TBS Fantasy General II by Slitherine Games

[SigitheBack]

I had only GOOD things to say about the game when it started. Until 'Trollwood'.
And now that I know that they used level scaling, I removed the game.

The screen below is on Hard (not Legendary...)
This is the enemy army that triggers at the end of the map 'Into The Trollwoods'.
My regular army capacity here is 13, with me being smart and picking the hero skill that increases it by 2 to 15.....
3 heroes require 6 points capacity and the rest of units are 1 each. So 12 units. And heroes are weaker than normal units if compared by their cap and you must carry 3 heroes here.
THE ENEMY HAS 16 UNITS ALL TRIGGERING AT ONCE! ALL OF THEM ARE LEVEL 2 AND THEIR HERO GIVES THEM 10 PERCENT DMG BONUS!

Absolutely no one tested this horrible level scaling.
And the only way to beat this without getting your army annihilated and going completely broke is by occupying a mana well and skipping 50 turns until you can summon enough fodder.
Pray to God that you picked Summoning on your Shaman hero... (by the way, Summoning is a completely broken skill if there is a mana well, since there is no turn limit or summon limit...)

Basically, dont play the game on Hard or increase army cap or level up your units...

 

[fantadomat]

(by the way, Summoning is a completely broken skill if there is a mana well, since there is no turn limit or summon limit.

Just wait till you fight the necromancer in the next level . They do have a shit ton of health and constantly spam undeads while running,it took me 10 turns to hunt him down and kill him with my whole army. Also it is amusing how they expect you to finish it in less than 26 turns,there is possible way to kill all that shit while rushing. I managed to do it by going all on the right side and focus killing the units. I see that you haven't found how op the mounted scouts are,melee fighters are useless garbage from my experience .

 

[Trash Player]

Level scaling will be gone next patch but size scaling is going to stay albeit toned down.
The optimal strat would be powerleveling heroes + few cores, grab all the off path goodies and take objectives safe and slow, ignoring the soft clock because gold isn't a concern.

 

[fantadomat]

Level scaling will be gone next patch but size scaling is going to stay albeit toned down.
The optimal strat would be powerleveling heroes + few cores, grab all the off path goodies and take objectives safe and slow, ignoring the soft clock because gold isn't a concern.

Ahhh i have no idea if it is only gold or gold and other resources,i never finished a level that had above zero in the timer. Also i don't know if you could focus levelling heroes,it seems like all the units get the experience or something weird like that. Also Heroes are weaker than normal units.

 

[Anomander]

Well I just finished Veilwood (9th or 10th mission) - that one with Witches and I didn't have any problem so far. All the missions completed with at least 5 turns left. I think I lost 2 or 3 units so far. Sometimes it's worth to buy mercernaries just as cannon fodder (they doesn't need supply).
I can see you don't have Stag Lancers (Riders). They're great (no enemy retaliation, good damage). The best are upgraded Trolls (on the right side, not Hurlers). Massive damage - I mean they can single handedly kill many units with full health. + Regenration. Go for them as fast as you can.
Of course resting is important. You have to Raid settlements and other fields.
If enemy loses half or so health he doesn't attack - AI withdraws it to rest. So you don't always want to kill units. Of course when they start resting you have to attack.
Most missions you can complete with frontal assault (probably not good idea) or by exploring map and passing enemies (they don't move until you came to their search radius).

I can say it's great. If you liked Panzer General (Corps etc) you will like this (if you can stomach fantasy). It has more rpg elements than Panzer (quests, map exploration) but it's similar.

 

[zapotec]

Is it harder than the first fantasy general? The first one took me around 6 months and three restarts!

 

[SigitheBack]

Reading the developer respond on Steam it make it seem like he is a child and never played a strategy game or any game.
"How did you get all the mana for infinite summons?"
...
"I just need to understand what the issue is - in tis case I am not even sure we would want to take that away, as you hav kind of "earned" the mana required for such a strategy."
Yes, I earned pressing Backspace!

Trying to save the game for me, there is a tree on the Heartspire map that gives a unit 'Frenzy' ability on attack for 2 turns. But you cant keep a normal unit fighting for long, you need to rest and then Frenzy goes away.
But heroes have good HP pools (when you pick the right skills, HP, path of the warrior, and not be dumb like me and pick army size...) and can fight for a long time.
Like so, Frenzy 10 times, plus Armor from Troll and Armor from Wizard for 12 armor and 90% physical damage resist!

But there is more! The Bearman hero has a Frenzy AOE call that renews Frenzy as well. So, when your Warrior hero is hurt, you rest him for 1 turn without attack and instead use the Frenzy call to not let it expire. I think now you can stack Frenzy unlimited amount of times, or as long as you have enemies to fight...

 

[SigitheBack]

Is it harder than the first fantasy general? The first one took me around 6 months and three restarts!

It is the same if you dont summon an army for yourself. It is a bit harder if you play fair.

 

[SigitheBack]

Just wait till you fight the necromancer in the next level . They do have a shit ton of health and constantly spam undeads while running,it took me 10 turns to hunt him down and kill him with my whole army. Also it is amusing how they expect you to finish it in less than 26 turns,there is possible way to kill all that shit while rushing. I managed to do it by going all on the right side and focus killing the units. I see that you haven't found how op the mounted scouts are,melee fighters are useless garbage from my experience .

Necromance is easy with barbarians. I flanked him around that little mountain from the left and kill in 2 or 3 attacks but yes, he spam a bunch of skelletons. The scouts are expensive though and I wanted a heavy infantry army, it didnt work out.

 

[fantadomat]

heavy infantry

Are garbage and useless,just play around with the mounted scouts,they could last a lot longer without rest if you have a nice meat shield of heroes. They do retreat after attack to their original position and rarely get counter-attacked during attack,also they have a lot of movement points.

 

[Alpharius]

I had only GOOD things to say about the game when it started. Until 'Trollwood'.
And now that I know that they used level scaling, I removed the game.

The screen below is on Hard (not Legendary...)
This is the enemy army that triggers at the end of the map 'Into The Trollwoods'.
My regular army capacity here is 13, with me being smart and picking the hero skill that increases it by 2 to 15.....
3 heroes require 6 points capacity and the rest of units are 1 each. So 12 units. And heroes are weaker than normal units if compared by their cap and you must carry 3 heroes here.
THE ENEMY HAS 16 UNITS ALL TRIGGERING AT ONCE! ALL OF THEM ARE LEVEL 2 AND THEIR HERO GIVES THEM 10 PERCENT DMG BONUS!

Absolutely no one tested this horrible level scaling.
And the only way to beat this without getting your army annihilated and going completely broke is by occupying a mana well and skipping 50 turns until you can summon enough fodder.
Pray to God that you picked Summoning on your Shaman hero... (by the way, Summoning is a completely broken skill if there is a mana well, since there is no turn limit or summon limit...)

Basically, dont play the game on Hard or increase army cap or level up your units...

Idk, maybe you just haven't yet gotten gud enough my dude?
By applying some tactical savescumming i managed to win this mission without any summons (cause i didn't cap the mana pool) on Legendary, only lost the temporary trolls. Didin't pick that bonus army size perk too. Ofc I had to spend most of the money on reinforcements after the mission but its not like i really need it right now anyway, having spent all armor and weapons.
Screen:

Spoiler

 

[Fishy]

Disappointing. I'll wait for a heavy discount to check it out at some point I guess. The wait for a proper fantasy hex wargame continues.

 

[Sloul]

Warbanners 2.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[SigitheBack]

Idk, maybe you just haven't yet gotten gud enough my dude?
By applying some tactical savescumming i managed to win this mission without any summons
[/spoiler]

I doubt that, optimal play on my part.
How many units were you facing, how much money did you lose?
Also, by tactical savescumming you mean reload a turn? Thats disgusting! Worse than spamming summons.

 

[SigitheBack]

Are garbage and useless,just play around with the mounted scouts,they could last a lot longer without rest if you have a nice meat shield of heroes. They do retreat after attack to their original position and rarely get counter-attacked during attack,also they have a lot of movement points.

 

[SigitheBack]

Disappointing. I'll wait for a heavy discount to check it out at some point I guess. The wait for a proper fantasy hex wargame continues.

Listen, is GOOD game! I show you. with some retarded design decisions like scaling but look heer:

1. yuge great looking map

that they ruined ingame with ugly as sin symbols

2. lots of scenarious with long campaign

3. interesting mechanic of turn timer tied to loot in ruins, so you face choices and consequences.
Do you rush to end the map quickly for money? each turn under par is 25 gold. In an early mission you can rush and finish 6 turns early, netting you 150 gold which is almost 2 new units
Or do you move slow to avoid losses and/or grind xp? (again, they ruined this mechanics because enemy level scales to yours... so idiotic.. but they say fix in next patch)
But still you can rush some of the ruins (trackers that goes invis or spiders in woods or summons that ignores even mountains but can capture mana pools and ruins etc) and then move slowly to finish mission

4. BRANCHING exclusive missions, in what do modern game do you see exclusivity nowadays? FG1 had it and now this spiritual successor has it

5. armor and weaps are rare resources used for unit upgrades, again, you have to think waht to pick

6. morale system! (though its a wonky mechanic...) It works in an AOE as well! you can start a long fight and 2 of your heroes have a -1 morale aoe scream that drops enemy morale by 1 each in 3 tile radius. On Normal, enemy bersekers have measly 4 morale, so 2 of your heroes can break whole armies. One of those heroes can even have an aura of another -1 morale.
But the same applies to you too!

7. aggressive ai, that often will mercilessly focus fire your weak units

8. weird mechanic of Morale protecting vs Magic damage, working as a % resist
(undead have low morale and weakness vs magic for example)

9. listen,

, EAGLE BEARS!

10. heroes with abilities, fg1 didnt have heroes with lots of levels

11. and now 2nd pillar of (aside from tactics) game
you will spend a bunch of time looking at this unit specific abilities, trying to decide what to get and what to synergize

12. top of the line writing

 

[SigitheBack]

The interviewer guy is so fucking aggravating dumb, good lord.
"this game is not designed for skirmish mode" - I was screaming for the dev to ask this idiot why?
or even worse
"fg1 has not held up to today standards" - omg you dumb idiot, what standards, handholding? everyone is a winner?

 

[fantadomat]

And yet SigitheBack ,melee units are garbage and get melted in a turn.

 

[Fishy]

I'll be honest, Eagle Bears would almost tempt me to buy.

Good thing for my wallet that the scaling however is a complete and absolute deal breaker to me. Unless they completely remove it, I'm not touching that before a deep sale. If I go out of my way to save experienced up units and increase my army, accepting some extra pain now, I expect it to help later and make things smoother, not to be magically compensated for. Have point-based-armies for skirmishes by all means, but scaling scenarios? What the actual...

Were these people living in caves when Oblivion came out and showed to the world what an absolute disaster auto-scaling could be?

 

[zapotec]

Hmm but it's like the spawning of super experienced units in the first fantay general?

 

[Trash Player]

Hmm but it's like the spawning of super experienced units in the first fantay general?

You mean the one happens due to narrow research?
It is not unlikely 5* general series and other derivatives had employed scaling to a lesser extent in the past but pre-patch this one has enemies scaled really tightly, almost equal to the best units players have.

 

[rvm1975]

Patch notes.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1025440/announcements/detail/2980743255553564052

Removing dumb autoscaling is best thing they did.

Enemy XP Progression
XP progression does no longer scale with Player Army. You can now be better (but also worse) than the AI and paying for keeping XP is more useful. (Difficulty Setting still impacts XP progression)

 

[Fishy]

Patch notes.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1025440/announcements/detail/2980743255553564052

Removing dumb autoscaling is best thing they did.

Enemy XP Progression
XP progression does no longer scale with Player Army. You can now be better (but also worse) than the AI and paying for keeping XP is more useful. (Difficulty Setting still impacts XP progression)

I get that this is linked to enemy forces scaling up with you, but I have no idea what it actually means. Even google translate couldn't get me an english translation. The enemy units gain XP at a steady rate now when they used to gain more depending on player army size? on player army experience? Difficulty setting decides the rate at which the enemy units gain XP? Is that XP they gain each turn doing nothing during scenarios? Or magical XP that they gain between scenarios? Do the number of enemy units and their cost/composition depend on the player's army?

Basically, in each scenario, what is set, what isn't, and what exactly decides the variations?

 

[rvm1975]

I get that this is linked to enemy forces scaling up with you, but I have no idea what it actually means. Even google translate couldn't get me an english translation. The enemy units gain XP at a steady rate now when they used to gain more depending on player army size? on player army experience? Difficulty setting decides the rate at which the enemy units gain XP? Is that XP they gain each turn doing nothing during scenarios? Or magical XP that they gain between scenarios? Do the number of enemy units and their cost/composition depend on the player's army?

Basically, in each scenario, what is set, what isn't, and what exactly decides the variations?

So 1st game was without autoscaling and you were greatly benefit keeping units alive, spending gold to exp etc ... i.e. on certain missions you were advancing enemies
in fg2 autoscaling kills that strategy and making thing even worse ... it is bad idea to bring high level badged units because most enemies will be autoscaled to same
atm can't check that in game but hope that they returned back to original design of game