Why am I still getting steamrolled unless I choose ONE specific strategy?

The Civ, warfare, and Magic trees are not equally useful.  The Civ tree is downright necessary.  It gives you food.  It gives production.  It gives research.  All of which gives you more of anything else.  The knowledge tech of Civ alone doubles your research.  If you found more cities, it triples to quadruples it.  The mining tech is also incredibly useful.  Oh yeah, it also gives you all of your gold.  And the unrest buildings. 

Not sure why they didn't take the obvious approach of putting research in Magic, food/gold in Civ, and production in War.  

Right now, the game is balanced around people city spamming as much as possible.  You don't NEED to focus on Civilization exclusively, though I find the the first tier of Civ techs to be incredibly worthwhile.  You do, however, need to spam pioneers and take as many cities as possible.  I find 5-6 in the early game to be a decent number to start with.

Because the balance is whack...

That said, if you are having trouble on beginner... I can't say what you are doing wrong, really, I am playing and having a real easy time on "Hard".

It would help to know what you are doing, to identify what you are doing wrong, if nothing else, try watching one of the "Let's Play" made from Das, don't think he made one with the latest version, but he is still pretty proficient with the game, AND have the patience and time to do a let's play

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

There are a whole bunch of problems with the tech tree that prevents the player from really making a long-term choice for strategy.

First off, Civilization doesn't offer any military advantages other than group upgrades. It is supposed to support a faction specializing in civilization with influence and being able to recruit monsters from the world around you. But these are just woefully underpowered to any trained units.

Second, there is no real choice between crystal and metal equipment. Metal can be used in the warfare tree on its own, and that's a "strategy". But Crystals cannot be used in the magic tree to the same effect. There is no armor, and upgrades in crystal-requirement gear requires that I invest heavily the warfare tree.

The result is that the player is left with many short-term choices (do I get that burning axe now, or get a mounted unit instead?). But long-term there is no real choice in what you go for, which makes it impossible to have a variety in the game.

Each game plays the same: Civilization first until Mining, Trading, Cooperation. Then go warfare or magic depending on if you have metal/crystal. Then go warfare because you'll need better armor for your units and heroes. And then the game is over once you get to chainmail and build a few super-units.

Suggestions: Improve influence-based world resources for recruiting monsters. Preferably by making the existing ones ugpradeable, and making the player pay each time he recruits one, and putting MANY MORE of those world resources in the game so that Influence becomes a viable resource alternative. A wild run-on sentence appeared.

Also create more mid-tree equipment choices for using crystal. That is, enchanted armor for everyone. I don't care if it's twice as expensive as chainmail - give us something. And then disconnect the late-magic tree from warfare tree. A few unit design traits originating from the magic tree would be cool as well.

I don't think there are enough ways to take advantage of influence - I know it's supposed to influence your relationship with other civs and you can use it as a kind of currency during trades but it should provide other tangible benefits - it feels really contrived when I'm flogging an AI my influence for the AI's useful resources. I know you can use it to buy monsters but it never happens in practice because those techs are way down the civ tree and you have to clear out the monsters in the first place. In which case you've probably developed units using the magic or war techs already.

In high essence cities you can go down the Magic tree for great effect. Gentle Rain is a good way to get food, and the Alchemist lab can grant materials and research.

yeah but researching and building an alchemy lab without anything in civ tree is still too long and yet again the best way to get money and rushing buildings is still in civ tree etc etc

True you do still need a fair bit of civ tech but you can kinda specialize in magic.

I would like for essence to stop being exponential and have more of the enchantments require research. That way magic tech would be more important. Really every city enchantment should be on the magic tree and you should be able to increase the power of those enchantments using magic tech, however you can only do this using Oracles in Conclaves because essence is exponential and thus adding more is very OP.

Really good evaluation... Reading an appropriate evaluation like this makes me want to play your mods

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Enchanted armor would and should still require metal and warfare tech. You could add Crystal Armor that also boosts spell resistance and only requires crystal and magic tech. You could also add magic hooded robes that cover every part of the body but the feet, as a light weight metal free alternative. we already have some robes but they are questionable because they are chest only. Also a crystal/vaporal spear or sword wouldn't hurt.

why would magic tree provide troops like other tree?

it makes no sense, we already have a tier of magic armor and some weapons, thats more than enough

rest of magic tree should be devoted to magic stuff, spells, providing mana, enchants, magic creatures maybe and stuff like that

Tech tree interdependence is killing long-term strategic choices. Every game by turn 200 I have almost exactly the same techs researched.

 Edit: Instead of interdependence, ie it REQUIRES a tech from another tree, I wish there would be bonus unlocks if you had something from two different trees. Research Chainmail and Enchantment and you can build Spectral Chainmail shirts (same stats but no weight).

I don't plan on modding any of this stuff. Too much work.

[EDIT: Looks like I agree with what other folks have said ]

Here are some suggestions along the lines of this discussion considering most folks are ok with the current standing of the Civilization tree (I've never seen any arguments against this assumption.)  This rambles a bit, sorry for that.

The Warfare tree could have a Hunting line of techs.  This line could introduce certain weapons and armors (bows, daggers, hunting knives, axe, and spears ought to be unlocked earlier; also hides and leather armors), buildings (for instance a Hunting Lodge building tree which can only be built on forest but gives food per grain), and unlock some unit traits.  Then there could be the more traditional Warfare line, Which would be all about unit training, smithing, production (especially unit production, but not completely), Weapons of War (swords, battle axes, warhammers, advanced polearms, etc) and advanced metals, which wouldn't necessarily introduce better armor and weapon types (these should be balanced by weight and encumbrance vs damage or protection) but better metallurgy so blades are lighter and hold a better edge, and armors are lighter but protect a bit better.  I feel like it's particularly clonky to say that plate armor is more advanced than leather or chain.  They are different and offer different pros and cons and should be treated that way.

To me the Magic tree is egregiously the worst tech tree of them all.  It offers very little support on its own and is particularly haphazard in its approach.  And it's overly-synergized with the warfare tree.  The enchanted weapons and armor mechanic is god awful.  More city enchantments should be available through the Magic tree, especially those that might aid with things that buildings currently do (mitigate unrest, give food and production, growth.)  The primary route of gaining more essence should be through the magic tree, and it should be easier to gain more essence.  My Conclaves should be nigh bursting with magic.  Maybe the only types of weapons and armors that can be player enchanted are created only with Crystals (Crystal Weapons and Armors); any found items which are imbued with magicks are considered Artifacts, and cannot be created by the current system.

Anyway, all in all I consider the tech trees a mess.

Damit

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Good, thought I was the only one who thought the only strategic choice in the whole game was whether to go crystal/metal for the 5 membered ranged units as early as possible.  Once the units are out the door, upgrading through the warfare tree is the only path for tanks while you may need to further upgrade magic if you started with crystal, to get better high damage ranged capability.  Then you hit "I win".

Exactly.  I typically focus on Civilization, and get one or two in Magic.  If, and only if, I survive my first bully attack, I start to invest in Military.

I wish magic gave you major magic advantages (a lot more spells), Military major advantages with armor and weapons, etc.

I will!

I want to finish some of my long term projects, but since Goetia is on hold and Ivory Towers is as well until the quest system gets some sweet chocolate lovin, I might just do something crazy. 

I want each faction to have different incentives on how to research. Reading Hf's comment (he doesn't talk about balance much, but when he does it is always spot on), we do seem to have three trees of endgame interdependence. Really, the Civ tree is only interdependent for unit size and the fact that all the economic techs are there. Magic gives a mix of things, but requires warfare techs to get the best equipment. The warfare tree offers some good metal based equipment. But it's only good because the AI has never learned how to research and train with it.

How do I want to change it? I might try separating all the trees and giving some incentive bonus techs to combinations. Civics-Magic would be epic wonders that give more magical resources and maybe +1 essence if you eat your vegetables and go to bed early. Civics-Warfare would be efficiency improvements that allow faster training and less wages, as well as some unrest reducers based on oppression. Warfare-Magic would be enchanted weapons and armor, as well as some tactical spells for trained units. 

On top of all that, I want faction differentiation. But Supreme Lord of all Modding, you say, we already had a beta about that and everything is perfect now. Screw that. There is always room to make each faction have special techs that involve cross-tree choices. I have been putting together some ideas for this and since Hf complained about tech trees, I suppose that is how I will shape my next content/balance mod. 

All ideas welcome!

Oh I don't think anyone said that!

Please make your mods modular!!!

I think the factions needs a little something ATM.. for example is it only like 5 of 8(10) that have special units...
I thought about changing the tech tree's myself, etc. but all the modding stuff I decided to take a look at after version 1.00 (release)

That said - Gammit if you need pointers or any help, just ask and I can write a few helpful tips about starting.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

No there are other way to play. Like take a faction with good fighting sovereign and take him around on leveling spree. Then you can clear the map just with him. SD first try at balancing heroes failed. I had an extremely easy time to win like this. And only died once during it when I was <10. This was on challenging with dense monster population.

At-least its harder on ridiculous and insane to solo the map now

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Is it possible to get the AI to use this new tech system effectively though?

I was thinking of tackling some kind of mod project but you and heaven keep taking all the good ideas hehe. Seriously, though, making more distinct tech trees and new items and such is easy enough but is the AI going to use them effectively? I haven't been doing any modding for over a month so maybe I am out of the loop on this.

welll if you just REPLACE techs with other ai will just pick the better ones

but yeah you are right that ai still might pick them in random order like it does with equip and traits

for all this there is only 1 solution: premade templates for ai developing (also easy and great way to let modders add content that is ai compatible )

https://forums.elementalgame.com/432736

we need this improvement to ai!

All unrest and production buildings should be moved to the warfare tree. Bonus to production from population (or city level) should be made much more noticable. All spells that provide city type benefits should be tied to the magic tree and require the pre-requisite spell school. Summons and influence units should be made more readily available and tied to their respective trees.

And to address pioneer spam, all buildings should have a 40% reduction in build cost, all units should have a 60% reduction in build cost (except the pioneer!). Prestige should remove full cities from growth calculations. Magnar's slave trait should send overflow evenly to non-full cities and altair's presitge from quests should be changed to +.5 to compensate.

I do not agree with this here. Although I do understand where you are coming from on the point of view that you are gearing up your production and making people happy about your war to be part of the warfare tree.

But in essence the civics are taking care of the community and building up the community. Sure a forge builds weapons. but it provides farming tools and workmans tools as well. Unrest reducing buildings is how you are controlling your people in times of war and in times of peace. So, it doesn't make sense to have them all in warfare tech tree.

The seperation is good right now. They could make some tweaks, but not such a large change.

The production bonus and the building costs reduction will lead to a swing too far for balancing. I agree to a production boost but not necessarily a cost reduction yet.

Is pioneer spam still a problem? Could you elaborate what you mean by pioneer spam? Is it because the AI is always building pioneers or is it because you are always building pioneers? I honestly don't quite understand this really. I thought the beginning of the game was about expanding your empire through outposts and settlements.