This faction is amazing, i'm just waiting to test them to say i love them.

I think they will be really hard to play but so fun,

I can't wait :D

are there lets plays out yet I havent found one yet i am very interested and waiting for this expension a long time :)

I agree it looks like a challenging faction to play and that's great. The problem is that it is not so great for the AI most of the time when this is the case.

The Allayi are very weak opponents when used by the AI and if the same is true for for the Morgawr, then I suspect that the chaos they could potentially cause to empires who are easily trundling along to an easy win will be mitigated.

I may be mistaken, but they seem like part of the solution to the boring mid to late game. And their abilities certainly seem to bear this out, but if the AI doesn't get how to play them, we'll end up with another faction that only humans can play to any effective degree.

I'm hoping there will be more things revealed about the mid-to-late game which are coming up to address the 'easy win' syndrome after the hurdle of the early game.

- I am impressed, very impressed, by the background, and by the gameplay and the new features.

- It's very creative. Maybe the famous french touch.

- I really like the Cthulu influence, the demonic culture, the chaos strategy etc. I am very curious to see what it will do in real games, with real humans in competition.

- But I fear, as usual, that the balance problems found will not really been solved. We got nothing to read about Balance, or balance correction.

- Nothing has really change : we still have very powerfull Wild Walkers (industry bonus + mega influence made by the construction of buildings) and superbe Ardent Mages (ERA II turn 10 influence plan combo + Imba wings and stun spells) who dominate by far the others factions.

We still have two main weak races : Necrophages mostly, and Vaulters.

- Pillage, for exemple, which is a great feature, is still problematic, because no one use it in multiplayer, except few Forgottens players, in rare cases. When Balance is uncorrect, it can lead to situations where entire features are purely ignored (as the pearl equipement for units, or the food/science/industry reserves, or several never-taken technologies).

In my opinion, this situation is a failure, and a sad failure, because it would be possible to solve this failure by changing sligtly few simples balance problems. But it seems the devs have no real will to solve these problems.

(But if devs ask for help about balance & others few technical changes, I ll be glad to give my suggestions).

I am also impressed. New factions, new traits and new features always bring more to the game. Seems quite complex though. A total different way to play.

The black spot trait might add some pepper to multiplayer games. However, selection this faction means that players will have to choose a map with water, since usually most of the players prefer the Pangea style map. I would also add that multiplayer games tend to be more or too militaristic (never saw a diplomatic victory with humans playing instead of AI).

I tend to agree with Jojo_Fr about balance issues. Especially when it comes to: 

1. factions that are or weak or with traits or features that seem useless in multiplayer games, like pillage. 

2. the turn 10 trick with Ardent Mages or Wild Walkers powers production+influence  (and easy wonder quest).

I also would like to add that even if Necrophages might be seen as a weaker game, in later stages it's difficult to counter the hordes of huge armies they have, that make the game a bit predictable.

More balance between factions would make the game more fun, versatile and interesting.

ojaguar wrote:

More balance between factions would make the game more fun, versatile and interesting.

9 out of 10 times balance for multiplayer makes unique factions more generic. Honestly I would prefer to see effort go toward making single player games more interesting via more capable and aggressive AI.

When a bunch of humans sit down to play together, there is a very different dynamic taking place than when someone sits down to a single player game against AI factions. I don't want more genericness leaking into the single player game (where the majority of players are) just to make multiplayer marginally better to remain unplayed by the majority of players anyway.

Best expansion race ever.Hope the A.I is tuned to use them too.

Jojo_Fr wrote:

"9 out of 10 times balance for multiplayer games makes unit factions more generic etc."

This is a dogmatic idea. What is important it's the bringed suggestions, listed and analysed one by one.

Personnaly I would never propose ideas which increase the balance BUT decrease the versatility, the diversity of each factions, of each games. I love the diversity and creativity of Endless Legend.

To take just one exemple : Pillage is (nearly) never used in multiplayer, because it's useless, very expansive to bring units, for a small reward (in early eras especially). If small changes are made to the Pillage which make it interesting, it will make multiplayer more interesting, but too the soloplaying. 

OK...that may have been exaggeration, but balancing factions for single player and multiplayer by the same metrics is going to generate conflicts. General balance, I can get behind, but when you start the balance discussion with multiplayer in mind, you are essentially attempting to make races 'equal' for humans which will always use the most efficient and brutal strategy to win. By contrast, that may actually be desirable in AI because as a human player, I can still overcome that effort much more easily from an Ai than I could from a competent human player.

When you have a game with factions that are this diverse, you cannot easily achieve a balance for multiplayer without removing some of what makes those factions unique. 

For instance, you say overpowered Ardent Mages are a problem. I have never lost or been threatened by an Ardent Mage AI in a game. To me, it is a bigger problem that the AM AI does NOT abuse its advantages like a human player would. I would in no way want a weaker/nerfed AM in single player because they are soft enough as is against me as a human. The Wild Walkers are the same. They are one of the few AI factions that truly present a challenge. But even so, they will still make poor army composition choices and not use their overpowering tier 3 units when they own half the map and can afford to churn them out.

There are, right now, much larger issues with the AI that I'd prefer to see addressed. Like their habit of ignoring their tier 2 and tier 3 units. Their reluctance/inability to use Guardians properly even when they have several. The lack of use of Dust accessories and armor. Their passiveness in the mid-late game.

So just curious, why lift the name directly from a Terry Brooks novel? The faction looks great, but I'll always wind up thinking of the novel as a result of the naming. 

Slashman wrote:

I agree it looks like a challenging faction to play and that's great. The problem is that it is not so great for the AI most of the time when this is the case.

The Allayi are very weak opponents when used by the AI and if the same is true for for the Morgawr, then I suspect that the chaos they could potentially cause to empires who are easily trundling along to an easy win will be mitigated.

I may be mistaken, but they seem like part of the solution to the boring mid to late game. And their abilities certainly seem to bear this out, but if the AI doesn't get how to play them, we'll end up with another faction that only humans can play to any effective degree.

You are right that it is easier to program an AI to min-max than it is to program an AI to skulk and trick and play other empires off against each other: hence AI is better at playing Wild Walkers than Forgotten. We do intend though for the Morgawr  to hold their own in terms of economy and military, which is better for the AI than the Allayi who had an even more unconventional economy. The AI will take to the sea faster as Morgawr and will be able to use all of the faction's special abilities (Dissent, Cat's Paw, Mark of the Damned and Black Spot). 

Jojo_Fr wrote:

We got nothing to read about Balance, or balance correction.

KnightofPhoenix wrote:
Personally, I think it would be best to have a final balance check round after the expansion is released, like they did in the past when releasing Forge of Creation.

It's certainly easier to balance content when you're not adding substantially more of it at the same time, so yes: free updates are better for balance passes than expansions

We have made some balance changes -Kaboomer may be able to tell you more- the GDDs are about new content though. I'd rather we stuck to discussing the new faction here and talked about balance elsewhere.

That being said I have a weakness for AI questions...

Slashman wrote:

There are, right now, much larger issues with the AI that I'd prefer to see addressed. Like their habit of ignoring their tier 2 and tier 3 units. 

We've done a pass on unit unlock priorities and also on army composition (would be interested in Knight's views on how effective these changes have been).

Their reluctance/inability to use Guardians properly even when they have several. 

Could you describe precisely in what way Guardians are miss-used? 

The lack of use of Dust accessories and armor.

This is a very hard one to solve - I've taken a few cracks at it over the last few months, I'm not entirely satisfied with the results yet. I will have another look. 

Their passiveness in the mid-late game.

I did a pass on the attitude score modifiers and have added dozen or so new ones to account for things like approaching empire victory and attacks on third parties. In theory the AI should be a little less complacent in the mid- to late-game (any VIPs listening: do chime in if this made a difference for you - if not we can tweak things further).

Gwydden wrote:

Moonlighter wrote:

So just curious, why lift the name directly from a Terry Brooks novel? The faction looks great, but I'll always wind up thinking of the novel as a result of the naming. 

Who the hell is Terry Brooks?

EDIT: I know who he is, but sarcasm

Yeah, the name is from the mythical creature - not the novel