You have to start a new game for the updates to work, just way it is.

5 gilder per turn balances out the loss of hundreds per turn?  how?  i know the nice stardock person said monster farming was never meant to fuel an economy...but then what IS supposed to fuel the economy?  and what is the point of even having monsters now? 

also - glad that there is an option to turn off the animations in tactical battles lined up for the next update(?), but now i have to continue not playing this game until it is added.  woohoo. 

Please, please please add mouse/camera invert.  First thing I do in a game is invert the camera, and I can't do that in this game.  I just can't get used to playing a game with the camera controls like this.  Thank you!

@Istari

for the record -  I do appreciate the quick response.

well personally "hundreds per turn" doesn't seem very balanced in the first place.  also the monsters are used for leveling up.  i thought everybody was pissed that game was to easy, now its getting more balance, is it to hard?

It's not supposed to balance it out. Players were never intended to be getting hundreds of gildar per turn by farming monsters.

A gold mine provides 5 gildar per turn.

Killing a low level monster, like a wolf, will provide to 3 to 5 gildar for a given kill which is in balance for controlling an entire gold mine. One of the reasons the AI was not competitive in 1.0x is that it was designed to play the game as intended which included killing monsters to supplement income but not as the principle source.

was refering to later in the game after having researched the appropriate adventure tech.  but anyway: did i forget to mention that i still was never able to equip all my champions with decent gear?  now (if i were to play this game) i would not be able to give them...anything! 

also: how is it that less gold = harder?  to me that just equals dull.  fewer troops of lesser quality = dull

Well, just played through most of a 1.08 game (got out of memory crash before I could finish, will probably go back later, Nvidia card btw).  I like the gold change, makes purchases more meaningful (though champions + sovereign still need something to help them late game and the more expensive weapons are definitely not worth buying), and still not too hard to achieve a nice gold income. Magic is definitely stronger (or the shards I had worked better :P), also longbows seem a lot stronger than before... got almost consistant max damage on everything I shot at with them (eventually I just started sending out only single parties of longbowmen to take cities from supposedly stronger melee forces, worked a bit too well). On another note, while I have not played an online game yet (though I hope to tomarrow if I can find an opponent), I did look at custom game setup; it seems we are locked to only conquest victory in custom games? 

I think what the developer need to do is to reduce the price in the shop, so the hero will able to buy the standard equipment, just as the troop. But, heroes a special because their equipment are not standards. Maybe Stardock should implemented more Hero's special equipment that will make 100 coin is worthy to be bought.

Well ... In my case, neither 1.08 & 1.08b were effectively applied. The 15MB downloads, extractions & installations went fine ... but once the whole processes were finished, Impulse still indicated that I had 1.07 and that 1.08 (or 1.08b) were available !?! Launching the game also indicated 1.07. I tried a few times without success. I'll try again in 15 hours ...

you seem to be missing the point, it doesn't matter if its what was meant to drive the economy or not, right now its the only real economy. the patch doesn't fix the game, it breaks it more. 3-5 bucks for a lowly wolf, so that worthless 90 dollar staff(for some reason you upped back to 90 from the 43 you had it at before) now takes atleast 18 wolf npcs to pay for it? or 18 turns, if'n you have no other expenses and a gold mine, just for 1 crappy stick, not even talking about real equipment you would want to put on your champions, and if all you got is that stick, all you are really gonna be killing is lowly wolves.  mid game some of those champions cost 200+ bucks, you gonna afford that on a 5 dollar gold mine minus expenses, or some of the town improvements. atleast with the monster farming i could do something. now the game still isn't fun, but i feel like someone has knee capped me too boot.

this is all outta whack. its not a situation you can fix by going after one mechanic irregardless to the consequences of other systems, you have to take the whole situation into account.  until you start patching with that in mind, you are just going to trade one aggrevation for another. or is it the intent to have us ending turn ad naseum, waiting to save up to buy the simpliests of items or twon improvements, or cheapest of champions.

I'm unable to update. Are the servers overloaded or what? I tried talking in IRC but no SD people responded :/

.

If you look at the cost of weapons for designed units, you should note that the gold cost has been dramatically reduced. The one area they will need to be reduced further in are the shops in all likelyhood.

Having monsters that were providing high amounts of gold was not a mechanic. It was a bug in the loot formula. It is now working as it was originally designed. The combat rating of the monster is what is supposed to determine the loot provided.

If you have a request or suggestion on the economy I will be sure to pass it on.

Just uploaded the new upgrade, played about 20 turns of my on-going game. There's a significant decrease in gold from monster farming (killed a 25 strength bandit that's normally about 25 gold, I got 4 gold and 1 gold experience). I guess that's one way to balance the AI. Now it's harder to equip armies & outfit champions. Prices in the item shop are the same. One of the neighboring AIs decided to declare war on me since I build a town near their country (I've already flattended two of the other AIs in the first 50 turns). I teleported my soverign plus 9 champions whom I had previously recruited along the way to the city which was under threat (it was pretty far removed). The enemy sovereign was approching (2 squares from my city). I had one very stong 4-man mace group, one 4-man more obsolete observer group, plus my 9 individual champions. They had two fairly strong soldiers with 76 hp, attack 6, and 0 defence, plus a strong 4-man group with something like 135 hp, 24 attack, 9 defense (I think it was). Their soverign was very strong, much stronger than my soverign and any of my single champions alone (since I imbued champion several times, my soverign is not at the top of his form) .. anyway the odds of the outset of the battle were something like 136 vs 124 (strength value), very slightly in my favor. I was able to win the battle losing only my observer group. I killed all four enemy units including the sovereign. at the end I got a whole whopping .. wait for it ... 7 gilder and 1 gilder experience. None of my 9 guys were even able to level-up afterwards. Needless to say, I found this extremely disappointing. It seems to me the reduction in gilder goes hand-in-hand with a reduction in gilder (from experience).

I guess that's one way to balance the AI: reduced gold & experience gained in combat .. not really what I was hoping for though.

I also noticed that woods no longer cost 2 mp to move through. Before, it cost my groups 2 moves to go through woods, now it seems everything is a constant 1 move point to enter. I haven't noticed any other changes as of yet. My magic users seemed to miss a lot in that last battle, but that's not unusual as I need to increase intelligence more when I level up (I typically choose constitution until it gets past 20 as the champs are too weak) .. probably going to have to review my entire approach to champs as now it doesn't seem worth fighting monsters for gold & leveling up .. the item store costs haven't changed .. probably better to forego hiring champions altogether and just spend the money on troops (their costs are cheaper relative to the item shop).

My first impression of the 1.08 upgrade is that there doesn't seem to be any use for champions any more, based upon what I saw in those 20 turns (too expensive, reduced money, and reduced experience in combat = scarcer money is now better spent on troops).

Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit.

AMD Phenom II X4 965BE 3.41ghz, not OC'd

GTX295 (Have stereoscopic 3D  off, it does function fine though, even though the current 3D drivers do not recognize game) currently not running OC profile on it

16GB Installed Ram

Everything is all up to date, all current drivers, etc.

Random OOM errors every few hours, not too big of a deal though.

Game seems to lag a bit when moving units later on.

i think what we have here is a bunch of people that got used to a mechanic/exploit and now its gone they are not happy.  if the CTRL + M cheat still works, thats a way to get all the money you want fast.  its pretty simple to me, if you want more gold, then explore a bit and find MORE gold mines.  also, if your neighbor has a gold mine, then fight him and take his.   this is what the game intends for you to do, not supply your entire empire with monster kills.

Oh, that's not good. I was playing earlier and I'm going against a very strong Magnar Empire. The last two huge units I killed I receive next to nothing--like killing a pioneer. I thought maybe they weren't as strong as I originally had thought. I was able to bear the slow combat speed due to the huge reward but if this is the case it sucks. Killing monsters & enemies is a major source of income. I haven't been able to generate more that 50 gilder from all my cities combined. Any idea on the reasoning behind this??

I'm curious. What is the most amount of gold you been able to generate from multiple goldmines? I don't the reduced pay out so much but if they keep respawning with my area of influence--destroying structures and caravans, then it's kinda of a pain isn't it?

.

Mellow people, they didnt say that 1.08 was going to balance everything. Give them another couple of patches, they seem to be making some head way on the OOM errors, and they are adjusting the game as needed. Be polite and give them a proper list of pros and cons to help them balance it when they go to do that.

what part of "we could not properly equip our champions even when we were constantly hunting monsters AND using those 'gold'mines and now that hunting is pointless champions which were already horribly underpowered in late game are now absolutely useless for the entire game (especially in the beginning when we have no access to gold sources other than monsters and our awesome new 'gold'mine) because we cannot afford to equip even our sovereign with anything better than mediocre gear and that is not balance it is stupid" do you not understand?

because I could, if asked nicely, break that up into proper sentences.

easy fix tho: radically drop shop prices.

don't get me wrong, i am not saying that everything is perfect.  there are still some problems that need addressing.  i am just saying that the gold mines are suppose to be your main source of income.  that needs more balancing.  i think mainly what needs to be done, is an overall look at:

cost vs gold production vs early/mid/late game.

basically about where you should be at each point.

i think there is alot of confusion out there with the game mechanics.  it would be nice if frogboy would give us a lengthy dev journal on some of the main mechanic points, especially the new stuff thats being added/changed.

I am still on the fence about the economy.  In V1.07 I found initial monster income to help a lot, but didn't really give me so much gil as to produce everything I wanted that takes money.  I also discovered that trying to make every city a big gildar producer usually failed and cost my economy more than it made.  What did seem to work was having specialized cities ... Gildar producers, Food producers,...etc,.  I made sure to add the one per faction type resource bonus tiles in the best specialized city of it's type... this method seemed to cause my economy to flourish. 

It's the take on research that this game has that is really fascinating .. due to the nature of the discoveries, if you don't research carefully, you can really screw yourself.  For example, if you go all out after the uber champions and dump all your reseach into the adventuring branch, well, you get the hero's but you get uber monsters to go along with them.  On top of that, you won't have the money to afford the heros, but the monsters are so powerful you will get anihilated.  So, you really need to work on economy before you do that. 

Honestly, I really like the slow pace of the game... i'm sorry for all those that want it and WANT IT NOW, but I am so sick of all the other games that are made for the instant gratification crowd.  This game takes a while to figure out ... sorting out whether it's working the way you think it is supposed to or it's just a bug or game flaw has been a problem for me I admit, but I still don't want it to be a game where I get to be all uber in 5 turns.  I have had enough of that lame crap.

So, I am going to play another 50 games for V1.08 and see if my evaluation of how to build a good economy holds up... the only thing is I really hate to lose the prgoress I have made in one of my save games so i hope they patch that up so I get to keep old saves.

i appreciate that, but what i am saying is that you shouldn't run around trying to fix things piecemeal, you want to fix the economy, then fix the economy as a whole, this piecemeal crap doesn't work. where maybe, maybe in 20 patches we might have a working system once they've addressed all the components, but not likely, since hacks were done without regard to other components.

right now i see 1-2 gold mines, that means my entire empire will be running on 10 bucks once i get it built, and  thats including waiting to get the cash to build the pioneer to get to the second gold mine, plus the guards because i can't rely on my champion doing any escorting, plus building up my first town. that is a lot of nothing but ending my turn while waiting for sufficient cash to accomplish anything, i can't even explore because in all likely hood, my weak sauce sovereign will get killed, having no equipment and pinching every penny to build the structures to get spells, to get better troops, equipment, that i can't afford anyway.

sorry there, i don't mean to sound snippy to you, but having istari spout the company line without regard to the content of the post has kinda irratated me, i'm afraid its spilling over into my reply here.

i'd love to hear again how the goal of lowering the loot was not to balance thigns out, cause silly me, i thought the point of the patches were to balance things out. and if you are ignoring things like shop costs, champion costs, building costs, etc, etc. while making changes elsewhere, you will never balance it out.

for the record, i don't expect them to get it right on the first try, but i do expect them to try and take everything into account, or there is no hope of success. i also really don't appreciate being talked down to.