LH Feedback: Thoughts and Bugs

Agreed, but you can still choose to manually place them. Perhaps remove it if the option is off (default). 

Part 2!

Rather than keep making new posts, I will just update this one. I had another long play session. Here is what I came up with.

Suggestions

• Heroes feel really weak. Now that acquiring them is more controlled, it would be nice to make them feel like the heroes they are. Leather armored units with a tier two weapon in groups of three are so much better at combat. It is not satisfying.
• Drastically lower the cost of items at shops within your own borders. This is in regards to the above. Earning the Fame and Research should be enough of a goal to get your heroes gear.
• Create an upgrade for heroes under General that cures their death wounds. Now that heroes are rarer, they really rack up wounds unless you save scum.
• OR Let heroes retire. Again, since heroes are rarer and can get really weak due to deaths, let heroes retire in a city. This could require level 6, and create a building in the city based on their class (Mage gives essence, Warrior gives a free level, ect).
• Show a units level on their portrait during combat. Having a bunch of units with the same name can be confusing. Showing their level makes it easier to plan.
• My three cities never made it past level 2. Growth in cities is incredibly slow. More growth buildings in the "food" techs are needed.

Bugs(?)

• Bannon got unlimited repeated turns in combat. He commanded a unit that went right after him, and then I passed his movement phase. Instead of going to the next unit, Bannon got to go again and again until I used him to kill every enemy.
• Using the command ability interrupts spell casting. If this is planned, fine, but include that in the tool tip.
• The Guard skill did not let me select any of the units adjacent to my unit.

Also, in my last post, I said building growth or research or money was not working. It turns out I am just an idiot and was not double clicking.

That is it this time around.

Part 3! Better late than never.

I have not been encountering any new bugs, besides the normal memory leaking. So these are just simple suggestions that occurred to me while playing.

• Change Guard so lasts until the caster's next turn, not the turn of the unit it is used on. It rarely lasts long enough to be any use as it is. Perhaps have it fortify the tiles it is cast on, rather than the unit, so the effected unit cannot run around with the protection.

• Increase the power of the Blessed Warhammer. It is very weak (A battlehammer is stronger!), and considering how much effort it takes to earn it, it needs a boost. I'd suggest a slight increase in attack, and it would give the caster the ability to cast Heal with a five turn cooldown.

• Slavery - If the capital is full, move population from razing and combat to other cities. It is frustrating to have these population wasted.

• Please add an option to map generation that lessens the amount of settleable land. I like playing games with lots of open land.

• Please add an option to make map generation have more snakey land masses. Choke points make for fun games. Many of the maps right now are just squares with some chunks missing.

• Give players an item when they raze lairs. As a Kingdom, I frequently cannot use monster lairs. Or maybe I don't want Knights of Asok or Darklings. Rewarding me for clearing the lair is fitting. It also lets players make a choice between long-term reward and short-term reward.

I would like to see various quests for Iru elixirs unlock as heroes get injured.  Say one quest per three injuries to heroes of the realm, so you have to choose which hero is worthy of healing.  

Love your retirement idea for heroes and turning them into buildings.

And yes the Blessed Warhammer is in need of some divine intervention  (see what i did there... and the emoticon even... oh I slay me!

You read my mind there.  Its hard to get a situation where your defender is close enough to act (*cough* the 2 move defender construct hero), his turn comes just before the enemy attacks, and the unit you are trying to defend comes just after.  Unless all that lines up, the guard ability is wasted.  

Like you said, it should work like fortify, and effect the tiles for any ally there, till the defenders next turn.  

This post is for 0.87. I posted bugs in another thread, so this is just ideas I had while playing.

Outposts: It would be nice if when you built an outpost right next to a resource, it created a fence around it (like in cities) so if an enemy attacked the resource, they would have to contend with any units stations in the outpost. This would make them a little more useful, and encourage keeping outposts manned.

Have Summon I, II, and III effect current summons. Brad was looking for a way to make summons more powerful, and this seems like an easy tweak to help along that path. Consider doing the same thing when you get new shards.

The recent changes to equipment are great, but some of the lair and treasure rewards are still a little weak. Let players bring ruined and rusted equipment to cities with a forge to upgrade the armor to normal quality.

Defender or Commander ability: If the unit is at full health, and would be brought to zero health, they survive at 1hp. This would be a passive effect to greatly increase the survivability of heroes against surprisingly powerful enemies, or lucky hits. This seems like it should go to the Defender, but a commander holding on to aid his troops also sounds thematic (and commanders are more likely to need it, making it more useful).

Formulas for damage need to take defense into account. Most recently, I did 7 damage on an attack that claimed I could do a minimum of 9. This sort of thing happens frequently on high defense enemies.

The damage tooltips are not accurate, they still need fixing.

You can have the potions (any of them) by researching into Magic Tree. The prices are fair, you shouldn't lack money by the time you get with research at that point. The rarity of those curing potions on map is intended because if they were abundant the scars (negative effects if a hero dies in combat) would lose any meaning as you would carry 300 potions to instantly cure the effect.

The summons are fine as they are, if you want to summon powerful creatures use the later summons and don't rely on shadow wolf At level 20 with half of summon tree unlocked, my Sovereign can cast a level 8 shadow wolf who's purpose is to absorb 1-2 hits and possibly deal damage, or a level 20 Air elemental with 160 hp, 60 attk, powerful lightning dmg and impale.

You have several invulnerability (both to physical dmg and magic) in the defender tree. Being active abilities adds choice and awareness to player instead of relying on out of jail card no matter where I move on tactical map and what enemies I face. Good design decision.

Formulas for damage do take defense into account. As stated at start of my post, tooltips are not always accurate, and this will be fixed most likely before release.

Guard works fine as it is, it's purpose is not to make the troops you're guarding invincible (sort of) for a whole turn (like having a cloth wearing mage staying toe to toe with a troll), but to give them a hp buffer until their turn comes, when they can take action and move away from harms way or w/e you see fit for them to do

Heroes at low levels start weak. Yes they can die. Yes you need to be careful what enemies you engage before you get some levels and better equipment for your troops. If you had a demigod from level 1 who could empty handed clear the whole area near your settlement the game would be completely unbalanced and terribly boring.

The price for items at shop, and rushing productions is in a good spot. Gives you an incentive to not IGNORE your economical development and treaties with other players. If you could mass purchase amulets rings new weapons mounts etc as soon as they were available they would lose their flavor and you'd be in a no different situation than generating a lvl 40 hero with best epic gear pretty much

You are not paying attention to your cities development if you can't make it past level 2. In all my games I get several to level 3 and few to level 5. You need to monitor how much growth & food you have available, you should have enough towns in good locations to provide extra food for your conclaves and fortresses, as well as money to support your troops etc. There are magic buffs and special buildings that help with this.

The heroes (as of 0.87) are placed on battlefield depending on their specialization and equipped weapons. My archers and casters (Even if I use a melee weapon on my spellcaster) are always placed behind melee troops. My warriors, commanders, melee Assassin, Defenders are always in the front line. Mind you, if you only have troops with ranged attacks, your hero might end up on same row or in front of them. TIP: mix units, always have melee units to act as a meatshield for your fragile backrow.

Anelyn, most of the things you responded to are one or two months old. Almost all of stuff from those old posts no longer applies. In regards to the comments you made to my most recent post...

The surviving trait I mentioned was, as I said, best for a commander. But even if it was given to a defender, the key difference is that a) the defender could still be severely hurt, and b ) it would not be an activated ability. It is a safety net.

Summoning in LH has already been admitted by the devs to be weak. Letting summons you've cultivated and leveled up gain power as you do seems natural. The rest of your comments about shadow wolves and air elementals seem largely inconsequential; you are speaking of a late game, level 20 hero. They better be strong. My suggestion would specifically help mid-game, early-game if you really pushed for it.

Ah well I never used summons as troops replacement (as in summoning them on map and taking them with me in party) just in the combat phase, and for me they always did their job well.