Brad I like what I see with the AI, kudos to you.

It's pretty late here so I'm just going to make a quick comment.

I notice in your vids that you usually take the approach of building 2 pioneers plus scouts before you develop cities - whereas I tend to build the tower of dominion plus the science building as early as possible and I'm quite happy to solo it with my sov for a long time. In a crowded map I can see why you take that approach (grab land before the AI), but I don't place the same urgency on it that you do - there's normally plenty of land to expand into and the monsters act as an early barrier between players - also by not building any units I keep my tax at none which allows me to max production and research. You say that building up a city is not a good strategy but I was able to win games on the hardest settings in the last beta by doing just that so I feel it has some merit to it. Later I move to city buffs and also thins that allow me to raise tax while keeping unrest low (e.g. gallows) which allows me to generate alot of gold - I havent had time to properly try it out in beta 3 - I'm looking forward to doing that next week

Also with regard to the champs, I'd like to respectfully suggest that you consider boosting the monsters instead of nerfing champs again - they had a pretty big nerf last time and a level one sov is now pretty feeble - it's the spells and goodies they pick up that helps in the early stages (thats part of tactical play though).

Anyway just my 2 cents

Two problems I've had with the AI in recent games:

Enemy champions casting stoneskin/flameblade/wither/berserk in tactical combat while I'm hacking at them with my sword.  By the time they are buffed, they are nearly dead or already dead.

Early game and I was at war with Magnar and he only had one city.  I had two champions just outside his border, but I couldn't defeat him with Magnar in the city, because he was quite powerful (playing on hard so he had like 120 hp).  Magnar then decided to slip out the back to go exploring or something.  And so my two champions moved in and took the city.  That was the end of Magnar.

I'd be a little wary about this.  Earth doesn't seem to have a ton of useful battle spells in my experience...a lot of its value is skewed towards terraforming, which you can't afford early on and can easily recruit a champion for later on when casting the spells becomes practical.  Stoneskin is a big part of the draw of the school right now...if you nerf it too much, you might see Earth becoming a very low priority for sovereigns.  Besides, wasn't one of the many goals of 0.9 to make spells feel stronger and more satisfying to cast?  You don't want to swing too far in the other direction.  Four defense seems like it might be too little to notice, and there's no guarantee of finding a lot of any given type of shard.

Also, the AI casting Stoneskin during tactical battles could be considered a mistake.  If it knows the battle is coming, it can cast it on the strategic map, fight, and then dispel it at the end of the turn if it doesn't expect to need it again soon.  The cost is the same and it saves a turn in combat.  Or maybe the fact that the costs work out that way to begin with is the problem...either way, it's worth thinking about.

I'd say that a very big part of the problem with sovereigns/champions is the way magic progression works.  It's kind of crazy.  The only thing you need to do to get more spells is to pick new ranks of the spell school when you level up.  The difference between rank 2 in an element and the maximum rank of 5 is potentially as little as three level-ups (in practice it will be more, since you're unlikely to get the option every single time, but it won't take long if you prioritize spell ranks whenever you can).  The result is that your sovereign has become an archmage with access to the most powerful spells their discipline has to offer at a stage where the rest of the world still thinks putting pointy ends on their beating-sticks is a pretty neat idea.  The results are what you'd expect.

This creates the side-issue that the magic research tree doesn't have much to do.  One would expect that researching it would make you better at magic, but it barely gives you any spells; 90% of what you really want to cast you just learn automatically from levels.  As a result its main contribution winds up being magical equipment, which makes it feel redundant with the military tree in a lot of respects.

The natural solution to both of these problems seems like it would be letting magic techs play a much larger role in spell progression in general.  Your sovereign's magic would be limited by the same factors that limit the power of your military, and balance between them would be a lot easier to achieve.  Right now your empire and your sovereign progress on almost completely unrelated paths...having lots of strong citiles, plentiful money and resources, and tons of research has next to no bearing on how strong your champions are or how successful your sovereign is questing out in the wilderness (with the sole exception of the quest/recruiting line).  Was there an explicit reason you guys moved away from a traditional spell research system since War of Magic?

EDIT:  I forgot the most obvious thing: spells that deal their damage to each individual figure are stupidly powerful, and spells that do this while also being AoE are even more stupidly powerful.  If you have any shards at all, it's basically impossible for a base-level stack not to be wiped out by effects like these in a single cast no matter how high-tech they are.  That 70-health squad with plate armor and magical weapons isn't too impressive when you can obliterate the whole lot of them in one turn by dealing ten damage.  Dealing a large, flat quantity of damage would probably be better in the vast majority of situations.  It'd also keep so many direct-damage spells from being useless against the single-figure opponents which make up the majority of what you see in the wilderness.  That would probably make champions too easy to nuke down, though...maybe it'd be easier to have certain spells deal only X% damage to champions instead of dealing multiplied damage to groups.  I'm not sure.  Something about Fireball and Dirge of Ceresa is probably going to have to change, in any case.

Y'know, if the game ceases to be fun, people will cease to play it.

It's important to remember that most people -- most potential FE purchasers -- are not going to be sitting around and counting HPs, buffs, etc. They are going to grab a weapon and run around trying to kill things. They will learn quickly what they can kill at level 1 and what they can't. If they stumble across a great weapon that evens the odds a bit, or even gives them an advantage, they'll think it's neat.

But if the game is too tough, if it requires too much micromanagement, if they keep racking up crippling injuries, they'll get bored or frustrated and quit. And they'll complain about the game to their friends.

[Late addition] Along those same lines, remember that beta testers <> customers. I know from personal experience what it is like to spend a few years and a few millions dollars to bring a commercial application to market, only to discover that the things the beta testers did or did not like were not necessarily the same things that actual paying customers did or did not like.

Food for thought.  ..bruce..

I totally agree with your post, but wanted to comment on the bolded part. I think you just identified a use for those +10 spell resist level up skills. At present, I haven't found magic scary enough to care about those options.

Frankly, I'm totally great with spells dealing X flat damage, even if those spells become more deadly to champions, and some particularly awesome and powerful ones dealing x flat damage to every member of a group. We just need to make sure that those spells each have a role to play. Single Direct Damage, Group Damage, AoE. All of these are tactically legitimate choices in different circumstances, and deserve equal consideration as avenues for combat spells.

I quite like, in concept, the spells that hit all creatures, or an area. They make sense, and they can be balanced with cost, damage per unit, accessibility and most importantly casting time. It's great that high level heroes can wipe out armies of plebs with a spell or two. It would be insanely boring to have to take them out one at a time and wouldn't make for a very heroic game

I think that units currently are underpowered. While champions till level 10 or so are still on the same power scale of units, mostly based on which items you found via quests, casters aren't.

When a caster reaches high level and start amassing shards, his power level skyrockets with land and levels. With a couple of water shards, casting blizzard (level 4 water spell, strongest AoE currently since flame wave doesn't work) can easily wipe 5-7 heavy units. Because the damage is per figure, increasing the stack size won't help. Magic resistance won't, either (if it would be some kind of a problem, the caster would have 170 instead of base 120...). With current balance, the only way to stop it is for the AI to counterspell is... which, at-least in one of my games, never did. Against melee champs, it's not better- it gets into a point where the unit 1shot everything, with a good 1-2 counterattacks, and 300 health. These monsters are not so hard to get, currently.

But also, isn't that inefficient? Why waste the mana casting buffs each battle if you can pay 1 upkeep and start the battles already buffed (I mean the buff spells like stoneskin and flameblade).

But at the same time they should not be able to rampage thought the land with no fear. And there should always be something or someone out there that can put your champions and sovereigns down.

Actually there are level requirements on magic traits so you can't get Earth4 until your level 7 for example. You could make an argument for increasing the required levels but personally I find that level 2-3 spells are all you really need to be cheap with magic.

Agreed. The traits and the number of shards do the rest.

I wouldn't criticize the AI who just kicked your ass

Seriously though, I think the AI made a good call - the last place you want to be is staring at a defeated 1hp Sovereign rooted in your capital, with 80 mana in the bank that could have saved him. All resources are just a means to an ends, they're useless if they're not used, it all comes down to who wins the battle. And even if he could have won without spells, how much more hp would he have lost? Health is a limited resource too, it doesn't regen that quickly.

I'd much rather an AI that wins but wastes resources doing so, than one that loses by not using them when it needs them. If your solo sovereign is ambushed by an army with a champion, I'd say better safe than sorry and spend the mana.

Tactical AI is making obvious non-optimal moves. It's casting defense after it casts an offensive buff that lowers defensive capabilities. Is the AI able to consider what it will do on the following turn?

The AI is getting better - though I would like to see it use a wider range of spells in battle. While all the AI's tends to use buff and debuff spells, I always use direct damage spells that are very effective with traits that boost spell damage +50%, +50%, etc.

PS: Any chance of adding a powerful, intelligent, and magically adept fire or ice breathing ancient dragon to the monster list?

OK I finished playing a full game on challenging (with Magnar) yesterday as I consider this to be the standard difficulty setting for someone who isnt a noob but desires a challenge - it's still a cakewalk although I saw some promising developments with the AI both tactically and strategically. Strategically, I noticed the AI made sure it had large garrisons for it's cities and it used a mix of strong units (e.g. spearmaiden) bulked out with cheaper units (more cost effective) and I should imagine this would be further supported with ranged units as they build them. Tactically, the AI seems to make sensible decisions with spells and also sits back on ranged units if it has alot of these units.

In terms of suggestions to boost the AI I have a couple of suggestions:

1) I noticed the AI training small scouting warbands and then parking them next to big monsters (which I notice still ignore the AI opponents) - the problem with this is that they arent doing anything except costing resources in maintenance and opportunity cost - I think if the AI is blocked by a big monster it should send those units scouting elswhere or return them to cities as a garrison force

2) The AI seems to overproduce units IMO - the more units are made, the higher the maintenance costs which involves raising taxes (massive penalties to research and production for a little gildar) and this leads to stagnation - I personally only build units with a clear purpose in mind (scouting, attacking, guarding) and I dont train beyond that becuase I dont want to get screwed by maintenance any more than I need to - when I see the AI traning and parking loads of units with no clear purpose, I know thats hitting their production and research pretty heavily and that they are falling behind the tech race

3) After playing the latest beta, I remain convinced that it's quite possible to do fine for a long time without racing to build additional cities in the early game - the additional cities get hit by higher unrest which means they develop slower and you have to spend resources training guards for those units, which means even more maintenance costs that need to be met by higher taxes

I'm going to play another game on a much higher setting today to see how much harder the higher settings are and will feedback after completing the game

OK been playing ridiculous setting and the AI puts up a much bigger fight as they are able to pretty much ignore maintenance costs they are also keen to attack and I noticed some nice multi-pronged attacks and bypassing well defended cities for weaker cities, that was all good to see.

The AI also makes a crapload of mages too which is pretty effective as they bypass armour, although cloak of nature plus one of the elemental rings works well against this strategy. The AI did appear to react to my anti element approach by broadening it's range of troops so that was good to see too.

Some AI weaknesses I saw were cities with nothing being built and also enemy sov poorly choosing his equipment - I was able to get magnar to surrender and I discovered he had items that he wasnt wearing, instead he chose weaker items (e.g. he preferred to use a club over a balanced axe   ).

I'm about 200 turns in and I've wiped out 3/5 rivals with just Tarth and Pariden left - apparently Tarth is twice as powerful as me (power rating is something like 400) however I have no doubt I'll win because my Sov is now a level 19 god and will be able to kill em off by himself I expect. Would have played it through tonight however the game has glitched on me (won't let me end the turn) so I can't be bothered to go back a few turns at the mo and will finish it off tomorrow.

Brad, would it be possible to have 2 options for AI difficulty in the start game - one for AI algorithms and another for AI bonuses - I'd like to play against opponents where all the tactics are used but without the AI starting with mountains of gildar and resources.

The AI is getting better but I feel it's a long way from kicking my ass yet - I applaud your efforts though Brad, it must be hard to programme the AI with all these variables for it to consider

edit: I've actually abandoned the ridiculous game now - I'm certain that I would win but the game kept forcing me to reload my save after a gamebreaking bug that wouldnt let me end the turn after being attacked by 2 armies

It would be great if the AI could have differing strategies to employ based on their characteristics.  When you talk about ensuring each of the groups are distinguishable from one another and have really interesting differences, this could be one other area to compare them.  It's something that would be apparent to the player as well.

Watching the video ~ 18 minutes in and I think I see a problem.  I am sure others have noticed as well.  The AI does not value troops enough, at least not anything like how I do it and I am rolling the normal AI with no possibility of losing.

You shouldn't lose guys.  Make them run away til they level a few times while your sov kicks butt.  Also, all the buffs in tactical are a waste of mana.  If you need the buff cast it from the map, if not don't cast it.  Leveling your sov or first hero (whichever is going to be your uber titan) is priority one and two.  Grow and expand and all that but all monsters with their precious XP are for the titan and his band of merry men that stay out of harms way til they are leveled and upgraded a few times.

Finished the video and I am even more convinced that the AI needs to value troops more.  Once a unit is low on health it needs to retreat and strike carefully rather than stand in and take the killing blow.  Attrition is the biggest problem with a game like this.  Not only does it stall your advances, it slows the game down with long periods of run back and restock, or long supply chains to the front.  A unit saved from death is brought back to useful much faster than getting new troops to the front (not to mention the XP loss, a few levels makes a big difference and that's a good thing)