Hello. This is another topic of critic. It's not whining, it's constructive critic.

1. The "arcade battles" with the Fortress

Here is what happenned on seas. It gives impression to an arcade game, not a strategic game : 

- One player start making sea units to conquier Fortress. He rarely do quests because quests are 75 % complicated to do, slow to do, or expansive to do. So he juste make a solid army and he start taking fortress.

- The A player invested some ressources to conquier the formorians fortress : tech for boat, building boats, and coming. Then, one day, the B player come with one or two embarqued unit, and conquier for no effort several fortress of the other player (first unfair feature).

- The A player start reconquering them. He build a naval force. The B player, if he want to keep them, will do the same. Both players make war each others. But consider this : at this point of the game, naval warfare is pure industrial warfare. You have more boats, you won.

My critic is here : what is the point to have a fortress if it's not a strategical chokepoint, but just a garrison ? What is the point to conquier this or to do quest with difficulty, if anyone can retake it very easily ?

1.1 Suggestions

- Give to garrisoned units in Fortress a +50 % defense bonus when attacked. Like it, fortress will be a fortress not a pure garrison.

- Give to units which fight near a fortress owned by their faction, a flat bonus of +3 moral (cumulative with the defense bonus, if the fortress is attacked off course).

- Give to the fortress hexagones a similar moral bonus than the city hexagone (if possible). Note that this only is it's not usefull if the attacker have more attack range than the defender.

With these things, defending a fortress and the proximity zone will be really more easy. It's a chokepoint. Even if the Ennemy move near the fortress and avoid it, you can still use the fortress to have a +3 moral in any battle near the fortress you own.

2. How to give more reward to doing the fortress quest

- As explained, doing a quest of a fortress is hard : expansive, complicated, or unpossible. It's far more easy to attack the fortress. I think some quest have to been reworked because too hard. For exemple quest objectives scale. In late game, there are quest which ask to find 11 new sources of strategic ressources in fortress (lol). There are too fortress who ask to bring a hero, and you confront more boats, with a fireship, than the fortress itself have formorians.

- These hardest quest should be make more easy, this is clear. But I propose this simple suggestion to favour the quest over the bruteforce.

2.2 Suggestions

- Give one unit to the player who do the formorian quest. This unit is a formorian unit which correspond to the technological era of the player. So : boarding vessel for era 1, fireship for era 2, submarine era 3 and artillery ship era 4. This boat is a gift from the formorians. It will help the peacefull approach to be a little bit more rewarded. Moreoever, if the fortress are boosted like I proposed, attacking them will be harder. So, we can hope players will flavour more often to do quests.

3. The Roving Clans are overpowerd on sea

Roving clans are overpowerd now because :

- They can hire formorians mercenaries. They are not expansive. They have double the life (Roving clans natural feature). They have +1 movement.

- You can put them in any fortress or coastal city you have. So, contrary to the guy who will produce his units in one industrial city, Roving Clans can teleport (it's the word) very powerfull naval units anywhere on the map.

- Each turn, or every two turns, the stock of good naval units is refreshed. I don't know why, but it's like that. So you can completely count on it to build your army entirely with mercenaries...

- Very unbalanced thing : the hired naval units are not made in iron or dust in late game... no, they are often make in glassteal + titane. It's clearly a mistake, because it's very overpowered.

- Theoriquely, Roving Clans cannot attack a major faction fortress, as they cannot declare war... BUT they have a skill which let them transform their mercenaries into false army flag, which look like privateers. SO, they can conquier the fortress witout any diplomatic retaliation with A.I.

This situation is logiquely absurd : you have "neutral" units who attack a fortress, and the fortress begin "magiquely" owned by the Roving Clans. If you do that with a city, the city is razed, which is much more logical. But if you do that wich fortress, they are captured.

For all these reasons, and added with the fact I played Roving Clans in multiplayer, and could dominated very easily all the naval situation, which confirmed my apprehension, I ask for the following suggestions.

3.1 Suggestions

- Formorians hired by Roving Clans keep their mercenaries bonus, and they can become neutral privateers, but they cannot attack a fortress owned by a player if there is no war. Because it's too powerfull, unlogical, break the spirit of the Roving Clans.

- The stock of hirable naval units is reduced and regenered more rarely. Something has one new naval unit each 5 turns. Up to 4 naval units in available stock.

- The formorians have never special items made in glassteal, titane etc. it's pure iron only.