There can be tiles for cities that have 5 food, but I have yet to see any 5 production tiles or 5 essence. The most essence I think I have seen is 3, and it seems to be rare to find for starting positions, requiring many reloads (wasting my time). I understand the total grain, materials and essence will equal 9 at most, but hey why not be able to have some 2/2/5 spots for example?
Having played games since I was 8 and being almost 40 now, I have played a LOT of strategy games in my time. It drives me up the wall to enter combat and look like someone just dumped my troops down onto the battlefield right next to dangerous enemy units, who then proceed to chew apart any weak ranged units or soft targets. My favorite strategy game ever (MOM) didn't even punish you that bad, at least when you went into combat your units were on one side of the battlefield and the enemy on the other. Why no skill or ability to arrange troops when entering combat like HOMM series. Better question, why start enemies so damned close to you? Archers, casters, etc are meant to hide behind a meat wall and do their thing, maybe getting a shot or two in before the enemy charges. It is to the point if I fight high initiative, high move units I have to separate my slow/soft units and go in with only beefy hard hitters to prevent them from killing my units in turn one. Not cool. This leads to my next question..
Why don't tanky units have taunt abilities? Shoot, make it resistable, but at least give my tank type units with horriBAD initiative (hello golems..) a chance to force an enemy to chew on those high health points and defense.
The perk trees still don't seem to have much pizazz. Still too many generic boosts and too few abilities. Yeah yeah, I can see the 'rebalancing skills' patch down the road that every game I have ever played seems to do after its release, and never quite gets it right. Not trying to be mean, but seriously. If you are going to make a skill tree and add rpg like elements, stop and ask yourself this question, is it fun to put 10 levels worth of points into traits and only gain 1 or 2 new abilities? Just sayin..
Noticed in a game I just played Yithril had some pioneer unit cruising the map and enemies were sitting on top of his pioneer unit (occupying same square) but not attacking/killing the pioneer. As it moved, the enemies chased after it repeatedly landing on the pioneer's square as if trying to attack it, but being unable to. Bug? Hope it isn't a cheese cheat for the AI.
Criticisms aside, what a beautiful game. The wrapping paper (read: Art) is superb. Would like to see some things under the hood fixed up, made better, etc. but that could be the "I have been playing games too many years and have expectations" thing kicking in. Does make me sad to see games 20+ years old still doing certain things better than LH. Here is to hoping they iron all this out quickly before moving on to the next project.
regarding the tile yields: as far as i know, they represent the properties of the surrounding tiles, and each of those surrounding tiles contributes a bit of production, food or magic. high food tiles (5 or even 6 grain) are usually near rivers and/or food resources (wild grain/orchards). high production tiles (5 or sometimes even 6 material) tend to be in or next to forests; i think clay pits (and maybe also metal?) contribute a bit to material, too. essence is typically created by crystal nodes, shards, and some other resource nodes (such as dragon or ogre lairs) i've seen a few 4 essence tiles next to dragon lairs for example, and 3 essence tiles in the vicinity of shards/crysal nodes arent't that rare. haven't seen a 5 essence tile, though (raw essence, that is - of course you can still add an oracle and/or scrying pool if you build a conclave/have the enchanters trait)
the troop setup can be a problem, i agree with that. with the next update, troops can move through friendly troops, so this change may help mitigate the sometimes weird troop deployment. at least high init troops won't be blocked by slow meatshields on the maps with tight corridors.
regarding taunt: the way AI works, melee units will always stick to a melee unit once they are in range and not move away. they may switch targets to another melee unit that is also next to them, though. so you can basically "tank" some melee units by moving a high defense tank unit next to them (it's usually best to not attack in that case, since defense units with shield and defense traits get huge bonuses to defense value if they don't attack). avoid the melee range of the "tanked" units with your other more fragile damage dealing untits, flank the line and kill them one by one with swarm bonuses. doesn't really work vs. units with ranged weapons, they act differently.
i agree that the trees could use some more active abilities, but most battles don't last very long, which reduces the need for more active abilites somewhat. there's not much point having a dozen skills when you only get to act ~3 times before the battle is over; also, i think the paths are designed with at least some magic in mind. most champions have at least one spellbook, so you typically have a few tactical spells to consider and not only path specific abilities.
