After postponing it for a while, I decided to try out FE instead of simply lurking on the forum. After a few games, I figured out that for my play-style, setting the game speed to Epic makes it more interesting (no more getting to the end of the tech tree too early).
Going through the XML files, Epic speed seems to only do 3 things:
- Multiply the research costs by 3
- Multiply the building/training costs by 2
- Multiply the number of turns before the end-game by 3
(I would also swear that it reduces the amount of experience you get, but I didn't saw that in the XML files.)
My problem is with the building/training costs (training is somewhat too slow, but that's a normal speed problem): it only affects how long it takes the building to be built or the unit to be trained. It doesn't affect anything else. So a ring of ember costs 2 crystals at all game speed and a horse-ridding soldier always cost 1 horse. That's a big problem, as your resource income is still the same, but they get consumed at half of the normal rate. So it makes material costs quite irrelevant past the very early point, throwing that part of the balance out of the window.
Note that this problem is also present for store-bought items, whose prices are the same while rushing (the main other gold-drain) is twice as expensive due the increase training costs.
First of all is that the expected behavior of playing at Epic speed? Even if it so, it should definitely be changed, either by halving resource generation at Epic speed, or by doubling costs (my preference).
