I’m gonna preface this by saying that I don’t play against anything else than the AI nor do I have any wish to do otherwise, so I do understand that some of what I’m asking for might be in conflict with what people who focus on PVP actually wish for.
As of Update 18.56738:
Balance: I feel like a few myth units are really weak compared to their same age counterparts, and while they aren’t supposed to fill the same roles, some of them really shine compared to others.
The Nemean Lion in a 1 v 1 against same age MU loses to almost all of them, and I don’t think its roar ability balances its frailty. Considering Aphrodite focuses on economy I’d prefer that her myth unit be durable to compensate for her absence of military upgrades. Besides…Lore wise, Heracles had to strangle the thing because no weapon could break its hide.. I think raising its hack armor or giving it some kind of regeneration by attacking would be a good thing. I’m really not taking micromanagement in this situation, I know some people have done interesting things with it in early rushes but I have no interest in this kind of gameplay for myself, and it becomes rather inconsequential in long games.
I would like to compare it to a few myth units that I feel are extremely strong by comparison (and please by no means go think that I want these myths units nerfed, I would rather have the weaker ones raised to their level if their respective gods offers no compensation military wise).The Frost giant freezes its target for 8 seconds, I haven’t tested it on a 1 v 1 for the other MUs but I’m pretty sure it can take out any of them just because of it ability. The Oni is also very strong and durable. The Hydra is an amazing unit that just grows extremely strong AND has some regeneration.
The Wadjet is another unfortunate case, and while there’s an argument for a lot of Classical Age MU not being as needed in later ages, this one in particular offers almost nothing while with some other gods I produce Classical Age units until the very end.
The Phoenix feels way too fragile for a Mythic age unit, and its rebirth ability plays weird. Its creation time is also very short for such a fragile unit, that also costs gold on top of that. Is there no way to rebalance its durability and extend its creation time? I don’t play Seth so perhaps Crimson Linen helps with making it more durable but I’d rather not have to go a specific route to not feel like I’m shooting myself in the leg.
Generally, I feel like when I play Greeks I have to follow certain minor god routes not to gimp myself too hard. I enjoy balancing my myth units (minor god selection) by having one or two that act as tanks and others that act as ranged, because Hera is locked to Zeus, and because the Nemean Lion feels too weak to me, I always end up picking the same routes. Hopefully a new god pack could fix this!
While this doesn’t fall into the balance issue entirely and while it’s probably very biased; Fimbulwinter is an exasperating god power that removes of lot of fun from the game, and having the Norse as enemies. It was never fun for me in the original game, and it still isn’t with Retold. I often just end up resetting the game if it puts too many norse gods against me, or even just one, if I just want to relax. If a game drags on, the AI just spams this god power.Releasing the workers after ringing the town bells also often bugs out, they will remain iddle and not return to their tasks, so having to ring it continuously is very taxing. A small mention for a later point about QOL: because the wolves attack caravans, and because there is no way to track caravan numbers quickly, the blow to the economy is sometimes very high for bad reasons. Again, very biased, but I’d rather this god power be entirely revisited to work as a targetted area or something entirely different. I know it would probably be in conflict with the whole point fo the Freyr god pack but honesly at this point…cant one of the original 3 Norse gods get Vidar as a replacement for Tyr?
AI: Another small prefacing for this; my prefered gameplay is teams of 4 v4 or 5 v 5, so these are the issues I run into, both for my AI allies and enemies:
The AI often fails to adapt to the needs of the game, for example, if they fail to claim a forum that is close to the enemy, they often produce their armies very far into the back of the map, and this results in a 4 v 5 almost, because their armies can take forever to reach the thick of the battle. If you could make it so that they take the traveling time needed to be efficient into consideration, it would be better.
The AI also seems to focus on useless things, that can tie into the 4 v 5 issue: even when it doesn’t struggle with its ressources, it will not rebalance its economic and military population to adapt to the needs of the battles. I’ve had allies who failed to do just that, and even at the highest difficulty level would only send small(er) armies into battle despite being in lead.
Their armies can also get stuck quite often, to the point where I now play only with diplomacy activated so I can have my units destroy whatever building they seem stuck on… Sometimes they get stuck by their own buildings, sometimes by mine, and it’s not even an issue of not having enough room to move around these buildings, they can even get stuck on isolated ones.
Which leads to my next request: Please have the AI remove its unused economic building. While I do keep in mind that it helps the Chinese with their favor generation, the AI just ends up covering the map with silos/granaries/mining camps etc. These often result in obstacle for themselves, for caravans, and for me. I’ve had my allies create such buildings in spots between my own buildings which resulted in temporary issues, until I was able to destroy these buildings myself.
The AI also fails to make smart use of some God Powers; when I pick Sekhmet, I will use the bastion ability on my allies to help them (the population increase is very useful), while they never do the same. Or try to place the Healing springs in strategic places instead of the middle of their town where it most likely will serve no purpose. It also often uses destruction type god powers on armies that are nearly wiped out, or try to use Implode on an isolated forum. The only smart/consistant AI uses of god powers I have seen come from the Chinese and the Japanese.
While being able to turn your amies into heroes and citizens is a strong point of the Atlanteans, the AI is veeeery shy on that point, they are often some of the weakest AI I face or have as allies, despite being really strong economically.
Ragnarok is often poorly used by the AI, which really uses it as a “do or die” strategy. They almost always get massively delayed in their economic/age up progression because of their use of this god power. It makes it interesting to counter when we’re all in the Mythic Age but should they fail to bank on it (and they almsot always do) the setback is very heavy.
Tieing into the current and previous points, and this issue has mostly risen on maps where stalling is possible, like Iron Woods or Jotunheim (aslo please give us an alternate version of it, it’s my favorite map!): when picking Minakatatomi the AI will cover its surrounding buildings with sanctuaries of the hunt, which often blocks caravans and makes the game lag terribly. To the point where I am careful never to have both Susanoo and Amaterasu in the same game.
The healing area of effect of bastions and temples (Aegir/Apollo) is too small, having to manually select specific units to put them right next to the buildings for them to heal is tedious.
QOL: Please give us a way to track the number of units per type. This would be especially useful for caravans. Currently the only way to know how many caravans I have is to select them all manually.
An auto repair option would be amazing.
I would like to be able to select more than 100 units.
Thank you for reading.