Detailed specific feedback FE 1.2 Attn: Derek Paxton (long post)

Stealthy is hardcoded, it works even if it hasn't got a modifier.

Part of my interest in the single unit stealthy variable is in being able to change the value of it. The global monster aggression variable (faction customization trait of stealthy) is set to -100 when that trait is chosen in CoreAbilities.xml, and can be modded down to a lesser value, providing some insulation from monster attacks, but not allowing the player to ignore the mechanic completely. I would like to be able to change the scout trained unit trait in a similar manner.

The idea of being able to modify the global and specific unit aggression appeals to me from both a difficulty standpoint (the creation of a faction weakness involving increased monster aggression, for example), or possibly unit trait involving a unit which is particularly a monster magnet or alternatively able to evade monsters with increased success as opposed to guaranteed success.

It strikes me as odd that this one variable is set elsewhere when everything nearly everything else is the game is defined in ElementalDefs.xml and CoreAbilities.xml.

Where is the trained unit trait stealth mechanic handled in the game files? Surely by hardcoded you don't mean it's the one variable in the game defined inside the executable? If I just knew the name of the variable, a quick search of the files would give me the answer to this question. Someone at Stardock has a master global variables list!

This discussion reminded me of a bonus typo I saw in my last game that still exists: ""<Text>If an enemy is particurly vulnerable or resistant to your attack you will see" in CoreFlavorText.xml".

There's hundreds of tiny things like that, I just wanted to be helpful and say that even if the values aren't in CoreAbilities.xml they still work.

Inside the .exe.

Thank you Heavenfall! I guess that's one mystery to take off the list, even if it's not the answer I was hoping to get.

Now you have me concerned that the default faction customization picks are inaccessible! Which would be a crime, since everything else needed to do a complete overhaul of faction customization is accessible elsewhere!

As a fellow modder, I have to say that I am truly impressed with the depth of the changes in the Stormworld mod, even if it is a different vision than what I have for the game. I'm sorry that life is dragging you away from that project for now, but the community is a better place for all the work and feedback that you have put into it. I for one, appreciate your insight helping aspiring modders like myself navigate some of these idiosyncrasies!

An interesting and thought provoking post. I do disagree with you on the following balance points, however:

2. I don't like any change that makes snaking more powerful than it already is.

8. I think Tireless March is plenty powerful at +1, especially with the modifier affecting tactical combat.

9. I like the Governor specialization choice a lot. I think eliminating it as a choice would be a mistake.

I pretty much agree with what coyote303 said, with some additional comments;

1)  I also feel that the Spell Tome perks in "The Decalon" could be split from the Arcane Monolith advantage as both are really strong on their own.  Spell Tomes being abusable with Henchmen.  An aside; Really like Stormworld's Champion Profession "Endless" which mimics that part of The Decalon.

2) Haven't used the Snaking Mod.  Not sure about going too crazy with more Essence in the game, but it would be nice to find a few more areas that have more than 1-2 available.  3 is rare.  Have yet to find a 4.  The AI players [1.2] still aren't doing a good job of using city spells, would rather see them spend energy on that first before escalating power. 

8b) It's too bad that some of the Faction Strengths aren't able to be purchased fractionally.  Like spending .5 for Forest pathing.  Probably not feasible as it would dilute strong picks into marginal ones.  I'd be happy if they at least split out Movement through Rivers into a different skill.  Maybe when they get around to giving us boats 

9) There have been a lot of great ideas in the forums about how to make The Governor tree better.  On my Mod "to-do" list is to develop a watered down version (of Gov) available as Henchmen for a politically minded expansionist faction.  I would also like to see Governors gain XP if they're in a city when a building is finished.  XP could be proportional to the difficulty of the building being built.  Lots of room for developing The Governor tree into something neat.

Thanks for the excellent thought provoking post! Really hope the devs don't miss this post. As a couple other posters said, don't agree 100% with everything, but it certainly provides food for thought.

Excellent. This sort of conversation is exactly what I was hoping to get started!

@ Coyote303... What if Tireless March only gave +2 Strategic movement? Would you be onboard then?

@Coyote303 and Bernietime... The Governor choice could be so much more, I absolutely agree. I wish it was. I like roads, and conquered city unrest quelling. I REALLY like your idea about a governor gaining experience for a building's completion in a city they are stationed in. I wish I could think of a straightforward method to mod that myself. The simplest solution I could think of was to make the adventurer's guild xp per season apply to every city (instead of only the city it was built in), but I like your solution better.

I put the url in my original post, but I believe that the faction customization would benefit from using (for example) 10 times the selection points and having the choices be 10 times as expensive. This, obviously, would not change the relative costs AT ALL, but it would allow abilities to be split into smaller pieces when overpowered (scout, decalon) or weaker abilities to cost fewer points and thus become more viable choices, i.e. more room for adjustment of costs once this change is made. With the current system of 3 points (and costs of only 1 and 2) it's not granular enough for balance.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/438225 post details my thoughts on that concept.

Tireless March seems fine at +1.  In the unit design traits having some perks available that cannot be used with Mounts is where I was thinking.  Give Footsoldiers with Spear weapons a one time counterstrike to Mounted units that does double damage (for instance).  Design a Pike so that it has a range of 2 for Footsoldiers, cannot be used by mounted units.  Create a spell that only affects mounted units that causes the mount a % chance to move in a random direction instead of its intended destination point.

Some ideas I was mulling over last week as a foil to Mounted Units.  As the game is now, there is no reason not to get a horse/warg when they become available.

Just FYI Tireless march stacks. So giving it +2 instead of one would be insane. 2+ champions and everything moves fast enough for me.

Population is easy to get. Use consulates to get your pop back up. Arcane Monolith is in no way OP, 50 mana is a lot to spend on something you can get via hammers, I never use it tbh because I want mana for other things. 

This is exactly the concept I was wrestling with myself when I made the tireless march suggestion. A mount is always > no mount. So I was just trying to make my veteran foot soldiers still relevant past mid-game. I think I may have come up with an easily implemented solution that doesn't involve tireless march though. As it stands, the cloak slot can be marked for upgrade before cloaks are available. All I need to do is see if the horse "equipment" can be marked as able to be upgraded when available. Then I can just give horses to the veteran foot soldiers to keep up with everyone else.

Your idea of trying to give foot soldiers a REASON to exist in the horse era is excellent. We should work that up a bit, and see if any of it can be implemented. The standard implementation of rock paper scissors is cavalry kills archers, archers kill melee, melee (pike men) kill horses. However, in FE it's not like this at all. Perhaps adding a double damage vs horses to spears would in itself help encourage more unit build diversity. The ability to do extra damage vs a specific unit type exists within the game already (The dragonslayer champion perk uses this bit of code). I know champions and trained units use entirely separate code so the question will be whether or not this methodology can be applied to trained unit weapons.

With Arcane Monolith, I spend mana to get resources from across the map (a sniped iron node and shard at the edge of scouting range on a large map which blocks an AI expansion or AI empire connectivity), thus turning a one time mana expense into iron per turn and mana per turn. You can't do that with hammers. No pioneer is going to keep up with the edge of your scouting range. Even if this outpost only remained productively yours for a while... it's a great deal. However, if you eclipse that AI significantly in power by crushing your nearest neighbor decisively early you can keep that outpost for a significant portion of the game. The AI won't go to war over 1 outpost while at a military disadvantage, even if that outpost is adding 15% non-contiguous unrest to most of his empire. Similarly, setting loose a Ashwake Drake next to the AI's production center can pay itself off many times over even IF homeless monsters don't show the level of aggression that they should. Similarly Arcane Monolith can allow a Cloudwalk drop into even a small unclaimed back, center, or edge area of an empire at war, bypassing the main enemy army and razing their production base. Another feat that is difficult to accomplish with a pioneer in the middle of a war.

If you don't use the spell Arcane Monolith... I'm not sure how you can quantify if it's overpowered, or how an increase in cost or cooldown would negatively impact your playstyle choices, but I respect the fact that you would like to use your mana for other things.

I do appreciate the Tireless March stacking tip though. Seems like it could get out of hand though. A +10 movement scout could capture (and raze?) every outpost in an enemy empire unscathed. However, I still believe that making the Tireless March a nonstackable +2 strategic army movement only for 1 mana per turn would be more balanced.

Heh, sorry if this does not relate to this issue your are illustrating, but has anyone tried a 7 stack of mounted heroes w/ T.M.? I think this would equate to:

Base movement = 4

7 mounted heroes each w/ T.M. = +7 moves

Total movement per turn = 11! {LOL}

So, at .25 move/road tile = 44 road tiles per turn!

-OR- If you were sending an Army out, one could have 2 stacks. 1 stack trained mounted units {call them Cavalry} & 1 Stack of foot units {non-mounted} w/ 2 Heroes as Foot Captain & Cavalry Captain. Casting T.M. on the 2 Foot soldier stack Captains gives +2 moves or (2+2=4 moves). So, Foot soldier stack 4 moves, normal cavalry stack 4 moves. They can move at same speed.....

This might be a crazy stupid idea, but what about a Tireless March spell that scales with encumbrance?

In other words, lightly armored troops are granted higher movement bonus based on encumbrance {lets say: +3 for lights, +2 for mediums, +1 for heavies}. This would lend itself to the idea that a lightly encumbered scout unit can move quickly though a forest unlike a heavy shock trooper unit that is heavily encumbered....{edit: Maybe +2 for lights/+1 for mediums/+0 for Heavies?}

Extending this scaling tireless march to mounted units means a heavily encumbered cavalry unit would have a base move of, say, 3 instead of 4...

All in all, thanks for your post.

P.S. It saddens me that you pointed out the overpowered "Lucky" trait, as I played my first full random game as Wraiths w/ lucky, defensive, archer, et al. traits. At a cost of 1 point the lucky trait did indeed make my units next to un-stoppable along with Wraith's blood trait -leaching health on enemy death ability...Shield +dodge stats along with other +dodge items {and evade type spells} were pretty nice imho. I don't have any ideas how to balance the Faction traits other than assigning a larger pool of points that are spent on Faction creation {Like instead of 3 points, a faction gets 100 points - then adjust trait point costs from +1 or +2 or -1 to higher values based on the impact of said traits, ie. "lucky" costs 50 points and if a faction combines "lucky" with the defensive trait, the combination of stacking of traits cost even more due to the power of a lethal combination...}

Someone should make a mod or something....lol

You can't specify extra damage vs mounted units directly in the code.  The best you might be able to accomplish is to give extra damage vs a higher movement unit.

Although you could check out Heavenfall's UnitStat library - there may be something useful in there to accomplish your goals.

I'd be willing you bet you'd be able to code it.  Unfortunately it wouldn't be as simple as saying "mounted" units, would think you'd have to specify Horse, Warg, etc.. as their own specific subset.

Also, I had no idea that Tireless March was stackable.  That's really crazy IMO.

All army-wide spells and effects stack, that's why they must be nerfed until Stardock makes them NOT stack.

In my own mod:

-Tireless March is +1 move to the unit enchanted with it

- Shieldwall provides +2 protection

- the army trainer skills provide 10% each time, not 10%, 15%, 20%

- henchmen cost 1 influence upkeep

- you need 4 horses/wargs per soldier. Yes, it means 12 horses for a 3-men unit. Cavalry is rare in my world.

I agree totally with you on that point. T.M. is a "Strategic UNIT spell" not "Strategic ARMY spell", I only discovered this by casting T.M. and noting that T.M. propagates army-wide when cast on a Hero. Once I had maybe 7 or 8 heroes, most, if not all, my active army stacks moved at least 2 tiles though Forests etc. Made a big difference when I was debating moves around wandering Lair spawns so I could loot some Free items from Treasure Troves...

No. The description clearly states "Increases the movement of the target's army by 1." You may need to cast in on a champion, but it is meant to affect the whole army.

Overall, I would prefer it, if Tireless March wouldn't stack and only affect strategic moves.

Agreed. TM is just too powerful as is.

Earthquake seems too cheap for its devastating effect. Perhaps every building should have 50% or more not to be destroyed. Complex buildings should rather be downgraded than destroyed.

Starting trait Wealty of 500 guildar at start I'd suggest to replace with +2 guildar per season.

Starting trait Adventurer should give only 50% of cost of hiring heroes. With all heroes for free human player is able to recruit all high level heroes, leaving AI with none.

I'd also suggest to remove population cost for pioneers. There is no need to slow down the game and when AI occasionally loses its pioneers at start it completely kills the chalenge of the game.

I don't know, but something should be done with influence. For henchmen it's valuable, but for other situations it's useless (or perhaps I didn't find the secret of its usefulness)

I played another game with all vanilla settings (no mods, no xml changes) on a large map with 7 opponents. My general preference is for the map to have more essence and thus, I realize, more mana per turn from city enchantments. I STILL believe that the spell Arcane Monolith becomes overpowered beyond a certain mana income threshold, but in order to be useful at the start of the game (when its function as a side replacement for pioneer outposts is most critical), I have changed my position about the doubling of the cost of the spell. I STILL believe that a few turns of cooldown wouldn't be out of place, and will probably mod such into the game for myself. However, at this point I'd like to play a few games as a faction other than Paridien so I'm done testing it for a while.

What an excellent idea, webusver. Thank you.

Also an interesting suggestion to me. Again, thank you.

The most useful thing I've found for it outside of henchmen is for trading with the AI for resources/tech.