Granted I mostly play on Medium maps, but I haven't had any issues with the unrest nerfs -- but then I always prioritize growing Fortresses into Prisons. Are you having issues on small/medium maps, or larger?

I ask because I genuinely think that the unrest nerfs end up creating a more balanced game between tall/wide empires, which is a scale that has previously tipped *hard* to the "wide" side.

I'm not sure that the tall/wide dichotomy makes sense in the context of this game. As I understand it, playing tall means you have a few awesome cities, and wide means you have many smaller/weaker cities. The reason unrest serves as a poor balance to the two play-styles is that it only addresses one side of the equation, number of cities, with out having any effect on the other side, city size. This means that it is very easy to have many large and powerful cities. This removes the choice between these two play-styles because of course it's better to have many awesome cities than a few awesome cities. By the way, this is not a problem in my eyes, but a feature. I love that I don't have to choose between wide and tall in this game.

If the objective is to encourage taller game-play (or discourage wider), wouldn't it make more sense to increase the per-city unrest or the area around a city that becomes unsettle-able? Nerfs to bell tower and town hall hurt tall players as much as they hurt wide players. Now if I have 3 cities with bell towers and town halls I have to deal with the same unrest as if I had 8 cities in 1.6. How is that benefiting the tall player?

I didn't know FE:LH was supposed to have tall/wide empires until I read this post >.>

Why do devs never do what I prefer.. I prefer a fusion of tall and wide. >< On biggest of the maps possible!

At very least this does explain why most of the AIs fail hard now, they're going tall and dying horribly in general, ones that go wide and develop their cities successfully while using cheats to mitigate the unrest penalties is the ones that give me a good fight.

While the ones that does go tall, they also ignore unrest reducing structures no matter what making the tall horribly pointlessly for the AI. While i'm at it, the tall AIs in Civ5 also fail hard/horribly because they love to neglect their military defenses. Is sad because when I decide to go tall I also have a massive military at same time frustrating all the warmongers who wanna hurt me because I have tiny empire.

I only bother to mention this because Devs actually read this forum unlike the eternal silence from firaxis on the matters of upgrading the military AI.

Why not just mod the game and give the AI 0 unrest at higher difficulty levels?

Anyone? I'm just asking what the current build number is for this beta. If you don't know how to find it, just right click on the game in steam, choose properties, then click on the tab labeled "local files" and you'll see the current build number listed there under the "verify integrity of game cache". Thanks in advance!

Not sure why it's doing that. I guess I just break threads...

Comments from my first game can be found here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/455934/page/1/#9

Onwards to my second game!

LH v1.7 beta 2.0

Starting up another game and providing comments in the hopes that further polish improvements can be made to the game. As with the last game, I will be playing with 'extra content' type mods, but not with 'fixes' type mods. A screen shot of the mods that I am using can be found

here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/syc7wztiuudu0i0/Screenshot%202014-07-11%2009.49.25.png

Again, the core changes that I make in order to help balance the game and make gameplay more enjoyable:

• Changed Book of Mastery prerequisite from Third Book of the Magi to Ereog's Journal 
• Removed the +1 attack from the Swarm ability. 
• Reduced Crushing Blow ability from 2x to 1.5x. 
• Increased MinValidTotalTileYield from 6.0 to 7.0 
• Increased MaxTotalTileYield from 9.0 to 10.0

Playing as Morrigan the Risen; World set to Hard, AI set to Hard:

• I've been 'ctrl-N'ing for a decent start (so that I can provide decent feedback) and I've noticed that the Undead start beside Wild Grain ~8/10 games. Why the very high spawn rate when Undead cannot even use it? 
• Similar to Wild Grain, I recommend a new resource be created, perhaps called "Graveyard" or "Mass Grave"; locations devastated by the great cataclysm...perhaps the ruins of ancient cities. The undead would be able to harvest bodies from these sites in order to give them minor over time boosts in growth. This may also help the AI play the Undead better.
• The AI does not care much for finding locations with essence on them. The AI should prefer essence locations nearby to those without...
• Staves have not yet been modified to remove initiative penalties (or make them less severe)
• Skeletons move too slow compared to the other race's common type units. I understand the thematic approach to having slow moving skeletons...but that takes away from the pace/tempo of the game. 
• Why does the Skeleton have a wage of 0.0 gildar, but the Spearman have a wage of -0.0 gildar ? Why the negative? 
• The spell Terror has quite the large over-encompassing animation. If possible, recommend reducing the spreading aura to just 1 square radius around the target before dissipating instead of covering the entire screen. (save that animation for the bigger fear spells)
• The racial spell Terror is snap-broken. It's so easy to overwhelm any force as my units take turns fearing the enemy. Recommend for this spell to be a little easier to resist.

• The was mentioned already by others, but I am tending to agree: Experience seems to be gained too quickly now. I am leveling up my heroes after every battle at the beginning of the game...and they are all easy encounters so far. Perhaps reducing the experience just a tad would be beneficial...

• How did these Shrills get in the middle of these four squares? I cannot attack them because they are not on a proper tile. See attached: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ga7l871ldfp7b18/Screenshot%202014-07-19%2014.52.38.png 
• Sometimes items that require certain prerequisites, like Platemail, does not show that it requires it...the UI is flakey. 
• Is roadway suppose to go on river tiles in line with the river? See attached: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jis8bhqzlj23zyn/Screenshot%202014-07-19%2016.06.03.png 
• Why hasn't this Banshee attacked Asha's Outpost yet? It's been over 100 turns...See attached: https://www.dropbox.com/s/81lf3ee56rh8kc1/Screenshot%202014-07-19%2016.21.20.png 

More comments to come...

Here are more comments...

• In tactical combat, when hovering over your units to see the extent of your reach or hovering over enemy unit to see the extent of theirs, both purplish and greenish colors are very hard to make out. Is it possible for these colors to be contrasted a little more to help make out where everyone can move and reach.
• Whenever a second combat happens against one of my cities, the city defenders do not show up to fight, despite not taking any damage in the first combat.

• I'm going to go out a limb here and make the case that the Consulates did not receive a nurf from the +1 growth as Frogboy had originally intended because the Undead would have a very difficult time staying competitive without the growth mechanism. Might I offer an alternative (in addition to the new resource as described above):  
• Have the Mausoleum grant +1 Growth in addition to its other bonuses  
• Have the Necropolis grant and additional +1 Growth in addition to its other bonuses
• Undead cities would effectively receive and easy +1 Growth near the beginning of the game and the ability to increase that to +2 in the late game. Combine that with special buildings and the new resource as well as killing humans and a nurfed Consulate and I think the Undead will do just fine...if fact, I think they will perform better than they currently do.

• Recommend that the Consulate have its effectiveness reduced from +1 Growth per turn to +1 Growth per every 5 turns.
• The Spell Despair to too powerful. Recommend reducing it's damage from 3 Damage per Level down to 2.5 Damage per Level. Recommend reducing it's resist damage from 2 Damage per level down to 1.5 Damage per Level.
• I have a dozen or so units built, Skeletons, Spearmen, and Eternal Defenders. Why does only the 1 Skeleton show up in the Economy Ledger? See attached: https://www.dropbox.com/s/diwlj7phlr60q98/Screenshot%202014-07-19%2022.10.00.png
• Does the Arena properly give the 25% chance of experience to units stationed within the city? If not, the descriptions should be rewritten to better reflect the guaranteed experience that is gained (as was done with the Adventurer's Guild).

Turn 127, here is a snapshot of my current game: https://www.dropbox.com/s/stgzk9w7rj3ul4b/Screenshot%202014-07-19%2020.42.14.png I've never been last before. I think it has a lot to due with my cities not growing very well, which is a bit of an illusion because my undead army is quite sustainable at the moment.

More comments to come...

UPDATE:

Well, 1.7 has now been released, so this game is at an end. I will provide 1.7 comments in another thread.

Thanks Ericridge!

In my current LH 1.7 Beta 2.0 game with 13 AI players, none of them were at war with each other until turn 175, when the Blood Season event got triggered. So is the "issue keeping the AI from declaring war" truly fixed? On a side note, having non belligerent AI players results in severe Pioneers spam. All over the place.

The river squares still only require one movement point to cross. There is no mention of it in the changelog list unless you consider: "Fixed weird pathfinding bug that caused rivers to be extremely aggravating to deal with".  So what's the "official" position here?

The city upgrades need a rebalance/revamp.   So many of them are no-brainer decisions that aren't influenced by the situation.

I'd also like to see a 1/4 chance of an upgrade that isn't building specific pop up.

I also think cities and conclaves should be able to build walls, while towns and conclaves should get unit buffs that make it where building troops in non-fortresses isn't worthless. 

Radical idea: the training yards and barracks buidling everywhere- the higher-level buildings give per empire upgrades instead of per fortress.

The things that I think need work in the next patch in terms of balance/fun

remove champion XP sharing nerf.  Champs aren't strong enough to justify this, and item exclusivity makes this more annoying

building level-ups need to be revamped

certain champion level-ups need to be made viable. esp on assassin tree