Hi gals and guys,



I'm fairly new to Endless Legend. Did some comparison and testing and came to the conclusion, that the Ardent Mages faction suited me best.

This faced me with the necessity of fighting most battles myself however, which in general I don't mind. Extended exposure to battles however has brought several points to my attention which I believe deserve improvement:



UI/Animation Tweaks

- Initial unit placement, Animations: Please add an option to disable them (so units instantly teleport to their hexes, rather than move slowly). It can take up to 30 seconds to position units this way (Especially when close to a lengthy city *urgh*)

- Unit Animations: Please add options to modify animation speeds. Slow animations really add up over time (and currently feel glacial while watching them).

- Post-Battle movement: Please add an option to skip having units walk back to the position on the strategic map, where the army stands. Just remove them from the field.



Minor feature request: Auto-Prepositioning Presets

How about adding a small feature, that allows the player during the prepositioning phase of combat to choose from a number of formation presets?

Example Presets:

- Storm: All troops positioned closest to the probable enemy position, melees in front of ranged, slower units closer then faster units

- Barricade: Position troops in a narrow chokepoint, with most defensive units to the front, ranged units to rain hell on the enemy and more light melees covering any flanks.

Of course, after choosing a preset (which is optional), the player can keep adjusting as he sees fit.



Background

Currently, I have armies that will by default hide in the deepest reaches of the map at the beginning, even when facing 2 Level 1 natives, which I'd steamroll faster than they could blink. Bothersome to reposition them manually.



AI Improvements

There are some questions that I keep having about the artificial "so-called" intelligence. Especially in combat and when applied to my side. Example questions:

- "The highest enemy defense is 60. The lowest friendly attack attribute is 240. Now why, dear hero are you buffing attack with your initially assigned enemy down, rather than kill the last friggin' centaur, before it totally unnecessary gets to hurt one of ours?"

- "Why, oh dearest Zealot, are you moving into melee range to attack your enemy, just because it is a forest hex, when now your friendly Warlock - the next unit due to act - now has no way to reach melee range and do some damage?"

- "Why oh why, dearest Warlock do you keep insisting on moving towards you designated enemy - while ignoring all others, moving around multiple cliffs which will take several turns - just because it moved behind the enemy line, when instead you could just kill the frontline bastard, so that your pal, who was assigned to that frontline enemy and who is next in line will then move into the emptied space and kill your original target?"

Seeing these answered would please greatly indeed.

Specifically:

- Smart selection when buffs are actually of use

- An operation mode where units will priorize attacking an enemy, when their original target cannot be reached in this turn

- An operation mode, where ranged units will look to keep at maximum distance if possible.



That cursed battle system

While I recognize the interesting nature of the current battle system - both sides assigning targets and then watching the turn unfold - it has too many frustrations for my tastes. I would vastly prefer a system where I could simply control my units directly whenever their turn is up. Now I realize this is unlikely to come, but I still thought I'd mention it, that at least as an option to use that kind of system would be very welcome.



Key points:

- Success depends to a certain degree (more so the more evenly matched both sides are) on guessing what the enemy will do.

- Small errors in prediction can lead to totally idiotic behavior of your units and extreme frustration

- Much of the progression feeling (at least when playing Ardent Mages) comes for me from unit levelups and upgrades. Loosing a unit because it did something brain-burningly stupid, just to follow unflexible orders is painful to watch.

This system would work fairly well when working with dispensable troops, however in the current system the chance factor can simply hurt too much for my taste.



Any comments? Thoughts?

Cheers,

Bosparan

Animation speed can already be changed in the advanced game options.



You should use auto combat when facing low level enemies with superior fire power. You'll still stomp them. But I'll still vote in favour of formation presets

Himmelslicht wrote:
Animation speed can already be changed in the advanced game options.

Well ... yes, one can do that - found that out by now. The thing is: It's a "per game" setting, which doesn't make sense at all. It ought to be a display option you can change at will throughout a game. It's also absolutely indiscriminate: I'd like attack animations in regular speed, no prepositioning animations at all, no post battle animations at all and triple the in-combat movement speed.

Right now I have one global speed setting for all.

Different players have different preferences, and may change their preference depending on mood and fight. Fixing it once for an entire game makes no sense at all. Animations should be more flexibly configurable in my opinion.

Himmelslicht wrote:
You should use auto combat when facing low level enemies with superior fire power. You'll still stomp them.

I'd rather play the game as I like it. Autocombat makes me lose control, which I dislike. It's one of the key features about Ardent Mages that makes me like them: I feel like I can best manipulate the battlefield. I'm in favor of increasing the control aspects accordingly. So please don't tell me how I should enjoy the game - same game, vastly different playing experience.

As for stomping low level enemies: Yeah, I do. But with a typical setup for Ardent Mages, I won't get out of it without some scuffmarks even then. Unnecessary scratches that won't occur if I control them on manual and leave me weakened for any major battle that might follow after and slows down my general gameplay, as I need to recover.

I may be in the minority, but I like that success in battles depends on predicting what your enemy will do (much easier against the AI, of course.)



However, I do agree that some of the fallback actions of units when their primary order becomes impossible are just ridiculously stupid. As you rightly point out, that would hurt a lot less with more expendable units, but when a single unit can take longer to build than a new city improvement...



And you're definitely right that animation speed should not be a "per game" setting, but a setting to be changed in the options menu on the fly.

I certainly share the pain of some of the AI's movement/action choices when your primary direction is no longer valid, perhaps setting up a "priority" checklist for units to use when their primary command is no longer valid would help alleviate some of that pain. Something like:



CHECKLIST FOR INVALID PRIMARY COMMAND:

1. Nature of Primary Command (Attack, Move, Heal, Buff, Retreat)

2. IF ATTACK: Secondary command = Attack weakest enemy within movement range, IF MOVE: = Secondary command = move to nearest location to original command, IF HEAL: Heal weakest allied unit, IF NO WOUNDED ALLIED UNITS: Attack weakest enemy within range





So on, so forth. I'm not a programmer so I obviously don't know the logistics of putting code together, just tossing around a suggestion.

Bosparan wrote:
Well ... yes, one can do that - found that out by now. The thing is: It's a "per game" setting, which doesn't make sense at all. It ought to be a display option you can change at will throughout a game. It's also absolutely indiscriminate: I'd like attack animations in regular speed, no prepositioning animations at all, no post battle animations at all and triple the in-combat movement speed.

Right now I have one global speed setting for all.

Different players have different preferences, and may change their preference depending on mood and fight. Fixing it once for an entire game makes no sense at all. Animations should be more flexibly configurable in my opinion.

Definitely a BIG +1 to this !

Amplitude, please :

- allow us to change the in-battle, pre-battle / post-battle and map movement speeds separately

- allow us to change these speeds during the game as well