Thank you for the excellent mod! Questions/feedback

[toaster]

Thank you so much for making this. I had played the game years ago until I was so familiar with it that it was a bore to play. Without your mod, I wouldn't have considered picking it up. How can I contribute to your work?

I'd like to provide some feedback in the hopes that you might advise on how to play another, more challenging campaign. I just played the mod on the original campaign, beating it on turn 200 (actually could have won on turn 40, but I wanted to see if the AI would put up a fight if I stalled). In my experience, compared to the base game I noticed some improvements and some shortcomings. I very well could be misattributing these to the mod, so please correct me in that case.

Let me first mention how I played. My faction was a life thief. I started with 3 earth spearmen and 2 life archers. I basically used a spear wall to keep the enemy at bay with archers dealing the main damage. I was able to take the religious center with that army once they were level 2-3. From there I just leveled up and built up my region until I could get the legendary creature and the pegasi. From there, I got 8 pregasi, 1 pheonix, and 3 champions to romp all around the map to pillage every high level NPC settlement including the Lich Crypt, Fire Dragon's Lair, Troll bridge, etc. Taking out all the NPC locations was my great stall, hoping the AI would build up, but they never really did and actually fragmented/dissipated their strength. 

pros
- the cap on human faction units. 
- AI consolidates and builds up key territories. I recall playing the base game the typical AI faction would never upgrade their capital and certainly would increase experience at their buildings, like the barracks, but playing this mod I think every capital i saw was upgraded thrice and in many cases buildings had experience buildup. 
- factions actually liberated their religious centers fairly quickly, turn 10-20. In the base game most factions would never liberate, which was annoying/frustrating.  
- factions would build more units than what I recall
- some factions seemed to have their religious center liberated from the start, which i think is a good thing. Is that a change?

cons
- AI would decentralize their armies to a horrible extent. 6 separate armies with a single unit in each.
- AI never built higher tear units. Never saw a legendary creature on through turn 200
- AI faction leader would run around without any troops. I saw one die that way and the marauder stack created once the faction was eliminated was actually fairly formidable. 
- No real danger
- Water immediately came and grabbed my capital on turn 5. I liked to see the aggressiveness on one hand, but on the other they are supposedly like Life and it wasn't really a formidable army I just didn't have anything in the capital. 

Suggestions
- I'd really like to see some kind of guaranteed, high level, full stack army that the AI gets. I remember Balkoth always being really tough but in my last play he was just wondering around without any companions.
- Granting the AI experience floors on created units at certain turn intervals might be a good way to beef up the AI late game.  

What I could do to give it a bit more fun and a increase the challenge? 

[Boaster]

Configuring the AI is no simple task. It is complex, but I tried to make the AI a little more aggressive in combat and force some simpler fights to be a touch more complex. One thing I was able to do was to get the AI to weight the use of certain spells and use accordingly. This was mostly already in the game, but I created complex equations on weighing of spells for combat replacing older ones. Also, gave the AI the ability to use stat boosting potions in the early goings of combat, spaced out in time so it wouldn't try to use multiple potions simultaneously resulting in neither stat potion doing any good.

The AI overland still functions a lot like the original game, but the auto-calculations of combat being enhanced allows for the AI to better survive it's combats, along with some auto-calc safe guards forcing the AI leaders to retreat from combat in some instances. Depending on difficulty and depending on if it's an AI leader vs AI leader battle, an AI leader has a chance to flee or will succumb to the reaper's embrace. This helps to eliminate pre-mature AI leader deaths, prolonging their presence in the game.

AI wills till be dumb. This was a game from 1998 after all, but it was better than absolutely no AI.

The AI gets a guaranteed high level full stack of starting armies when playing on Hard Mode. I believe the Leader's starting level is 5/10/15 according to easy/medium/hard difficulties. AI starting army level is also proportional.

Since a lot of your CONS speak to AI, that's a complicated issue that I've never been able, by either time or effort, to greatly improve.

One thing I have been able to tweak is some Marauder armies being able to join forces if they happen to meet in the same place/building/sprite. Also, Marauders will weigh their ability to defeat an army, and if they are calculated as being able to defeat an army (such as scouts or other small armies), they're more likely to attack. Also, Marauders will not completely avoid more powerful armies. Marauders will also attempt to capture buildings that are occupied.

I am probably the most equipped person to overhaul the AI, but I simply cannot invest the time because of working two jobs, and over 60 hours a week between the two.

[lemminkainen]

Don't worry for that Boaster, I think all LOMSE players now are at least in their 30's, so we totally understand that it's hard to invest time in a game, too. Haha maybe when we'll retire we'll have a lot of time for games again.

Your feedbacks are good, Toaster. If I can reassure you however, AI does train legendary creatures from time to time, I've seen those in most long games in hard mode. Make sure you play in hard mode if you want full challenge. You can also forgo totally the "last save" option, which I do every game and it's a lot more fun.