keeper fx new game+?

[blibbin]

What are people's experiences with the new game+ campaign?

After seeing the full 1.0 release I was super excited to play the game looking as good as it does, as I had just been playing through the Deeper Dungeons on GOG which I never managed to finish back in the day. However...

Has anybody else found the levels with enemy keepers in particular Crushingly hard? I just tried to play Nevergrim, and after researching 1 or 2 spells and before I could even begin to train my 4 or 5 dragons and warlocks, the enemy is building bridges to my dungeon and dropping level 4/5 bile demons on me.

How are most of these levels even supposed to be winnable? I find a lot of these unplayable as you often find every gold source not immediately next to you monopolized which makes it impossible to progress into the level. I find this more frustrating than fun and frankly am quite disappointed with the experience. I get that this is new game+, and I have some decent experience having playing through the game 10 or so times, but this campaign seems very poorly thought out.

Has anybody else had this experience?

-b

[YourMaster]

Sorry to hear that, New Game+ is meant to just be mild in difficulty, just a small step above the original campaign. Recently I have been getting more reports that people are having trouble with the AI, so stuff should get balanced again it seems. (Whenever the AI gets more competent, it needs to be reigned back on maps intended to be easy).

Could you let me know which version you are playing on?

In the meantime, perhaps this helps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYyUKZCLtx4

[blibbin]

Sorry to hear that, New Game+ is meant to just be mild in difficulty, just a small step above the original campaign. Recently I have been getting more reports that people are having trouble with the AI, so stuff should get balanced again it seems. (Whenever the AI gets more competent, it needs to be reigned back on maps intended to be easy).

Could you let me know which version you are playing on?

In the meantime, perhaps this helps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYyUKZCLtx4

I'm playing on the most recent release since I saw 1.0 released a few days ago.

I just watched the above video, and god damn. Is this really considered basic play? Maybe in reality I'm a bit of a DK scrub, as I prefer taking my time, winning a few small poking battles and slowly gaining the edge by imprisoning/torturing and converting enemy creatures etc., out-numbering the enemy so I can win in a large scale battle. Perhaps this campaign wasn't meant for me as it seems to focus more on a Starcraft-esque style of following the fastest, optimal route which is not the way I have played DK in the past.

Think I'll carry on with the Deeper Dungeons levels in free-play, assuming the difficulty is the same, while enjoying this game in all of its new shiny (more playable) glory. Been sinking over 30 hours into DK recently with all the amazing additions and visuals.

-b

[YourMaster]

I mean, I made the video to be informative, so I did not fluff about to much. With 'basic play' I mainly meant, no cheese, no rushing, no special tricks, simply building a dungeon, training your creatures and you'd win. You could try 'The Good Campaign', it should be pretty easy.

[Yani]

Yes, the AI has become a lot stronger. You can't win in a fair fight. But you can cheese it because some mechanics can be abused to get an advantage. Like making them CTA some place while you attack another, stealing their rooms without them being able to rebuild them, invisibility, etc. If those mechanics are understood by the AI and can be countered, it will be impossible to win.

The best course of action is to balance it like YM says. Stuff like adding more delays, randomization, and even artificial mistakes, will make it much better. The "difficulty" of the AI could then be configured by how much delay it has, how randomization affects the choices that affect its strength (like "should i slap?" or "should i cast speed to all creatures training?") and what kind of artificial mistakes are made (like "oops i didn't see that invisible creature" or "oops i let a creature become mad"). This stuff is not hard to code but it requires work and dedication.

[YourMaster]

Please Yani, stop saying you cannot win a fair fight. Experienced players can and will win a fair fight, easily, without using any cheese at all. Players can train faster than the computer does, players can cast spells faster than the computer does, players can decide what kind of army they get.
That skilled players can beat the AI in a completely fair fight, or fights with the AI with an advantage, does not mean the AI cannot be too hard for most players.

[watler253]

> You can't win in a fair fight.

This is just wrong. Players have a more balanced and strategic experience against AI opponents, like the ability to engage in fair fights against the AI Keepers, where victory is achievable through effective planning, resource management, and tactical decision-making.

[12114_v2]

I completed ng+ a couple of years ago, so here are my two cents (but take it with a grain of salt, because I don't know if it changed since then and I don't remember all the details).

The campaign was fun, but I'm biased since I LOVE the og campaign and am rarely in the mood for all these new puzzle campaigns/maps. With that being said, regarding the balance, the blanket statement that ng+ is just "marginally harder than the OG campaign" is flat out wrong.

The difficulty was all over the place, with some levels, like level 16, being 5x harder. Didn't help matters that I forgot the multiply creatures box existed, and that it was often glitched I think, because I would just mind my own business and train my creatures and then all of a sudden the white AI would break my fortified walls at the bottom right and gang up on me with the blue keeper (vs my 2x level 4 hornies and not much else). So that one took a few tries, and was imo the hardest level in the entire campaign.

Level 15 I cheesed with invis imps just for laughs and took over his rooms, thereby enraging his creatures. But that was just for fun.
Level 12 was probably the second hardest, maybe being 3-4x harder than OG. But level 14 was pretty ez for some reason.

The rest was fairly easy. I was most excited for level 11 and level 18 and they were BARELY any harder, if at all, so that was a disappointment for me. Level 1 didn't feel any different either, but that's not a very important level.

So yeah... slightly harder than og? Not really, highly depends on the level. OG was overall more balanced, with none of the levels being suddenly a TON harder, then going back to being the usual difficulty.

With all that being said, I wish we had hg+ or xg+ (hard/xtreme) varieties of the OG campaign, that would be orgasmic, because let's face it, ng+ was still far too easy. I'd play hg+ in a heartbeat. It'd be for all those sweaty players who have no patience/time for stuff like assmist but love the OG campaign since it's familiar/diverse/fun and you at least have a general idea of what to do. But YM would probably say "oh, it's not original enough, we have high standards" and would most likely not bundle it. Maybe there's something in the workshop, not sure.

So has anyone tried level 10 in 1.00 by playing it normally? By normally I mean turtling and spending like 30 mins, or should I?

[YourMaster]

Ok, I will expand on that, it's marginally harder if you ignore cheese. Level 16 was always a hard map, if you do not run in a transferred creature and kill it from the start. In NG+ it actually has no changes beyond protecting against cheesing it, so people playing it 'normally' will notice very little difference indeed.

[12114_v2]

Ok, I will expand on that, it's marginally harder if you ignore cheese. Level 16 was always a hard map, if you do not run in a transferred creature and kill it from the start. In NG+ it actually has no changes beyond protecting against cheesing it, so people playing it 'normally' will notice very little difference indeed.

Yeah, idk, like I said, it was most likely glitched and has since been fixed. I wasn't even trying to be aggressive or cheesing anything at all, just minding my own business and training creatures, then for no reason at all the white heroes would break my wall about 10 mins into the game. The one time they didn't do that on like the 4th-5th attempt (not sure why, didn't really do anything different), I won.

Also, the blue keeper on that map, I'm pretty sure, played quite a lot better than the one in OG (but it's been a while, maybe my memory betrays me).