Sovereigns have painfully low hitpoints, they are glass cannons. It's like early European combat, you just agree not to attack the other guys leaders out of respect for nobility. However in my mind the AI Sovereigns should never venture out to be attacked, should run from any threat and so on.. or have 3 times the hitpoint potentials. Or have spell resistance or something.. I can't list how many times I've wiped out a kingdom by virtue of popping their Sovereign on a cheap shot.. Then auto resolve and win or loos in that fight, i win because their kingdom dissolves.
Sovereigns are just too damn random, period. Karavox is like, the model of your average "good" NPC sovereign. Mid 20s attk and def, mid 20s mana, but craptacular HPs.
The rest? Either they're completely worthless (as in have never gained xp and never bought equipment, and run in to fight HTH), or they're completely random. (Last game one of Karavox's kids had 67!!11111 Attk. Only my level 7 Ice Lord had that kind of power, or Umberdoth baddies in the wilds. The rest of his stats? Normal. Died to one spell.)
I'm guessing the code that generates the NPCs is as rough as the AI. It works, but it's still not that balanced or using a lot of thoughtful input.
Really that's what you can say about everything listed in this thread. There's code that establishes it and is functional, it's just not balanced or developed fully. I mean...I just realized last game that Elementium is useless in game. Truly. You can buy Legendary Gear from the trader without Elementium, and produce troops without it too. You don't even need to have researched General Armor to unlock Magical Armor in the Sorcery tree.
Functional. Just not balanced or developed. All we can really do is wait. It's hard to know how much they are planning on changing, and knowing where they need input. It's kind of....yeah, to be asking for beta-esqe guidance from Stardock after release, but they really could stand to say "we want to know where x is failing right now", please tell us.
I will say, I've enjoyed magic a little more now that it actually makes some numerical sense....but holy crap is it over powered. It went from barely functional, missing 90% of the time and doing wildly inaccurate damage...to being almost faultless and completely overpowered. The displacement effect spells are just ridiculous.
Maybe it's the fact that by the time you've researched the uber AOE spells, you've already got the shards and the int to bump the damage up to "kill half a stack in one shot" levels. It would be better if the AI were producing meaningful troops, but all it takes is ~3 aoes and almost anything will be 1/2 dead. Defense being both about magic and physical combat is a problem too, because the only way to stop magic is to have def, which makes you invincible in combat.
Really, if the AI were producing troops in platemail and max experience, players would be gouging their eyes out I think. But a whole combat rework is coming so, again....what can we really do but wait?
