Its no mystery. Earth 2, Life 1, Armorer, Might, Hearty (Is it called hearty? The +hp/lvl and immune to poison one), Cruel. Rusty short sword. Cast stoneskin and regen. Look for mites, ruffians, wolves, lone darklings, rock spiderlings, and any goodie huts. As you pick up levels, prioritize adventurer's boon, potential, lethal, trainer, bloodthirsty, brute, finesse in generally that order. Path of the warrior. As you pick up normal armor, you can start killing black widows, plague stalkers, shrills, larger groups of darklings, sand golems, butcher men, etc. Once your atk and def get into the 20's and you have 50 or 60 hps, you're good to go for anything except slags, forest drakes, troll armies, and those sorts of big nasties.

Like I said, it's just about picking your battles. I will do a thread next week.

Honestly, if you play any sort of melee oriented sov, and exercise caution in the early game, you'll be surprised how easy it is. Remember you can shop in your opponent's territory and you can flip their outposts to claim shards they have built on. Not that you even NEED to do that to win, but it's still nice to remember. Not having to worry about your lands/holdings or care what the enemy factions have claimed is really liberating. You just wander the world and kill what you please.

About the only way this gameplay isn't viable is on insane where the monsters just have too many hps, but even then I'm not 100% sure I couldn't pull it off.

I read ruffians as russians... Sorry it had to come out >_<

Sincerely
~ K

If they were Russian troops they would be retreating after the first one died. 

Not to go all historical, but the russian loss of soldiers in certain wars says that they are used to sacrificing more ppl in wars than most.

Finally baited someone into a historical conversation about Russia. Imperial Russia and the ages before relied on mercenary officers and serf soldiers. Soldiers only stayed in battle as long as the guy pointing a sword at their back was threatening to kill them. And that guy generally only stayed as long as he was not in mortal danger.

When the term for a culture is cognate with the word "slave," it says something about the relationship between people at different levels of society.

Well, Kievan Russia and Appanage Russia were slightly better organized, but one was killed by constant infighting and the other was made completely out of really dry wood. Overall, it's hard to get serfs to fight without reasonable upward mobility and a strong wage. Of course, fighting unending hordes of cheating kiters doesn't help either. 

What difficulty level?

Edit:  Somehow missed the last part about difficulty.  I'm trying it on insane just for the hell of it.

I just tried it on hard, it's not that difficult, but I did get reckless and die.  But it's not as hard as I thought it would be.  The Krax blood and ability to fortify helps.

Playing on expert, I practically have won thought I did get reckless a few times, fortunately I had some town which I had captured and waiting to raze .

By capturing and razing towns I am 10% into the magic tech tree
Also did reload once, seemingly a level 4 sovereign cant beat a rockspider ambush... BUT I TRIED!
oh right might as well put it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/lz57xpnnpw8e2v2/Charge.EleSav

Edit: PS, forgot: Don't use auto-turn when soloing with your sovereign, that will just cause tons of bugs (those unexplainable ones where your unit cant move, or ends up in fog of war).

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I have only been playing for a few days but i have to tell you this game is better in beta than 99.9% of the games i buy in retail usually for a higher price. I am tired of being fleeced by big developers who put out shoddy games and basically tell you to take a flying leap when everyone realizes the game is a stinking pile of dog do do wrapped up in a big name franchise. You have a winner here--have fun with it and continue taking care of your customers like you are now and your company can not lose.

Such a nice thought

Sincerely
~ K

The game is STILL unplayable on a system at the minimum requirements.

I translate "minimum requirements" for any game as "playable while in Zen meditation, when the fall of a single snowflake will appear to take hours, and engage you the whole time."

Well I don't have minimum requirements, but might be that they need to go up just a tiny bit, heard a lot of people complaining about memory leaks etc.
That said, the game runs smoothly on my machine until I start going out on lategame on large maps (In where I just hit the Turbo button... Yea my comp is that retro that is has a turbo button ;))

Sincerely
~ K

Yeah, I have 32-bit WinXP at the moment (and will, at least until the middle of next year), with a dual core processor and an aging graphics card.  Game runs very smoothly and quickly, even with anti-alias turned up.  I have some pretty hefty concerns about game balance and randomness at the moment, but zero over performance.

Me too. But if I have the patience and "Xcom - Enemy Unkown" doesn't end up being too awesome, I will probably try to rebalance stuff in a mod. Well as far as my own logic around balance goes, I might also just be an old silly guy who wants everything his way

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I rarely come to the forums but have played every beta.  This is the first one that has actually made me think and be challenged, it also has a had a host of pleasant surprises.

Going back to play it again now. The game has come a long long way since Elemental, appreciate the hard work out into it and the opportunity given to play these betas.

I did two spittakes while reading this thread. Good stuff guys.

I would like to change my response to the title's question:

Yes, you have succeeded. Now give me my mod tools and release the campaign!!!