On difficulty

[Tethrinaa]

Any way to increase the difficulty beyond what the game allows? I struggle with the end game challenges being too easy due to population numbers.

Who cares if zmey the devourer has 200 health and hits for 100 damage if he can only "kill" one of my "naked" gatherers per turn in a social challenge. My squad can be totally inept at fighting and speech, and zmey will still be convinced if I bring enough people. This just doesn't seem right.

Artificially limiting myself to a certain party size works, but I'd prefer an actual balance fix.

[Itkovian]

You're on god-like and finding it easy? Wow!

[Miradus]

Gah. I feel like I suck. :)

I haven't reached "end game" challenges yet and I've played two games through to the end. A wandering 5 skull is going to be brutal no matter when it comes. I particularly wince when they walk up to the village, kick my teeth in, then stand around for a few turns to keep doing it round after round while I watch everyone die.

[Tethrinaa]

The most important thing is population. Take event paths that yield population (4 children from the smithy quest, 1 child from the cat + child quest, etc.). To that same end, keep your population alive by always being the one to initiate encounters, and always choosing hunt\social\poison\etc when available. When it isn't available, just have superior numbers with sword\shield and shielding armours. By turn 30, the majority of my guys have >10 shielding stat. People talk about piercing and hammers, but any damage you take risks losing a guy. I use axes sometimes when I can place the card safely behind another one, but cards gain health so fast that i find hammers inferior to axes. Piercing might be good, haven't found many good spears.

Started a handful of godlike playthroughs before settling on the start I liked, and it is definitely gatherers. Crafters have no materials to craft, warriors have crappy options for handling early battles (which is ironic, but gatherers always get a hunter, which lets them choose hunt).

Food types trivialize the early game. Gather nuts\fruits\vegies\seaweed\fish\meat\bird meat and cook half of whatever you can to quickly get 10 food types. This gives all sorts of useful stats and especially movement, which helps you be the one initiating encounters.

[Itkovian]

That is very impressive! It looks like you have mastered the game very quickly! I must admit, I am still struggling to complete a game above 150% difficulty. It would seem you are very talented at rapidly discovering the ins and outs of a game. I hope you can find further enjoyment playing the game. It has been the most enjoyable game I have played in years! :)

[Revolucas]

And here I thought I was awesome by killing a dragon with only 7 person party on turn 126 on normal. :(

[Itkovian]

Originally posted by Alundaio:

And here I thought I was awesome by killing a dragon with only 7 person party on turn 126 on normal. :(

Haha! Don't feel bad. :) It took me many hours to even get the courage to face a dragon!

[screamingpalm]

I'm finding the game a bit easy as well. Wondering if mob spawns increase as the game progresses. Not sure if that would be the answer- wouldn't help make the questline any harder though (maybe that should scale over time as well).

[Tethrinaa]

The spawns do seem to get harder as time goes on (more so as you get further from the village, so maybe its just the bigger things start further out and slowly make their way to you, not sure yet). But as long as you initiate encounters, there is always a non-fight option that will allow your larger sized group to stomp the enemy with no losses.

[BigRowdy]

Checked Tethrinaa's profile and wow, just wow. Talk about some time in stratagey games. I'd listen if he says something.

[Troy]

Originally posted by Tethrinaa:

The spawns do seem to get harder as time goes on (more so as you get further from the village, so maybe its just the bigger things start further out and slowly make their way to you, not sure yet). But as long as you initiate encounters, there is always a non-fight option that will allow your larger sized group to stomp the enemy with no losses.

Sounds like non-Fight challenges need a balancing adjustment, especially at the high end.

[Tethrinaa]

lol. To be fair, I leave my pc + strategy games on pretty often. But I have definitely played a ton.

When a tackle a new strategy, I usually beat it once 1-2 steps above "normal", then push the limit on how high I can beat it. Most of the time the highest difficulty is not intended to be beatable without cheating or exploiting massive AI flaws. Games like this don't usually suffer from those, since the AI and the player are very asymmetrical, as opposed to something like civilization.

Limit the number of people usable in challenges, say 2 or 3 per difficulty skull? and I think this game would be in a sweet spot. You would need advanced crafted gear to buff your relevant challenge stats to take on the end game foes.

I wouldn't mind some other aggressive difficulty slider too. Make a couple packs a night actually attack my village, with "fight" being the only option. Would make warriors more relevant imo, as you would need to intercept the packs or actually defend the village.

[76561188078797539]

I don't think the game actually rewards "high risk, high reward" combat - at least not noticably so.

I'm doing my first "long" playthrough with focus on information gathering (a lot of the game elements are pretty much "trial by error," especially when it comes to things like crafting), and noticed that the "fight" option does not seem to offer better rewards than less dangerous approaches.

In fact, I just fought two two-skull groups of spiders, which seemed to have very much the same composition (Queen and 7 smaller ones). The reward for "fight" was a "backstab" item (spiked collar) and 2 spider silks. The reward for "hunt" - taken out of curiosity after reading these comments, since I'm running a "u wot m8?" warrior-heavy playthrough - was several ancient wood logs, and 10 spider silks. Frankly, the latter seemed far more rewarding to me.

Not sure if it's just luck of the draw, but seeing how much more dangerous actually fighting is compared to selecting other options, I'd expect to see a greater variance in rewards.

That said, I'm nowhere near Tethrinaa's mastery level (frankly, still learning a lot of the basics), but I do feel that the risk-to-reward ratio may be a bit too much in favor of the "safe" approach.

Still, the game is spectacular. I only learned of Thea browsing Steam's "recent releases," but it hits all the right buttons. Hope will actually have enough time to actually enjoy it given the coming holidays.

[BigRowdy]

Originally posted by Tethrinaa:

lol. To be fair, I leave my pc + strategy games on pretty often. But I have definitely played a ton.

When a tackle a new strategy, I usually beat it once 1-2 steps above "normal", then push the limit on how high I can beat it. Most of the time the highest difficulty is not intended to be beatable without cheating or exploiting massive AI flaws. Games like this don't usually suffer from those, since the AI and the player are very asymmetrical, as opposed to something like civilization.

Limit the number of people usable in challenges, say 2 or 3 per difficulty skull? and I think this game would be in a sweet spot. You would need advanced crafted gear to buff your relevant challenge stats to take on the end game foes.

I wouldn't mind some other aggressive difficulty slider too. Make a couple packs a night actually attack my village, with "fight" being the only option. Would make warriors more relevant imo, as you would need to intercept the packs or actually defend the village.

Whew! Thats good. Looking at those hours I could only assume you were the next Terminator cyborg sent here to kill us all.

[Cablenexus]

Originally posted by Tethrinaa:

lol. To be fair, I leave my pc + strategy games on pretty often. But I have definitely played a ton.

When a tackle a new strategy, I usually beat it once 1-2 steps above "normal", then push the limit on how high I can beat it. Most of the time the highest difficulty is not intended to be beatable without cheating or exploiting massive AI flaws. Games like this don't usually suffer from those, since the AI and the player are very asymmetrical, as opposed to something like civilization.

Limit the number of people usable in challenges, say 2 or 3 per difficulty skull? and I think this game would be in a sweet spot. You would need advanced crafted gear to buff your relevant challenge stats to take on the end game foes.

I wouldn't mind some other aggressive difficulty slider too. Make a couple packs a night actually attack my village, with "fight" being the only option. Would make warriors more relevant imo, as you would need to intercept the packs or actually defend the village.

I watched your list after your comment and I cannot believe what I see.
There is talking tenthousands of hours strategy experience here. What a compliment for the devs you have time to play this gem. Hope you like it lol

I think this game needs a new mode. Easy, normal, hard, godlike, impossible and "Tethrinaa" mode.

[Itkovian]

Originally posted by BigRowdy:

Originally posted by Tethrinaa:

lol. To be fair, I leave my pc + strategy games on pretty often. But I have definitely played a ton.

When a tackle a new strategy, I usually beat it once 1-2 steps above "normal", then push the limit on how high I can beat it. Most of the time the highest difficulty is not intended to be beatable without cheating or exploiting massive AI flaws. Games like this don't usually suffer from those, since the AI and the player are very asymmetrical, as opposed to something like civilization.

Limit the number of people usable in challenges, say 2 or 3 per difficulty skull? and I think this game would be in a sweet spot. You would need advanced crafted gear to buff your relevant challenge stats to take on the end game foes.

I wouldn't mind some other aggressive difficulty slider too. Make a couple packs a night actually attack my village, with "fight" being the only option. Would make warriors more relevant imo, as you would need to intercept the packs or actually defend the village.

Whew! Thats good. Looking at those hours I could only assume you were the next Terminator cyborg sent here to kill us all.

Please don't be Skynet, Please don't be Skynet, Please don't be Skynet... :)