I like the mod a lot but there is a few issues I find with it, I dont really see how the AI improved specifically because I have played 2 Battles of outplanes games with defeat all mages on impossible and none of the great mages attack each other, in fact all of them are allied with each other, so sure I could attack them all and win but I dont find the game fun if there is only me versus everyone one sidedly, if there can be a way to just have a peaceful mode to build it would be nice but I dont think the warlock modding engine can support that, otherwise it feels like nothing is really going on. Also isnt there a way to have portals not be able to be portal blocked, like having damage occur around the portal, it occurs pretty often when there are tiny worlds filled with units. Is there a way to make the AI smarter, it doesnt really use buff spells on its units or cities it just haphazardly casts terraforming and fire balls everywhere. Also I think the game could be harder without having to give the AI infinite resources and buff all of their units to oblivion just by reducing production overall in all cities and increasing the cost of units, spells, and general upkeep, that makes the game progress only a little slower but also allows for wars and expansion to become more costly and makes basic survival more challenging without having to one sidedly give perks to the rival great mage that at the same time doesnt make it that much harder to beat. Otherwise there isnt really a point to the game if I have to make it harder on myself in order to have fun with it, though I dont know if modding that is possible or even if the AI could adapt to it, I wonder if you can mod to change the AI as well, I dont really believe so but maybe you can. I think the solution to having great mages able to go to war with each other is more or less simple in theory, one problem with AI is they dont EVER build specialty towns like towns to gods or strongholds, that means they have to find a holy ground or have specialty to a god at the start of the game to possibly have other AI against them,
I think by having AI so if they like you they will keep trying to like you until you either break with them or fail to support them in a war, if your in negative in relation to them they wont ally with you which makes you have to give them gifts to ally with you, and being an ally should be designed where its only really broken if your relationship with them goes bad through treachery, religion and so on, or if you fail to respond to a call to war, there could also be very rare chance betrayals if that is possible. Where if the specific rival mage doesnt like you they will probably go to war with you, or even ally with others against you if they have envy of the leader, also having those you go to war with still hating you even after peace is a way to go but not hate too much during peace, it should be possible to gift them enough after other grievances go away. Also if it is even possible to make AI more reasonable when it comes to trade, instead of giving them one very good spell and a thousand of one resource in exchange for all of their other resource it should be by the thousand on whether they will trade, based on their relation with you, and the value of a certain spell which is predetermined by a system, maybe equating a spell to gold or mana but just a suggestion, another thing warlock never got right anyways was the demand feature, if you ever at all demand anything the answer will always be no, so how would one fix that if even possible, I think one way is having a military strength feature where each unit has a military strength and if the collective strength is high enough, even buff spells and heros will add to it, then demands will be more likely to be fulfilled by a basis.
Also there is an infinite points glitch with hubris where you spend all of your points with hubris, take off hubris, go to the next page in the perks list then the counter goes from -5 to 0 and you can click hubris again to get 5 points each time and you can start the game at -5 points without hubris,also is it possible to make another faction, I think one more would make it feel more fulfilled but it isnt necessary, if I were to want another faction I would want it to be a divine faction where you can get units tailored to a specific god and have units with similar powers to the avatars of those gods with the drawback being you cant specifically recruit the holy ground divine units without a holy ground so all of the divine units to the god or gods you worship wont be stronger than the holy ground units besides the holy sentinels, I think the way to go about having a divine race tailored to specific gods is have them function like holy grounds if you can where you cant get a krypta temple after you get an agrela temple for example. The divine race I think would be a good way to separate the mages who worship gods at the start to those who dont. Also the AI in the sandbox map never really builds cities, and I mean like even if they had only a maximum of 5 cities, some AI wont even build like 3, also I saw in a master of the arcane mod, where certain special resources had guards appropriate to the resource, like with red and gold dragon eggs, but with halberdiers, stubborn knights, maybe have that uranitum resource have a unit guarding it like a moon walker or some other unit, also have gold dragon spawners, also that event where you spend 2500 mana for 200 gold units isnt that good either, there should at least be a choice for that one. I had defilers which arent even that good as only options along with dremer smashers, also I would recommend having the dremer plains or contaminated plains provide at least no penalty to dremer cities or a bonus to resources, otherwise why would I ever get a specialty dremer town or get that one building that gives a percentage bonus to everything only for it to contaminate everything around it, now there is a chance this mod did change that but it should say it so I can be sure. Also I dont think the defilers should contaminate either for that reason if the negatives of the contamination effects the dremer towns as well, it makes the defilers a waste, also I think the invokers and summoners are just too expensive while being too squishy. For the sylvan faction I dont think the bearman are sustainable enough, they are simply too squishy to me, they are like fodder. I could use those elder turtles to great efficacy at the same cost, and I think the elder turtles are too cheap too. They are the best reason to play sylvan besides me gunning for the best spells to trade all of the resources of other mages with and the extreme amounts of food I have to support massive armies. Also I think holy sentinels should be stronger, yes I think they are just way to weak, they would be great to have in like the beginning of the game but thats all, so it makes me think they dont really fit in the game well since they do no damage, cant move, and though they have good resistance and health, its kind of pointless to use them as a wall since they probably wont even reach where you want to put the wall by the time you get there. And many other units can just do a better job anyways. So if I had to give advice on how to balance change them, I would say give them 3 or 4 movement instead of I think it was 1 or 2 and increase damage and healing by like 20% then they would be much worth it. Also I think red dragons should get a buff, they arent sustainable, the resource bonuses are much more worth it. Also I think the Arethi elves should get a little better production, their production is atrocious for what I have to face which is 15 magisters and a great wall of warrior fodder. Then again if you were to reduce the production of everything and increase the cost of everything I think the elves would seem more balanced. Otherwise the elementals being added to the elves was a good move I think. And of course to me the planestriders are definitely the weakest race. Anyways I dont expect any of it to get changed, I am just giving what I think would make the mod better if it is even possible, I do think the modding tools is designed to not be able to easily break the game so changing the AI might be a stretch but I wouldnt know, the game was dead on arrival anyways so dont feel pressured to make any of these changes. Thank you for the mod though I did enjoy the general contents and numerous bug fixes in the mod.