But let's say we add in armors that are crystal dependent and we want a faction who focuses on magic tech to be able to build certain magic armors and weapons, which would require some metal and crystals. Will the AI then build those units with those armors and weapons (all of which would be new perhaps)

I think both the magic and war tech trees should have their own styles of armor and weapons and such and the civ tree could remain generally the same with a faction needing to develop civ while choosing to go down the path of magic or war if they want to become powerful in one of those areas. This way, if you go down the path of magic, you don't need to go down the path of war necessarily or perhaps there could be benefits to doing both, like some special kinds of armor or weapons.

To people who don't know, the AI has a priority value for each tech. If you set these values right, you can define the most optimum choices. There is then an AI military strategy type you can give to specific factions, which increases or decreases their value of any techs you specify. This is completely moddable. Might want to try it out.

Are you talking about AImilitarystrategytypes and coreaidefs? What other files handle things like that?

My question is though, if you add in certain armors and weapons through the magic techs which can only be obtained through the magic techs (all being new armor and weapons) will the AI design units that use them?

I still think that warfare techs should contain all non-trinket items for soldiers, both magical and mundane, and that the magic tree weapons and armor should be champion-exclusive (trinkets and cloaks are fine where they are).  I'm also holding out hope that we'll get some modding tools, so that players like me can have an interface to hold our hands while we dink around with modding. 

The AI does not design units. You or the devs design them and the AI uses them when it can. So, if you make a unit design for the new content, the AI will use them. 

I typically do this as well.  I take my sovereign, recruit 2-3 heroes, and go on a leveling spree.  I still get steam rolled.  

What? 

Just cheese the game with Krax blood dodge stacked units, you can then research whatever you like after obtaining the Sindarin staff, or actually it doesn't matter at all what you do since your troops can fight at a very high ratio making them ridiculously high in combat effectiveness. You can also just rush a trio out and take AI cities if you see any right off the bat. On Ridiculous it just gets boring to wade through stacks of spearmen though. 

As for everything else, really it just depends on your starting location. If you start in an area with two or three essence, you pretty much will steam roll with Enchanted Hammers, Meditation, Inspiration, and one other of your choice.  I feel like that usually determines whether or not I bother playing since most of my games will end up in a state of 'Well, this is familiar' .

Your heroes should not run around in the same stack together, they will gain less experience.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Really?  Should I run one with my Sov, or put one hero per group?

Yup... soldiers do not take away from champion / sov xp

Experience for levelups is exponential, and having multiple heroes doesn't hurt your effectiveness. What does hurt your effectiveness is the limited equipment. Gear that you find is typically much better than anything you can purchase (assuming you can even afford the exhorbant fees), but you will rarely find enough to completely outfit more than two champions making any additional champions wheat for the scythe.

The secondary reason that you might not want to group all your champions together is that you cover significantly less ground per turn. I still typically group my sovereign with another champion at the start, but that's mostly just because regular units take so damned long to build.

Um, that is not true Rogdan.  If you have two heroes in the same army, they get 1/2 experience they would otherwise have.

Thats true, but you also have twice the firepower, instead of having 1 hero at level 20 you will have 2 heroes at level... 12-13 or whatever they reach. With limited monsters, XP doesn't dissapear like this, and if you need to group up a couple of heroes to beat the world it is an ok tactic, but generally time-wise it is usually better to split heroes and send some troops with your heroes (Unless your heroes can solo, and move faster than the troops). Apply only troops where you can afford them of-course.

I usually quickly tech up leather armor and spears, and build armored spear troops to help clear out the immediate area if any high threat is present, those bunch of meatshields you can acquire can help tons.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Thanks for the feedback, folks.  I wish a member of Stardock will post in here and either tell me what else I am doing fundamentally wrong or if this feature of the game requires a tweak.

The experience nerf for stacks of doom was to reduce the frequency of them.  It's generally pretty effective, though if you like SODs you can just play as Altar (or a custom Men faction) and train gobs of henchmen.  That's my current favorite tactic.

On the other hand, one champion isn't usually going to be able to take on a dragon, much less a Wildlands ruler.  Multiple champions in a party, each with their own specialties, makes it much easier to destroy higher level enemies.  So it becomes a tradeoff of scale: small parties for small challenges, larger parties for larger challenges.  The experience won't be any greater in a really tough fight for one champion among many, but the item you find at the end of the battle should be correspondingly better.

I was not saying it was a perfect plan to solo, I was trying to communicate that if you can run off some heroes to just solo mites, while 1-2 heroes are bashing the high level stuff, hopefully in seperate groups, you quickly gain a powerful hero force.

I am not one to control his games either, and yes I was trying to state (later on) that sometimes its almost best to group up your powerful heroes, even bring 1-2 groups of trained units to bring down one tough monsters. But focusing on 1 hero still seems to me like the best choice in the current game.

Edit: I am by far not the best hero-using player, players like Tidjyu seems to be better actually, I just know one or two of the secret rules in elemental that helps boost heroes to exponential powerful levels.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I have tested these suggestions, and feel I am now much more competitive.  That being said, this is still on "beginner" dififculty, and if it was this difficult for me to figure out on that setting, maybe this should be addressed.

Atleast the UI should reflect the XP penalty, but I am happy that you feel more confident in your games

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Totally agree. After some games, the research process is always the same. First and 2nd tier on civics, and after that, a mix of warfare and magic. So the game variation is very affected. Each tree should be able to develope depending on available resources, to give more variety to each game.

But, if the Tech trees have to be modified...there can be so many points of visions as people...

My sugerence is basically, to convert an horizontal orientated Tree into a more versatile Vertical Tree. Let's branch all choices from the begining, and just get improvements via later research on each branch. So each game, you will research depending on what available resources.

- Civics. As said before, focusing on money and production.There is little to say, just turn them into vertical branches

    Food improvements. Grocers, gardens, festivals, all that. Tech for apiary, farms, goes here too.

    Gildar improvements. Market, and all stuff related with $.

    Production improvements. Lodging camp, workshop, iron and gold mine, smelter,...

    Unrest improvement. City hall, cleric, ...

   Diplomatics impovements. Monuments (what if calling one of the two as Statue)

- Warfare. From the very begininn, a branch for:

         light armour. No metal requiered.

         Heavy armour. Metal required

         Pierce: Bows and spears (could even get separated, but I guess having them together is enough)

         Blunt: Maces, hammers. More metal requiered, more damage. Less initiative, maybe less dodge. It can add bash, smash and all that.

         Cut. Swords and daggers. Less metal, maybe more production cost requiered. Gives initiative, and may add countestrike (x1, x2, x3...).

         Mount branch. From here, split into horses, wargs, and any other future mount.

         Training Tree. From here, the tree dedicated to group size, reducing training time, more xp at start, better defences, better attack, etc.

With this tree more opened, it should be able to dedicate to have some troops in early game, without too much suffering in economics. And mid game, with the economy settled and some resources explored, each game will focus more variated.

- Magic. Oh oh, what shall we do to with this meesed Tree? Let's try to put some order:

       Heroes Branch. Easy, and clean.

       Crystal and mana improvements. Upgrades and all that.

       Research improvements. The same. It could include a Spells branch, with the researching for spells as many people are asking for

       Magical stuff. It could split into Magic weapons and Magic Defenses.

As the magic Tree seems the more diversed, we could add here two more branches:

  -  Darkligns, Trolls and other monster recruiting. ¿Who wants a squishy  darkling? Well, if research takes little and there is a close lair, maybe...But now, sure not.

  - Special faction unit could be researched here too. Each faction should have 1 or even 2 unique units, with further researching developement.

Have you even played a recent beta?