Some Noob questions

from Elemental Forums

Okay, maybe some experts can pls explain me a few things abou the game. It looks very complex, and I am not sure about a couple of things.

After seeing the game was still buggy, I stopped playing the Campaign, waiting for later, and decided to try a map of my own making. Since I always enjoyed map maping, I spent a few hours making a large continent of my own, with mountains, forests, rivers and whatnot. Then I distributed mobs, lairs and quests and finally NPCS, and it all worked out pretty well. I put the ressources so, that every faction would be able to built cities in some sorts of interest, like having places where you can find ore and food and some stuff. You get the idea.

Now I played that map really long and finally vanquished my southern neighbour. One thing I realized was, the none of my neighbours really expanded. They built one city in their starting area, and that was it. None of them seemed to be interested in creating more settlements, even though the area was large and plenty of good places. Ok, I set them to easy, not to have it too hard in the beginning, but it still seemed odd. Does anyone else have experienced that, that the other factions don't really seem to spread and build new cities?

Second, mobs. In the beginning there were just a few. But every few turns or so, my advisor told me some heroes were in some dungeon, and as a result many mobs were set loose. Or somesuch. So by and by the wilderness filled with more and more mobs, WAY more than would ever be able to handle. They seemed mostly do to nothing, and I was glad about that, since even with my large Kingdom, there was at some point no way I could ever defeat them all. The result is, even when my Kingdom makes progress, the world seems to get more dangerous and less civilized, and I don't feel that is right. Somehow civilized areas should spawn less mobs. Or is there a way to prever the  mob spawning in some areas? I am not sure if all this is right.

Third, I always only had 1 or at best 2 armies. Mostly one with my regent is enough. However, since travel is SO SLOW, it makes reacting to things difficult. I dunno, but even over a long time I always felt crammed to some tiny place and reacted with 6-8 "soldiers" (including my king) to react to things. I never build anything like an army. Is that normal, or am I doing something wrong??

 

EDIT: Oh yes, and Nobility level? There are some things like chests, and they always said the nobility level must be 3 and mine always stayed at level 1. How does one raise his Noblity Level??

elemental
4,712 views 2 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top


Okay, maybe some experts can pls explain me a few things abou the game. It looks very complex, and I am not sure about a couple of things.

After seeing the game was still buggy, I stopped playing the Campaign, waiting for later, and decided to try a map of my own making. Since I always enjoyed map maping, I spent a few hours making a large continent of my own, with mountains, forests, rivers and whatnot. Then I distributed mobs, lairs and quests and finally NPCS, and it all worked out pretty well. I put the ressources so, that every faction would be able to built cities in some sorts of interest, like having places where you can find ore and food and some stuff. You get the idea.

Now I played that map really long and finally vanquished my southern neighbour. One thing I realized was, the none of my neighbours really expanded. They built one city in their starting area, and that was it. None of them seemed to be interested in creating more settlements, even though the area was large and plenty of good places. Ok, I set them to easy, not to have it too hard in the beginning, but it still seemed odd. Does anyone else have experienced that, that the other factions don't really seem to spread and build new cities?

Second, mobs. In the beginning there were just a few. But every few turns or so, my advisor told me some heroes were in some dungeon, and as a result many mobs were set loose. Or somesuch. So by and by the wilderness filled with more and more mobs, WAY more than would ever be able to handle. They seemed mostly do to nothing, and I was glad about that, since even with my large Kingdom, there was at some point no way I could ever defeat them all. The result is, even when my Kingdom makes progress, the world seems to get more dangerous and less civilized, and I don't feel that is right. Somehow civilized areas should spawn less mobs. Or is there a way to prever the  mob spawning in some areas? I am not sure if all this is right.

Third, I always only had 1 or at best 2 armies. Mostly one with my regent is enough. However, since travel is SO SLOW, it makes reacting to things difficult. I dunno, but even over a long time I always felt crammed to some tiny place and reacted with 6-8 "soldiers" (including my king) to react to things. I never build anything like an army. Is that normal, or am I doing something wrong??

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The games I have played, the AI expands but doesn't do a pioneer rush or anything.  Also remember the AI setting you were playing on. Perhaps it was gimped a bit due to lower rating.

Mobs.  Spawning a group of baddies.  Reminds me of Civ and how goody huts can go wrong.  Instead of getting something you get angry units who want to kill you.  Someone set that off.  Speaking of spawning mobs, civilized or controlled territory doesn't spawn mobs.  The land where no one's borders touch can spawn mobs.

Third.  You can pick adventurer in the Sovereign creation screen to get more move points.  You can also take organized trait and all the units who team up with sovereign go at the same speed- the sovereign's instead of at the slowest one's pace.  There's also a teleport spell.  You can also summon units and send them off.   Once you can buy equipment you can purchase things to make the Sovereign have more moves.  Also can design units that have more moves.  I made a unit I called 'Fast Messenger' for the campaign who could get 4 tiles per turn.  Pretty good.  Keep researching.  I'm sure there'll be more spells and equipment to help you travel. 

One last piece of advice.  Don't let mountains stand in your way.  You can with spell lower land and traverse right over the tiles.

 

 

 

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

AIUI the random mobs are determined by the player with the adventure techs.  As any of the factions research adventure techs, larger and stronger monsters will appear in the wilderness.  You'll notice from time to time you'll get messages that some random group of adventurers (not yours) accidentally delved too deeply into a dungeon and let powerful monsters out, so there does seem to be a "logical", "storylike" explanation for why the wilderness is getting more dangerous.

The notable locations and quests levels are controlled by how far up the Adventure tech tree you've gone -- I think that's Domination tree if you're playing evil.

Playing on standard difficulty your opponents will definitely expand out and will actively seek out good city locations and take them before you can ...  There are also apparently minor cities which will not expand.  I wouldn't be surprised if the opponent factions don't expand much at the easiest difficulty settings though.

As far as armies go, I've been running around with my sovereign, one adventurer/companion, a few magic creatures, and maybe 4-5 squads of knights and archers.  If you're concerned with travel speed, you can go into the unit designer and start designing troops for speed.  I ended up building Ranger units specifically to move quickly and confront enemy harassment units which were burning my farms and other outlying structures.  You can get unit movement level up to about 2.5x faster than a standard unit with the right equipment.  You can get even higher with horses or wargs, which unfortunately I don't have the right resources for.

Ashes of the Singularity II