Right now, the techs you get from quests are slight improvements to existing techs. At best, they often give the player a chance to not pick up an armor or weapon or item tech and pick up something else in order to advance the Era (since they don't count for Era advancement).



Here is the idea:



In order to increase the replay value of EL, make the quest techs more powerful. Maybe they are unique buildings or units, items that have added abilities not available in other techs, or Faction-wide bonuses like a permanent Luxury tech.



If these quests are rare, then each playthrough has a different strategy that opens up. For example, if you get an early building that gives +4 Production in Ocean hexes, your Faction suddenly becomes the Faction that focuses its settlements near oceans. If you get a quest tech that let's you make Wands out of Emeralds and they can stun units, your nation suddenly has a battle option that they didn't have before when designing units. If you get a tech that allows you to use Spice to increase Faction movement, your strategy is suddenly very different as you take advantage of your new mobility.

I like the idea of more powerful and unique quest rewards. As it stands now, if I come across a side quest offering a random weapon I ignore it entirely. If it is a tech of some kind, I don't mind it but I'm often not that thrilled about it. Seeing quest rewards have a real and deep impact on game play sounds like something that would greatly benefit the game. K__ offered some examples above that would definitely have replay value to the game for me.

Quest rewards aren't powerful enough? Have you ever gotten the glasssteel weapon/armor 3 tech from a quest? It gives you the best equipment in the game as early as era I.



Some of the other rewards could certainly be improved (flat resources, one poor quality hero - only weapon)

EcthelionHelm wrote:
Quest rewards aren't powerful enough? Have you ever gotten the glasssteel weapon/armor 3 tech from a quest? It gives you the best equipment in the game as early as era I.



Some of the other rewards could certainly be improved (flat resources, one poor quality hero - only weapon)

I generally don't spend a lot of time in Era 1, so the ability to get Era 2 Armor with slightly better stats than normal Era 2 armor is not that interesting to me considering that it generally is outclassed in Era 3 by the armor there. I view the Era 2 armor as transitional or situational at best, or the stuff I put on non-elite units like Garrisons because I have so much banked that I might as well use it.



In fact, I often forget if I'm playing a game where I unlocked quested tech unless it is from a Faction quest-line. Tech from Minor Faction or Ruins quests are just not that much more impressive than the tech I could have researched, and they definitely don't change the way that I play or open up new tactics or strategies.



More importantly, I really would like this game to have a lot of replay value. It's a high quality product, but in a market that is glutted with 4x games there really needs to be a reason to choose this game over others.