[v.80] Let's Play - Mancers (Ridiculous)

ah nice, another MadDjinn LP looking forward to the next episodes. 

I'm following this one. Can't wait for the next chapter. I'm a big fan of how you do LP's and a big fan of the Polycast.

Just one thing; I love your settings with difficulty level and all (same difficulty I play on myself), but I'd say this game is alot better strategy wise and more challenging if you do auto-placement of buildings. 

Then you get a real need for getting out more pioneers to outpost connect cities, build monuments, getting administration and so on. I've stopped placing the improvements myself, and enjoy the game more. Also; the AI don't use those sleezy city snaking tactics you know!

heh, yeah, if the AI could do snaking, it might do 'ok'.

The Pioneer spam that they do really hurts them in the long run, as their pop tends to be fairly low for a long time due to the outposts they like to create.

I'll be releasing another one from this series in a bit (today).  I don't think I'll post each video here though (kinda spammy) but will post the link to the playlist for it.

Part 2 -

The playlist (for future videos)

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIn-J5vZXOJMwULATJtpSPn6PJzg-AA1O

To comment about you not wanting to kill Ceresa and lose her as a potential champ:

SD should change it so that when you kill another faction leader, instead of forever dying, they should join you instead but join you with a different penalty/wound than if she were to surrender to you and have the Spirit Broken wound.

As is, you sit around wasting time hoping that she one day decides to surrender.

That could work.  But I think I was more miffed that after wiping out everything, she still wouldn't sue for peace.  Ofc, that could be considered 'normal', but this being a game, she was caught outside of her cities and had lost them all plus all of her military.  Still living, even if not in charge, is a pretty big motivator.

The sad part is that I didn't really want *her*, per se, but her stuff.

*nods

Stuff is good.

Isn't there an option when speaking to a faction far beneath your power rating to make them surrender? Or is this what is not happening? (Due to Ceresa being stubborn^^)

Ceresa has death and water spellbooks though. i guess if she levelled water to 2, the freeze spell would have been really helpful when that trog warg army was marching towards Serrane

Yeah, she was being stubborn about surrendering.  She didn't even want a peace deal unless I paid her.

Am sure the AI (and player if the situation ever presents itself) can surrender, in which case all their towns / units are destroyed / erased, and you receive their Sovereign as a unit (to be your champion), but he/she will be found at the location he was when surrender took place (with no troops on him / her, but with all buffs, equipped items etc).

That because I had Porcupinee (ops meant Procipinee :D) surrender to me in a previous game and that's what happened. Interesting fact is that if the surrendering enemy Sovereign, had cast on them buffs which can only exist on only 1 unit at a time, like Tireless March, you end up with duplicates if you already had that spell cast on one of your own heroes. Not sure if is bug or just a bonus of surrender

BTW MadDjinn, great LP's, looking forward to episode 3 of Bandit Queen, and as a request if you could possible make one with the Kingdom you love so much: Kingdom of Tarth, Lady Irane! Sovereign path: Assassin. Looking forward to it

hmm, there likely would be a Yithril play through before the Tarth, as a lot of people would like to see that (especially with the double axes/etc changes).  Ofc, I'd also have to play them a bit to bling up the Juggernauts.

That sounds great Then let me quickly add Resoln --> Ceresa after Tarth, before you get other requests I had a blast playing her, and can't wait to see what you can make out of her

yeah, that's the main thing I really dislike about the current system -- must play and get all of the techs before being able to make nice units for the AIs.

i guess you are not aware of the cheat mode, then? you can basically run the game with a -cheat starting argument and use some cheat codes to unlock all research etc. really useful for making some nice custom units for your custom factions (for a short explanation, see this thread: https://forums.elementalgame.com/426222/page/1/#3346389 )

After watching your Bandit Queen LP 3 vid:

The bug with enchantments window displaying all players enchantments is only related to using previous versions save games. Starting a new game has no such bugs.

Also horses and wargs retain their .085 bonuses if you play a saved game from that version since they are stored within the saved game.

To best experience the .87 changes start a new game (with Tarth preferable :D) and then it will all come in a different light hehe

Yeah, I know the .87 patch changes won't fit in with the Bandit Queen play through (Derek confirmed that to me earlier).  I may need to restart on .87 on Monday just to use the new changes.

It should be Tarth with a mix of cloak & daggers and some life / water or life / earth spellcaster to support the good (bad) guys in action!

And this next LP don't underestimate the wolf packs! Heck I'm even careful and conservative when going against bear cubs

wolf packs need a slight nerf.  They're more powerful than some real monster packs.

I always hated facing darklings when playing Ceresa since they had very high resist (~42-49% chance to resist) making it a gamble to land any curse / debuff (and no point spamming shadowbolts on a unit with 12 hp to lower the resist) and they have high initiative as well, their wolf riders have high defense (chain missing when swarming them <.<). Even at weak indicator compared to my army they could slaughter a unit or two, which is a good design IMHO, because it gives you an incentive to play manually the battles instead of autoresolve as soon as your group power is better than the enemy indicator.

I've never had a problem with Darklings or Wildlings (aside from the spell casters), and I think they need a general boost.

It's those Mighty Mites that are a bane.  4 base attack with another 4 from a dagger + they reproduce faster than other mobs... they're, stat wise, more powerful than either Darklings or Wildlings in LH.  FE had them worse than those two groups.

I never had problems with Mites

Also Mites have lower ini than darklings, no mounted units, no wolves, no archers, and no shamans.

I don't think their strength indicator is the real indicator of what they are capable of. Also I wouldn't want all the low level mobs to be nerfed to become trivial, they should most likely provide a challenge to your starting army / low level heroes.

As it is now even fighting a pair of wolves or a single bear cub feels an epic fight which adds to game feeling and fun, you shouldn't have to wait until late game to get interesting fights

Please please make a LP with Tarth and sovereign Assassin. For some reason with them I'm having terrible difficulties keeping up with AI's from all points of view (on ridiculous difficulty of course).

Is their race trait bugged? It seems to me that I get way less research than any other faction (mainly talking about early game). I know they are Rebels and get +10% unrest, but so does Krax (despite it doesn't show on his info on sovereign selection screen at new game), yet settling in same spot 4/3/2 with both, Krax research for basic civilization tech is something like 12/12/8, while for Tarth is like 23/23/18. Both villages have same unrest, economy set to low.

They removed the Cruel trait from Karavox and gave it to Kulan.