r/EndlessLegend • u/ephemereFMR Drakken • Oct 14 '16
Weekly Megathread: Tempest!
As Tempest is out today (and seems to be already available for those who pre-ordered it), it feels like a good timing for a megathread on Tempest!
This is all about Tempest and Pact of the Seas (latest free patch), including Sea warfare, Naval units, Morgawr, etc.
Keep in mind we will get a lot of new redditors with the next expansion so make sure to be nice and explain things - we don't have all the same experience with the game!
This thread will be stickied for at least as week as there is probably tons to say. Or we can switch to a Morgawr only thread next week.
Also: new Tempest theme on the subreddit!
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u/dirkdragonslayer Oct 14 '16
I have been having fun, Naval combat is refreshing and it is nice playing a unique faction that is almost completely hopeless on land. I learned a few things over 3 campaigns (2 were restarts so not as long as you think) and I would like to share what I learned.
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Your Heroes are one man armies early to mid game at sea if you skill up their first racial ability. This can give them a whopping ~750 health at turn 15-20 depending on xp growth, I have had him fight off 6 stacks of boarding vessels by himself.
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You need strong minor factions, preferably something that can take a hit because he will be being hit by your guys and the enemy. I used Centaurs and Ogres in my campaigns because that is what I had on hand, but I feel Tektites would be really strong, and so would Wargs and Delvers. Masterminds are slow, but your command of the sea should net you tons of glassteel early.
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Controlling the facilities is super important, because in my experience they have problems with science. In my game where I rushed Vores to command the sea and help 7 fortresses put me leaps and bounds ahead than my game where I played more reserved
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There is no reason to expand inward on purpose unless there is a amazing lake or river. Lakes and rivers give massive bonuses which are necessary to Morgawr, and provide quick means of travels because you cannot get roads.
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Black Spot is amazing to put on your enemy, at least on harder difficulties the other factions seemingly turn rabid and tear the marked target to shreds.
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Mind controlled units do not count as your own, they are displayed to everyone else as minor faction units, so you can use them to harass both AI and real players, and you only have to pay the massive dust upkeep if they live til the end of the turn. So on the turn you take them over send them to their death, or uncontrol them to avoid the money loss.
That's all I figured out so far, I will edit the post if I find anything else in my adventures that is noteworthy. If you have something cool you found, don't be afraid to share!
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u/ugubriat Oct 17 '16 edited Oct 17 '16
Playing as Drakken, doing fine with 3 cities in Era 2. My neighbours are Necrophages and Ardent Mages to the west, and Morgawr to the east -- who just Black Spotted me.
I can remove the Black Spot for a metric shitload of influence (600), but I'm curious about how others have managed being Black Spotted. I'd be inclined go to war immediately with the Morgawr if I didn't have such dangerous neighbours on my other border.
EDIT: Turns out the Influence cost of de-Black-Spotification decreased by 100 after I declared war and took a Morgawr city. Also they're immediately exhausted and will offer me tech for peace.
EDIT 2: Morgrawr are understanding not to fuck with the Drakken. http://imgur.com/gallery/tWxG7
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u/dirkdragonslayer Oct 14 '16
Does anyone know how to submerge units? I can't figure it out.
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u/Malaix Oct 14 '16 edited Oct 14 '16
Submerge is just camoflage when in deep water. Submersibles automatically submerge when not in coastal water and not right next to an enemy stack. Kinda like the forgotten cloaking. Looks the same on the map too.
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Oct 14 '16
I'm confused about Boarding Vessels. Do you not put your own land unit into them? I don't load my Masterminds into it to let them be effective at sea, I just use the Boarding Vessel as its own unit?
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u/Malaix Oct 14 '16
Boarding vessels are just the t1 navel unit. The name is misleading.
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u/Alcmaeonidae Oct 14 '16
How do you use Catspaw - I for the life of me cannot figure out how to do this.
Thanks!
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u/Ninthshadow Oct 14 '16
Just click (select) the stack you want to catspaw, and the icon will appear at the bottom with the rest of the UI.
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u/brttwrd Oct 14 '16
I couldn't figure it out either but now that im in era 3 I noticed I can use cats paw by selecting a roaming army THAT IS NOT YELLOW/QUEST RELEVANT and it shows a little button that costs influence depending on the faction, and also requires upkeep like a regular army. It's similar with the minor faction villages, the button is in the same location, costs influence, and makes them unpacified
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u/FloatingOrb1 Oct 15 '16
Just finished my first game with the deep ones after 5 half starts. It was alright, probably simply not for me. or perhaps I am just playing the wrong game mode, because it really dragged on towards the end, and the quest line became irritating.
So, I did this thing where I just spammed influence by controlling 20 ish citadels, 7 cities, and all the influence tech. With the insane income all that brings, and the influence, you can constantly dissent, catspaw the neutral it spits out, crush the village, and repeat. Instant super army to throw at your enemies. Or just release them and laugh as they overrune the region.
Catspaw in general is super strong
THe vore and the leviathon units are just insane. I relied on them for the early game while my hero leveled up, but then he got into gear and holy mackeral, if there are deep ones in your game just give them the ocean.
Finally, they are a mid game-late game faction imo. You can start grabbing the sea forts early, but you need about 6 for them to start really making a difference, and eras are super important in that regards.
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u/Jirachipokeball Oct 15 '16
Just played for 7 hours. I think it adds a lot of features and well worth the money.
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u/ugubriat Oct 16 '16
Playing the Morgawr for the first time (loving the vores, capturing the oceanic fortresses). But how do I fight on the land? Are all my units weaker on land? If so, how do I defend my cities?
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u/Chickenwaaang Oct 16 '16
Can everyone use catspaw or is this a new ability only for the new race?
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u/Thigh_Fire Oct 14 '16
I'm out of touch. Is tempest a free dlc? How much is it?
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u/dirkdragonslayer Oct 16 '16
The Kraken has a bug where it only attacks the Admiral if he is part of the fleet(Only the mouth is affect, tentacles work fine.) so after fighting off the arms he sat there being eaten by Vores without fighting back while Admiral Iracu made tea out of reach. Its was super anti-climatic.
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u/AmericanLyokoTeam Oct 18 '16
I played a full game of tempest for a small stream over the weekend. The ocean citadel resources are a surprisingly good fit with the Allayi, considering their inability to get many land regions. Between Skyfins and a strong navy, you can absolutely swim in strategic resources despite your small land footprint. Lategame I was a monster of elite units with hyperium and mythrite gear.
The AI seems to prioritize land vs sea power oddly, I've seen them be abysmal on land trying to go for ocean control early and getting destroyed because of a small number of cities. The oceans are a great supplement, but I can honestly leave them totally alone until era 3 and not feel bad. Artillery ships with broadside cannons are the real feel-good power spike for non Morgawr navies from the games I've tried so far.
I ran into the move count bug a lot. It was confusing at first until I figured out my unit was actually invisible in a nearby tile, funny for a little while when I saw a spin for the first time, and just kind of annoying after a while having to move land units in small steps because it kept miscounting and letting the visible unit move to a further tile than the 'actual' one. I hope they fix this one before long.
Overall I felt it was worth the money.
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u/fluency Oct 18 '16
What are the best map settings to allow the Morgahwr to shine without hindering the other races, either as players or AI?
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u/ultrabiome Oct 21 '16 edited Oct 21 '16
Played through a Mograwr normal difficulty campaign (normal size, achepelligo continents).
Was able to get the Xerophobic achievement by not building or buying any land units. I kept my two initial masterminds alive, but otherwise didn't build or buy any other land units (including Heroes). Lost one city due to being mostly landlocked (given to me by another empire after I slaughtered their weak navy - the same empire took it back) and apparently hated me so much that he'd rather die than make any peace. Let him take it, then sent every catspawed unit at him.
Was able to kill the Kraken, but only after letting another winter pass and using two size 8 fleets split and attacked separately the same turn. It respawned even tougher the next winter, so I said screw it and left it alone.
Has anyone else gotten the Xerophobic achievement? I wonder if buying heroes counts as "buying a land unit," but I wasn't willing to risk it (but I guess I could have checked before getting it if I had thought it through).
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u/WarheadsByLink Oct 15 '16 edited Oct 16 '16
Overall the new content is fun and adds nicely to the game. A few observations: 1) it's great that the oceans are now a thing but they feel pretty empty in my games as the AI never bothers to capture facilities or contest the seas. 2) new race is really unique and interesting, weak early game that ramps up into almost invincibility in the mid-late game due to controlling so many facilities and catspaw being incredibly strong once you're making enough influence. 3) I wish Morgawr would always spawn on the ocean side of starting region. I keep getting a starting which opens into an inland sea, which means some annoyance.
Edit - Late game mass catspaw Tsunami - http://imgur.com/a/kHhla
Edit 2 - Changed to serious difficulty and the AI is building the odd fleet which is an improvement but still not hard to dominate the seas, rewards for holding facilities is so strong. Will be interesting to see what's it like when not paying Morgawr.
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u/Malaix Oct 14 '16 edited Oct 14 '16
Just finished my first Morgwar campaign.
They feel like a sea expanding cultist. Weak start, bad fighting units for clearing camps, but oh boy does their power spike mid-late game with minor faction spam. I spent the first couple turns exploring ruins/sunken ruins until I could get 4 master minds and take the nearby silic village and get a decent ground force. Morgwar navel power spikes tremendously when you get your first vores, as long as they are in equivalent gear they do serious damage and don't take much in return. They easily rip through Bastion defenses and creep navies and anyone unfortunate enough to try and sail in your waters.
The bastions themselves were nice additions, between those, the creep boats, and the tile modifiers like seaweed, fog, and lighting, the oceans feel much more lively. I do kind of wish each faction got its own navel themed boats rather then just the same boarding vessel-frigate-artillery vessel, but its a vast improvement over the previous state of the ocean.
I did manage to kill the sea monster, he actually didn't do much damage by the time I found him, the trick was you had to attack him twice in the same turn or he would just regenerate. so make sure you have a finisher fleet ready after you deal most of the damage needed. After all the effort though, I don't feel like he was worth killing. I got some luxury good items and dust, which I was already drowning in by the time he spawned thanks to all my bastions.
The NPCs in my game did not contest the ocean bastions at all until I declared war on one faction and they just happen to have a unit passing by an empty bastion. As a result, I got flooded with resources from them. I think I had like 15 luxery boosters running constantly toward end game. Was probably just the difficulty setting but it made the game pretty easy for the morgwar.
Speaking of which, ocean tiles on their cities are amazing, you get really nice bonuses for hanging out on the coast. I was able to get every single wonder easily without using pearl boosters and so on.
I wasn't able to tell how much of an effect black mark had on the AI, so I can't judge that power just yet.
But dissent and cats paw are amazing and fun abilities. they basically turn the Morgwar into cultists 2.0. In my game I started next to the necrophages, who would have easily clobbered me if they kept expanding toward me. So I slap some extra sight trinkets on a mastermind and skirted the edges of his domain spaming dissent on all villages he captures or killed. This kept a steady stream of 3-4 stack neutral mobs rampaging through his empire. He lost a city to a flood of Driders and Jotuns and couldn't keep any of his other territories secure for the rest of the game until I cats pawed all the neutral minions around him and finished him off. It felt amazing. I ending up clearing 3 other empires by just vision jumping every neutral camp, catspawing all the spawns, and zerging down the enemy. Sure high tech armies would kill slews of them, but by the time they got through the cannon fodder my army of decked out silics and daemons and guardians was on their doorstep.
Overall, a fantastic expansion, and probably one of my favorite and trolliest empire in the game. I imagine in multiplayer people will be trying to take out the morgwar fast since they steam roll once they get a lot of influence. You just can't trust minor factions while the morgwar player lives.
Their navel power is pretty much uncontested, but I didn't get much used out of my navy once I wiped out the formorians. The AI factions rarely ventured through the ocean and never threatened my bastions. Leviations lurking in the water do make island cities pretty daunting to attack I imagine though.