The Scout is still available at start: it isn't really a spell, so we haven't changed it. Warlord's version of a summoning spell is Raise militia - this one has to be researched.
So I've finally got around to posting this game. There isn't going to be a huge report about it because there is not much to talk about. Melciar surrendered in about 15 days after losing a settler building a city to my scouts, losing a leader in a bad combat against... brigands, I think?.. and things generally not working out for him. I, on the other contrary, had a very lucky and rich start and basically had everything going on for me, so the possible continuation of this game would not have been kind to Melciar =)
What does deserve a mentioning though is the fact that is was one of the first games played with the PBEM++ mod, and as fast as this game was, it still allowed to see some of the changes in action. Probably the most impactful one is the reorganizing of starting spells. Not having a scouting summon pre-researched on start not only provides more equality to the starting condition (since there can't be a situation when one player has a summon and another one doesn't), but also slows things down a bit. The scouting delay itself makes it a bit harder to plan the rush early on, plus the presence of one more skill in the class unit research chain means the access to the rushing units (martyrs, bards, phantasm warriors, etc.) is delayed as well. This slight slowdown wasn't the primary reason behind this change, but I have to say I find it turned out better than we thought it would =) Not nearly as impactful, but having a guaranteed damaging combat spell is nice too.
Another change that's not immediately obvious, but is still noticeable after a while, is the heroes leveling up slower than the leader. In practice (more specifically, in my practice: I don't know for sure how other players are leveling them up) most of their XP comes from the repeated use of the ranged attacks, and this exact XP source got cut by 33%. Personally, I find that the resulting pace feels right, or at least definitely better than it felt before =) You can probably still luck out to get a very nice hero, disregard your class and go mind controlling, but it's gonna take you longer to get to the point when it pays off. Which is definitely a good thing.
I might be a bit biased, but I think the mod is working out quite nicely so far =)
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HellBrick
Written by HellBrick
Written by Hiliadan
Written by HellBrick
What does deserve a mentioning though is the fact that is was one of the first games played with the PBEM++ mod, and as fast as this game was, it still allowed to see some of the changes in action. Probably the most impactful one is the reorganizing of starting spells. Not having a scouting summon pre-researched on start not only provides more equality to the starting condition (since there can't be a situation when one player has a summon and another one doesn't), but also slows things down a bit. The scouting delay itself makes it a bit harder to plan the rush early on, plus the presence of one more skill in the class unit research chain means the access to the rushing units (martyrs, bards, phantasm warriors, etc.) is delayed as well. This slight slowdown wasn't the primary reason behind this change, but I have to say I find it turned out better than we thought it would =) Not nearly as impactful, but having a guaranteed damaging combat spell is nice too.
Another change that's not immediately obvious, but is still noticeable after a while, is the heroes leveling up slower than the leader. In practice (more specifically, in my practice: I don't know for sure how other players are leveling them up) most of their XP comes from the repeated use of the ranged attacks, and this exact XP source got cut by 33%. Personally, I find that the resulting pace feels right, or at least definitely better than it felt before =) You can probably still luck out to get a very nice hero, disregard your class and go mind controlling, but it's gonna take you longer to get to the point when it pays off. Which is definitely a good thing.
I might be a bit biased, but I think the mod is working out quite nicely so far =)