Hi Frogboy,

could you say, when will there be the next patch or a fix for this one? It would be nice to play/test more with the new features, but at the moment with the new population-system out of control, it is not really meaningful.

Thanks.

I think demanding a larger and larger pool of available specialists to build repeatable buildings is a workable idea - but this should be a check, not the actual cost of the building. The purpose of the dynamic is to slow and restrict building, not mysteriously vanish huge (unskilled) groups of the population.

If my tenth study has an increased cost of 100 specialists, I should not be able to build one unless I have that many free population. But when I build it, it should actually only cost the same as my first one, and all those people should remain available. Then, if my eleventh study has an increased cost of 200 specialists, I should not be able to build one until I have that many free pop (it's increasingly difficult to find good people), but to actually build it, should only cost the basic amount (no matter how difficult it is to find good people, once you find them, it is them who you take - not all the people you passed over in your search for them).

This would restrict expansion, while freeing up population for soldiering - it would also solve the problem of capturing cities as the occupation costs would not suddenly add so much 'used' population.

I agree with this. It's just a question of whether I'm able to do it as I'm not familiar with that code.

Simultaneous damage wont solve anything. We need more HP to start with, then we can build from there. 10-20 times more hp then we can have some real battles. TC needs to be deeper and take more part in the game.

Groups of units should be really powerful and champions should be units that can buff the groups. Only powerful champions should be able to pick fights with grouped units directly.

There should also be a penalty for moving past an enemy unit so that we can actually engage a unit/group in battle, not just strike them and watch them run away to kill the sovereign or whatever. The "tank" units should fight it out in the middle, the ranged/magic/support units stay in the back and quick/mounted units should try to go on a flank to try to reach the support units.

(It would be cool if we could mod hp...)

Tell me how so that I can start playing this damn game for real!

Check out https://forums.elementalgame.com/403584 for a fairly in-depth walkthrough. 

This is an example of a mod that would give Relias 100 hp in sandbox: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=q3hbe4Fm 

Another approach is to completely remove the <UnitStat_HitPoints>100.0000</UnitStat_HitPoints> line and then set it "globally" in a modded CoreUnitStats.xml. Each unitstat can have a default value that it gives, and that value is given to a unit if the unit doesn't have any value.

Constitution is a separate stat that only gives you hitpoints. The difference between constitution and hitpoints is (afaik) that constitution increases in strength as you level, while hitpoint bonuses are completely static. So 1 constitution would be worth more for a level 10 unit than a level 1 unit.

I much prefer a game where each city has meaning and expansion is difficult and largely based on resource acquisition. If this system worked a little better one would be rewarded for gathering their experts together to take advantage of %bonus buildings instead of perfoming the same builds in each city. One would even benefit from demolishing buildings in captured cities to 'migrate' the specialists to great cities that are %bonus enhanced. I would say the system is very close to working and that creative mathematical approaches are a helpful way to bring some increased depth to a number the game's more simplified dynamics.

Yeah, I support this too.

Best regards,
Steven.

2 AI Improvements I would like to see:

A. Tactical Battles - give me some opponents that uses magic. I have played several games where my sovereign is the only one using magic. I would likely consider implementing this by have the AI sovereign randomly choose a strategy for advancement at game start: i.e. 75% Warrior (Focused skill points on Strength), 25% Mage (Use skill points to increase Intelligence). Thus 1 of 4 sovereigns, on average would focus their personal development on improving intelligence and casting spells during combat. 3 of 4 AI sovereigns would be warriors that largely ignore magic.

B. War Strategy - Give me an occassional Empire Sovereign that pursues a policy of razing Kingdom cities. Say 10% Empire Sovereign will adopt a policy of razing Kingdom cities; i.e. capture Kingdom city - raze it - move to next Kingdom City - raze it - repeat. Now all the sovereigns follow the same strategy, none has a strategic plan of burning and pillaging.

Example:

At game start the game AI assigns a development focus and war strategy to each AI sovereign

Development Focus: (1-25 Magic, 26-100 Warrior), War Strategy (1-10 Raze Cities, 11-100 Conquest)

Sovereign A (1,89) - Magic Focus, Conquest Strategy
Sovereign B (30,50) - Warrior Focus, Conquest Strategy
Sovereign C (55,32) - Warrior Focus, Conquest Strategy
Sovereign D (89,76) - Warrior Focus, Conquest Strategy
Sovereign E (94,3) - Warrior Focus, Raze Cities Strategy

1 Magic Improvement I would like to see

C. I would like to see more tactical magic spells and an AI that knows how to use them.

Example:

Spell 1: Darkness - reduces line of site and attack range for all units to one. Imagine fighting a battle where you can't see you enemy. Lasts for 1 turn per caster level
Spell 2: Summon Wolf Pack - Summons pack of wolves (i.e. Squad size) that last for 1 turn per caster level
Spell 3: Summon Giant Spiders that last for 1 turn per caster level

I’m confused as to what point you’re trying to make. The citizen system is a way of limiting the number of production buildings you can have by population, nothing more. Nothing wrong with this principle, it’s just a really poor way of going about it. Citizens have nothing to do with the resource system or city specialization. The % bonus buildings encourage specialization, but they’d do that equally well without citizen costs.

And what's so great about specialization anyway? What was Minas Tirith specialized in? Doesn't specialization just mean you have to have multiple towns to cover all the necesarry functions? (or ignore one part of gameplay) So, you just have to have more settlements.