[sergex]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron: Then the layout needs to be made painfully obvious when selecting your castle type while designing your "player."

I agree with this too. I don't have a problem with hidden information and self-discovery but this info is too important to leave out. It's dumb to make a critical error before the game even starts because of poor documentation.

Other than flying units, how do you overcome castle defenses?

I find that just using extrodinary amounts of numbers works fine. 100+ units should do fine in most cases before turn 40, but you are at the whim of the morale checks. If their god with Fear is inside the castle you most likely aren't going to have much success. Maybe capturing all the land around the castle and starving out the god's Dominion will make him weak enough to conquer. When I played the demo I just massed up for a final assault on turn 40 since the game was over anyway.

I don't think the demo was supposed to give you a complete game so this isn't really a fair criticism.

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Seems to me there is almost always a considered reason for the costs, even if it isn't obvious at first.

For some units, yes. But there are several Machaka and Jotunheim (the two nations I tried) units that increase in cost too drastically for what you get compared to the next weaker troop they have.

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I agree too. I play with abysia, and I do fine with just hordes of the weakest infantry. Having huge numbers of them makes it easy to route the enemy and to keep their own morale which outweighs the added morale of the units that cost 3x as much. Only problem is starving when in enemy territory, but I usually don't hang around in one province with a huge army for long.

But when you have no units with terror, they still route far too quickly...

Again, I think having all your guys into one or two really big squads helps with this. Only time my infantry route is when they get torn up by crossbowmen, but by that time, the second line of infantry (or fast troops like salamanders or nightmares) have reached the crossbowmen and have routed the enemy frontlines already. Number of units is the key thing in early game I have found after a couple dozen games. Later on, huge summoned creatures like Iron Dragons totally destroy all infantry so that strategy goes out the window If you play a nation like Jotulheim that uses small amount of troops, you rely on priests to keep casting Boost Morale, which doesn't seem to really help all that much, so you're screwed IMO when going up against huge armies of weak infrantry.

And, I agree about the GUI and graphics, but I don't think it takes away from the gameplay enough to worry about it. I just discovered the F1 screen and it really helps with managing the Unrest/Tax situation.

Pretty good review, but you really need to read a LOT of forum Posts to learn the hidden info to make truly informed opinions about many features.