Conquest of Elysium 5

[thesheeep]

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.

Nobody should EVER play without the AI suicide prevention mod. It's so mandatory I honestly don't know why Illwinter doesn't just incorporate it (and add some different flavors for different classes).

I don't think the AI is any dumber than it was before, really. At least not when it comes to suiciding.

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.

Only in human settlements, though. You can't recruit normal catapults e.g. into your forests.
And the Dryad, for example, cannot even do that - even in human settlements, the dryad cannot recruit anything.
IMO makes sense that the Druid could, given that he is human after all. Then again, Bakemono can also do that and I don't really know why... it's a bit whack.

I think the only exception are those green units that are on offer sometimes - but even those cannot be recruited into every type of fort.

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.

Boy, would I love to toggle off those doomsday events, or at least push them back several years...

 

[Joggerino]

Do you know the characteristics of a lvl 4 spellcaster?

Same as a lvl 3 with an extra cast per spell and an extra spell memorized.

I had a senator game where I failed to take the haunted capitolium which had a demilich that had the battlefield wide life drain spell and accidentally donated the necro +1 item to him. All subsequent attempts to kill him were complete failures, no matter how many mages with anti-undead spells I threw at him.

Yeah, being hard countered sucks

 

[Hag]

Going through a High Cultist game, here are some random thoughts :
- Still not sure if High Cultist is fun or boring. Lot of waiting around for stars, risk-taking meaning that you can never be sure when your army will be ready, not much to do between two summonings, many of which are slow. On the other hand, some tier 3 summons are ridiculously overpowered and can take over basically anything not soul-slaying by late mid-game by themselves. Plus, sea-hopping to cap coastal hamlets is fun and refreshing, if slow, but a nice change from classical territory occupation.
- The Kobold King I am facing -an AI- looks weak, but annoying to the extreme, with never ending flows of chaff that I can take at 1 to 20. More of a huge PITA than a real danger. Dragons are basically useless.
- Games still crashes at random. You can use the --autosave launch option if needed.
- The more I play the more I think winning is not really the aim of the game. It's more akin a gigantic tactical sandbox, with many options and secrets to discover, many of them far apart the optimal winning moves. Late endgame is almost always disappointing : either you must spend hours finishing the last strongholds while you have already won by all means, or you unexpectedly crush the last opponent and win while you were busy exploring the planes or other side activity.

 

[Berekän]

The antpocalypse is starting to get extremely annoying to me, I have abandoned a few interesting games already just because I didn't wanna have to slug through hordes of ants. Wish they gave us an option to smash their nests or something.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Wish they gave us an option to smash their nests or something.

Burn, melt, ANYTHNG!

 

[AgentFransis]

Wish they gave us an option to smash their nests or something.

Burn, melt, ANYTHNG!

Krush, kill and destroy.

 

[KateMicucci]

Does anybody have a list with summon fail chances for demonologist, cultist and witch?

Is there a mod to reduce their summon fail chances?

Also, is there a good mod that reduces the tedium of waiting around for your resources to fill up so you can actually do something?

 

[Hobo Elf]

Use the sacrifice scaler to increase cost/reduce fail chance of summoning.

I found resources to be the most bountiful in CoE5. Just play in an era where your class will get the most benefit out of. There really is no reason to play in an unoptimal era as it just makes the game tedious.

Demonologists will be more resource starved than other classes and that's intentional. They are among the strongest classes in the game but come with a harsher difficulty curve.

- The more I play the more I think winning is not really the aim of the game. It's more akin a gigantic tactical sandbox, with many options and secrets to discover, many of them far apart the optimal winning moves. Late endgame is almost always disappointing : either you must spend hours finishing the last strongholds while you have already won by all means, or you unexpectedly crush the last opponent and win while you were busy exploring the planes or other side activity.

I had written earlier that I stopped trying to play to win and found the game to be more enjoyable that way. Then later I saw a forum post by the dev who said that he had designed CoE with the mindset that winning is not the main goal of the game.

 

[KateMicucci]

Cultist does not have a slider. He still often fails the bigger summoning even when the stars are supposedly perfect for summoning. It seems worthless to cast astrology, especially as half the time it tells you that the stars are unclear anyway. It's frustrating and that's why I'd like to know what the odds actually are.

You are probably right that it is better to play eras where your class is strong and just boost AI a little to compensate.

 

[KateMicucci]

Of the classes I've tried so far these are my thoughts on their level of fun:

S tier: Troll King
High Fun: Warlock
Average Fun: Barbarian, Baron, Necromancer
Boring: Voice of El, Pale One, Druid
Frustrating: Cultist, Witch, Demonologist

 

[KateMicucci]

A single row of longbowmen? You need at least 3 (basic rule for all archers). If you have the resources then one row of tower guard and two longbows is better. Pikes are ok but two rows of zweis is probably more reliable and less fiddly. Ideally you have two rows of knights (and or cavalry) at the front. Knights kick ass. In a pinch use your free spears as a meatshield or just send them alone as a cruise missile.

Baron is all about rushing and snowballing. You need to be aggressive and grab as many settlements as possible to get more freespawn and overwhelm the enemy with numbers before the mages can fully come online. Upgrade the hamlets ASAP and use monks to terraform the swamps. Don't forget to capture ancient forests to get unicorn knights. Use small stacks of cavalry led by lords to expand faster. Capturing libraries is your top priority - you can upgrade your court mages to very capable wizards and of course grab the neutral wizards too. Alchemists are pretty useless in combat but still get them for the money.

Unfortunately Baron's rituals slow down his snowball. It takes about two years for a drained swamp or motte to pay for itself. Vassals also take about 2 years before they leave the motte. It is more efficient to use the gold to buy more units to capture more stuff. Baron has no late game at all so he really needs to stomp the AI before they get their tier 3 factories going.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Cultist does not have a slider. He still often fails the bigger summoning even when the stars are supposedly perfect for summoning. It seems worthless to cast astrology, especially as half the time it tells you that the stars are unclear anyway. It's frustrating and that's why I'd like to know what the odds actually are.

You are probably right that it is better to play eras where your class is strong and just boost AI a little to compensate.

I get it, but the obtuse design is done on purpose to screw you over. It takes some mental gymnastics to get over it, but once you do I think the experience becomes more enjoyable. The trick is to not put all your eggs in one basket. Making a doomstack is quite appealing, but if you lose that one army then you're boned. There are diminishing returns to having too big of an army anyway and if you think about it the game really does encourage you to spread yourself out. Having a few units who are all in effective rows / positions is more effective in combat than having too many rows of units. For example you basically want your casters / ranged units to be able to do stuff in combat as soon as your melees engage because of how insanely strong magic is. So with that in mind, it becomes less frustrating if you're trying to build up several armies and if one of them fails a summon but another succeeds, it's OK. It may sound expensive resource wise, but your resource gain goes up exponentially the more armies you have conquering nodes for you.

 

[Hag]

I get it, but the obtuse design is done on purpose to screw you over. It takes some mental gymnastics to get over it, but once you do I think the experience becomes more enjoyable. The trick is to not put all your eggs in one basket. Making a doomstack is quite appealing, but if you lose that one army then you're boned. There are diminishing returns to having too big of an army anyway and if you think about it the game really does encourage you to spread yourself out. Having a few units who are all in effective rows / positions is more effective in combat than having too many rows of units. For example you basically want your casters / ranged units to be able to do stuff in combat as soon as your melees engage because of how insanely strong magic is. So with that in mind, it becomes less frustrating if you're trying to build up several armies and if one of them fails a summon but another succeeds, it's OK. It may sound expensive resource wise, but your resource gain goes up exponentially the more armies you have conquering nodes for you.

Furthermore, I found you get level 1 cultists recruit quite often compared to other nations. With your coastal hamlets full of chaff ready to be picked up, you can usually let loose a new stack each year.

 

[Gaznak]

With CoE5 Illwinter guys killed all that was still left of my love to them after Dom5 release.

They need to realize that old fan base is constantly dwindling and very soon they will not be capable to continue like this. New stuff is just thrown into their games by heaps while all the old stuff lies half-broken, unfinished and forgotten for ages. Every new game (no matter CoE or Dom) looks like an unbalanced and untested add-on priced as a whole new game.

I've been kinda Illwinter fan from times of Dom2 but no more.

 

[thesheeep]

With CoE5 Illwinter guys killed all that was still left of my love to them after Dom5 release.

They need to realize that old fan base is constantly dwindling and very soon they will not be capable to continue like this. New stuff is just thrown into their games by heaps while all the old stuff lies half-broken, unfinished and forgotten for ages. Every new game (no matter CoE or Dom) looks like an unbalanced and untested add-on priced as a whole new game.

I've been kinda Illwinter fan from times of Dom2 but no more.

It took you almost 10 games to realize that you don't like their business model?

 

[rezaf]

Regarding summoning chances, I feel this is one of the worst mechanics in the series.
For me, it basically makes savescumming mandatory. Be it in the early game with low level summons or in the late game with higher level ones, you often NEED those summons to stay competitive, accepting a summon fail might even cost you the summoning army, and even if it was possible to come back from that, you lose so much valuable time in which the competition can keep snowballing it'll likely drag out the later game and turn it into a slog.

I think they should throw out the mechanic and replace it with one that would just occupy the leader each turn until there was a successful roll. So you'd only lose the services of that leader for x turns instead of being attacked by the summon. I realize getting attacked makes thematic sense, but I feel it impacts player enjoyment in the wrong way.

Same with the apocalyptic events, they usually just want me wanna quit. Some are technically survivable or might even help you win, but most of the time, I'll take a look when my last manual save was and if it was too long ago, I rather forfeit the game than dealing with that shit.

 

[rezaf]

Nobody should EVER play without the AI suicide prevention mod. It's so mandatory I honestly don't know why Illwinter doesn't just incorporate it (and add some different flavors for different classes).

I don't think the AI is any dumber than it was before, really. At least not when it comes to suiciding.

I've since tried that mod, and it comes with a few caveats. First, it's extremely annoying that the mod doesn't lay itself to rest, so you get that annoying processing mods message every turn despite the mod no longer actually doing anything.
Then, the defenses also protect from other players - including human players - and thus I find them to be a little too strong.
Lastly, I observed many AIs surviving due to those defenses never recovering regardless due to never recruiting new leaders.

After spending a hundred hours with CoE5, I'd say this is one of the main AI fails, for whatever reason many classes refuse to recruit enough leaders. For some classes the opposite is true, like the Dwarf Queen, the Kobold or the Priest King, but many classes lose their main leader and never recruit a replacement. I realize this can be an issue for the player as well, but maybe the AI needs a boost in such situations - an offer in the recruitment pool for a reasonable price might be all it takes.

 

[Haba]

New stuff is just thrown into their games by heaps while all the old stuff lies half-broken, unfinished and forgotten for ages.

IIRC, they've quite readily admitted their own limitations. Much of the stuff that doesn't work that well (AI, for example), simply is outside of their area of expertise.

It is still two guys working on games they like making as a hobby. It doesn't make the kind of money that would warrant hiring people to work on it either.
https://www.allabolag.se/7696075121/illwinter-game-design-ekonomisk-forening

 

[Gaznak]

Much of the stuff that doesn't work

Much of the stuff that doesn't work is old nations and units that are never updated or rebalanced to fit into constantly changing mechanics.

 

[KateMicucci]

Regarding summoning chances, I feel this is one of the worst mechanics in the series.
For me, it basically makes savescumming mandatory. Be it in the early game with low level summons or in the late game with higher level ones, you often NEED those summons to stay competitive, accepting a summon fail might even cost you the summoning army, and even if it was possible to come back from that, you lose so much valuable time in which the competition can keep snowballing it'll likely drag out the later game and turn it into a slog.

I think they should throw out the mechanic and replace it with one that would just occupy the leader each turn until there was a successful roll. So you'd only lose the services of that leader for x turns instead of being attacked by the summon. I realize getting attacked makes thematic sense, but I feel it impacts player enjoyment in the wrong way.

Same with the apocalyptic events, they usually just want me wanna quit. Some are technically survivable or might even help you win, but most of the time, I'll take a look when my last manual save was and if it was too long ago, I rather forfeit the game than dealing with that shit.

I wouldn't mind if it was a small chance of failure that could be effectively negated by taking proper precautions, but right now it happens all the time, and even if you 2x overcast or delay your big summonings for many months until the stars are "right" there's still a big chance. Trying to Call Elder Beings my cultists would sometimes fail 3 times in a row. The only mostly reliable summons are the ones that you have to cast underwater.

Apperantly nobody even knows what the summon fail chances are.

 

[thesheeep]

First, it's extremely annoying that the mod doesn't lay itself to rest, so you get that annoying processing mods message every turn despite the mod no longer actually doing anything.

How can you even read that?
I can only assume you mean those end-of-turn-calculation messages and they are so fast for me I can never read them.

Then, the defenses also protect from other players - including human players - and thus I find them to be a little too strong.
Lastly, I observed many AIs surviving due to those defenses never recovering regardless due to never recruiting new leaders.

Yes, it is very much a bandaid solution.
But it's still better than the default, which is up to half the AI factions buckling to some deer, etc. in the first dozen turns

 

[rezaf]

How can you even read that?
I can only assume you mean those end-of-turn-calculation messages and they are so fast for me I can never read them.

Yeah. They fly by for me as well, but once I activate the mod, each player gets half a second delay for processing mods, which adds up.

Yes, it is very much a bandaid solution.
But it's still better than the default, which is up to half the AI factions buckling to some deer, etc. in the first dozen turns

The better solution would be to just mod the starting lineup of each class, but unfortunately modding is also a bandaid, they should have changed the way they create classes a long time ago to defining each in a manner that makes use of their own modding commands, if only to make obvious which commands are still missing and to make changes like this easier.
That said, I didn't really take an in depth look at CoE5 modding yet, they seem to have made quite a few additions. In CoE4, it was impossible to create a class such as the Baron, for example.

Anyway, I've come to just start with a few more AI factions, often enough, there's a sufficient amount of survivors for a decent game.
Besides, I've been killed in the first few turns myself. The starting conditions the game puts you in can be brutal.

 

[Humbaba]

I bought CoE4 a while back and only played it for maybe like 20 hours total because I found the gameplay to be strategically lacking and way too volatile with all the hostile wildlife terrorising the countryside among other things. Is this new one in any way significantly different or is this just more or less a standalone expansion?

 

[KateMicucci]

I bought CoE4 a while back and only played it for maybe like 20 hours total because I found the gameplay to be strategically lacking and way too volatile with all the hostile wildlife terrorising the countryside among other things. Is this new one in any way significantly different or is this just more or less a standalone expansion?

Same shit.

 

[Torus]

Apperantly nobody even knows what the summon fail chances are.

There's a guide for COE4 that has summon fail chances. Probably safe to assume it hasn't changed that much.

The Onionking's Summoning Ritual Repository
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=771523197