[Genesis] Bonuses - cost too much energy for what they give?

[kalirion]

I'm playing on Beginner, and have only conquered two shards in addition to the tutorial one, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but .... 1 energy per starting gold? 50 per 1 gold income? 110 for Workshop? I only have 120 energy, so it seems to be a far, far more scarce resource than Gold within a shard.

BTW, anyone else spend way too much time on the Tutorial? Took me over 4 hours because I did too much exploring.... got my hero into the 20s, even cleared out a labyrinth and a couple dragon lairs (1 dragon each, they concentrated on wiping out my army, which was a good thing because my warrior would not have been able to take any more than the counter-attacks.)

[Noanmus]

Yes the energy costs are high but consider how easy the game would get if you could just start every shard with several buildings already made. Probably best to save it for defence and storyline missions.

[kalirion]

Easy? It would save you a few turns, that's it. But I guess maybe a few turns may make all the difference on harder difficulties? Now if it let you start with a resource (wood, iron, or whatever) that would be something.

Does losing storyline missions result in a game over, or can they be retried with some fame penalty? I'm still at the "picking random shards to conquer" stage of the game, had my first uneventful encounter with Oinor last shard where he put up no fight despite being "Skilled". At least the "Beginner" NPC lord had a couple heroes and plenty provinces by the time I got to him, Oinor had almost nothing and I encountered him last...

[Noanmus]

Yes it would only save you a few turns but that can have a huge knock on effect, say you start with a forge and magic guild, then you can start off with the tougher good aligned T1 units and have spells and items for your hero, which in turns means you can take all your surrounding provinces and maybe a few locations without ever wasting turns moving to your demesne to get anything. Oh and you can start with reduced prices for resources, which are probably the only things worth taking every single time.

As to losing shards you can afford to lose a number depending on the difficulty you are on, im told you can lose A LOT on begginer and still make it through the game, so dont worry too much unless its a defence map. Remember the buildings you didnt get will come up again later.