Now the game was on large map, with multiple resources (I had several games with virtually no resoruces, so I wanted to guarantee that there will be some) and normal monsters. all other standard, world difficulty Sentinemodo (which basically means monsters +25% HP and aggressive toward player). I usually play with dense  monsters, but I wanted to have a game with large number of trained units, not solo sovereigns, and as the monsters give you most experience, this should reduce their power and in comparison put your troops on par. That with economic bonus for the AI should give a challenge I was seeking.

And it worked. at the climax of the game the map was having virtually dozens of trained troops armies with over 1 thousands HP and 500 and up attack/defence.

Centaurs in Stormworld have move of 3 which gives them excellent settling power. Really I was spreading like fire over dried grass. whenever a settleable area appeared and I had a pioneer ready, he was there almost instantly.

The amazing ability to settle, kept me on the third place behind Ceto of the Living stones, and the Lady Irane, the Tarthian princess. I was close to both of them and I tried to keep good relationships with all.

The story as you can see started with quick demise of Magnar. First Tarth and The Living stones declared war on him and crushed him quickly (first Tarth grabbed few cities, then Ceto grabbed rest) elevating them in power. I was too late to get him and his capital. Tarth was faster by one season. I had an army in position, but I was too late and he fell to , which was a pity because I could use a prestige boost for all those cities I've planted. 

At this point I was significantly stronger than two remaining Empire players Lochean of the Golems, and Omiss of the Lizardmen. So I had a peaceful period, spent on development, clearing monsters. I've lost a city to Wildland monsters, and made it point of my future expansion to clear the large head of a crystal snake from the abyss (forgot his name).

Having that completed I've woken up to see I am no longer on par with Ceto. While I grow (fast in my opinion) his power rating simply exploded. Fortunatelly I kept in check the Tarths (they were waging war with Lizardmen to the north-east), and were choked by the wildland directly to the north (the one with lotsa caves and cave bears on it). I could have allied the two empires, but that would make my victory only more difficult, as there is no option to break an alliance.

I didn't knew it then by the research graph tells you the story.

I decide to make a little diplomatic efforts then. Asked both empires to declare war on Ceto, than Ceto to declare war on Tarth.

Myself I've attacked the golems - the weakes empire. and let me tell you at this point of the game, they already had boreal blades on militias. Ouch. Did I told you about inherent resistance of golems to magic, and that my centaurs are weaker against pointed ends of the arrows? I had to fight nail and tooth for their two fortresses and two cities. I was able to win only because I claimed three of the Asok Knights resources. But only barely Asoks are good, but they come in threes while golems have already been fielding fives or sevens.

Having the prestige boost was nice but I was already having some 20 cities, growing at the snail pace. and the distance between me and Ceto grew every turn. While I conquered Golems, he managed to fend off all other invasions, claimed half of the lizardmen, and everything that Tarth managed to grab from Magnar. If golemns had boreal blades and sevens imagine what had guy that bested him 6 times in power?

Then I saw his armies marching on tarth - 1k HP stacks with 200 HP per unit and some ridiculous attack values. There was no time to wait. If I was to win I had to attack immediatelly before he could swallow other AI's and consolidate on me. I spread to hit in as many places as I could to chunk his powerbase.

This was the tipping point. I was still on the level of one handed boar pikes, with shields, and nowehere enough of metal and crystal, against colossus.

I hit hard. taking four cities, but his power level only grew. At the same speed as a was claiming his cities, he claimed remains of lizardmen and tarth, and turned on me.

Two turns after the initial war declaration he retook two of those cities, and claimed four of mine.

That's when I discovered two things. First was Gnomeking Helm. It allowed me to summon some ridiculoulsy powerfull scrap golems (you know they grow in both attack power and HP with level, and I was summoning them with high level sovereign) for free. (note HF, this thing is overpowered, really - something that can hit for 50 damage against 20 defense and have 300 HP out of the bat is overpowered).

Secondary I doscovered tornado. Now when you have as I did some 8 air shards you do 3 damage per sahrd that is 24 damage, now add path of the mage and Evoker III for some really ridiculous values, and then understand that against what you would expect from the description (still very nice for 45 mana) it is PER FIGURE which means that unless you hit champions/monsters they simply die. just like that. 1200 army consist of seven units of seven units on average 24 hitpoints, extremally high level armies, veterans of lizardmen and tarthian campaigns were reduced to single digit hitpoints left.

unfortunatelly only one army per turn, (I got only one air archmage (AIR V) - sovereign) and Ceto was having DOZENS of them attacking from all directions. this was also not a solution for all those "small" 400 HP armies of two spearmans that easily dispatched anythign I was able to throw at them including my kinghts of the Asok.

You see - Living Stones have one nasty feature - they increase in attack (fire) as they level up. and the fortresses Ceto had were pumping them high level right of the bat. This gave some ridiculous values to their spearmen, archers you name it, defenders and once in a while barons 32 attack times seven per unit with 200 HP when he could afford them metal/crystal wise. And ceto has a good 1/3 of the world by that time -> lots of metal/crystal (though strangely nothing on sale).

I've decided to go into opposite direction - IceTaurs - hardhitting, armor bypassing, ranged cold attackers, that I hoped will be fast enough, that nobody would notice they carry no armor.

Sounds like you had a blast!

It is not a Stormworld issue that pedestrians are missing from the tent mod.

I will put a huge nerf on the scrap golems next release, I didn't really plan for the player to reach such high levels. Right now they have Tough (+3 hit points per level) and they continue to gain stuff per level up to level 20. I will remove the tough and stop them from gaining anything after level 15 (except normal level bonuses).

Well no, there just aren't any centaur pedestrians to place in the tiles.

Looks cool. I agree with you on the no ctrl-n thing. Work with what you get. Set the difficulty high enough that you really feel the achievement when you finally win!

I agree with Heavenfall... I made the tent mod and it is not a stormworld issue, nor do I think that Heavenfall should fix the problem of no little centaur people. If I knew how to create 3d models of these people I would include it for heavenfalls mod, but at the moment I don't know how to do this. Also, I don't think heavenfall will be making pedestrians, because he doesn't play with them.

would you be kind enough to point these out when you see them next. I wrote all the xml by hand and didn't use copy and paste so there are a few typo's that may have caused these problems. I will look through my files and see if there are anymore typos in there.

Only found 1 problem the lumberyard, since that pic doesn't use the same convention as the others. I fixed a few others where I used the wrong icon instead of the construction icon. I didn't find anything else and I've got version 1.8 up with those fixes.

Thanks, that was to ensure that I didn't miss any of my building designs. Now, I've got a template to do an efficient copy and paste.

I am affraid that Sentinemodo difficulty is more difficult than expert. I can beat expert every game, and it took me few tries to beat Sentinemodo.

for comparison Expert has more money (10 times instead Sentinemodo's 5), but hitpoints of monsters and trained units are only 10% higher not 25%, sovereign has 25% more not 50% and (whatever it means) AI has intelligence factor of 2 as compared to 10 (challenging has 1.3 and insane has 10)

Anyway to use it - download the file from the link in the first post, copy it into the mods directory. make sure you have use mods in options enabled. I am not sure it works with master affliction mod, as Sean is also setting his own difficulties, but they should be compatible.

1. don't worry too much about your power level. There is a distinct difference between 'computer thinks it is more powerful' and 'computer can truly hurt me

2. check out tuijidy's posts on let's play and beginner guide. they should take you beyond expert easily

here you go: there is a link within to the playthrough

https://forums.elementalgame.com/435680

I had crashes. Three or four during that time. At least two were actually hangs/freezes on tactical combat (I've learnt, that swipe move from a dragon, take around 20 seconds to complete) that I needlessly interrupted with auto resolve that killed my army.

Other crashes are resulting from autolocking of the laptop. I usually was able to get back to play but once in while, I get failed directX call followed by the crash.

Sentinemode, how did you manage to keep up with the comp without the wealthy perk? I find that the trade relations that you buy with wealthy, the  less then two turns remaining on buildings and buying two unitis that normally cost 16 turns to complete, in 2 turns, made a gigantic difference in my games, I bested expert and ridicules but I can't without that perk because they all go to war with me because of being 'weak'.

I used the centaurs perk - move of three. and spammed cities like mad.

Also II've been planting them as dense as possible. on the comparable area I had approxiamtelly twice as many cities as living stone and quite a few of them were fortressess, that produced a trained unit (as good as I was able to afford with metal) and a building. large number of units push your power rating. Quantity boost it more than quality.