So I've got to say that I'm loving the latest round of balancing. Amplitude, I think you've really hit the nail on the head. The games are lasting to a meaningful tier 4 at least, I'm taking cities strategically rather than with the goal of elimination, and politics are really entering play as the games last longer. Add to that the fact that the Forgotten are terrifically fun to play as or against and I think Endless Legend is better than it ever has been.



But I keep feeling like the Guardians stuff is kind of out of whack in ways that were never really apparent before. 200 free palladium or adamantium didn't concern me back when it was a miniscule upgrade over glassteel; now it's game-defining as every unit in the empire retrofits simultaneously into mercenary-shredders. The Megapole used to be a calculated risk against the alternative full-strat army; now it's a no-brainer, awesome early dust even if you lose the race. And frankly, I never really enjoyed fighting against or with the Guardian units, there's just not much positioning or planning in the use of a one-unit army with unbeatable initiative, but now you ignore them at your own peril.



So I finally just got around to straight out disabling Guardians content, and I think I like it that way. Anybody else feeling the same?

I got Guardian when I got Shadows, and honestly I am leaning towards disabling it as well.



The only thing I really like about it are the global events, and some of the unique buildings. But many of the legendary deeds seem to be a bit unbalanced (which is not a big problem for single player imo, mind you), and I never cared to try the guardian units themselves (I would have vastly preferred each faction have its own unique super unit, and have the guardians roam the land as the cataclysm approaches).



I might end up disabling it myself as well, which is a shame.

- I agre with you about unbalanced features.



- Legendary deeds are too high and could be nerfed : 100 luxury ressources as reward in the era I, and 50 strategic ressources (not 200) in the era 3.



- About Megapole I don't know what should be done. Maybe reducing the dust from 50 % you won when the projected is cancelled ? What do you think ?



- About Guardians, the weak guardians (all guardians except Gios) have an underestimated usefullness, I think. I think they may be very interesting in the tactics. About Initiative, they can be surpassed in the late era, by elite equiped units. With changes like that, would you find Guardians expansion more interesting ?

Newp, I think you're looking at it the wrong way. Unless you are min/maxing the game in SP, Guardians gives the AI a chance to play better. Basically, it's built in cheats for the AI to stand a better chance.

I've been waiting nineteen years for them to finally nerf titanium glassteel, so the game wasn't a round of "whoever gets the first upgraded units gets to wipe out the nearest empire." However I agree with all points you make.



I got 200 gold for a deed that was unlocked that I wasn't even working towards. Turn opens, boom 200 gold cause somebody got to age 3. I was basically on permanent gold for the rest of the game for free. It really screwed the balance of the game and I was easily able to field a 6 man defense force on every city as well as two 6 man armies roaming around. The Drakken player I was fighting did not get 200 free gold, so he was just by luck sitting way behind me.



I get that RNG should be a thing, but surely this is TOO MUCH RNG right?

We're playing in a small group of friends (between 3-5 players), and loves the games, but we're at a point when we used a house rule to forbid building the wonders.

We found them too game breaking and usually the one who got lucky with ruins / quest can build the museum and the one who succeed in building the megapole can snowball the whole game from here.



Also on the subject of legendary deeds, some are really too gamebreaking and random, like the one you need to activate 3 luxury boosters, it got more to do with your luck with quest and ruins than anything you can plan for, and 150 of some luxury is just too powerfull a bonus for something you could be done by turn 10-15.

I would love instead having something like activate a booster of EACH Tier one luxury resource simultaneously. So that you need to plan ahead (like use the market / trade with player / colonize another non optimal territory which got the luxury / ...), and also forces you to make suboptimal play in the short term.

This would of course bring an according reward, I was thinking reduced cost of the luxury ressources booster by 25% (so having 3 cities it would only cost 15 for 10 turn).

Basically the idea would be legendary deeds that are hard to do and would need you to get out of your way to get them, but provide interesting long term benefits instead of a short burst of power who can be abused to snowball out of control.



For instance I find the deed of pacifying 10 villages interesting, it forces you to do something and provides an interesting bonus but it doesn't mean game over if your enemy got it.

Guardians content raised the bar for this game in my opinion. I don´t see myself playing EL without it anymore than I would play Civ5 without religion or tourism. At the same time that the deeds and guardians can be snowballed by a strong player, they can be the one thing that gives an edge to a weaker player to fight back, and the endless know this game needs this sort of mechanism. Guardian units are among the very few hopes that very tall build have against expansive and military players.



The wonders are completely situational the way i see it, except for the Megapole which really is a good idea everytime but imo takes a lot of planning and good decisions besides that good luck in order to be built without actually compromising your development instead of helping it. Like it´s been discussed here before, it´s very often simply better to retroffit an army and go get the builder while he´s still recovering from the effort.



And the bad world events are absurdly annoying most times, hence great mechanics. I´m sure everyone loves the good ones, all the influence.

I dont even have the Guardian Dlc and i see them from time to time. In fact in my last game an entire faction was destroyed by one.

The cultist player was making a guardian every few turns at launch. Has that been fixed? Granted no one (cowards) except me tried to even hinder his progress and he owned a lot of villages.



If not I'm disabling it asap.



I just find it breaks up the flow into who can spam the most guardians and it's not fun. I suggest a cap on them of some sort. Maybe not a hard cap but a soft cap that flexes as your empire grows or shrinks as its destroyed.

Gamgee wrote:
The cultist player was making a guardian every few turns at launch. Has that been fixed? Granted no one (cowards) except me tried to even hinder his progress and he owned a lot of villages.



If not I'm disabling it asap.



I just find it breaks up the flow into who can spam the most guardians and it's not fun. I suggest a cap on them of some sort. Maybe not a hard cap but a soft cap that flexes as your empire grows or shrinks as its destroyed.

Yes, it was fixed and also there is a cap already, the number of guardians you can have at the same time is limited to the number of guardians researched, so you research the fire guardian, you can now build 1 fire guardian and that's it, you research the earth guardian and you can now either build a second fire guardian or an earth guardian, but you still can't have more than 2 guardians, that means the total limit for the number of guardians someone can have is 5, you could have 5 of the same one or a mix but it's impossible to have 6 or more guardians.

Excellent. Thanks. It was too insane with his 8+ guardians and huge legions of warriors to handle.