1. The level of randomness in this game is far too high to be fun. The game needs to stop using uniform distributions and start using something with more probability weight in the center. Spells that do 0-20 damage with equal probability are not much fun, and are not very strategic (because I cannot predict the outcome very well - I don't really know if the attack will kill an enemy unit or not).
Either use some other probability distribution where most of the probability density is concentrated between the upper and lower quartiles, or use other dierolls that achieve a similar effect - eg 2d6 rather than 1d12. 2d10 rather than 1d20.
This goes all through the combat engine.
2. The way that parties/squads work is not fun. As has been said many times, the way that parties stack is far too strong.
Adding more units should affect the number of combat rolls generated: three strength 10 units should get 1-10 three times (to compare to the enemy defense) and not 1-30.
This would make some real quantity/quality tradeoffs. For example, I could build 6 guys with 10 strength from basic weapons, or I could build 3 guys with 15 strength each by giving them an expensive magic item. And that 15 strength will be noticeably better than the 10 strength vs enemy armor. As it is, the system is massively biased in favor of building as many guys as you can.
Yes, this would require rebalancing every monster in the game. But this needs to be done anyway.
This would also reduce the weak scaling power of magic and champions. And would make defense more valuable relative to offense; as it stands a unit that has 1.5 times as much offense as defense is one thing at a single guy, but is far worse when there are 10 of them.
A champion with 20 defense from a whole bunch of things would actually be tough, and could fight off 8 mooks with strength 8 weapons without dying horribly from a strength 64 attack.
3. The rate of growth of the economy is off. Growth in the early game is too slow, particularly if you don't happen to have a goldmine nearby. Honestly, your early game income could be 1 gpt or 6 gold per turn depending on your start position.
And starting with an iron mine doesn't help much, since its several techs before you can even use any iron.
And then growth in the late game is such that you can't spend all your gold fast enough.
This is partly due to the gold production buildings. You have +1, +2, +3, then +10 and a whole bunch of +50% and +100% buildings.
Increase the income from early buildings while reducing the later ones.
4. There need to be limits on the number of magic items a hero can equip. You shouldn't be able to just keep adding these. You should have to pick and choose the best items, not just equip all of them.
One amulet, 2 rings, 1 pack. No more using basic equipment as a gold sink to make level 1-2 champions with stats in the hundreds.
This way, more advanced items are interesting; a +10 attack item is far better than two +5 items, because it only takes up a single equipment slot.
5. Damage is still too high relative to hit points. One of the biggest problems with combat is that very often the first strike can wipe out the other unit entirely. This means that the tactical combat AI is far too easy to exploit. All I have to do is move my guys such that you *just* can't reach my soldiers. Then you charge forward with all your movement, and stop. And then I attack you and destroy your entire unit while suffering no damage myself.
This is exacerbated by how stacks combine.
Easiest fix is to increase the health of units.
Having simultaneous attack and defense damage (without a first strike skill) might also be a good way to fix this.
6. Experience earned doesn't depend on how tough your foes are. You get the same XP from killing a small spider as you do from a mighty demon, and the 10x XP difference depending on whether you landed a hit or not leads to very odd experience farming strategies - I deliberaltely refrain from killing a unit in order to make sure that everyone gets a touch.
Experience should depend on the combat strength of enemies, and it should be a fixed pool that is spread around the units.
So if I beat your stuff with a big army, then each unit only gets a small boost.
As it is, a level 1 unit doubles its health from winning a single fight where it damages the enemy. Lameo.
Reducing xp gain by dividing it across units would help. As would increasing base health to 10 from 5. So getting level 2 is 10->15 instead of 5->10.
A good rule of thumb is that it should take 3-4 unit-turns to destroy an equivalent unit. [And units get 2 atatcks per turn, so this means 6-8 attacks.]
7. UI weaknesses. Many things still take far too many clicks, and going through different menus. For example: buying items and then equipping them should all be done through a single screen.
Targeting enchantment spells for example is a huge pain.
Many other good threads exist on this.
8. I haven't explored the magic system enough to have a definitive comment, but it still seems like there is very little difference between the spell schools (this is a big step back from MoM or AoW or even Disciples), and that summons are far better than tactical spells.
The best way to fix this is to make mana regeneration a proportional thing, adding say 0.1*Essence per turn. Have some items that can boost this, and then have summons and enchantments reduce this somewhat. So a weak enchantment might reduce recharge by 0.05 mana per turn while a strong summon might reduce recharge by 0.3 mana per turn.
And then to redesign a lot of the spell system.
The issue isn't about *more* spells. If anything, cut the number of spells, so that those spells available to each element are meaningfully different.
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All of these problems were apparent in the beta, and all were pointed out and had fixes suggested. I'm disappointed that none have been fixed yet, or at least that there hasn't been a demo
If its going to take a month to change these, so be it. But it would be really great to get an acknowledgement at least that there are problems here and that there is an intention to work on these.
