I'm trying an experiment. I picked Yithril, gave my soverign a shortsword and gauntlets of grazna, and set out questing on turn 2. I set all the AIs on "Hard" difficulty
After a short while i got ahold of a warding kite shield, a champion to accompany me (i took her poison dagger), unit of panca archers, and a sand golem. With this motley crew of 4 units, i went on a warpath, declaring war on everyone i met and invading them immediately.
It's now turn 41. I have five cities (none of which i built), and i've wiped out three empires. At last i've lost the poor little sand golem in battle, but my soverign (lv6) has 20 defense and kicks ass so i don't really need it. I've barely researched any military tech or bought any gear, i've barely even cast spells either, just a few uses of Slow.
it's the first time i've tried being so aggressive, and the results are a bit disconcerting. At this rate i might be able to win a conquest victory before turn 200. i don't even have juggernauts yet but i'm steamrolling through everyone
Does anyone else think this is a problem ? Defending oneself in the early game seems pretty impossible. In a hypothetical multiplayer scenario, i'm not sure of how you could defend against a rampaging soverign. The strength of the strategy comes in gathering gear and levels as you hunt for people to invade. The main reason it works so well against the AI is that they send their soverign and all their troops out in exploring parties, and leave their cities with a skeleton crew, allowing me to walk in and take it.
on the other hand, if they kept their soverign at home to defend themselves, she wouldn't get any xp or nice equipment, and would die horribly anyway.
I think the strategy is too strong, and too easy a method of grabbing quick power. I can cause the world to quickly empty out into a few superpowers, which would make for a pretty boring endgame
How could it be remedied? Perhaps the first problem is that city defending is so meagre. You get a couple of free units to help fight off invaders, number and types depending on the size of the city. but most of them are pretty sucky. the archers are half decent but you rarely get more than 1 or 2. the City militia have little or now armor, and aren't even worth using as cannon fodder.
Aside from those free units, there doesn't seem to be any advantage given to the defender.. i can't think of any other reason why you'd want to position troops in a city defensively, rather than going out to meet the enemy. Perhaps this is a problem. I'd like to cite one of my favourite game series', Sid Meier's civilisation, as an example.
Most of the civ games do have a bit of a defensive focus. Quite often a city will give inherent bonuses to units standing in the tile. Most units also have the Fortify ability, which gives them a gradually increasing bonus to their combat strength (up to 25% over 5 turns) the longer they remain in one place. And to help curb early conquests, the basic Warrior unit, the weakest of the troops, usually comes with some inherent bonus to city defense, making them stronger defensively, rather than offensively.
All these factors combine to make early warfare prohibitively dangerous.. usually. Most of the time people sit out the sticks-and-rocks era developing their economy, and you only get serious combat going on once you get to the midgame/medieval era, where you start getting siege weapons to counteract the powerful city defenses.
I find civ's approach to be quite positive. It means that factions generally get a chance to develop a bit and do their thing in safety, before their big scary neighbor comes knocking. it makes room for strategies beyond spamming early troops and conquering in a hurry. By contrast in FE, siege weapons come quite late in the game, and they aren't particularly needed or fill a useful niche.
Does anyone else agree with me? do you think the current pacing of the game is fine?
