I'm glad that's not the mechanic. XP via kills is really outdated and poor game design that makes literally no logical sense. It assumes that the only purpose of any soldier is to kill, not to route enemies, or to distract, or to suppress, or simply to refuse to waver against overwhelming odds. Unless you think that sparring only helps teach soldiers to fight if they murder their sparring partner you should realise it's dumb. Nobody is planting little flags to claim their loot in the bodies of those they slew, and enemy armies leave plenty of loot behind regardless of whether they died or ran away. The soldiers that did the least fighting are often the ones in the best shape to smash and grab everything in sight once the battle is over. Levelling doesn't even always improve a units ability to kill. +3 models to a unit makes a lot more sense if that unit survived more often. Who wants to join a really killy unit if it's wiped out every battle? Also I don't want to play a game that encourages me to whittle down the HP of an enemy so that I can charge in at the last second with the unit that needs the XP more. It's boring and dumb, and Dark Omen would be a better game without those mechanics.

@@JanetOnOccasion By killing i mean all possible outcomes. And direct killing and routing and killing fleeing enelies and supressing enemies, and just make them flee. Experience comes from exact actions. What exp do soldiers get just running all battle from enemies? I understand the bait strategy and all that, but camon in almost every game I saw there are regiment that runs and regiment that engage. And both get same exp? At least let the choices for lvl up be corresponding. Did a lot of killings - get plus attack or whatever, did nothing but running - here faster movement for you.

Battles are largely a measure of how well a unit has been trained outside of it. The only stat that should ever go up as a result of battles is discipline since the only worthwhile experience you get is being able to hold your nerve in the carnage - but that would be boring so just give everyone XP for showing up and let players decide how they're going to be trained before the next battle. Just consider the XP after each battle to be the result of time passing instead of the battle itself. Levelling by doing is always a poor system since it makes the player engage in behaviour that will provide the best bonus, instead of the best battle outcome. I don't want a levelling system that makes me choose a bad or boring strategy for the sake of making a unit better at something that I might need later. I've never seen a system accurately measure a units value, so it shouldn't try. And to specifically address your question about running all battle long; Units giving the enemy the run around all battle long while remaining cohesive would be showing an insane amount of stamina, mental fortitude, excellent manoeuvring skills, and battlefield awareness, all while being pursued relentlessly. Presumably this would be keeping a much more dangerous opponent busy while the rest of the army wins the battle. Like you the computer would probably just go "Did nothing, no XP". Just give everyone XP every battle without complication so I can play the battle how I want without having to engage with some dumb meta game that doesn't understand the value of my actions. It can't know how expertly my unit did nothing. It did nothing like a champ. It looked at the battle and knew that doing nothing was the best possibly thing it could have done and it did nothing flawlessly, winning the battle and getting it's ration of XP in the process. Bravo.

Badger

This was recorded before that update.

@@JanetOnOccasion Aye noticed it later on when the enemy DID attack from behind and it was the best to side charge. Got me confused but was like ,must be from another version, great vid tho.

THAC0 itself wouldn't have been quite so bad if AC 0 was the best possible AC, but when AC could go negative, it made it much less intuitive.

Correct. In the original Steam playtest some players were confused as to where the new dice would come, since normal Match 3 games they always drop from the top. The arrows were to give a hint that the direction correlates with the direction you move the dice to make the match. This gives a little extra strategy to manipulate the board, e.g. saving up the 4/5-matches that do AOE damage to critters.

Seems as good a guess as any. Though I think the real problem was that giving an attack order on something that isn't in range just makes the troops wait for a shot instead of trying to approach it, since that would lead to them running from battlements every few seconds and you'd throw you PC out of the window. So I think the first couple of tries I was giving attack orders on the worm, which just made them ignore the little critters and stand idle waiting for the worm to get into range, which was impossible. I was lucky with the tower not getting flattened, though :P

Maybe they're a lava farmer. You stay away from his pit, y'hear?

It’s just their name, dude. Merlons are a type of battlement. Google ‘castles’ and it’s probably one of the first things you’ll learn.