Early on, I decided to edit previous articles with any corrections or new information to keep it all in one section for posterity. The complete revamp of the combat system put paid to that. So at the moment, I figure I’d spend some time with some observations, hints, and a correction or two.
Combat: As of posting time, I haven’t the foggiest what is going on. Ask anybody, and opinions range from “complete debacle” to “absolute shitshow”. And they’re both right! My first impressions were that the bonus vs. other units were being re-balanced, so my advice to people in my Fellowship was to take note of this and “adjust tactics accordingly”. For example, the Cerberus has a bigger bonus vs. Magic as well as attack vs. light ranged. However, whereas before a pack of Cerberus against archers with a Magic backup was an easy victory, they get cut to ribbons. By the archers. The Sorceress unit is vastly overpowered to the point where one of them melts my entire army no matter how well complemented they are against the bulk of the enemy forces. There were times where if I saw a big mixed army I would Negotiate to avoid heavy casualties. Now I can’t win a single battle because matching armies with the supposed unit they’re vulnerable to doesn’t even work. Sure, you can train units faster but they’re so pitifully weak across the board you’re just flushing all your Supplies down the drain.
Until this is definitively fixed, I wouldn’t advocate wasting precious Supplies building troops. I haven’t even tested out the Mercenary camp units because it’s not worth the aggravation of losing them all in a heartbeat. They promised your existing units to be more powerful and they clearly aren’t. They added the Cerberus to both factions by creating another building to make space for, and for some inexplicable reason aren’t applying Training Speed upgrades to it while also making it take up slots in your Barracks. Explain to me again why I need to build two separate buildings that fill up the Barracks training queue? Yeah, don’t spend a day and a half training up a complement of Cerberus to lose them within 3 minutes. It baffles me that they planned this dramatic change to combat, launched it piecemeal at a time (imagine starting a game of chess where all you have is pawns with the promise that other pieces will be available later in the game) and generally seems like it never occurred to them to test out the new system before implementing it so, you know. IT WORKS. That’s all I can say on that subject for now.
Orcs: I am currently on the “Let’s Take Some Time To Work On Wonders” phase while I tirelessly upgrade my Mushroom Farms. Turns out I had it backwards: your Mushroom Farms are the ones to upgrade first. My apologies to anyone steered wrong before this correction: if it’s any consolation, I have paid for it via a longer stay in this tree. What I have done is alternate between Hardshrooms and Psychoshroom production to upgrade each farm to Level 4. Your Hardshrooms will go towards the cost to upgrade Farms while Psychoshrooms are used to create Debris.I still maintain you should concentrate on upgrading your production buildings before working on the tree again, but you’ll want to upgrade Farms first and then your Portal. The 20% per upgrade boost to your portal means more Hard/Psycho shrooms as well as more Debris output to fuel those upgrades. You may be tempted to upgrade your Rally Points for faster Debris production, but the fact remains having to pull double duty producing two types of mushrooms negates that advantage. You’re better off focusing on the Portal first for bonus mushrooms. When those are maxed out, you’ll have ave a much easier time (although still with 1-2 day waits on 3 types of Mushroom bakes) accumulating Loot and Wisdom Shrooms. Orcs cost quite a bit to raise in Supplies, all the more reason not to waste it on troops you’ll lose in a minute.
Tournaments: After every Tournament, I like to compare my Relic boost percentage before and after. With the recent Steel Tournament, I was surprised to learn it caps at 700%. I am totally okay with this, because I can imagine the game breaking potential of not capping production buffs. Plus I can still improve them with the Mountain Hall Wonder which has other nice benefits as well. At this point, I’m comfortable with getting no more than 2 or 3 stars in the first 3 provinces for some easy KP and Mystery Shards. With Combat currently broken, I’m going to be negotiating heavily so it’ll work out. My advice on Tournaments still stand: the costs are worth the benefits, especially the more often you do them.
Lord Pumpkin: I was super miffed that there was no feasible way to complete the Summer Solstice quest line. But the recent contests redeemed that one with some very manageable goals for active players. Wonky Walter was fun. Lord Pumpkin cracked me up, though. As with the Orcs section, I find it fun sometimes to “roleplay” within the world of Elvenar. Here comes a corny riddle speaking Pumpkin who starts and ends every quest with “Booooo!” And all I can think of is the dude with the Renaissance cap saying “My Liege! Look, I know Lord Pumpkin is ridiculous and your first impulse is to want to kick his ass rather than produce any amount of Beverages or whatever for him. We all feel this way. But he’s Lord Pumpkin. He only gets one week in one month where he’s relevant, and we all kind of feel sorry for him.And even now, he’s completely ridiculous. He’s not asking for crazy stuff, we can spare it. After that, he’s out of your hair for the rest of the year, so we just humor him.” Nice rewards, too!
Wood Elves: Nowhere near there, but I took a look at the tree and it’s actually quite interesting with what they’re doing. It’s like what they did with previous Expansions but in reverse: you get upgrade Culture items early and the Portal/factories come into play towards the end. That’s a win-win, so more on that when I (eventually) get to it.
Diamonds: I get that free to play games rely on microtransactions for players looking for an edge. But is it just me or do the devs not get the micro part? 20 dollars for a single expansion square? 20 dollars or more for a single Culture item? Early on, I shelled out a little bit that turned into comparatively quite a bit because it seemed worthwhile. Now I don’t see the point. Hopefully they’ll figure that out.
No idea what’s next on the blog. Suggestions?
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