Q: Unit & building upgrades

[unmerged(13632)]

Greetings -- Just bought the game off of Steam after trying the Demo for about an hour. Excellent game so far, and I look forward to improvements & multiplayer in the future. I'm only about 75 turns into my first full game at this point.

I had a couple of questions though -- and as usual in my gameplay over the years, it's probably something obvious I'm just missing:

1) Is there a way to upgrade buildings? If so I haven't found it.

2) Are units allowed to enter water (becoming transports) even without a Harbor built in one of my cities? I didn't try until after I built one...and then I found out many turns later that units don't even need to embark from them.

3) I had a nice little group of about 6 or 7 well leveled up units moving on an enemy capital and 3 or 4 of them were OBLITERATED by a single AoE spell (some fire variety) in one shot on about turn 70. Was I supposed to basically have had each of them spell buffed to counter this by this point in the game?

4) Speaking of buffs, should I be limiting my troop construction to only those I can buff for protection against incidents similar to #3 above?

5) Speaking of troop construction, if I build a perk-giving building, do I need to cycle my older units back to that city to give them the perk? If so, is there an obvious choice to "Upgrade Unit" that I haven't seen yet?

6) If I build a perk-giving building like that "Pumpkin Patch thing" (I forget the name), does it give those upgrades to new units produced in other cities as well? Can I cycle my older units through for the buffs?

Ok those are my current questions, I appreciate any answers.

Cheers gents!

 

[LTK]

Oh, this is easy. Short answers: 1) No 2) No 3) If possible 4) No 5) Not sure what you mean 6) No.

Long answers: Buildings do not have upgrades, only prerequisites. Building one harbor anywhere in the world allows your troops to board a cog anywhere in the water. To prevent your units from being killed by a capital's AoE spell, either spread them out, at least one hex between each unit, or get Elemental Resistance or one of the god spells. It's good to have a wide variety of troops to respond to a wide variety of threats. If you don't plan on recruiting a specific type of unit, don't build the building they require to save resources. Building any perk-giving building allows you to buy that perk for every eligible unit you own, now or in the future. As far as I know, only the units you recruit in the same city as the perk-giving building will already have the perk once they have been recruited.

 

[unmerged(15561)]

1) Buildings that are constructed are not upgraded. They lead to new buildings with other powers. So its not like Majesty (2).
2) One harbor needs to be built in any city to allow units to convert to ships when moving over water. Cant remember if that city is then captured or destroy whether you need to build another harbor though. If it allows you to continue to convert land units into ships then its a bug.
3) Spread them out when advancing? Depending on the spell being try to look at what spells are in rival Great Mages queues and dispel them with your own magic.
4) Thats a good idea, but I personally like to have many units on the go and alternate if I take casualties. Units receive XP every turn so will rise up and if you are playing a money generating strategy you can buy a good number of upgrades for those units in a hurry OR cast buffs on them if you are mana heavy.
5) IIRC units prior to buildings providing upgrade perks must be upgraded separately by purchasing available perks by class. Look for the GOLD ARROW pointing upwards to do so. Any units built in the city with the upgrade automatically get this perk once the building is built but are also recruited after the building was built.

Hope that helps.... Hardcore players can correct me where Im wrong.

 

[unmerged(13632)]

Thanks much for the answers. I also got a bit of a "hint" on gameplay by checking a couple of the guides on the Wiki concerning Humans & Building types. I was surprised to see that the Rogue line leads to the tax collection though

Another quick question:

1) Should I try to go with one or 2 of the various spell lines on the "Wheel"? or spread them out with whatever seems like a good pick at the moment? It would be nice to have an in game spell tree to see just what direction seems to make sense, but if there is one, I couldn't find it.

 

[unmerged(500371)]

3. I bet that was the Lich King with firestorm sell. he did the same to me

 

[unmerged(493174)]

I think the wheel is a remnant of the game that wasn't finished, since all five options seem to be chosen randomly. Just consider it a pretty graphic.

 

[Obadiah333]

I believe the spell wheel research thing is random. There was an attempt to map it somehow, but I can't seem to find the link now. There might be a rhyme or reason to it, but as of yet, no one seems to know how it works - hence it is random. A great many players seem to have the same wish: make the spell research a tree and get rid of the randomness.

 

[unmerged(497726)]

A first, the random spell research bothered me. But now, after playing many, many games, I've found that randomness to be pretty welcome. I never know what support magic I'll have available so each game plays that much more uniquely. For instance, my last game, I got Ice Trap right near the beginning, which made it possible to go after even Greater Fire Elementals early and start building Temple Units as soon as I had the resources to support them. This most recent game, I'm close to turn 100 and still haven't seen it pop up. That means I've ignored Temples and pleasing gods completely, instead concentrating only on strengthening normal units. I should have enough of them powered up now to face a GFE and not get completely smeared.

Randomness is working for me. It's just one more variable that makes the game continually replayable.

 

[unmerged(502032)]

But it can cost you the game, if you don't come to global dispel in 150 turns or so (usually rivals cast unity spell around turn 150). That's why developers have to allow the player to turn off victory by unity spell.

 

[unmerged(493757)]

I guess you mean Counter spell, global dispell can't cancel unity.

You can focus most of your cities on research to research as many spells as you can so you can have counter spell to counter unity. But if you play normally even in impossible difficulty, you always have counter spell before any AI begin to cast unity.

In the current state of the game, 50% of the spell is not frequently used (not as useful as the rest), so the random spell research system is good to compensate this. Imagine if the game use tree research system, those less useful spells will never get picked, this means that each game will be a boring game.

 

[unmerged(489903)]

So Cassilda do you know what turn you got the resource to build a temple unit? Because unless you got a really generous loot that probably come much more later.

Most games i try to get close to 100 research just to help with all the random spell selection, one time i got elemental resist and other low level spells near the end with Agile Mind up

One thing i notice is if you get lucky and got a high level spell from loot the chances to research a high level spell are high.