Jamzie wrote:
I agree that this is a huge issue! Your army isn't really that strong, you expand slow, so might get surrounded, and on top of that, diplomacy is difficult because of AI getting annoyed you take pearls. Once I started amping up the difficulty, I stopped finding them viable.

Why is your army not that strong? Do you not attack during winter? Monks are crazy strong.

Slashman wrote:
Why is your army not that strong? Do you not attack during winter? Monks are crazy strong.

Almost too strong in winter.



I am still torn about the monk. I feel like they need a small tweak somewhere, but I can't quite put my finger on it yet.

KnightofPhoenix wrote:
Almost too strong in winter.



I am still torn about the monk. I feel like they need a small tweak somewhere, but I can't quite put my finger on it yet.

Nooooo! Don't touch my monks!



Let me just add that if you're trying to play the Allayi like other factions you are likely going to perceive an imbalance. Playing a nice peaceful game is unlikley to let you win because as has been pointed out, expansion disapproval will prevent you from expanding/earning like factions who will field many cities. You need to balance that play with being a crazy warmonger in the winter.



Don't try to be the Drakken and go full diplomatic (I dunno...maybe that might work in some instances but probably not) and don't try to be the Necros either (you can't hold that much territory). Instead, you should think of yourself as a faction that alternates between calm and quiet gatherers in the summer and murderous psychos in the winter. Aggressively smash cities that border your territory in the winter so you can more easily collect pearls. Also, Run multiple boosters. I can't stress this enough. Your boosters can last up to 24 turns or so with enough running. And since you have fewer cities, you won't run out of them easily.



Use Skyfins. Use them to collect pearls and use them to preemptively gather resources you haven't researched the extractor tech for yet. They work better than a standard extractor and you can move them when you have enough of a resource and want something else.

Jamzie wrote:
I agree that this is a huge issue! Your army isn't really that strong, you expand slow, so might get surrounded, and on top of that, diplomacy is difficult because of AI getting annoyed you take pearls. Once I started amping up the difficulty, I stopped finding them viable.

Speaking of upping the difficulty, I'd say it wasn't fun at all from my serious Allayi campaign. Winnable perhaps but not fun. The issue isn't about the AI getting bonuses but the huge difference in FIDS penalty compared to hard. We're not talking about endless but serious difficulty. It is too common to find only 3 resources or 4 highly penalized resources on every Allayi tile. This difference should be reduced as my understanding is serious is supposed to be the best balance between fun and challenge.

idlih10 wrote:
Speaking of upping the difficulty, I'd say it wasn't fun at all from my serious Allayi campaign. Winnable perhaps but not fun. The issue isn't about the AI getting bonuses but the huge difference in FIDS penalty compared to hard. We're not talking about endless but serious difficulty. It is too common to find only 3 resources or 4 highly penalized resources on every Allayi tile. This difference should be reduced as my understanding is serious is supposed to be the best balance between fun and challenge.

I thought that higher difficulty levels just gave bonuses to the AI not a penalty to the player. Has something changed?

They are interesting, and I've won twice with them now. I haven't tried the very high difficulties but can see how that could crimp them. The one time I was close to winning I lost to roving on economic with bugs trying to eat me. Fighting off the bugs was not too hard, but you had to pace it since you can't raze towns quickly and disapproval is real. And I was two turns off a wonder when the other faction won. So, I find they take careful management in midgame, but after that will steamroll if you get through it usually. How I manage midgame is flexible, I also do expand past 1-3 cities. You can, but you must pace it. Pacing is everything for me with them.



- good steamroll if you paced through mid-game balancing

- hurts very very badly from having to wait to raze cities

- the novelty of collecting pearls wears of quickly and becomes very very tedious

Slashman wrote:
I thought that higher difficulty levels just gave bonuses to the AI not a penalty to the player. Has something changed?

That's what I thought too. But after countless starting map generations on serious for Allayi, I noticed the average tile FIDS was abysmal. So restarted a new game on hard and immediately see a huge difference in FIDS. I didn't stop there and continued expanding to a second then third city. In every case, the average FIDS was higher than on serious difficulty. Is anyone able to confirm that FIDS tile penalties increase for the player on harder difficulties?

idlih10 wrote:
Is anyone able to confirm that FIDS tile penalties increase for the player on harder difficulties?

I think that's more luck than anything, but I can't confirm outright as it's been a while since I've played lower than serious.

Slashman wrote:
Why is your army not that strong? Do you not attack during winter? Monks are crazy strong.

It seems quite 'meh' to have an army that's only strong in winter. Maybe their armies could be 'one with auriga', maybe their heroes can get it in skill tree like Drakken, or Shapeshifters could be a 1st winter tech.



Something needs to be changed, they are just far too weak in endless difficulty imo.



idlih10 and Hechicera mentioned fun and tedious, and that's what I think about the race too. I find early game with them very entertaining, but lategame where you have to search for pearls, it's too much micromanagement, and auto-explore doesn't find them. Once entire map has been searched, they will just stand still. As a result, I haven't actually finished a game with them yet, despite countless of hours, and as many games, where it was easily doable.

I have found the Allayi units still potent in summer. I am not huge fan of Monks in summer, as they are too situational, but in the circumstances where they are potent, they can be quite devastating.



The Allayi are quite technical to play in battle. I view the Seekers as a support unit, whose role is to attack, debuff, and pin down dangerous targets / high initiative units. I ignore their attack and damage, focusing entirely on their defense, HP, initiative (I give them Death or Glory). While the Seekers pin the enemy army down, the monks dish out the damage (focusing on attack and damage). The enemy army will either start attacking seekers, giving monks free rein, or they will attack monks so they can get their shifting rage bonus when counter-attacking.



I still think monks in summer are a bit odd and not perfectly compatible with the Allayi (unlike winter forms), but against high-initiative armies, they become useful and start to impose a dilemma for them (do they target the seekers that are pinning their units down or the monks?). It's against low initiative armies that monks in summer become much less useful than winter.



So really, the rule of thumb when it comes to monks, in my view, is: if your enemies have a lot of high initiative units that your seekers can't all pin down, use summer monks. If your enemies have low-initiative units or you have enough seekers to pin the high initiative ones down, use winter monks.



EDIT: what if you don't have time to assess the enemy army when they attack you? That's why having safe retreating with 0 damage is so cool.

Jamzie wrote:
It seems quite 'meh' to have an army that's only strong in winter. Maybe their armies could be 'one with auriga', maybe their heroes can get it in skill tree like Drakken, or Shapeshifters could be a 1st winter tech.



Something needs to be changed, they are just far too weak in endless difficulty imo.



idlih10 and Hechicera mentioned fun and tedious, and that's what I think about the race too. I find early game with them very entertaining, but lategame where you have to search for pearls, it's too much micromanagement, and auto-explore doesn't find them. Once entire map has been searched, they will just stand still. As a result, I haven't actually finished a game with them yet, despite countless of hours, and as many games, where it was easily doable.

Why do you have to search for pearls once you've explored the map? Just zoom out and they all show up as little white circles. It's just a matter of collection once you have the map explored, not searching.

KnightofPhoenix wrote:
I have found the Allayi units still potent in summer. I am not huge fan of Monks in summer, as they are too situational, but in the circumstances where they are potent, they can be quite devastating.



The Allayi are quite technical to play in battle. I view the Seekers as a support unit, whose role is to attack, debuff, and pin down dangerous targets / high initiative units. I ignore their attack and damage, focusing entirely on their defense, HP, initiative (I give them Death or Glory). While the Seekers pin the enemy army down, the monks dish out the damage (focusing on attack and damage). The enemy army will either start attacking seekers, giving monks free rein, or they will attack monks so they can get their shifting rage bonus when counter-attacking.



I still think monks in summer are a bit odd and not perfectly compatible with the Allayi (unlike winter forms), but against high-initiative armies, they become useful and start to impose a dilemma for them (do they target the seekers that are pinning their units down or the monks?). It's against low initiative armies that monks in summer become much less useful than winter.



So really, the rule of thumb when it comes to monks, in my view, is: if your enemies have a lot of high initiative units that your seekers can't all pin down, use summer monks. If your enemies have low-initiative units or you have enough seekers to pin the high initiative ones down, use winter monks.



EDIT: what if you don't have time to assess the enemy army when they attack you? That's why having safe retreating with 0 damage is so cool.

Thanks, I will give that a shot. What do you do, before you get access to Death or Glory, and the free retreat skill?

Slashman wrote:
Why do you have to search for pearls once you've explored the map? Just zoom out and they all show up as little white circles. It's just a matter of collection once you have the map explored, not searching.

Why do you want to argue semantics? Seems like such a waste of time. I'm sure you, and everyone else who read this, knew exactly what I meant. When that's said, I guess you can consider it like searching ruins, despite already knowing where these ruins are.

Jamzie wrote:
Thanks, I will give that a shot. What do you do, before you get access to Death or Glory, and the free retreat skill?

I still employ the same 'military doctrine.' Your seekers, if set in a tight formation and so benefiting from high morale, will tend to surpass others as far as initiative goes, esp if they are well equipped. It's also a good idea to keep the hero in formation with them, for both the morale and the healing (in summer).



Don't hesitate to bring a skyfin reinforcement in tough battles, their buffing / debuffing is quite powerful.

Jamzie wrote:
Why do you want to argue semantics? Seems like such a waste of time. I'm sure you, and everyone else who read this, knew exactly what I meant. When that's said, I guess you can consider it like searching ruins, despite already knowing where these ruins are.

So how would you gather a collectible resource without actually sending someone to gather it?



Also, in the mid to late game, you should not really be hurting for pearls very much. I finished and won my first game with a near 200 pearl surplus. I actually had more cities than I needed and had wasted pearls on armor and some other things I could have done without. So I would have been needing even less if I had been more familiar with the Allayi. Skyfins are built for this. They can move something like 15 hexes in the Winter when equipped properly.



I honestly don't think it is as tedious as you're making it out to be. It is part of the Allayi gameplay. Everyone wants something new to do in the game but then complain when they have to actually do it.

cj.of.earth wrote:
I apologize for the long windedness of this post. But, I wanted to give good details of my experiences so far. I'm sure there's all sorts of things that I missed while playing that I might try next time around. But, I hope this helps.







I have to agree with the TC, the Allayi seem weak. Their units look decent and the fact that they get a really good unit very early on makes up a little bit for their lame economy.



In a game that already focuses too much on War and not enough on Eco/Diplo/Expansion, this seems very counter-intuitive.



And strangest of all, the Allayi have a Faction tree based around running away and bribery. It's got one great bonus called Pathfinder and a decent bonus called Improved Auriga Affinity. But, the tree itself looks terrible.



If I can offer up some positive feedback, it would be that at least the Allayi Heroes have a decent looking healing ability and 5 movement. At least one of their Heroes (Rabos Rockstriker Highridge) has Army Boost 2. Unfortunately, he's a Ranged Hero. Pheonix and Nach are both better and I find that to be frustrating. DLCs should be adding solid above average Heroes. Most of the Allayi are scouts, virtually none of them are good city managers and only one good army general. That's sub-optimal. Your chances of getting good Heroes in your market is being reduced by adding DLCs.







My recent Allayi:

Turn 60, Fast Speed, Easy World, Vs. Normal AI (1 Drakken), Small World Size (4v4), 4k-6k Dust Income, 2.3k Science Production, 6 Cities, 94% Empire Approval, Summer Season, 19 Pop (Main City), 8/9 Era V, 8 Legendary Deeds, 1246 Score.



Compared to my Custom Necrophages:

Turn 62, Fast Speed, Easy World, Vs. Serious AI (3 Random), Normal World Size (6v6), 12k-16k Dust Income, 4.7k Science Production, 10 Cities, 100% Empire Approval, Summer Season, 17 Pop (Main), 7/9 Era VI, 6 Legendary Deeds, 2108 Score.



Both have very large armies (+40 units, 2 Fotios, 10+ Heroes level 4-8). My Necrophages had twice as many Heroes.

This isn't all that bad when you consider my minor faction bonuses are 7 Delvers, 5 Dorgeshi and 3 Silics in my Necrophage game and I have at least +1-2 more Luxury Boosters running.







These are my initial impressions so far:



1. The +100% cost of producing Population is unreasonable. +25%ish is more reasonable.



2. The +150% expansion disapproval is too high. +50% would work fine.



3. The Pearl cost on districts is too high. Reduced to 1/2 would be fine.



4. Their faction hero shouldn't be a Ranged unit. It should be a Support unit with a Support tree. The Ranged tree is neglible since the Allayi don't have Ranged units that can fully benefit from the skills (Skyfin have Solitary). The Support tree would be more appreciated.



5. Their Faction tree is setup badly. Awestriker is where Pathfinder should be and Pathfinder is where Zealous Hands should be.



6. Zealous Hands should increase the cost reduction of producing new Population by +5%, +5% in addition to it's original effect. There are too many bad city managers in the game. With the addition of both the Forgotten and the Allayi, their Heroes are clogging up the market and preventing the players from getting useful Heroes (Industry+Food Boost, Slavery, Industry Efficiency 2, Influence Boost 3).



7. Awestriker's effect should be replaced with +25%, +25% Hero Experience.



8. Chosen of Auriga's effect should be replaced with +15%, +15% or +10%, +10%, +10% Army Initiative.



9. Coup de Grace should increase Damage, not Attack. A reduction on the amount would be a good idea.



10. Monks should be able to use boots and they should not be based around Countering. Allayi focus on bonus Initiative. Monks could use a redesign so that they benefit from Initiative stacking and not Countering.



11. Skyfin have more HP than they should have. A reduction of 33%ish would be fair.



12. The Allayi need Food/Industry Boost 2-3 on their Heroes. They do not need Science Boost(different discussion, it's not good). Refer to point 6.



13. The Pearl cost of switching forms is unnecessary (and extremely unwanted). I spent Pearls on this only one time for the Faction quest which required a level 3 Skyfin in dark form.



14. The Allayi need a way to produce a small amount of Pearls innately, at least 0.4 Pearls per day per city on Fast.



15. The Light Form's bonus to Health Regeneration does not appear to be working properly.



16. Pathfinder should increase Dust+Science from Trade Routes by +25% in addition to it's original effect.







I enjoy the way the faction is designed and I have a lot of positivity towards it at the moment. But, balance-wise I feel this faction is not where it should be. I would much prefer an overpowered faction that speeds up the game rather than an underpowered faction that slows the game down. And frankly, a balanced faction that can War and Eco would be much more appreciated than having only one or the other.



I wish I could give more positive feedback here. I genuinely enjoyed the Artwork and the overall design concepts. But, I honestly don't know what to say. This is another of a series of DLCs for this game that I have had some fairly negative reactions to. Forgotten are okay. But, Guardians..... Legendary Deeds are so imbalanced.... And I would pay actual money to see Co-Op quests removed forever. They do nothing but slow the game down even further. Now Allayi.... I have mixed feelings at the moment.







Again, sorry for the lengthyness of this post.

You say that Endless Legend focuses too much on war. I bet that you can't do half the stuff you can do with diplomacy in endless legend than any other game. You need to play strategically, not with just a lot of armies and big units. What I took from this statement is that you want the Allayi to play like the necrophages or the Cultists. This is like what I tell my friends in Civ. You need to play adaptively based off of starts and factions. You need to take your time in the beginning and analyze what your best chance of succeeding is. Build off what you already have, not what you want to have. The Allayi are supposed to be about adaptability, play adaptive.



Another mistake it sounds like you are making is not grabbing neutral units to put into your army. A lot of factions do this because their basic unit sets are lacking a certain type of unit. And the buffs from the Allayi during winter are actually amazing. This is because they get buffed while everybody else gets nerfed. You need to plan your strategy around the winter. Use the summer to prepare and the winter to act. Saying this you should not pinhole yourself. I am just saying you should take the upcoming winter into account when you are planning to do something. If someone has an army far away from their city during the winter and you see this because of a spy, you can just easily siege their city and watch them struggle with the movement penalty.



Hopefully this reply will help with your experience in the Allayi.

I think auto-explore should be updated to include ruins (after you research that tech, that makes it possible to search ruins again), and auto collect pearls.



Whether it's tedious or not, is not an objective fact, but a subjective one. For me it is very tedious, for you it is not.

Hello everyone.



Sorry to bump this thread up but it seems to be the most interesting one when it comes to Allayi balance suggestions.



Now to the subject : Did any developer respond to the criticisms and/or suggestions made about the Allayi ? Is there anyway i can find out how they feel about everything ?



Also, as far as personal opinion can matter i really don't understand why the community seem to be so obsessed with reducing the expansion disapproval. It is the one thing (with the skyfin) that encourage map patrolling other than expansion. I would personally tend to increase it just to encourage thinking "out of the box" for the potential buffs.



If anything, i'd say there aren't enough gameplay elements that are unique to the Allayi economy wise (i.e. how you spend pearls). Yes, Allayi can collect and spend pearls better than others, but why only "just better" ? A personal suggestions would be :



[LIST=1]

Reduce the curve (or delete entirely ?) on pearl cost for each Garth. They are just better borough and so aren't "something new" gameplay wise. Pearl expenses can then be focused on a gameplay patterns such as...

[/LIST]

[LIST=1]

Buying auriga blessings at vastly increased cost (why not making them work like research/technologies ?). Most factions would not be able to unlock more than 2-3 blessings while the allayi would get everything thanks to their pearl hunting capabilities.

[/LIST]

And there you have it. Allayi gets something that no one get : an economy blessed by pearls.



Edit : To be clear, the only issue i have with expansion disapproval is it encourages you not to attack cities which is... weird.

Well it is possible that the devs are still collecting feedback and want to make sure they get as wide an opinion range as possible.

"Now to the subject : Did any developer respond to the criticisms and/or suggestions made about the Allayi ? Is there anyway i can find out how they feel about everything ?"



No they did not.

Slashman wrote:
Well it is possible that the devs are still collecting feedback and want to make sure they get as wide an opinion range as possible.

That is the case. It seems clear that EL is not a done project yet. So continuous feedback will be helpful.



I think some minor tweaks are still needed here and there, for both the Allayi and the Forgotten, to make it more or less 'complete.'