New topic here : Link.

Don't read this one please.

- I am the best player of this game, with the player Grinder. I got 3000 hours of playing. I know what I say when I talk about balance.

- The goal of this topic is to give suggestions to balance the factions and to suggest new features, for new strategies, more replayability and fun. These suggestions of course would require a good dev to work on it, or who knows, that an Endless Legend 2 day exists.   :D

- These suggestions take into account all expansions of Endless Legend including Symbiosis. They also take into account the excellent and indispensable ELCP mod, which improves the AI, the balance, add smart features, and eliminates many bugs. Link to the ECLP mod.

Increase defensive power to make aggression more difficult :

The ELCP mod has clearly increased the defensive power, making fortifications effective if one attacks the besieger. But that's not enough. Taking a city is very easy, and it's not a good thing because EL is already a game where conquest is easy and low risk.

I propose that the following measures be taken:

- Currently additional district increases a little the height of the fortification. Something like +20 I think. It is not enough. I propose that this bonus be doubled. Large cities must naturally be more powerful defensively.

- It is possible with a level 4 spy infiltration, to completely destroy the fortifications of a city, even a cult city. It's unrealistic, and far too powerful. I propose that the infiltration action "Destroy Fortificaiton" can destroy only half of the fortifications at the maximum (level 4 or 5).

- The buildings dedicated to the fortification have seen their effectiveness increased thanks to the action of Leader Ennemy Boss, the creator of the ELCP. But we should go further to make the cities more powerful.

I propose that all defensive buildings after era 1 sees their industrial construction cost drop again by -25%, in order to encourage players to look for these technologies (which currently never happens!).

Make useful the myriad of unnecessary special equipment :

- The first thing to say is in my opinion, that the units have only two slots of equipment. It's not enough. Firstly, in 95% of the situations, the unit will have a slot dedicated to a speed talisman, to move faster on the map and the battlefield. Which leaves us an available location, which is too little to do something.

I suggest that units get not one but two additionnal slots with Meritocraty technology. It would allow more specialised and qualitative units choice.

- The players always use the same talismans and rings, because the others are too expensive in rare resources, or they are simply useless.

For example, talismans that increase the attack of a unit in High Ground position, is far too expensive. The resources are carefully conserved by the players, and it's a rational choice.

- Moreover, in terms of efficiency, resources currently should only be invested in army boost equipment (like Defense Boost 2) and in weapons. Never in the armor because the effect of efficiency is too weak, even for the Vaulters (who have however a bonus when they use a booster).

- Designing better equipment, with a more powerful and remarkable effect, would allow the setting up of expensive but specialized armies, and greatly improve the tactical diversity.

- Since there are too many changes to be done on this topic, I have not written some suggestions here, but I can do it if a modder wants to tackle this problem. But I can write two ideas of equipement with powerfull tactical effects :

An adamantium talisman that gives slowdown for two turns to the affected creature (great on fast archers).

A Mithrite ring that blocks the counterattack of the target (would be useful only if one has the superiority of initiative).

Make city infiltration a bit more difficult :

One thing annoys me a lot in Endless Legend: it is impossible to guard against the infiltration of its cities.

Anyone can have any fast unit, approach a city and instantely put his spy.

With stalth units, it's even easier, and the detection towers are useless. You can put towers everywhere, it will not change anything, as any unit can simply reach you, you will be infiltrated anyway.

I do not know exactly what should be done, what elegant solution it can exist. But I have a little idea to propose. I do not know if it is technically feasible:

- Placing a spy requires vision on a city for 1 turn, not 0 turn. It is only after one rounds of vision on the city that the infiltration action is possible in this city.

The advantage is that a fast unit can reach any city, but if it is detected and destroyed, the infiltration is not possible.

This change will make a strict map control strategy viable, with watchtowers and fast interception units on duty.

Buff the Vaulters / Mezari (Balance) :

Vaulters have their advantages but are underpowered. And their benefits are good on paper but rarely useful.

On paper, they have teleport, powerful units, and a strong defensive bonus (bunker city).

In reality, their teleport is not very useful because the units go almost as fast by the roads.

Their units are not so powerful, because special resources continue to be expensive.

And their cities have no defensive bonus at the height.

Here is what I propose to improve Vaulters:

- Improvement of their defensive power: Their Epéicale military building of era II, X, also adds two Titans to the militia. The titans will have the equipment corresponding to the technological age of the player. This will allow the Vaulters to be really more powerful in defense, especially to defend their distant cities.

- The teleport, activated via the resource booster, now allows you to teleport settlers to heroes, even outside the Eclypse. This will greatly help the Vaulters build distant cities early in the game. On the other hand, teleporting units to heroes, for vicious rush actions, is only possible during the Eclypse.

- The Vaulters see the cost of special equipment diminished. Not weapons, nor armor, but only special equipment. They cost -50% less resources to use. This will allow the Vaulters to massively use these tactical tools on their armies, making them more qualitative than those of other empires.

- Nerf: In exchange, the Vaulters lose their ability to build roads. They can still build watchtowers, but more roads. The Vaulters cities practice autarky, and the notion of a trade route is foreign to them. It's an economic and military nerve. The Vaulters will have to rely on fast units, their fortification, and their teleport to defend their territory.

Buff the Allayi (Balance) :

Some suggestions originaly came from here : Link. But it's better to read this :

- There is not enough ways to use pearls for the Allayi in early and mid games. The Allayis accumulate a lot of pearls at the beginning of the game, without having any use. Stokciples are not so usefull, and still cost a lot of industry. Allayis accumulate pearls without having utility.

Suggestions for this problem :

- Pearls can be used as general booster by the Allayi (as the Vaulters can do) +20 % science/dust and +20 approval.

- Allayi have an immediate access to all winter graces from the first winter (it will open to them to interesting early building, as fast extractors).

- Allayi have a racial trait which permit them to begin razing a city when they just conquer it. Not "Salt the Earth" but "Restaure Nature". It block the city to produce any output for 5 turns. It prevent any dissappproval expansion from this city. And in 5 turns, the city is razed, with no settler. After the razing, they won four pearls for each razed district (Auriga is "happy" to clear this presence off her face, and give pearls). Or, a pearl boost is automatiquely activated when the city has been cleared. Or a temporary 5 turns (in quick speed) of -100 % expansion dissaproval.

- Nerf the Monk : The monk is incredibly powerful. The main reason is that its load is buggy, it is about three times more damage than expected! Any Allayis buff measure must be followed by a correction of that, otherwise the monks (especially in Winter form) will continue to completely unbalance the game.

- Buff the Skyfin's Allyi as combat unit : Skyfin is superb as explorer, pearl collector and ressource gatherer, but very rarely used as combat units. Main reason is he is solitary (as guardian, he cannot be included army) so players rarely use them in armies.

As the Skyfin is expansive, and only good as support unit, I don't really see the reason of this Solitary trait.

Suggestion : Suppress this Solitary trait.

- Buff the Allayi Hero as City Governor : The Allayi is weak as city governor. And not much strong as commander. He seems to be more designed as pearl collector because he is only skilled at this... anyway here the problem is to buff him as city commander. Here are propositions made by me : Link. or by The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales Link.

Buff the Necrophages (Balance) :

- Necrophages are the weakest faction economically, because they can not parley with the villages. They lose pacification, resources, gold.

And their economic bonuses do not make up that at all.

I propose two simple things to improve Necrophages:

- They build at double speed the destroyed villages. In other words, destroyed villages cost -50 % in industry.

- They need 6 body to have one food stokcpiles, not 8. It's a small but substantial buff to their ability to produce the food they need to sustain profitable cities.

Multiplayer suggestions (For EL 2) :

- Teamers : Create a cooperative way of playing, to play the game as teamers, in permanent alliance (3Vs3 for example). A lot of people complained and asked this commun feature.

- Improve the lobby : Improvements like : Game name can be set to the same defaut thing each game, a tchat, heard a sound when your game is full, and few small improvements like from others well known multiplayer game, that would make the lobby a really more interesting place.

- Chat box in multiplayer lobby : From Amazigh. Link.

- Ladder/rank system : An automatic ladder system, to evaluate the level of each player. It really help to set a game with the right level of players. It would be be attractive for the players from the 4X's ecosystem.

Comfort when playing (EL 2) :

- Auto-collect pearls : Collecting pearls is annoying, is very time consuming, and not very funny. Pearls are a nice system but the time it consumes is too high. It's becoming worst if you are not allayi, because if you want to collect them frequentely you need to spot the land each winter. Totaly annoying, and totaly hard to manage by beginners.

Suggestion : Create a new function : seach for pearls. Something which say to the unit to reveal land (even known land) and collect pearls.

- Auto-launch units when garrison is full : Auto-launch units in a new army when garrison is full. If not, it's time consuming and often stop units production when garrison is full.

- UI feedback customizablity : More feedback choice would be great. For exemple, Start/End of building a settler (in specific, not as a part of the big building sum up). Or

Enemy forces entering your territory in X region. From Rymdkejsaren. Link.

- Improve UI : pathfinding and battle board overlay : Brillant idea from an annoying problem. From Abmpicoli. Link. Improve UI: pathfinding and battle board overlay.

- Ideas to increase the interface comfort 1 : From Wallish. Link.

- Ideas to increase the interface comfort 2 : From Vicarious. Link. Best ideas are underlined.

Can we expect you guys to implement any of the following changes/options into the game in the near future?
a way to get rid of unwanted settlers other than exiling them to enemy regions
minimal number of military power required to lay siege to a city determined by the city's defenseretreat
waiting periods triggered by some diplomatic actions or any other changes that prevent players with huge Influence income from declaring war on a weaker AI faction next turn after agreeing on truce with that faction in exchange for a bunch of its resources or technologies
"Auto-upgrade units in queue" option
possibility to set the interval between autosaves manually
possibility to remove an unfinished building or unit from the build queue without losing the progress

- Automation into the update of the units : And saving of template of units design, for others uses into new games. From Savage. Link.

- Map highlight mode : Great idea with excellent screen exemples. It would largely increase the comfort of playing. From Abmpicoli. Link.

- Queue stuff even without pre-requisites met & Global queue : Elegant and simple idea from this ingenious guy. From Abmpicoli. Link.

- Facilitating work with a large queue of research. An obvious need. From Rustam. Link.

- Save game should have unit/city focus, window and notifications persisted : Excellent idea. From Abmpicoli. Link.

- Increase the character limit for army name :  From SentientDawn. Link.

- Ability to calculate the needed influence for a desired empire plan : It would be nice if there was a way to see in game (perhaps in the simulate screen) how many points you will need to have to pick whatever configuration of empire plans you have or wish to have. From Northwoods. Link.

- Notifications when new heroes appear in the mercenary market : Often, I check each turn the mercenary market to see if one ore more new hero appeared. It is annoying. Notification would be so simplier.

- Make the cliff easier to distingue : Cliffs can sometimes be hard to see. It is annoying and frustrating. They should be seen in all situations. From Arqane. Link.

- Gray-out city boundaries, focus on region : From Abmpicoli. Link.

Additionnal topics dedicated to particular suggestions :

Reflexion & Suggestions to change the Mykara's Fungal fixed fortification system : Link.

Obsolete topic (do not read it) : Link.

Well, thank you for reply :)

First, let's decide what are we talking about. My post was about pillaging, not about forgottens. I wanted to show how meanless and difficult to pillage playing for walkers or vaulters, for example. Its easier to pillage playing for forgottens, actually. So I want to suggest how to buff pillage, not forgottens. I think we need a buff that will affect all factions.

About your thoughts.

- Pillage give twice more dust and ressources award in the era I (because pillaging in era I is very hard to do and very rare to see so it needs a serious buff).

Do you really need and do you really can to pillage in era I? In era I you are too busy by searching for ruins and good regions to settle. Remember, you need for about 8-10 turns in common to do a pillage, especially in era I. I think you will get era II faster than you will get close to the enemy :)

- Forgottens have zero military upkeep for their units when they are pillaging an improvement (because they feed on it for their logistic needs, so no need upkeep).

First, why only forgottens? Second, I think you want to pillage as fast as possible, so I wouldn't even care about upkeep if I could pillage in 1 turn.

- And most important than all : pillaging is faster to do : Forgottens has +50 % pillaging speed. This feature it's to help them to pillage with smaller stack, simply because it's boring and not economiquely viable to need 4 or 6 units to pillage, especially in early game. With that, it will be possible.

Thats is an interesting thing. But. Its all about the mechanics. The mechanics of pillaging is like sieging. Buildings have fortification (30), and units have fortification damage. Lvl 1 unit has 2 damage,  lvl 2 = 3, lvl 3 = 4 and etc. So the only way to increase pillaging speed is to increase fortification damage. That means that forgottens will not only pillage faster, but siege faster too. Isn't it a little bit overpowerred?

Now I want to show you the power of this buff. Two units with lvl 4 will have 15 fortification damage summary. This two units can pillage in 2 turns. You can make 6-10 armies with two units each. So in 2 turns you can get 1200-2000 gold from pillaging with +100% gold from pillage tech. Its pretty hard to stop 10 armies from pillaging. Also you have 2 heroes with lvl 5 (9 damage). Hero + 2 units = 24 fortification damage. You can equip your hero with "fast pillage" item, that will give you + 2 damage for each. So it will be 30 fortification damage = 1 turn pillage.

Forgotten heroes also have skill that let them change army every turn. Did you imagine that? This will be at 40 turn of the game.

About economy.

- Technologies have -10 % dust cost.

Well, to be fair, I allready can get era 5 in 50 turns sometimes playing forgottens. Its already faster than playing vaulters in half games, for example. And honestly, forgottens can get sciense victory faster than vaulters. Thats NOT balanced :D

But this is another story...

Now I think they are OK with economy.

About military.

- Decrease the cost of Assassins and Predators of -15 %.

- Increase the cost of Myst of 15 %.

Players use mysts because they are much stronger and mobile than the othrers.

We need the buff of stats.

If mysts will cost a 15% more, well, I dont care, I will use mysts :)

I will post my thought about forgottens military later though.