I usually start with a scout, then tower of dominion, then pioneer. Starting with two pioneers is a waste to me, because you can't really use any world resource, and if you build another city right away your growth will be very low.

Why make champions and sovereign less powerful ??? NOOOOOOOOOO

I think they could be more powerful on the other hand ! They cast monstruous spells that's normal that they're powerful !

I still find them pretty weak, especially the champions compared to the world's creatures.

Spells could be more damaging too both for your army and for the enemy at a point that you pay more attention to spells when they're cast instead ofthinking bah it's oKay if I let it pass...

Based on your comments above I believe you are most definitely headed in the right direction!

My opinion is that champions and sovereigns should BECOME titans of power. But they should start out pretty ordinary.

The issue isn't how powerful the Hero is, but where the power comes from. Heroic weapons and armor found in loot are so incredibly OPed that nothing else can really compete. Traits IMO should be where the Hero's power comes from. A hero with a spear should be as good as 5 men with a spear because he is an expert at parrying blows and attacking weak points in armor. I don't like that a hero simply finds a spear that does 5 times the attack of a normal spear and then has to fight with a crappy one for 10 battles until he learns enough to be able to use it. An epic spear should only do slightly more damage than a normal one, be lighter, have an Accuracy bonus, and do one special thing that changes he unit's tactics in some way. The rest of the power should come from special abilities.

Currently the best strategy is to ignore all buildings in favor of spearman on turn one. get 4 of them and your Sov. Go kill stuff and keep making more. Never build Tower of Dom, never have taxes, never lose. The prestige from leveling the Sov will level your city 6 times faster than Tower of Dominion and the Unrest bonus is negligible compared to the power of a spearman. Once in a while get a pioneer out there to plop down a settlement. Rinse, repeat, conquer the world.

I usully play medium maps with 8 players, and the AI expands so fast you have to rush pioneers off the start. Your start seems pretty good, I usaully get a workshop second because it allows me to build other stuff faster but maybe that's just me.

I'm glad you see the same balance problems that I do with monsters. Any champion can kill the beginning monsters himself and thus level high enough to kill medium monsters by himself and onward until they can destroy empires by themselves. Pretty much every monster but super high level ones like dragons and elemental lords can be soloed by a champion and exist simply for feed. Monsters aren't a threat to one unit by itself let alone cities.

What are you fighting that your Sov can't handle himself so you need spearmen?

Yeah, your stoneskin suggestion is great, because it gets not overpowered with many shards and is useful at the start of the game.

I think melee heroes are as powerful as mage heroes if they have a high level (15+), because with the current scaling they hit every low level target, are immune to spells from low level casters, are immune (assassin) to attacks from low level fighters and are immune to the damage of low level fighters (warrior with heavy armor).

That would be no problem if the player and the AI level at the same speed, but with traits like brilliance and the right enemy selection the player can level much faster.

Exactly, powerful items should require killing difficult monsters.

I really like the idea of the Sovereigns becoming a titan.  I am less on board with the champions becoming so.  However, as I stated on the other thread, if they are going to become titans then there should be far less of them.  Walking around with a stack of 10 heroes that are Titans, will deplete how important they are.  The game will become a race of recruiting champions just to get the larger stack.  If your attacked by a strong army you should have a feeling anxiety.  If there is a champion leading the army it should be dread.  If the sovereign is there leading the army, it should be utter doom.  Right now, because there are so many champions in the game, it is kind of ho-hum.  Their fun, and the game is fun, but champions feel common just because of the quantity of them.

Speaking about the "other" thread, it should be a major decision to send a champion, particularly your sovereign into battle.  You need to do it, but damn it is going to suck if they die.  Make the consequences of losing a battle with one even worse.  Champion lost a arm, can no longer use two handed weapons or a weapon and a shield.  Champion was defeated in battle, suffered tremendous injuries, loses half of all acquired traits at random (champion can't remember is own name let alone how to do stuff).  The game I am playing I have 5 cities with two champions guarding four of five, plus I still have an army with three champions in it.  Champion suffers broken back, champion cannot be used for 30 turns and then carry capacity cut by two thirds.  Make the punishments hurt.

If they are going to become that powerful, than the punishment for using them foolishly should be equally as powerful.  Make it so if they lose once it would probably be better to just retire them.  Same goes for the sovereign.

Just my opinion.

Agreed. Damage should largely depend on weapon type. An arrow is an arrow and a spear is a spear. I hate to sound like one of those "realism" people, but this is important. The problem is one of quality of damage vs. volume of damage. The game makes no distinction between 1 catapult shot and and three swing of a champions sword. Sure they can both be deadly, but one can just about killa ton of people, while the other can kill only a couple (and just kills them really well). Spearmen should be much more efficient at killing other infantry and weak monsters than heroes are, but heroes should be the best choice for taking on those tough enemies like dragons. But the game currently has no way of reflecting this stuff because everything is just rolled into one big "Attack" value. Heroes should also gain an advantage by having better accuracy, but the other side of this problem is that to-hit is under implemented, because (quite rightly) they realised that battles in which half of attacks missed would be lame.

Most other games (like D&D and warhammer) don't just increase the power of the hero's attack indefinately: they give him multiple attack dice and add the resultant damages together (as is currently done for units, with 3 guys firing three arrows quite logically equating to 3 dice). If Elemental gave heroes multiple attack dice as they gained levels (say, from 2 to 5) then we wouldn't need to increase their attack (damage) values to such extremes to make them competetive with units. Heroes would still have marginally higher damage than units, but less attack dice, so they'd have a lower quantity of damage but higher quality. More importantly, giving every unit multiple attack dice would mean that accuracy could be implemented properly, because instead of rolling to hit for the whole attack, you could roll to hit for each dice individually and add them together, so even when one or two missed, you'd still do some damage.

It's not actually that big a change. I wrote a more detailed post on it here.

I certainly agree with the steps you are taking in this quick update and the way you are looking at the basics of one particular aspect. I've posted in the beta 3 my comments:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/422922/page/10/#3137496

I do agree on the overpowered item drops (heartseeker gained on level 3!) entioned above though...

great start

I would like to comment on Stoneskin.  I just hope its not cookie cutter-ish and wish the sovs had other things to use or try than that.  Cause if it its not SS (Stone Skin) there's an armor enhancing spell thats been used and abused to the gazillionth time.

Other thing is that Burning Hand doesn't seem to provide as much attack as SS does for defense.  

But I do agree with you on the Hit Points,  I'd like to see higher hps.  Perhaps also as a function of difficulty also.  When burning hands does 7 damage and your mace guys go wha-POW and mow down a mob with 91 damage.  I think why did I even bother with path of the mage?

This is where I come from.

I play Pariden a lot at this point--almost exclusively.  I pursue an aggressive policy of pioneer production, because my sovereigns are out to grab every shard they can find.  It's admittedly a tradeoff: spell power (outposts) for research/food growth (cities), but that's all to the good.  As you mention, Brad, it's about meaningful choices.

I play conservatively in a combat sense, putting my sovereign, first acquired champion, and a summoned shadow warg in a single party.  That way I can usually clear a path, except when I'm granted an unlucky terrain of a valley with two relatively dangerous monsters nearby.  I look for all the champions I can find, since I know it's a race to grab them, as well.  In large games I like to see them in a reasonable quantity.  I always assume my opponents are doing about as well, and never worse.

Stoneskin is a useful spell in the early part of the game.  I wouldn't nerf it, but I would agree that opponents like a troll should have more hit points.  This also adds some tension to combat, as the troll could win by a lucky shot, while the hero could win by dint of regular accuracy and spell defense.

I think the AI should scale mana use Dependant on how many forces it haves on the overall map, and try using more spells to win losing battles.
So if the AI is close to losing and have few forces left, it will burn through its mana reserves (at this point mostly in tactical combat and unit enchants) to win as many combats and kill as many enemies as possible.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

How about comparing stored mana to the cost of your best spell, and perhaps multiplied by the total spell ranks of your champions?  Early on your best spell would be farily low cost, therefore less need for stored mana, and your champions would have less spell ranks.  Later, your spells are more costly and you have more champions drawing on your mana pool with higher casting abilities.  The mana pool should have an established optimum level at any given time.  More mana than that and you can cast your heart out.  Less, and you should be more conservative and prioritise claiming nodes, or even cancel some enchantments.