The axes are getting used, they aren't Yithril specific anymore.  I have a screenshot of the unit design screen int he first post.  The general issue is that in FE you upgrade to whatever weapon is available that does more damage than your current one.  You could specify if you wanted it to be of a certain damage type, or just be the best weapon for overall damage.

In LH that formula doesnt' work anymore.  The first problem is that there are no damage types, so anything set to upgrade to upgrade to the best available blunt or cutting damage didn't do anything.  But the bigger issue was that the highest damage is not longer the best indicator for what you want your units weapon to do.  Instead you want that axeman you trained to upgrade to bigger and bigger axes, but now switch to swords halfway through.  Swordsman are very different and if you wanted a guy with a sword and shield you would have designed that guy.

The is similar to the way bows and spears worked on FE (we had special tags for them to keep those units from converting to other weapon types). We just broadened the system to include any sort of tags we want to make in XML (so modders can use them and designe their own upgrade paths).

We also added an Axeman unit on Weaponry that starts with an axe (which is now 2 handed) and can be upgraded to the Ignys Axe, the Battle Axe and the Great Axe.  The reason the starting axe has to be 2 handed is since the axed upgrades are all 2 handed you want to keep them the same to keep palyers from designing the first unit with an axe and shield and never upgrading his weapons.  Thats the same reason the Maul was made 1 handed (since all the weapons that lead into it are 1 handed).

We also added a swordsman unit on Blacksmithing that will upgrade to the Longsword and the Boreal Blade.

The Greatsword was converted to the Great Axe because axes needed a late game upgrade (swords already had the longsword) and swords are all 1 handed and couldnt use the late game 2 handed Greatsword.

Yithril did lose the 2 special axes, but they got 15% more hit points on all their units so its a good trade for them.  And I don't think many custom faction creators were picking Great Axes, so its better served to make unit design and unit upgrades more interesting.  But after we put the patch out you guys will have a chance to see and try it out yourself.

Nevermind, just read your post above.  I guess we'll see how it all works out.

The cleave associated with axes made yithril more attractive. This change makes them far less attractive. I'd suggest adding a unique Axe to their faction that replaces the standard great axe and regular battle axe. Let's not forget the guillotine axe is a joke.

Many unit or hero traits (Veteran, ...) are too weak and should be either removed or improved. Units should be able to select the Axeman (+ 25 % Cleave damage), Bruiser (+ 25 % Crushing Blow damage), Spearman (+ 25 % Impale damage) and Swordsman (+ 25 % Counterattack damage) trait, too, because these traits are more much interesting than the Bloodthirsty (+ 25 % damage against wounded units) trait.

The Charge trait should be changed:

- Charge: + 3 movement during the first turn of combat

- Ambush: + 3 (units) or + 5 (heroes) attack during the first turn of combat

The attack bonus for heroes should be higher, because the damage is not multiplied by the number of units.

Are you going to increase base XP rate or provide a slider?

And will one-handed spears be a separate weapons category?

I can't even begin to explain how much (and how long) I've wanted a separate upgrade line for weapons. Looks like it might have to be fleshed out a bit but looks good so far.

^ this.

This a giant wonderful change! Hopefully you put that in FE as well.

I'm kinda hoping as much as possible is backported to FE.

Can't say that I agree with you here.  If traits like these are introduced for units, they should require quite a bit of production time.

I happen to really like the bloodthirsty trait.  It's especially synergistic with Tarth or Urxen Blood traits.

Wutz FE?

for the AI focus on defending cities change I hope it incudes something where the AI makes a tactical withdrawel in some situations.  I notice that some of them garrison a few units in each city.  I am able to overcome this defense.  However, if they pulled back from the first city and now had 4 extra defenders instead of 2 I might take losses in my attacks to the point where I could not continue steamrolling through their cities.

In General the AI needs to do a better job of grouping their units together into tougher armies.  They also need to probably have a better way to figure out what is a border / vulnerbale city versus one in the interior that is less likely to be attacked.

When will the fix go in for the issue where the bar on the left side of the screen with your units and cities disappears when you load a quick save?

That is VERY frustrating.

If i remember it correctly the bloodthirsty trait has a very high production time (20 ?), too, and i think that the trait synergizes with everything, because the requirement (unit is wounded) is very fast met. The Axeman, Bruiser, ... traits would have a requirement that is even faster met, but the linked abilities have a large cooldown.

We really need some new LH traits and the plus 25% skill damage ones are as good as any. Unit creation has gotten pretty stale and we could use some more interesting combinations. A pretty sweet post was written full of ideas for traits: https://forums.elementalgame.com/442130.

I agree. 

I don't particularly care for the +weapon dmg ideas because they are no-brainers.  Trained units will never switch their weapon type, so you would be a moron to not pick those traits, unless they had a significant training time.

Thanks for the link, I had missed that post!

I support this unit upgrade path change, good work Derek.  I think it's a great improvement that takes away some of the boring micro re-design.

I also like how you focus on fun rather than realism.  This is what gaming is all about and keeps you coming back to the fun game.  If people want realism, make a mod for it.

As for realism, I dare say not many of us play battlefield in real life, nor want to.  I certainly wouldn't want to be hit with a poison arrow either, or mauled by a wolf, just saying no game is realistic, or even approximates realism, except perhaps for some military simulators and we're not making one of those.

Aren´t we simplyfying too much?

Why dont have separate line in the editor for (early) one handed axes and (late) two handed swords? I can imagine one might want to have early durable axemen with shield and cleave and late swordsmen with heavy counterattack.

Further, defensive nations might have full scale of one handed axes (like spears) and warriors might have full scale of two handed swords...

Maybe warriors and defenders should get a two-handed wield trait

it would be +25% damage with 2-handed weapons+ 10 dodge or something.

That's a fair point.  In my mind I like big differences.  As is you have:

1. Swords and shields (counterattack and shield bash)

2. Hammers and shields (crushing blow and shield bash)

3. Spears (immune to counterattack, impale, armor piercing)

4. Axes (backswing, cleave)

5. Bows (good ranged attack)

6. Crossbows (so-so ranged attack, power shot)

7. Magical Staves (elemental damage)

For each of these it feels like very different things.  It isn't simply a matter of a stat difference.  I like that when players are picking between these options they play differently.

But I do like the idea of having a faction that uses 1 handed axes.  I'm going to add that as a Yithril special ability, but it won't come in until the next patch.

How bout an update on progress and fixes related to FE please? Your FE changelog is nearly a month old and still unreleased.

If I had to take a guess many of the core fixes/changes are going to be backported to FE.  Thats not necessarily true but just a guess.

Of all the things I see within the game changes this is the one I like the most.  This allows modders to make custom upgrades without having to resort to some extreme methods (making new damage types) to allow for units.  One thing this allows for that I am extremely eager to try it magic weapons.  You can by using this ideology of upgrade paths allows for a different damage type to be used for weapons and still be in the path for upgrades since it takes the sum total as the max upgrade value.  Or at least its supposed to.  Making that good ole enchanted sword which is only slightly better than the old sword but it can hit magic creatures.

One suggestion to the magic trees that I keep seeing as a problem is that for mages above all other units it is extremely difficult to stay relevant without talents/spells.  I like the concept behind the different magic talents being gated but the way it is if you play a mage you have to spend points on the talent trees to improve the base class or spend your points on spells to make yourself more useful.  This leaves mages kind of sucking until they have enough points to finally upgrade their spells and then dig into their trees.  

A second critique of the mages are that the summons such that they are independent of the spell trees as they are.  My opinion is you should have 3 summoning unlocks and then additional talents for strengthening those summons but linking them to your spell trees.  Summoning unlock 1 should allow an earth2/fire2/water2/air2/life2/death2 mage to summon a minor elemental/undead/spririt of the appropriate type.  Then summoning unlock 2 should unlock a more powerful version at spell level 4 and then you could do a master version for spell 5 so you could have more summons tied to different elements without having a massive amount of more talents spent getting the different summons and spells.  Additional unlocks or buffer unlocks between these could be improving the summoning levels.  So you could do summoning unlock 1, then strengthen bond +1 summoned level, unlock level 2, then superior bond (just a name) +2 additional summoned levels, and finally master summoner unlocks master summons and +3 additional summoned levels.  for a total of +6 levels on top of the normal summoning levels making those initial summons not so paltry but also not completely overpowered.

I saw the changelog version got updated.  I hope that doesn't push the patch past today.  Was looking forward to starting a new game tonight under he new patch.

It probably means they think they're further along than planned, though I think balancing is a massive issue right now.

Wutz FE?  hehe ... that joke never gets old.