Awesome.  Thank you.  I will be sure to pick Krax and Trogs for my next game!

+ AI trait weighting reduced from 1000 to 100 for researching techs purposes

What does this mean exactly?

What does this mean?  Better diplomacy AI, or just more of it?  Or something else, and if so, what?

It means it's better at making long-winded speeches.  You'll finally get to say 'Have some light balls.'

I've also had a good time against Gilden. They can field very good units.

Wither is also a spell the AI should utilize strategically. Even without shards it's good value for the cost against armies. With enough shards it's a game winner.

Thanks!

Hi Frogboy, since everyone is ignoring my threads I'd post this here for some assistance. Thanks!

Where is it? I paid for it 

Order placed on Friday, December 07, 2012    (Order #: 2363257)

Order Summary

Fallen Enchantress Map Pack DLC (Digital Download)

Good to hear this.  I sincerely hope that the Dev team will continue to find ways to tighten up the code in order to use the minimum amount of memory necessary to get the job done.  As things stand, the game still crashes way to often.

Something that has always irked me is that there isn't a 'How about you switch sides and help me fight X instead?' option in diplomacy.  You have to first sign a peace treaty and then bribe them to go to war.  It would open up AI trait possibilities like Loyal (tends not to betray an ally) or Backstabber (tends to jump at the chance to betray an ally).

Periden is not useless, though they are weak in stand-up fighting -- the initiative bonus can be incredible, and the earth shard bonus counts even when they are level 1.

I expect they will be overpowered in 1.1.  

I've been seeing the AI use destiny's gift (and, on insane, I was dealing with sov's with higher initiative than me and of course much higher health than me), but in 1.02 the AI has so many problems that even destiny's gift does not help it enough to make a difference.

And, of course, when you take away its toys, then you have them... so here's an unbuffed, level 1 Amarian unit from that situation:

[URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/252/amarian.png][/URL]

 That's 40 initiative with a ranged attack, the defenses and health did not really matter much because they rarely got hit (but later, I buffed them with evade and nature's cloak, just for fun, and I also buffed them with regeneration because when they leveled up they needed to heal to get the newly awarded hp).

Map size also matters.  I was playing the huge map mod, in the above screenshot.

Pathfinding needs work too.

For example:

-2 cities, you can see the first at the bottom of the above pic, the second one is due north at the top of the pic, connected by a road goes that goes on a diagonal  northeast then diagonal northwest.  Champion (yellow cape guy) with movement=2 was located in the southern city.  Champion can be manually moved from southern to northern city in 1 turn (manually exit on road then follow road into second city).  Reloaded, selected the champion and then just clicked on the highlighted square south of the crystal (just outside the northern city) and pathfinding had the unit exit the first city off-road then head due north (off-road, ignoring the existing connecting road).  Ended up requiring 2 turns to reach second city when it should have taken 1 turn.  If I click on a square in the city (the crystal square) then pathfinding will get the champ into the northern city in 1 turn, so that works.  Pathfinding should work similarly in both cases.

-exiting a city, too often a unit exits off-road when a road square could be used.

-if a 2-move unit and 4-move unit are stacked together at the start of their turn and the 4-unit is detached, its movement is 2/4 instead of 4/4.

Similarly...

I just moved the 3-horse scout unit adjacent to the yellow cape champion to recruit the champ, using up all the scout's movement.  Champ still had 2 movement left.  I wanted the champ to attack the mob 2 squares to his north.  To do this I'd have to move thru the scout's square, but doing so causes them to group up and the champ loses his remaining 1 movement.  Now, I can move into another unit's square without grouping if I click past said square, so I tried to click directly on the target mob to see if pathfinding would pass thru the scout to attack the mob (as moving thru the scout's square takes 1 movement, leaving 1 movement to attack the mob).  Nope, pathfinding moved the champ due north into the 0.5 movement-required square, using up all the champ's movement, and no attack was possible.  Is there a way to have the champ attack the mob in the current turn, that I'm missing?  The attack should be possible.

The game is much improved, and getting better with each update.

Nicely done!