Which Conquests of Elysium game is best?
I respectfully disagree with Hobo Elf.
Currently, I prefer 4 to 5, and there's still some things that were better in 3.
My main gripe with 5 is that the AI appears to be even more braindead than before - I wouldn't have thought this was possible. And what I mean is mostly the part where it should not leave it's capital unprotected in the very early game and where it should be less keen on suiciding it's last leader in general.
Besides that, I like many of the changes in 5 on paper, but they sometimes have unfortunate side effects. For example, everyone gets human recruits now, which undermines part of what made classes distinctive. Like, one big downside of the Druid used to be his lack of access to siege engines - he only had a chance to summon rocs. Now he can get catapults.
Also,some of my biggest gripes with 4 remained unresolved. Apart from the aforementioned AI, the recently discussed pointlessness of the planes comes to mind, but also the unhinged snowball effect with several factions, the doomsday game events you cannot even toggle (though they seem to be much rarer now), amongst some other things.
I like some of the improvements, especially the slightly improved graphics and qol additions, but in the dozen or so games I played so far ... somehow they were less fun than they used to be .