Being a fan of this type of fantasy 4X game, I've been very interested in this title ever since it was announced. You guys have done a fantastic job covering this game and I can't wait to play it in a few hours or so. Thanks guys!
Another tip that took me forever to figure out is that when playing the mages that's not death, always customize the mage and assign both the primary and secondary to the same school of magic to be able to produce your own T2-T3 units and have access to really strong spells. If you split your spellbook's primary/ secondary then you won't have access to the third page of the school's spellbook that contains the strong spells like "Summon Medusa" (double enchantment), "Summon Guardian" (double radiant), or rooms like "Beast Pens" (double nature)
You can still get the third page of the school spellbooks, and even a fourth page, in many different ways. The "easiest" way is via Sharper Ruins, but some quests will also give you more pages, beyond just the "Lost spellpages" quests. That being said that is very late game, so doubling up is a decent way to get though the early game. Mentalism or Nature are really good for this, with Earthmaster good for late game.
Yes and no, sometimes depending on playstyle and build you going for, its sometimes good idea to split your masteries, like you usually don't want to grab 2 Death masteries, since you probably gonna be using Necromancy, and that is pretty damn mana-intensive vocation, so grabbing Earth mastery for heal and earth lore, Enchant for missile resistance or you could go for weird anti-Hokan rush build with Death + Guardian to give all of your Death and Physical resistant undead units a permament white damage and bonus vs undead to clap his skinny backside
I grabbed the Goblin Shaman as soon as he appeared almost right away from the start of my game location. Really enjoying the writing in the game along with the situations which pop up exploring the map where killing everything in sight is not necessary such as when i encountered some brigands whose great written description of their current lot in life allowed me to decide to show them kindness and charity instead of taking their lives where i was rewarded with a grateful thank you by one of them which felt pretty cool and noble. Yea am avoiding pissing off The Circle Of Mages. They look like they could extinguish my existence with just a blink of an eye. Thanks for these gaming tips of magely excellence as well as to Mr. Jesse and Happy Gaming! which here in New York is a smart thing to do as we are dealing with a sub zero artic blast at the moment. Cheers! ☕
Tip 11: Get a stack of wisps if you have extra mana and are otherwise struggling to expand. Those suckers are tough and you’ll need them for other uses anyway.
Good idea to run one normal unit with the wisp stack if you can. All the xp from the fight will go to the normal unit, as wisps do not use xp or level up
Don’t they die constantly? I currently struggle to keep my normal stacks alive. Cant imagine a stack of wisps would fair better. I also use wisps to scout but usually only one.
@@CaitSith87 No because they have a 50% damage resistance and they are equally good at range vs melee. Their hardest opponents in the early game are ethereal and other wisps. Finally, they are cheap, only cost one mana to maintain
@@CaitSith87 Auto resolve will get them shredded but with their resistances and white damage they are strong against almost everything except stuff with white resist, which isn't a lot of stuff. They are going to get the shit nerfed out of them though.
Not to mention, as a necromancer, you can buy cheaper tier 1 units, then zombify them at the cost of 9 mana per unit, to create a stack of zombies with 0 upkeep, and in my experience it seems the zombies will keep learned abilities as well. Like when I turned a human worker into a zombie, and it still kept Harvest and research magnet
I find it quite slow and grindy in the early game, it takes forever to get the ball rolling, the goblins are so bad... More than once a couple of arsonists fight me and kill one unit in one turn with the throwing torches. You lose too many units and progress very slowly. After hitting my head against a wall a few times, I have found a decently option. Don't recruit goblins if possible. Near your starting location you will have arsonist spawn points, if you clear one and capture the location with a lodge, you can train arsonists, which are an amazing tier 1 unit. I've also read someone talk about the wisps and their 50% resistance, very good to mix the upkeep between money and mana. Focus your efforts in making friends with the city you find to your right, once you max relations you can build the human barracks, which not only will give you 5 free upkeep, but also when you finish the right part of the tower page, you unlock room extensions, and the human barracks has one that allows you to train halberdiers, an extremely strong tier 2 unit, very worth its cost. I gotta say that the Artificer seems like the better choice, his basic rune (3 orange) gives a unit +6 damage against burning, which the arsonists can proc, and the 3 green gives +10 hp. He also has lots of buff spells that can make your life easier, like giving blessing or changing damage type to white or elemental, in that regard I'd advise against customizing him, that secondary guardian page is so useful for him and you get extra earth master pages easily anyway. You can get glyphs as anybody but only he crafts them. Seen as you can attack with more than one stack at a time ( which I can't understand why ) horde factions like the undead seem much less interesting. I don't feel very interested in the alchemist, but I've tried a little bit the necromancer, he seems very heavily focused around mana as primary source of upkeep. In general I like it, a lot. But I'd like to be able to choose a race for the starting units and recruitment, to be able to use more than one stack in battle, the narrator from spellforce 3 reading the quests and speaking of quests, a journal, so I can see what I had done previously. I can't believe a quest heavy game doesn't have a journal.
Question for Jesse (or the team): Does save scumming undermine enjoyment in this game? It seems like it might, in this particular game. It seems like the follower mechanic, the unit upkeep mechanic, and the unit training and recruiting mechanics are all very prominent in the game. And that losing units regularly was anticipated by the developer. It also seems like the anxiety over possibly losing a high level unit in any battler you enter is an exciting risk that save scumming would completely neuter. Seeing a high level unit barely survive must be exhilarating, just as losing one would be devastating. But only if you're not save scumming. If you are, then I imagine you kind of rob yourself of experiencing that elation/devastation, and the excitement that comes during battle of being on the brink of either.
My questions is this. After 300 hours what is your opinion on replay ability? I like the story campaign so far but what happens when that is over. I’m not one to just play the same story with a different wizard. Is there word on a sandbox mode?
No word on a sandbox mode. There's some decent replayability in changing your starting position and mage types. Plus, there are many, many quests you won't see in your first play through. We're hoping to see more along those lines in the future.
I saw some comparisons to Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and other games in this series of course. What do you think about it? To what games would you compare Spellforce: COnquest of Eco?
Probably, most of all, Sorcerer King. Sure, it takes inspiration from a lot of other games, but most closely resembles a much better implementation of the ideas that Sorcerer King was trying to implement.
I know that the map is fixed but stuff that appears on the map is at least partially procedural. Assuming the same start location and the same character, how much really changes from play to play? I played for a bit last night, and then started a new run with the same parameters to see how much would be different, and it seemed about 85-90% the same. The tower starts in the exact same location, and most of the map locations in the immediate vicinity are the same. Some are in slightly different positions, and a couple are completely different, but I'm not seeing much indication that the procedural elements add any real replay value. That said, this is based on playing just a handful of turns, and seeing what is in the general vicinity of the tower. Is there more variation over the course of a playthrough, or is it basically more of the same (~85-90% the same as any other playthrough with the same character and start location)?
I'm cursed lol. I love necromancers and evil characters in games that let me do that. Since so many force you to be the goody two shoes. So if there's a game where I can play a Necromancer, I will jump at the chance to do so, to the extent that playing _anything_ else is excluded and even capable to completely ruining the experience for me. So you gotta know, I turned on this game and played necromancer first 😂 and chose the golden fields to play on, only to realize it didn't mesh well with the necromancer lol
Being a fan of this type of fantasy 4X game, I've been very interested in this title ever since it was announced. You guys have done a fantastic job covering this game and I can't wait to play it in a few hours or so. Thanks guys!
Another tip that took me forever to figure out is that when playing the mages that's not death, always customize the mage and assign both the primary and secondary to the same school of magic to be able to produce your own T2-T3 units and have access to really strong spells.
If you split your spellbook's primary/ secondary then you won't have access to the third page of the school's spellbook that contains the strong spells like "Summon Medusa" (double enchantment), "Summon Guardian" (double radiant), or rooms like "Beast Pens" (double nature)
You can still get the third page of the school spellbooks, and even a fourth page, in many different ways. The "easiest" way is via Sharper Ruins, but some quests will also give you more pages, beyond just the "Lost spellpages" quests. That being said that is very late game, so doubling up is a decent way to get though the early game. Mentalism or Nature are really good for this, with Earthmaster good for late game.
Yes and no, sometimes depending on playstyle and build you going for, its sometimes good idea to split your masteries, like you usually don't want to grab 2 Death masteries, since you probably gonna be using Necromancy, and that is pretty damn mana-intensive vocation, so grabbing Earth mastery for heal and earth lore, Enchant for missile resistance or you could go for weird anti-Hokan rush build with Death + Guardian to give all of your Death and Physical resistant undead units a permament white damage and bonus vs undead to clap his skinny backside
I grabbed the Goblin Shaman as soon as he appeared almost right away from the start of my game location. Really enjoying the writing in the game along with the situations which pop up exploring the map where killing everything in sight is not necessary such as when i encountered some brigands whose great written description of their current lot in life allowed me to decide to show them kindness and charity instead of taking their lives where i was rewarded with a grateful thank you by one of them which felt pretty cool and noble.
Yea am avoiding pissing off The Circle Of Mages. They look like they could extinguish my existence with just a blink of an eye.
Thanks for these gaming tips of magely excellence as well as to Mr. Jesse and Happy Gaming! which here in New York is a smart thing to do as we are dealing with a sub zero artic blast at the moment.
Cheers! ☕
Tip 11: Get a stack of wisps if you have extra mana and are otherwise struggling to expand. Those suckers are tough and you’ll need them for other uses anyway.
Good idea to run one normal unit with the wisp stack if you can. All the xp from the fight will go to the normal unit, as wisps do not use xp or level up
Don’t they die constantly? I currently struggle to keep my normal stacks alive. Cant imagine a stack of wisps would fair better.
I also use wisps to scout but usually only one.
@@CaitSith87 No because they have a 50% damage resistance and they are equally good at range vs melee. Their hardest opponents in the early game are ethereal and other wisps. Finally, they are cheap, only cost one mana to maintain
@@joramhh1637 my level 15 level apprentices and his stack if i controll them barely win outside of the tutorial area hut some wisps do. Really?
@@CaitSith87 Auto resolve will get them shredded but with their resistances and white damage they are strong against almost everything except stuff with white resist, which isn't a lot of stuff. They are going to get the shit nerfed out of them though.
Amazing video, thank you so much for this! 300 hours pre-release is huge praise for a €30/$30 game! 💛
Addition to #2 about Followers. Human Militia troops have the Follower trait, which makes them great early units until you can afford tier 2 units.
Not to mention, as a necromancer, you can buy cheaper tier 1 units, then zombify them at the cost of 9 mana per unit, to create a stack of zombies with 0 upkeep, and in my experience it seems the zombies will keep learned abilities as well. Like when I turned a human worker into a zombie, and it still kept Harvest and research magnet
I find it quite slow and grindy in the early game, it takes forever to get the ball rolling, the goblins are so bad... More than once a couple of arsonists fight me and kill one unit in one turn with the throwing torches. You lose too many units and progress very slowly.
After hitting my head against a wall a few times, I have found a decently option. Don't recruit goblins if possible. Near your starting location you will have arsonist spawn points, if you clear one and capture the location with a lodge, you can train arsonists, which are an amazing tier 1 unit. I've also read someone talk about the wisps and their 50% resistance, very good to mix the upkeep between money and mana. Focus your efforts in making friends with the city you find to your right, once you max relations you can build the human barracks, which not only will give you 5 free upkeep, but also when you finish the right part of the tower page, you unlock room extensions, and the human barracks has one that allows you to train halberdiers, an extremely strong tier 2 unit, very worth its cost.
I gotta say that the Artificer seems like the better choice, his basic rune (3 orange) gives a unit +6 damage against burning, which the arsonists can proc, and the 3 green gives +10 hp. He also has lots of buff spells that can make your life easier, like giving blessing or changing damage type to white or elemental, in that regard I'd advise against customizing him, that secondary guardian page is so useful for him and you get extra earth master pages easily anyway. You can get glyphs as anybody but only he crafts them. Seen as you can attack with more than one stack at a time ( which I can't understand why ) horde factions like the undead seem much less interesting.
I don't feel very interested in the alchemist, but I've tried a little bit the necromancer, he seems very heavily focused around mana as primary source of upkeep.
In general I like it, a lot. But I'd like to be able to choose a race for the starting units and recruitment, to be able to use more than one stack in battle, the narrator from spellforce 3 reading the quests and speaking of quests, a journal, so I can see what I had done previously. I can't believe a quest heavy game doesn't have a journal.
underrated comment!
Question for Jesse (or the team): Does save scumming undermine enjoyment in this game? It seems like it might, in this particular game. It seems like the follower mechanic, the unit upkeep mechanic, and the unit training and recruiting mechanics are all very prominent in the game. And that losing units regularly was anticipated by the developer. It also seems like the anxiety over possibly losing a high level unit in any battler you enter is an exciting risk that save scumming would completely neuter. Seeing a high level unit barely survive must be exhilarating, just as losing one would be devastating. But only if you're not save scumming. If you are, then I imagine you kind of rob yourself of experiencing that elation/devastation, and the excitement that comes during battle of being on the brink of either.
We imagine there will be an ironman mode coming, too, just to avoid this concern...
My questions is this. After 300 hours what is your opinion on replay ability? I like the story campaign so far but what happens when that is over. I’m not one to just play the same story with a different wizard. Is there word on a sandbox mode?
No word on a sandbox mode. There's some decent replayability in changing your starting position and mage types. Plus, there are many, many quests you won't see in your first play through.
We're hoping to see more along those lines in the future.
I saw some comparisons to Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and other games in this series of course. What do you think about it? To what games would you compare Spellforce: COnquest of Eco?
Probably, most of all, Sorcerer King. Sure, it takes inspiration from a lot of other games, but most closely resembles a much better implementation of the ideas that Sorcerer King was trying to implement.
Just started playing if an allfire node is contested how do I deal with that so I can claim it?
You either remove the units of the hex or you remove the building that's providing the zone of control
I know that the map is fixed but stuff that appears on the map is at least partially procedural. Assuming the same start location and the same character, how much really changes from play to play? I played for a bit last night, and then started a new run with the same parameters to see how much would be different, and it seemed about 85-90% the same. The tower starts in the exact same location, and most of the map locations in the immediate vicinity are the same. Some are in slightly different positions, and a couple are completely different, but I'm not seeing much indication that the procedural elements add any real replay value.
That said, this is based on playing just a handful of turns, and seeing what is in the general vicinity of the tower. Is there more variation over the course of a playthrough, or is it basically more of the same (~85-90% the same as any other playthrough with the same character and start location)?
All the locations of quests and stuff and procedural. Plus, there are SO MANY quests that you're not going to get them all in one play through.
Thanks for this 🎉
Just started playing.. is it possible to get bigger than 5 army stack? And why can 2 army's not attack at once?
Yes, you can max it out at 10 stack. It increases with your Wizard's "Mastery Level".
How can Ores be upgraded? It says I have no recepies for that :S
You'll find them later!
I'm cursed lol.
I love necromancers and evil characters in games that let me do that. Since so many force you to be the goody two shoes. So if there's a game where I can play a Necromancer, I will jump at the chance to do so, to the extent that playing _anything_ else is excluded and even capable to completely ruining the experience for me.
So you gotta know, I turned on this game and played necromancer first 😂 and chose the golden fields to play on, only to realize it didn't mesh well with the necromancer lol
I have this and master of magic.
I tried so many times to play this one. It never clicked with me, like master of magic has.
a 4X channel, very cool!
MOOOSSSTLY 4X, but we dabble elsewhere occasionally ;)
No voice-over and mediocre sound design!
The music is beautiful. But the sound effects? Not so much...
I would like the narrator from spellforce 3 to make a comeback and read the texts, that would've been epic