[kianduatha]

I'm somewhat confused; I thought the thematic business *was* getting a fairly high percentage(30+) of non-caster national commanders. It seemed pretty intentional; The castles were amazingly good(not too expensive, high admin, high defense), while it took a lot of gold to recruit casters. In fact, it took as much gold to make a castle+lab+temple as it took to make 2 castles without them. To add to that, the ridiculous resource cost of your troops makes it so that each individual castle cannot produce many troops. So of course you would make as many castles as possible, but some of those would not even have labs in them.

This results in two things: A higher ratio of commanders to troops(and way fewer troops, total), and more national non-caster commanders. Both of those seem very 'dwarfish'.

What would increasing castle cost/time while increasing the resources you get from them do? It would 1. increase the proportion of mage commanders(bad). 2. It would increase the 'real cost' of lightly equipped thugs(bad). 3. It would encourage the use of indy commanders for troop ferrying/carrying crossbows(bad).

I'm just not seeing it.

On another note, the Clan King is worth it if you actually turn him Oathsworn(the extra magic resist and runic ward really help), but it's just so hard to justify using him like that when you know he's absolutely useless to you after that battle. Maybe if Oathsworn Kings could actually...do something. Summon allies, priest 2 and inquisitor, an 'increase order/prod in this province' special(I think there is one of those, right?). Something that would make him marginally useful even after laying down the stone.

Oh, and taking a look at Hammers again: I think the main reason I wouldn't purchase a Hammer is that Rangers do their job better. For 2/3 the gold, you get more or less the same damage(-1 attack, -1 damage), a bit lower defenses, but mapmove 2(!!), stealth, and a ranged weapon(!!). Hammers are still nice, I mean, they just need a comparatively lower cost. Maybe 25.

I was going to say something about the Engineer, but when I was testing him my game seemed to crash every time I took him into combat. I'm gonna restart my computer and try testing some more, but has anyone else seen this?