Moving healers or backline units

[His Imperial Highness]

How does one move a back line unit to attack a archer? my two frontline men died and now I have only my hero which is a mystic and a preist and healer and I litterally cant do anything apart from letting my guys get shot in the face.

[Terracorex]

I've only played the Baronness.. Looking forward to trying the insane mystic.

I can say with the Baronness that she needs to be in the first (when possible) or second rows. You get a range penalty beyond three hexes. The usual strategy with her (doesn't always work), is have her in first row with two melees, one on each side, next to her. They step up in front of her to prevent the enemy melee from hitting her. This works so long as you have better initiative. She takes out ranged units in the back enemy rows (if they are causing a lot of damage). Otherwise, those range units will always be the last to die and will end up causing more damage through the battle than any other unit at times. Initially, I had always kept her in the back row, trying to protect her, and she was of limited use. She has decent melee and range defense, so she is meant to be closer. Once you get her point-blank shot, she can even stand beside someone and do serious damage.

[Alexander (Aterdux)]

Mystic is a support unit, like others, and like others kind of suffers same limitations his class have. Mystic is hard to play in the beginning and as I said, if you need to move him, (or other archers/support units) you probably lost anyway. As a support unit he is decent though.

[Tech Enthusiast]

Just because something might make sence in your system, does not mean it is fun. Even less so if you put a melee spell on it right from the start. This is wrong on so many ends.

Remember the golden rules why some companys become big, others don't.

1. Always think about a feature: "Is it fun?" - no? change it.
2. Will a player that is new to the game understand what happens? No? change it.
3. Is a feature you personally "like" questioned on more pages then google lists on one page? change it.

Add the strange fact that your inventory is suddenly empty because you board a ship and you already have a bunch of stuff that is neither fun, nor will a new player like me understand why that is the case.

So a useless main toon and loosing all your collected stuff after boarding a ship for no reason what so ever? Not fun and not a good start for a freshly bought game, don't you agree?

Again: It does not matter if you can explain it somehow. If it is not fun, change it. And i doubt anyone will agree on having a useless main toon with a spell that is more of a taunt against yourself then a help is fun.

[LeiAfkpuz]

Because of how the mystic is, I was unable to get past the third chapter, hiding in the mine with the mole. I literally could not get past all the fights due to being down one unit cause of it.

I restarted, the Cursed Castle, campaign as the Baroness, just because I didn't want to have to go through all the main campaign chapter 1/2 again, due to the main character being pretty much useless in an area where you have limited resources available to hold against waves of enemies.
That or pathing is bugged and wouldn't let me move out of that area, forcing me to do the moles quest, eventually being either hunted down by the bandits, or by Berthold.

I agree support needs to be protected and that is their role in the game, but as the main character he should be more than just "another support unit" and should be able to hold is own and not just be someone who needs meat sheilds.

Edited: Like I'm not disagreeing with you that the Mystic is a support and needs to be protected, but as the main character he should atleast be able to stand on his own

[Alexander (Aterdux)]

The thing about this - it is hard to change basic stuff at this moment. Do we just allow mystic to move, or all support units to move, how to rebalance etc.

And I disagree that a mystic "has to stand on his own". In many other games if you play a mage, mage cannot do things without regular melee fighters.

But thank you for all these reports, maybe we need to look again at things and make somehow mystic a bit stronger...

[Tech Enthusiast]

I really don't think making him stronger will suffice. The whole "you can not move where you want to" is strange.

Change that and the mystic will be fine as well.

Melees should be able to move to intercept.
Ranged should be able to back off.
Mages / Support should not simply stand there and take it if melees are down.

It simply makes no sence, is counterintuitive, takes away player freedom without any good reason, takes away possible tactics and again: is just not fun.
You have choosen a might and magic light fighting system. Why limit that system and not improve it?

[Earnest]

Hey, Dev: Here's a tip, free!

If the players think a feature should *actually be functional* when it can be taken, then it should be *actually functional* when it can be taken - or you need to change that feature.

It is purely stupid that a Mystic can take a spell at the start that they cannot actually use. Period.

You say letting them move is broken with that spell, fine. Move that spell. Make it so that a player should be able to move before getting the spell.

As it is right now, you're giving us a spell with no use. It's beyond irritating. I assumed it was a bug, it's so stupid.

Fix it, please, and stop giving excuses about balance issues. If it would be unbalanced, then move it and give us a different starting ability.

[Sebathius]

while I havent played the mystic, I have found it rather frustrating that a unit can not move, or make wider decisions outside of the limitations of what the computer decides. Ive seen units of mine go down because the healer wont have that unit as an option (whether it be from range or sheer unadultered hatred towards that unit, your guess is as good as mine), a range unit wont pick certain units (I assumed because of range, but for some reason he would not take the tactical decision to get closer if this were the case) and melee units only will engage units the computer finds are in the frontal rows.

I do enjoy aspects of the game, but these obstacles really reduce the aspect of what combat is like. With as many games that are out there, honestly to stick to a limitation like this that would frustrate your player rather than challenge him seems like it would kill your chances of having it played for very long.

I sincerely hope this is reconsidered and changed. Moving units to try to engage the last rank and not having a way to have your support units get invovled is rather shortsighted.

[Terracorex]

I played chapter 1 as the mystic under normal difficulty. I had previously played through the game as the baronness. I was actually surprised that he was easier to play in some regards than she was, once I realized that it much better to have in the front line than in the back doing nothing. It's a bit tricky to play him, but the basic strategy seems to keep him in front when possible. Use his and your priest first turns to up his defense so that he's as good, if not better than other melee units.

The advantage he has over the baronness is that she is basically just an archer, where he is a very unique unit. If you can get an enemy unit to stand beside him, which usually requires a careful initial positioning and making sure to not step forward with other melee units, but instead let the enemy come to you. Provided you can do all that, his BIG advantage is that his damage is not mitigated by armor, and he can cut down big well armored foes more quickly than your melee units typically can.

I'm curious to see how I'll handle the mines with him in chapter 3, but I suspect I'll use much the same kind of strategy, since I remember in each fight there being one melee fighter that was a pain to take down. Everything in this game, is here for a reason. While the current UI may be buggy, the underlying strategy has been very well thought out.

Regarding lack of movement, that is a key feature of the game actually. This game is all about initial positioning and making your movements carefully in battle to control how the enemy moves in response to yours. For me, some battles require several different tries in how I initially position my guys to get a good outcome. Having to think ahead and plan several moves ahead, logically deducing that if I attack, and hence, move here, then they may move attack there or there, This makes this game much more like chess than I have seen in other turn-based strategy games.

I suspect that real battle is more like this, where pre-planning is everything. You have to account for all possible outcomes, because there it is life and death, and bad choices, mean you loose.

I would argue that there a plethora of games where you can move around willy nilly and correct initial mistakes. In this game you cannot. You must live with your initial decisions, good or bad. Is that fun? Well, that depends of what you think of as fun. For me it is very challenging, since I find this game refreshing over several other games that frankly, get far more monotous and repetitive after a while.

[Allen63]

Agree with Terracorex (I play Mystic too). After some level ups, the Mystic can move to attack. If one pumps up his magic related stats with equipment, he becomes quite strong and very interesting (to me). But, strategic and tactical planning is necessary for the tough battles -- that's fun, to me.

[Alexander (Aterdux)]

I understand if players saying it's no fun we have to change it. The only question is how representative is what is said here. And while we might be able to make a mystic stronger - Allen63 do you think it should be done? Making all move we can't do simply because it really changes the entire combat system, and at this point of time we can't go back to redesigning combat, we don't have the funds to continue working on the game for another year or two.

And actually, there is an ability for both mages and archers to back off to a safe spot.

[LeiAfkpuz]

My suggestion would be to just make the "You can now move" level-up ability, present from the start, and make the spell they start off with that level-up ability.

As someone who just started the game when my mystic got his first level up, I didn't realize how much fighting this game involved, so I used my first level up to get the "You can now collect taxes" which means I would then have to wait till level 3 to get the "You can move" ability, which well was a downer. Since then I've learned that the combat abilities are much more needed in this game, at the present anyway, but as a beginner to the game, I though trade/bribing would be a thing.

[Alexander (Aterdux)]

Gold is always a smart choice. We will reevaluate this once more.

[McNutty]

What do you guys not get.......its part of the system, its how it supposed to be. unfortunately if you dont like the way it works dont play the game, point blank, period. I played the mystic for my first choice from beginning and did everything just fine on normal. Now im playing with the knight and finding it harder because once the mystic levels up he is a true power house (there is a spell the mystic gets that buffs a friendly units melee attack by +10 and does 40 damage to adjacent enemy units way more powerful than anything the knight or baroness can put out) not even going to mention the energy burst abilty which with your 3 hrs of play you have no say in this matter to begin with. besides realistically if its down to an archer and a priest, the priest is not going to catch an archer before he pelts him with arrows. So in point if you find yourself down to to mystic or priest and healers, YOUR doing it wrong, not them. so move on with your pointless arguement.

On a side note i will agree with lei with the trade idea. Gold in this game is a very important commodity because it literally is involved with everything. So i have found myself (in the cursed castle map) just camping out in castle doing nothing but collecting the daily income. (i will admit i have not tried the "feudal lord" talent yet so i will reevaluate once i do.) But the idea im getting from this game is about always going to and fro from taking citys maybe castles, doing quests and running from market to market to find good items so having a trade system in place seemed natural but was kind of thrown a slight curve by not seeing one. By saying this I in no way disapprove of the game and love it a lot but it seemed to me that just sitting in the castle with my time maxed out at 4 waiting for money kind of went against the grain of the game, at least thats how it feels.

[Sebathius]

The most ignorant statement you can make is that if you dont like it, dont play it.....especially in a section specifically set aside for "suggestions".

The point of a beta or early access game, the point of a suggestion box is to increase the potential of this game. The vast majority of real time conflict involves a LOT of actual movement. People like to dismiss reality when building a computer generated combat system and say that "this isnt real life, so deal with it" but you limit your game's potential when you go against its nature.

Real soldiers and fighting forces do what they can to be most effective in a fight, this can and most likely will include getting yourself into range to still be effective. You sacrifice a turn of attacking your foe by movement, so its not breaking the balance of the game.

Take the suggestion as it is and stop trying to shout others down because they dont agree with how you play or how the system was initially made. Regardless of how the developers decide to go with these suggestions, We all have every right to want the game to succeed in a way that make the game fun if they we choose, just as much as you have the right to enjoy the game the way it already is.