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@@norandomnumbers The first and most important thing is to get comfortable scouting - splitting up stacks to spread your vision out to see gold is *really* important. You also want to check for Free Cities you can pillage, as this is also a giant chunk of change you can get early on. Some Bronze Ancient Wonders are also clearable early on and can payout enormous sums of gold if you are on Fabled Hunters.

@@wepg I do scout a lot and I often plop outposts on mana or gold nodes, but I also play on brutal so node and wonder clearing is more difficult and slower. (I still auto resolve very often, though not every fight, and definitely not wonders). I'm often paying off my grievances to the AI I want to declare war on for the imperium bonus though, that's a huge gold sink. I pillage when I can and I feel it doesn't make my armies vulnerable, but I'd often also like to capture cities quickly rather than pillage within reinforcement range. A lone unit close to the city center pillaging by itself will be killed and the enemy army will retreat back to the city, but lone pillagers on the outskirts are fine.

@@AndreLuis-gw5ox once you start to play the game and understand the rules, you'll learn that manual fighting the AI effectively breaks the game due to the tactical AI not understanding combat very well. If you want to play casually and enjoy the game and have fun, do so! If you want a challenge that encourages you to actually learn the game's mechanics, though, you need to play on autoresolve mostly or autoresolve only to get a good balanced game right now.

Sure! Underground Adaptation is no longer a troll trait so taking it isn't offensive to the other players, but it still has some serious issues with generation for the underground *player*. It's sorta like Wonder Architects where it comes with a giant heaping scoop of RNG, but unfortunately most of the RNG is just downside risk, as the upside risk still isn't there and the lack of pastures to clear and easy access to bronze wonders really hurts. It's technically playable now and the proliferation of spirit weakness in underground fights means you *can* attempt to justify it if you are on High and/or Zeal. I think that it remains mostly not worth it as it is a 1 point trait that you have to do a lot of work to get it back to neutral value, but if you want it for RP reasons knock yourself out.

@@wepg Thanks for sharing you thoughts!

I love the fact that I don't have to look at my face and, more importantly, that none of you have to look at the avalanche of cat paraphernalia spilling out of the closet behind my desk.

It actually scales based on player skill/experience. Brutal is a lot scarier when you don't know about/can't leverage all the extra heroes on the map, and a lot easier to handle if you bring something that has access to a strategic layer damage spell.

Because the area was vast steppe, which seen in aboriginal australians, plains indians, mongols/pontic steppe people, before the advent of horses, lead to very tall people, so they could travel large distances across these plains.

So it's not just about nutrition, but rather the people of these plains are genetically selected to be genetically taller/have higher growth potential because it is advantageous for them.

Ah, this is from a much older patch, to create a navy now you need to click create a navy in your military tab, add an admiral and some ships in that screen and you should be good to go.

We had some issues here but it's really mostly Champion-dependent; give them a shot with a reasonable ruler type and focus on Frontline durability and backline ranged heroes and the power of the new reavers really does reveal itself. I think we can still win it *if* we are lucky, but I'd love to see Champions get some more starting bonuses so they aren't *quite* so far behind from the beginning of the game.

​@@wepgWhy not just make their economic bonuses the non-magical aspects of an empire? So, food, gold, production, draft, and probably flat amounts in each city of their race. I could see something diplomatic working well with their flavor identity also. They are supposed to be the leaders who actually care about their subjects, after all.

@@conradmills4977 Yeah, I think there are a lot of levers that can be pulled to help Champions out, so I care less about the form the buff comes in and more that it happens at all. I think there are a lot of great options for making them better, but they do really need it.

@@wepg True. From a design perspective, it is an interesting problem: there needs to be a generic leader type that doesn't capitalize on specific game systems, such as spells, items, and resource shuffling, but it also can't be the absolute best option in all cases. My previous flat bonus thought would be too strong, percentage might be fine.

No problem!

Arcanum is the coolest Isometric RPG from that time period that I've played the least, but what I saw of it was pretty dope. Pyromancers are probably using Magic, but honestly it's probably like the Pyro-vision TF2 gif inside their heads.

@@wepg yeah Arcanum is a super fascinating game that I wish I could enjoy playing more-the world building (I love the concept of magic and science interfering with each other) and aesthetic but it’s really unfortunately hamstrung by consistent bugs, really terrible balancing, lack of polish, kinda jank stats/ leveling system (but I also don’t really jive with D&D based systems-I’m dumb and basic so to me the SPECIAL + perk system is the most complexity I can understand without looking up builds) that makes me bounce off of it shortly past the first big city-also the in-game visuals really let down its amazing art design it’s so muddy, dark and bland that really disappoints me-the concept artists had such a unique style and vision, that felt like it couldve been as iconic and distinctive as Fallout’s-I can vividly remember the “Wizards to the back of the train!” ad for it in old print copies of PC Gamer. And for me I feel like of all the games I can think of, it’s the number one that I wish would get a remaster/remake/reboot. It’s ideas and world just has so much potential.

Most definitely, but Reavers appear to be a lot better on the new patch, so we're gonna try them out!

He showed up and wrecked face! We'll try to find an opportunity to finish that game against Garacian and Gian if we can, as it sounds like they can field another army for another big fight, but I'll pass along the well-wishes.

Maybe I'll leave the poll up indefinitely and change the title back and forth, CZcams would go crazy.

Keep it up! The more you play and the more you learn the better you'll get.

CZcams is a cable channel and I'm an unreliable worker; I think people who have subbed long enough have seen me disappear for weeks at a time without comment. I'm just happy with who we have, as I think the community we're building is great and has *lots* of excellent ideas for me to assimilate, which is ultimately my goal. I am the borg.

@@wepg keeping it fun, I like that!

Yeah, I hope this video will be helpful to folks as it was super fun to record. Maybe we'll do something like it in the future.

@@wepg we’ve established that i’m not your real dad, just your Tooth Fairy, but you should definitely do that Walker

Anything that makes the game essentially non-functional by making most of the other decisions not important. If you can cast tectonic shatter multiple times on turn 1 and 2, for instance, you can kill almost any army without even being forced to fight it, which is just not interesting or interactive gameplay (which is what we like to promote whenever possible).

So! Constructs. If you are planning on utilizing Tome of Constructs specifically, be aware that it is very Xenophobic- you have a *very* hard time justifying bringing more than a few units that aren't linked minds. The other biggest issue with Constructs beyond that, of course, is the lightning weakness. I think Barbarians are ultimately the best tool for supporting Constructs for a lot of reasons; Warding War Shamans gives constructs Bolstered resistance to fight lightning, Barbs will naturally use Artificing most of the time anyways, and they have more than enough draft to experiment with Iron Golems if they want to.

Herbivores is one of those weird things where it's actually typically better for autoresolves than it is for big manual PvP fights, but extra healing that the AI "understands" how to do is really strong.

Thanks! It's a good patch.

I think if you are playing with unlimited strategic damage, Attunement Mystics for sure. If not, I think most cultures can take a look at them unless you are planning for specifically leveraging how insanely strong the magelock hero weapon is right now, which means sticking with WK. I think any of the traditionally good cultures are also likely to play well using a Sovereign, as they just seem quite good right now.

Thanks! This game is excellent, I love sharing it with people.

You're welcome!

Thank you! Cheers!

Hit me up if you wanna do a coop 2v3 comp stomp or something, could be a lot of fun!

Maybe we even force Garacian to come with us and do something *really* irresponsible like 3v5.

You probably already been alerted, but your Audio was coming in low. The good news is, it was coming in clear and crisp... so the fix is literally just upping the Audio. The easy way to 'test' this, honestly, is once you hop in the call and the Stream is live... turn on the Stream (mute everything else) and give it a listen. You'll know exactly how the Audience is hearing you. The problem with this is... now you're live, and if it's a hard-fix issue you have tough decisions to make. I give the easy test, because in your situation it's an easy fix. :D

@@theclimbto1 It was definitely something we were aware of, we made a temporary fix a little later in the video. But it's kind of a combination of things to do with my setup stream setup (where my audio is balanced). I've set up the real solution now and should be much louder while retaining perfect quality in the future 👍🏼

I think, right now, I'm going to test Sovereign on everything that moves and half the things that don't just to see if there's something useful there. The cost of losing magelock varies a lot depending on your rules for killing momentum, though, so if you are playing with unlimited WK might still be optimal there.

Time stamps are actually coming this evening, I just did two streams today thanks to exploding condensed milk all over my kitchen yesterday. Do not despair! As for games with a *lot* of manual combats, I'm still thinking about doing a one-and-done stream as to why I don't play this way. The tl;dr part is that basically the tactical AI has so many problems that I find fighting it a lot is bad for both challenge/game balance as well as my own fun.

I still think -1 turn on forging minimum 1 turn would make it a lot more interesting, but yeah, it kinda needs something.

It is planned!

Interestingly, Materium 1 got pretty meaningfully nerfed on the most recent patch, but I still think 1 turn outposts are worth going for. Astral and Shadow have both been very good on the empire tree basically on all patches. Nature still has the worst tree, but Order's Rally stuff has been getting astronomically better so is worth investigating if you are going that path. Chaos, unfortunately, has a good pick in chaos 1 and then basically nothing for a *loooong* time. tl;dr- SAM is best, then maybe your sonic the hedgehog OC, but say N(o) to the nature empire tree. Fortunately, Nature has really good tomes, but the affinity points are borderline wasted.

Thanks!

Fortunately, Mystics and Reavers both seem meaningfully better on the current patch, but I think if you learn how to play Barbarians-High-Industrious well they are anything but boring.