Thanks for updating it! As with the tech-trades, I think that stacking buyout + industry cost reductions are a necessary crutch for Endless-difficulty games. Could you make it optional?

I don't think it's that much of a problem. Stacking both takes a bit of luck with Minor Faction placement and marketplace hero selection (plus not getting a market ban...) plus there is a big opportunity cost in setting it up while someone can spam units to overwhelm you while you're getting ready. In fact, judging by the escalating costs of absolutely everything with progression, I think the reductions are a well fitting gameplay element. Keep in mind that the game is supposed to be over in 300 turns on normal.

TheNumi wrote:

Thanks for the quick update! I find this patch amazing and wish Amplitude/NGD would give it a check. c:

I haven't got much an opinion of the buyout, I've mostly played single player myself, but do wanna play more multiplayer except likely not too competitively. So a feel a reduction is good enough than complicating it.

Is there any plans to also take a look at the stockpile techs? From my understanding looking around it's been suggestions of nerfing it. Now I'm not the best to judge on it, but after reading it and relying a lot more on stockpiles I did notice a huge difference in my performance, enough to make me question why I didn't use stockpiles constantly. Perhaps someone else can give a better opinion on it though unles it's been mentioned in the past here.

I would also like to see a 50% reduction in stockpile effects. THey really are a gamebreaker, especially once you hit that point with Cultists where you have permastockpiles running. Also, them being so cheap in the store really makes the stockpile tech much more effective. You can buy a stockpile for a few hundred Dust, but a crappy Nidya unit for the Scyther quest is twice as expensive and just as single-serving.

Falkner wrote:

Thanks for updating it! As with the tech-trades, I think that stacking buyout + industry cost reductions are a necessary crutch for Endless-difficulty games. Could you make it optional?

I don't think it's that much of a problem. Stacking both takes a bit of luck with Minor Faction placement and marketplace hero selection (plus not getting a market ban...) plus there is a big opportunity cost in setting it up while someone can spam units to overwhelm you while you're getting ready. In fact, judging by the escalating costs of absolutely everything with progression, I think the reductions are a well fitting gameplay element. Keep in mind that the game is supposed to be over in 300 turns on normal.

Well seeing as my games typically end before turn 200, I dont think my nerf would make it too bad. I also think its not necessary as a "high difficulty crutch" since the AI also does use it, so it would be affected aswell. Anyway, If I do it, it needs code changes anyway, so I'll just make it optional.

As for changes to the stockpiles: We have to be very precise what exactly is the problem here. As far as I can see the main issues with stockpiles are them being too cheap on the market by default and maybe the pearl stockpile tech rush. Both methods give access to a limited number of stockpiles that at a small cost (2 techs) allow  to basically "buyout" construction worth thousands of dust. So its not really the stockpiles itself that are a problem, but the ability to aquire a bunch of them early for little investment and upgrade them to by just researching two techs. Now I kinda like that this strategy is in the game (strategic variety after all is something I want), but it is indeed a bit too strong. I would say raising the market value of stockpiles in itself may already be enough of a nerf to it.

Also @Abrasax While a warring cultist can easily reach perma stock pile status, I dont think this is a huge issue. After all thats kinda their gimmick and I dont think they are too strong in order to be in need of a nerf (and they were already stealth nerfed in Inferno).

By the way its nice seeing a lively discussion going here ;).

RedChameleon wrote:

I've noticed watching youtube let's play, that AI often is not bringing whole of it's army in to battle. Wonder if it is something worth looking at? The "proper" fix might be complex as I think AI relies on it's calculation of the relative army strengths while making a decision. But there might / should be an option to increase the threshold which tells AI his army is overhelmingly stronger than the opponent's army. That way it will always opt for more troops, which considering it's currently inferior tactics, will help AI to win the battles... 

I highly suspect this is an issue of reinforcement/replenishment units which was a problem in ES1 (which ES1 used a rally system so fresh units would be directed, one-by-one, to the site of a battle only to arrive after their main fleet is long gone, making it easy to pick them off one at a time as the AI didn't seem to understand how to redirect a rallied ship). I don't believe those are "armies" but rather units meant to reinforce their regular army or reinforce it. It seems to me the issue is them not knowing how to deal with the troops immediately upon the elimination of the army they were intending to reinforce.

On a side note, always check the dates on Let's Plays as a lot of them I have seen are so old they practically don't even use the same mechanics.

A couple requests:

1. I would like to see an optional gameplay mode called "Sandbox Mode" where there is only one major faction, the player, but the minor factions pose a much greater threat (depending on game difficulty) to your SimCity wannabe faction:

• Newbie: standard minor faction progression with low hostility and slow to produce new armies
• Easy: standard minor faction progression with moderate hostility and slow to produce new armies
• Normal: standard minor faction progression with high hostility and produces new armies regularly
• Hard: hard minor faction progression with moderate hostility and produces new armies regularly
• Serious: hard minor faction progression with high hostility and produces new armies frequently
• Impossible: harder (think old Major Pain global event, +40% stats) minor faction progression with high hostility and produces new armies frequently
• Endless: harder minor faction progression with super high hostility (bloodthirsty even) and and produced new armies like Endless Wild Walkers produce armies

I know this would be a lot of work, but having a sort of PvE with World Progression would be a lot of fun in EL.

2. Changes to the minor factions' basic roaming army and mercenary loadouts. It seems like they only use a few of the weapon types. This is where I think they should be:

• Sisters of Mercy: sword and shield *NEW*
• Dorgeshi: claymore *NEW*
• Gauran: battle axe *NEW*
• Bos: longspear *NEW*
• Kazanji: battle axe
• Haunts: claymore
• Nidya: axe and shield
• Urces: battle hammer
• Silics: battle hammer
• Erycis: claws
• Hurnas: longbow *NEW*
• Jotus: crossbow and shield
• Eyeless Ones: quarterstaff
• Geldirus: claws
• Ceratan: claws
• Delvers: hammer and shield *NEW*

As it stands, there seems to be very little variety, no minor faction uses longbows, hammer and shield, or sword and shield, and too many seem to favor longspears. This really upsets the balance of cavalry slayer and infantry slayer.

3. A change to Serum of Iteru, 50% bonuses instead of 100%, as done by ninakoru in the Military Revolution mod. Serum of Iteru just seems gamebreaking.

4. Only allow status effects on successful crit, hit, or graze, but not with a miss. This includes Slow, Exhaust, Unsteady, Parasite, Shock, and more.

Great work, thanks!
This should be the responsibility of the devs, maintaining thier software, too bad amplitude is not very good at it, but at selling new broken stuff... Wish they would do more fixing and less selling...

About the AI and not using reinforcements well, I've stumbled across this a few times even with the Community Patch. Instead of going all out on its units and having a chance to win, it seems to kinda flop it and cancel the reinforcements. One example is in my Kapaku playthrough Ardent Mages attacked my main army that was kinda just poking ruins, and they had a dangerous force, two full armies and garrison. Although the first army was a bit weak (50% HP), the others was healthy and it was 75% in their favor.

So I played the battle instead as I thought even at those odds I could probably win with perhaps 2 units left alive. Expecting the reinforcements, I went straight for the reinforcement flags with two units to cut them off from moving, but none came. I easily demonlished their army without a single unit being lost and was on my way elsewhere with the enemy losing 6 units for nothing.

Worse examples has been where the enemy has a massive army yet goes "one by one" instead of fully reinforcing. Big example was when I fought and sieged the Cultists who obviously had about 10 armies against my 4, with guardians on both sides. I took the gamble cause my units was a little more powerful. I only lost 1 army and that's solely because they didn't reinforce their whole armies against me and even attacked with their guardian leaving it alone in battle to die, which led to me easily winning against the Cultists despite I should've gotten way more casualties.

So it feels like the AI is kinda "saving" their units or rather, saving their action points so they can attack more often in a single turn, not putting more than the autoresolve deems necessarily to be 50/50 or 45/55 in their favor, but even then as the first example there was no way they could've won even with autoresolve with their 50% HP army. I feel that the AI should in majority of the cases go all out with all their armies if they can in battles and not rely on the autoresolve metre if it's in their favor, because a good player can turn any bad autoresolve into a great win, but it only gets worse if the AI doesn't put everything it has in it.

Now I don't know how often it happens to warrant for a fix (if it even can be fixed), but I've encountered it enough to say it does happen once in a while and that the AI seem overconfident in them winning and trying to "min-max" too much as if playing against other AI, when fighting players they should bring more guns than they can carry at every opportunity.

Regarding the militia part with the AI keeping them in reserve for defense, I feel it's very... hit and miss. In the same Kapaku playthrough I was sieging the Allayi, and they attacked with a garrisoned force which gave them another city's militia. It was kinda 50/50 but I easily crushed them, leaving two cities without any garrison. So again, I think the AI tries to get a 50/50 or 45/55 scenario as often as possible even if it means adding militia and not go over that auto score which are the times they leave the militia out. This is also just one example, I've had this one other time with them wasting a second militia garrison.

Now that's not much of an issue as the other part I mentioned, both times the AI didn't have much else to defend with and it was kinda inevitable I'd take them, but I feel it might have something connected to their playstyle of min-maxing or underestimating the enemy instead of going all out on players. Ofcourse, it's just a wild guess.

Looking at the lets plays the A.I is not aware that their land is being terrorformed.I really hate it when systems are added in DLC and they dont tune the A.I to be aware of it.