I agree mostly. Having a starting position without enemies that launch attacks makes the game to easy, but that has been an issue in the last version too. The difficulty for the developers is to find the balance between a dungeon having no intruders at start and beeing overrun without having a chance for defending. But that can be solved by re-rolling the map until you have neighbours that suit your style.
The new recruiting system is a nice feature, but there were ways to choose your recruits before: drowning unwanted ones made me feel fittingly evil, or having them eaten by the doppelganger. The change now is that you get the ones you want much quicker.
The thing about the lack of wood, I think the reason is that there are no more user dungeons in campaign mode with their resources to plunder – having a tree spirit village around helps, but not everyone has 🙂 Let me point to another thread I wrote, that mentioned the idea of a “regrow tree spell” to trade mana for wood, which also might be a way to give mana a use in the later game phase.
What I really do like is the feature that you need bows to recruit harpies. I’d love it even more if you had to own two handed weapons to recruit ogres! It might make the two handed weapons research a little less useless and those ogres are to easy to get in my opinion – you barely don’t need any orcs because there are so many ogres.
As I have this post open, let me put some other impressions that I get here that do not refer to the original post:
– It feels as if the game has become quicker. The recruits are more, so there are more researchers in the early game, so everything else has sped up.
– The campaign mode has too few sites for my taste. (I used to play with 4 major and 4 minor enemies and 3 ally sites) But maybe that is to take the bite out of the new speed, so you have a shorter end game phase. Edit: After counting, I take that one back 🙂
– Have the prerequisites for demon shrine units increased? Or is it just that you now can see more that you can hire?
– Perfomance issues have been solved! Great! The game used to become too obviously turn based in the late game, now it runs smooth.
Update:
I feel I thought too far in the previous post as there might be an easier solution. At the moment, humanoid creatures can either use weapons and armor both or they simply can’t. A feature that differs between light (one handed) and heavy (…) weapons is already there and works well (I noticed that on ork losing an arm lost his ability to carry heavy armament) If that possibility was split up AND bows used the normal weapons slot and not a dedicated one (which might also soften the problem [<- can you use that phrase in english?] of dividing up arrows as well as the role assignment …more tactical battles I’d set equipment rules for creatures as follows: (“I’d” means the following things are just propositions…)
– Goblin, harpy: no armor, light weapons, bows
– Orc: armor, all weapons
– Ogre, werewolf, shaman: no armor, no bows, light and heavy weapons
– Zombie: armor, light and heavy weapons, no bows
– Vampire: here’s room for discussions. Surely he can use light and heavy armament, he even can use bows but I think it simply isn’t his style, but I’m not sure if he should use armor. Maybe only the vampire lord, to make a bigger difference.
– The succubus: I don’t know how you do imagine her, but I think she might be able to use weapons
– Keeper and legendary humanoid surely can use everything they like.
– Kobold: Their pourpose (as I see it) is to deliver some starting resources. If they were armed with knifes or clubs they could be “harvested” for initial weapons and they were a little harder to defeat.
But how? Do those new ones join you randomly like normal recruits? I never saw any mutant yet. Do I have to take any action after researching it?
I thought (and if I’m wrong, I recommend to make it so 😀 ), researching mutation might allow you to mutate one of your minions, creating a stronger form of the chosen minion, depending on who you make mutate. Eg. mutating an ogre could give you a powerful basher / tank, while mutating a wolf gives you a hellhound, sniffer, scout or whatsoever…
Edit: The right place for a “mutate minion” button could be just beyond “summon imp”, leading to a list that allows you to choose one of your minions.
