Howdy,

Last night I played a fantastic game.  I was able to created a balanced sov, on a large random map with moderate settings and a balanced resource map, normal difficulty settings.  The game placed me next to a couple resources and a few that required boarder expansion and growth to attain.  During the first few turns I proceed to loot some goodie huts, my rewards were not over powered and were useful to my sov (a green hat with +5 int and a set of bracers with +Defense).  I moved onward, found a champion, siding w/ my faction ideals, and picked her up for about 35% of my total treasury of guildar.  A good price but not cheap.  My new friend and I moved on to other goodie hut were we collected some 2nd tier weapons and proceeded to equip them, I needed to start clearing the trash around my capital.  Knowing that unresolved mobs in their dens will further grow, my new friend and I decided to take on a bear cub... harmless right?  After a few rounds of combat we defeated the bear cub but not after taking about 40% damage to my sov.  That's one mean bear cub.  A few turns later I built new buildings and selected new research.  I wanted a fire shard so I could start casting some spells and wanted to make sure I grab that escape spell asap in the second tier.  I wandered around some more and took on some more low level dens, clearing my boarders to making room for outpost expansion in the future.  A few more turns passed and I picked up another new champion friend while killing more mob dens.  When my friends and sov leveled I was pleased to see they all started with the choice of a path to take, ie... path of the defender etc... I had to stay clear of particular areas due to high level dens adjacent to the routes I wanted to explore further.  This ensured I must better equip my champs and sov to progress further.  Content with my small party I proceeded to start building some defending units; knowing they auto equip new gear it mattered not what I equipped them with when created.  I took my new party, with the new club wielding unit to a quest hub hoping for some awesome loot!.  I took a quest to find a lost dog.  A few squares away was the quest resolution hub, a den of wolves, so I head that way to get this poor man his lost dog back.   The wolves contained 3 groups of wolves and a leader wolf... great.   After battling the wolves and alpha wolf I lost my club unit and had damage to one of my champions.  I thought the quest was over... but NO... that lost dog took sides with the wolves and brought another pack of wolves to fight me again, I was sweating this next fight.  Though I won the next battle I was in bad shape.  All my champs were hurt bad and I was nearly dead. 

The game progressed in the same way as above I took more quests, further equipped up my champions and units,  built outposts to grab distant resources, and proceeded to 4X my way to falling asleep on the couch at 12:30 at night.  (Ya that's late I'm getting old)

Its shaping up to be a great game.

Some notes on interesting things that stood out last nite i just noticed.

* If your attacked and you escape from battle you are left in the square you were defending, this means I could defend my square indefinitely.

*Still need to tweak mob natural defense, some feel like glass cannons. where I play chase me and have archer champions simple range them all down. 

*I really think some spiders should have the spit ability

*AI needs to know when the battle is taking a ranged or melee offensive.  If its over a % of ranged units ranged then mobs should have a regenerative ability where they cant move or attack but they "turtle" (high regenerative ability, increased defense ie... bears-hibernate, rock spiders-stone form, fire snakes-flame burrow, drakes - scale armor etc...) This will force player to close combat and either have to lose because they made no melee units or force them to mix up the army or champion equipment. 

Thanks,