Sorcerer King Dev Stream Today (October 8th) at 3pm EST, Noon Pacific

Will the physical Sorcerer King be the same from game to game?

Or maybe can he get assigned various traits from a pool of abilities (not known to the player). I like the idea of engaging him in battle and suddenly finding that he has a massive cleave attack in one game; and in a different game he has the ability to globally project a shadow of himself (a weaker phantom of the Sorcerer King) in ordinary battles; and in yet another game he's got a lich-like phylactery so that upon defeat he's not actually defeated yet (until the player finds the phylactery and destroys that within a time limit); and so forth.

As this is on the latest internal build I am hoping that we get to see some more fleshed out minor races/diplomacy.

My questions:

1. What does interaction/diplomacy with the minor races entail, are you receiving buffs from them, gifts (units, materials, weapons, crafting plans) or do they become properly assimilated into your own empire (as in you get their cities and units).

2. Have you considered having a visual representation, like some buildings, to indicate the tiles you have chosen when you level up your cities into?

3. Do you think the sorcerer kings captains/key holders locations will ever be made visible to the player? I made a post previously about how it can be a bit difficult to hunt them down.

Finally...a little different

4. How long does it take to make the cinematic released for the game? Is that something the devs have input on/storyboard or are the artists given free reign to do as they wish.

Many thanks

I'd love to hear more about Dungeon Master mechanics.

I'd love to see the minors in all of their glory!

One of my favorite things about the WoM series. I'd love to see this implemented somehow here, too. 

Are Vetrar and A-whatever placeholder Loo-tenants or are there going to be some new ones? Or maybe there is a random pool of up to 6 Loo-tenants. Since cold and fire are already covered, maybe an air, earth, water or death type Loo-tenant as well would be cool.

Yeah, I agree. MOAR on the minor factions plz.

Speaking of minors, I see the graphics for the minor faction's building are really good.

However, they seem artistically a lot different from your outposts or your cities, IMHO. I'd prefer if the artwork was more consistent, to be honest. Make everything look like the cartoony "Warcrafty: Orcs versus Humans" outposts or more like the "Age of Empirey III" minor faction buildings. (New Pariden for example looks really nice. ^^)

What´s in store for city management? Current system is too streamlined and offers no specialization or REAL choices.

Are you thinking about some building paths, exclusive buildings, wonders etc.?

In bigger maps, the city building will get very tedious (all cities the same) and will ultimately lead to dreaded "build everything everywhere" strategy.

I find I never queue 5+ items. However, there are times where I know I want the next item to be a pioneer, but without a queue I need to remember that. So in other words, how about a queue with a cap, like 3 or 5 deep?

I hate that I had to miss the stream but I will definitely be catching the re-run on Youtube.

Honestly, there weren't that many new toys presented to us, if any.  But it was still a blast watching Kael snuff it first, as is customary.  (among other things)

#3 I may actually suck at SK  :\  We'll see how the next few streams go

Stalkers are particularly ridiculous in the early game right now.  Maybe instead of Maul, they could get a Pounce ability (basically move to any open tile on the map, once per battle) and a Double Strike ability representing a double claw swipe.  I'd like to see the bears make a return appearence to SK.

Stalkers and Trog Archers I avoid like the plague. Most everything else I can handle but those creatures lay the serious beats.

Agreed on the bears returning. It'd be nice to craft some berserker (Bear shirter) gear.

Blizzard spell or scroll (or sometimes Fireball if they are close together) is good for taking out those Trog Archers, but you need troops or heroes fast enough to get a turn first!

I found later in the game that I almost had to automatically lead off with a blizzard or a flame wave or I'd lose a unit to Trog Archers. Usually I'd end up having Tandis or a unit equipped with a ring of haste (horseman work well) cast the spell.

I started a game on Insane for fun and I am doing quite well. Got beat up by 2 ogres when I did the Keplin the Mage quest a wee bit too early. Tandis suffered a broken nose and I lost all my troops there. I came back and got my revenge later.

Other than that, the only time I had real trouble was when I met 2 Trog archers and I don't have fireball, blizzard or really anything. It's really early in the game and they are already harassing me.

Yes, units such as Trog archers or Trogs have a really high damage to HP ratio!  They only have 3 HP per member, but boy do they put out the hurt if you can't get at least 2 of the 3 in the stack dead before they attack!

Updated post with replay.

I haven't really paid attention yet, but do multi-unit groups lose attack ability as they lose members as they do in FE:LH or do they stay at full attack until dead?

I'm fairly sure that they do lose attack effectiveness when they lose members of the unit.  Not sure what happens if you have a unit that is showing two members and then heal it back up to 3 - currently it doesn't update the graphic, but it may still update the number of members of the unit still functioning.

Thanks, I'll have to pay attention to that, especially post healing. Would love to hear a dev weigh in on this to know intent on this.

Multi-unit groups certainly do a lot less damage as they lose members. As for attack ability, I am not sure.

I think Trog Archers and Trogs are going to become a meme of some kind. They can sure dish out the beats.

There is a bug that I have seen. If I have a unit of pikeman, let's say, and they lose a member so they are down to depicting two members in the unit; after I heal them enough to bring back the member, the number of members stays the same. However, if the pikeman gets into combat after that and suffers a few points of damage, then the pikeman is restored to three members again.