Get rid of the stacks of doom

They do need to make other choices viable.  They need to overhaul how diplomacy works, but I don't think increasing the cost of military is the way to do it.  

Unfortunately now that the champs can recover from injuries with the Elixir, the stack of doom will become more common.

The A.I. plays to win and it won. That's great. Why would it change its strategy if it can win with the current one?

This is not true. The Spell of Making is a good example of a non-military path to victory.

The military is not the only viable option. Magic in this game is so powerful that the game can be won with just the Mage Sovereign and a couple of Mage Champions. They'll grind countless stacks of doom into dust.

I never played the original games (unless masters of magic was in this line or was it a different one? idk) but i have played every civilization and total war game to date for untold hours. I can say that a diplomacy win in civilization dang near requires a decent sized military. In fact in civ and total war you aren't going to win any victory condition without a decent sized military as the AI will consume you. 

You may not be getting the feeling of a victory condition solely based on your savvy choices in a meeting of nations but the fact that you've lasted long enough to have a meeting with other nations and that they would even listen to you is strictly based on your ability to keep the AI at bay with your military. It's not very often that the smaller nation leads the larger nations, yes it happens but not very often, unless of course the smaller nation has a much deadlier military. 

Diplomacy is the art of convincing the other guy that your club is bigger.

Diplonmacy is no good unless military is very strong. No one mind to listen even honor to one who are weak (no military or military are too weak or no good)

You should try playing a game WITHOUT stacks of doom, and see how you like it.  For some reason, in my games I have yet to see the AI launch a really impressive attack.  They'll declare war, maybe send some raiding parties my way, but I can just go about my business until I'm ready to steamroll them.  I WISH there were stacks of doom.

I wouldn't say they are Civ IV stacks of doom. In Civ IV the stacks were of unlimited size. I remember having dozens of troops in a single stack. What is the max in Fallen Enchantress, 8? 

I have won 2 out of 4 games using the spell of making. In the second game I had 1 stack of 3 units - hardly a big military. There was some distance on the map between me and any AI player so I just dashed for the spell after building up my economy some. Based on my current experience I would say the spell of making is too easy to get. The spell should take longer to cast to give the AI more time to disrupt your plans.

its 9 for an attacking army, but defending armies can have 9+city defense.  The problem with defense is, you really can't recover from anything in this game.  By that I mean, the outcome of a war is often determined before the first battle.  Very Sun Tzu really.  If you are not prepared when the enemy attacks, it's pretty doubtful that you will be able to build an army to fight off your attackers.  In 20 turns of combat, the enemy could wipe out your entire faction.  In 20 turns, how many new troops can you field into battle?  It may sound as if I am describing this as a problem, but  in actually, I consider this a strength of the game. The world is filled with people who want to rule it, be prepared.  “War is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.”  

Gonna add more. 

This is a strategy game.  That means, like chess, you need to be thinking many moves ahead.  Plans.  What are your plans for war, diplomacy, what are your research goals.  If I am Altar, I may plan to rush Henchman, or if I am Yithril, I may plan to go straight to Juggs.  You have to plan for war.  Even if you don't want to fight a war, your neighbors may not feel the same way.  

I would love to see  "Survive for X turns" option.

I tend to like "turtling" but it's  terrible strategy in a game where the AI is just going to steamroll you with the stacks of doom.

And virtually every RTS game ever made usually demands you zerg the AI before he zergs you. I don't find that fun in the least, but I will admit FE doesn't do it as "in your face" as other RTS's.

It's not a RTS.  I don't want to be a dick, but only use terms you know as less nice people will jump your ass for it.  

In FE you don't have to zerg anyone. The moment an enemy army enters your territory, they're at the mercy of your global spells. Any stack of doom can be reduced to dodgeless, defenseless, half-dead collection of free XP (which I might add needs to be upped a bit) ready to be crushed before the tactical battle even begins. To accomplish that you of course need Mana, competent mages and some research into the magic tree. That's provided that you're not playing a race that can simply outbash your enemies. FE is a game you can lose, and that's awesome. Enemies won't stay their hand until it's convenient for you to fight them, they'll press their advantage when they think they can win. If you aren't ready, you deserve to get crushed.

-Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock. Will Rogers.

But yes, diplomacy here is lacking, which is specially jarring since Gal Civ 2 had a much better one, so it is not a problem of Stardock having never gotten it right...

Seriously, though - what settings are you guys playing on?  I don't ever see a proper stack of doom, the AI is very unimpressive in my Challenging games.  Do I need to boost AI up to something more... Ridiculous?

As an aside: Although yeah I think Diplomacy is lacking, I actually really love the "Influence" concept.  Instead of just blindly guessing how many cookies an AI wants before it will give you X, it just neatly rationalizes and commoditizes the whole process.

Stacks of Doom, not so scary when you can freeze it on the map for 3 turns (I don't think they can resist, I have frozen everything), and then pillar of flame it or whatever else into ashes. See Rvgr's reply. I am actually more worried about the AI getting good at that. I will develop a strategy of rolling outposts to get within 5 squares of the city and send in my shock troops and then a lone troop to take the city. That's my take on how to take someone else's territory.

If they are sending stacks of doom and you don't have any great mages, seriously lol get a mage with all 4, or like my sov, 5 schools up to at least level 2 in all schools and watch the mayhem.

Well, I do plan ahead as much as I can. In my last game, I built up as large of an army for each city that my economy/resources would allow. The game rated them as "epic" strength. Nonetheless, the AI had wave after wave of epic stacks of it's own that eventually beat me. 3 epic armies against (what appeared to be) an endless stream of epic armies. Well the outcome as you said is obvious. Kind of reminded me of the video games from the 80's where the opponents just kept on coming and coming endlessly until you lost your three lives and had to feed it another quarter.

I still say the cost of maintaining an army should be adjusted, so that the AI has to make some hard choices.

The Tidal Wave is also awesome.  It is also just fun to watch

I really don't think a change to the cost of maintenance needs to be made (I would actually argue that they need to be cheaper).  You might need to adjust your strategy.  Remember, it is a 4x game, don't ignore Exploring for and exploiting resources, items, quest, exp.  Don't ignore expansion.  Early with pioneers.  You can gain a pretty high score just from having a lot of cities.  Also, Know Your Enemy.  From what I have noticed, the AI doesn't seem to build great troops.  Having one early fortress that can produce troops with a lot of bonuses can help.  And a lot of cities that produce money to pay their wages too.  On Challenging, you have the same choices to make as the AI.

I've seen an army resist, but it contained a unit immune to magic (a pet cool pretty crystal snake)

So would I. But it doesn't really fit well with other victory options. Also technically it's just a test of military might as well. But, importantly, it'd be fun.

I suggest the team consider the idea of it for some DLC maps. Custom story and full of spawn points to make a survival horror thing (Or tower defence, any overhaul of game styles).

It could be done simply by just having:

1."Survive against the wilds" checkbox (or custom map)
2. Indestructable monster lairs + nearest capital as a rally point
3. Every x turns trigger an event that spawns lots of monsters/boss monsters.
4. Random events give all wild units enchantments (fire resistance, cold, poison, blunt etc. to require retooling for new threats)
4. Have the minimum level of all wild creatures increase by 1 every x turns.

It'd mean having to deal with stacks of high level mites that are immune to fireballs and other fun things...

Anyway, I'd also like significantly more diplomatic options. More ways to be useful to the AI and for them to be useful to you. Perhaps the concept of champions giving xp to a sov (currently they give 0% of xp) could be applied to allies, magical alliances rather than pure mundane trading. Both gaining an xp share/mana production share or being able to enchant each others units or cities (1 free slot per city for allied enchantments?)

1. XP share from allies for a stay-at-home sov that doesn't like war
2. Mana production share
3. An enchantment slot on cities for allied spells.
4. Have each of the above be factored in to faction strength, so a faction able to provide mana/enchantments/trade etc. isn't treated badly by the AI who rely on strength.
5. Additonal defenders in allied cities provided by a fortress level-up

It would mean that allies would really win or lose wars, players could play with non-combat orientated sovreigns and entire empires. Diplomacy would be important not just to civic research but also warfare and magic and also provide benefits to champions.

The only issue I had with the OP is the title .

That said, if you play in a world where atleast 1 opponent is a warmonger, you will HAVE to build defenses, I like the point in FE that you gain a huge advantage of being prepared for a war, instead of being able to out-spew out-produce everything, and ignore military until the last minute defenses are needed (Civ 5 springs to mind)

That said, I think 3 out of 4 victory conditions right now are pretty "simple"/"easy" to grab, both magic victory (which is basically economy due to the heavy costs), and military victory doesn't require too much...

The master quest require you to have some army which could usually shatter a couple of empires anyways, but at least it might be a quicker way to end the game.
I would like to try the master-quest if it was changed to something like: There are 25 artefacts needed recovered, and if an opponent have 2-3, you will have to grab them from them, either by stealing, conquering or trading. of course you cant steal or trade items so this would be a quite massive change to mechanics, there would also need to be some way to figure out how many of these artefacts your opponents have (even in the current masterquest In my Opinion), so you know how close the bastard is to victory, and would still require for you to defend your cities for the last part of the quest when warmongers notice you being close to re constructing the rod of domination.

The current issue I notice is the lack of "proper" diplomacy with empires and kingdoms, I have very special tastes and might always be disappointed due to having a rather unique point of view on this, but I would love if it would be easier to find allies (I play on rather hard settings, so the enemies basically dislike you for not having 3000 empire points by turn 50...
Impossible to find "Friends" in a world like that.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Oh did the army resist damage spells as well? That would be a bug. The whole stack shouldn't resist a damage or freeze spell because one little snake is magic immune.

I thought "stacks of doom" meant where the Player builds one or two overpowered armies and proceeds to mop up the entire map with them.

Not the AI building competitive armies (for a change) and taking on the player on equal terms.

Stack of doom is when any faction (Player or AI) spends all they're resources on one huge army to avoid losing units against a weaker unit spam.. Thats how I understand it anyways, instead of building 3 semi armoured units, you build 1 fully platemailed fully enchanted unit, then does that 8 more times and stack them up

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I don't have problems with the implementation of stacks in the game. As stated above their is plenty way of dealing with them:

- Freeze, Tremors, Pillars of Flame, Tidal waves and such

- Defense ready up for a triple siege ( blizzard scrolls, mages, elite units, summons + city defense).

My only problem with the stacking system is when I'm at war with one AI and I signed a non aggression pact wiht another one. I have witnessed the AI stack a group of enemy units under a friendly AI caravan and I just couldn't attack them, which was VERY annoying. Maybe something to look up, i.e making it possible to attack an enemy stack of units independently from another friendly unit that is on the same tile.

I think everybody agrees that the diplomacy side of things could be improved. Though i don't understand why so many complaints about the different victory conditions, they are all viable imo, although mastery quest usually takes too long and the final battle is too easy.