Anyone else "abuse" the save load mechanic with Beastlord as much as I do?

Oh yes, all the time.  

In my last game, my main army included Ascian, a cave bear and an umberdroth.  Plus I recruited Tuatha.  Though they looked like the bar scene in Star Wars, they kicked ass.

Those hoarder spiders are nasty - especially with Venom III. 

This is probably why people think beastlord is overpowered. If you play a beastlord and don't abuse the reloads then it evens the class out and makes it not so overpowered.  Saying that though play however you want, it is a single player game after all. But there is no way stardock can account for things such as reloading saves or other particular playstyles when they try to balance the game

Civilization has a "fixed random seed" feature. It doesn't allow simple reload to affect gameplay as outcome or rolls stays the same after reload.

Would be nice to have in FE too. One still can do tricks with attacking on other turn, etc. but harder is better.

I've found I don't need to, as I take a Spell Mastery bonus that really helps out.  Even in early game, my Sov rarely misses a Tame cast.

I try to use a Familiar to extend it, but the horrible shortcomings of Familiars make it excruciating -- yes, I can accept the low hitpoints and no armor, but not being able to cast the Mantle of Oceans spell nor improve its spell mastery makes the Familiar a very expensively unreliable knock-off.

This is the actual problem with beastlord. It is too hit or miss, 

If you fail a tame your sovereign dies and you get a great disadvantage, If this happens again you probably restart.

If you do well in your first couple of tames you snowball so unbelievably much, Maybe the tame should not fail as much and creatures get half the power or something to balance it. 

it seems fine as is.  My current LP is with an Urxen beastlord.  You can either be lucky, or very unlucky.  It took me 4 attempts to get 2 cave bears (2 tries each at 20-ish%).

But that's life.  Always bring meat (scouts work) and if it fails, you don't really lose much.  Leave the cool stuff with another champion.

The familiar/Imp being able to use beastlord tame seems the broken part.  If you only can cast it as the soveriegn, you'd get a lot less beast.  As is, my imp and I stole two beasts from the nice old Bone Ogre, which gave me a nice army booster to take it out.

The Familiar can't benefit from Mantle of Oceans, can't equip anything and doesn't get promotion perks, so its Spell Mastery will remain low (so it has a high risk of failing to cast Tame even after several level-ups) and its cost will remain at 40 mana per cast.

I frequently take beastlord, its fun.  In my 2nd to latest playthrough I got a bear cub, (a bear which died the next turn), a hergon, an albino spider and a black widow... and that's it for the first 200 turns before I quit.  Just bad luck.  AND I don't mind abusing save reload.  There just weren't that many capture situations that I actually a) succeeded and critter lived.   Got no badass critters.

Trying again though, got a ravenous, albino and a black widow so far.  Seems like spiders are always way more frequent.

Had a short game where I got ascian?  What a bloody disappointment with 2 moves... wonder if that's moddable...   REALLY curious if that crystal neck thingy can be used on an escaped juggernaut, they're twisted right? 

This is why I don't play Beastlord anymore.  It feels like I'm either gambling or cheating.

A fixed seed wouldn't help with that because you can always "spin the wheel" by using any other unit to force a random roll.

If you want to limit an ability, limit the ability.

• Tame has a cap in deadliness, level, or whatever works.
  If a monster is above the cap - no chance to tame it.
  
  
• Below the cap there is a reasonable chance to tame something.
  
  
• For monsters above the the cap (or when the tame roll failed!), there are lesser results.
  
  Monster can become a temporary ally, only for this battle, then vanish after the fight.
  It can be de-aggroed.  Monster becomes "pacified", meaning that it's not hostile towards you... until you hurt it or hurt something nearby that it considers a friend.

That way tame is useful at the start of the game because it helps in battle... without just handing you a killer stack for free.
You can still tame a small critter or three but you have to work your way up.

if they really wanted to nerf it, they could remove the tame spell and instead add the collar to the shop in your town. you'd get 1 (or more) free collars in your inventory at the start, and you'd have to buy them for cash if you want more animals.

Why on earth would you want to Nerf it?  It's fun to play, and I thought that was the whole idea behind the game?  Making it fun for the players? 

If you don't like the ability, don't use it.  If you think it's unfair to use it on a higher level critter ... don't use it.  It's an individual game ... you choose your own way of playing.

sure it's fun, but it's also much stronger than most of the other professions. compare beastlord to hunter, noble or bandit lord - you think they are on par? i'd rather see them buff the weak professions to be honest, but if that's not an option, the logical conclusion would be to bring down beastlord. it's not like the suggestion I made would destroy it - you could still get as many critters as you like. making collars a purchaseable shop item doesn't change that at all. all it does is bring it a bit more in line with other abilites - ue cash to rush things and maintain a trained army, or buy collars to tame some pets. don't think that's such a horrible idea, tbh.

I agree your suggestion wasn't horrible, but I just don't get the whole "if something's really great and everything else is really bland, let's take away the really great thing instead of fixing the bland stuff". 

It's like little Timmy has a lollypop, but the rest of the class doesn't have one, so instead of giving lollypops to the rest of the class, you want to take away little Timmy's lollypop.

It's a game, I want it to be fun.  I don't like games that frustrate me.  I don't play them.  I realize a lot of you want challenges and all the headaches that go along with playing the game on Killer mode or whatever ...

Maybe they can build something like that into the difficulty level selection ... a bonus or penalty applied to skills ... at lower difficulties it's easier to use the skills and it gets progressively harder on the higher difficulty levels.  An increased failure chance, or a reduction in the level or creatures you can charm ... or even an increase in the amount of time between uses on higher difficulty levels.

That would leave it like it is for players like me, and help balance it out for players who are more serious about the challenges and such.

Saying "just don't use it" is NEVER how you properly balance a game.

True, but neither is "Let's take away the one cool thing, instead of adding cool things to everyone else," which seems to be what is being advocated.  If the other selections are lacking, then campaign to have stuff added to them, instead of campaigning to have the Beastlord ability Nerfed.

The point I was trying to make was that a small number of people feel that it's too powerful, but others of us like it as it is. 

If you personally feel that the Beastlord ability is too strong, and gives your Sovereign too much power, then you can put limits on yourself.  In other words, it's a single player game ... you can decide your rules and stick to them.  It's a "Don't cheat on your diet" approach.

The game designers are never going to please everyone, but adjusting the game so that it is fun for the percentage of you who like the extra hard Killer level where everything is hard and takes excessive work, is going to ruin it for those like me who just like to play for fun, and don't want to have to struggle for every inch of ground, where everything is out to get me, and every time I turn around I'm dead. 

I have to agree with lelovelady.  Why nerf a feature that some of us enjoy.  Taking away Timeless March was evil.  If you don't like it, don't use it.   If I can use it so can the AI.   If we can acquire dragons why not cave bears and umberdroths?

Beastlord is very powerful if you learn to take advantage of it but it does take some learning.  And that makes it a valuable part of the game.   It can be very tricky to tame some beasts.  Discovering which beast is the most valuable and searching for them is akin to a quest (it's not the Hoarder).

Which Beast are you referring to? The Hoarder starts with 160 hp and is great on its own (due to aoe). It's not the greatest in a large group though since it will damage friendly units if they are next to it when it attacks due to the aoe, but still I haven't found ANY beast that beats it early game especially. And for auto-resolve it's great to have at the back of your army to soak up the damage so you don't lose units.

I don't want to do a spoiler by naming the beast but it has a different attribute than just being a powerful unit.  Check out all the beasts!

They really should steal from the greats here and just rip off pokemon. So then you could only cast Tame on units below 50% health, and then you could make it unrestiable. Also then it wouldn't be random and you could only get monsters you could kill anyway, preventing early game abuse.  

Yes, it is "sweet poison".

Good that someone mentioned it after all the dicussions about OP-things...

I am an otpimizer, so I can not acccept if there is a realistic chance and I am not successful...

and yes, it makes a very very big difference to get this bear or spider or not.

But yes, again, even challenging or hard games are "broken" or as they called it often here, OP.

You have to "translate" what we do with reloading to understand how dramatic the effect could be:

• We change the chance of 60 or 70 % to tame to 100 %.
• We can count all the animals in our surroundings as members of our future army, so Power Rating is rising very strong resulting in better trades with the AI and I seldom get attacked.
• When we even reload fights where we lost Beasts, the effect is even stronger, normally the Beastmaster would have a problem with supplys, because normally the amount of animals to replace your losses would be limited.
• We get more stuff by the possibiliy to go for harder quests earlier, getting stronger, Power Rating, taking cities, Game Over...

So on one hand there would be the possibility to change the Beastmaster-Concept to make it more "reload resistant" or to play more...honestly...

When we are talking about changes I would change sth. like limits or possibilities:

There could be sth like a "Pool" that a Beastmaker can support, for example a "basic" Beastmaster can control Beasts with the worth of 5.

So for example one bear cup (1) and two normal spiders (2x2). When you level up and take stronger Beastmaster-Traits your pool rises.

Or you can just have one type of each animal in one army, because they would fight each other or some other reason...

Or you can simply set limits: As stronger you are as Beastmaster, the higher the "class" of beast you can tame.

Or you have to maintain your "Tame control" with mana...more mana for stronger beasts...more mana to control them and more mana to tame them., when you run out of mana they are liberated ..with this concept the beastmaster would have a nice challenge to deal with, because he needs mana to tame, but when he tames to much,

the maintanance decelerates the time till the next tame...yes, this could be interesting... this could come near to the summoner.