Current Vanquisher raids are too easy. Got two raids: first was killed by 2 hunters, didn’t even reach city, second killed by town center. Vanquisher raids at 0.9 was more challenging and fun. Could add option to have hard raids?
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There is a relic you can find/buy that makes predators/raiders more aggressive.
Yes but I never use or acquire them, I 'aint dumb. On a similar note why can my archers reach the raider camps or towers without being fired upon? If I can destroy the camp itself the character raiders just vanish instead of seeking vengeance, and shouldn’t the towers being high up mean they have the longer range? In 9.2 I needed two barracks full to take out the camps, sometimes unsuccessfully, now I just shoot until I run out of arrows or bolts.
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Even using the relic, recently, the raids have been fewer and much weaker in strength. I’ve gone 23 years in my new city in Vanquisher mode (0.9.3) with the Ark of the Vengeful Dead relic selected in my temple and haven’t had the first raid. I have a population of 682, and fully developed. Four barracks build with 24 soldiers in each barrack.
I started this new game and purposely didn’t take out the existing raider camps on the map and still, no raids on my city. The camps still attack villagers if they wander too close, but no one has even attempted to raid my town.
I also have to say that raids currently feel quite weak to me. Going with medium difficulty, year 52 and pop ~650. Also, very oddly, all raids have so far always been from the exact same side of the map, without any exception.
edit: Ok, in year 54 for the first time raiders attacked from a different side. Now they attacked from where I have a hill castle with a vault harbouring 13k gold. Maybe this was kandy enough for them 
Still, the raid was quite weak
Raids are not only weak but a bit too “stupid”.
1800 pop t5, year 48, 350 raiders every couple of years. I know their behaviour now, same thing. 24 Riders will kill them all, no towers, barracks or walls needed. That is kind of the definition of late game boredom.
My gameplay fun does not increase by relic, stronger raiders or more. They need to be more unpredictable, attacing from more locations. In 9.2 or 9.3. there was a phase when this happened. Very difficult almost frustrating.
I am confident, that you devs will do MOAR and make this - as you have done before - increasingly more fun.
That’s a relatively small population size. As far as i know, the raid sizes are based on population. I dont see a way that it would become difficult until you get larger. I thought the same things about raiding being easy, until I had 2500-3000+ population.
Then suddenly the raids became more pressing. Ill have 500+ raiders, (mostly heavy cavalry) escorting some battering rams., coming from 2+ sides. They wont ever destroy my entire city (unless i just didnt defend at all), but they can absolutely put a dent in population and force me to repair a lot of buildings.
@acox7194 you are right. I got some bigger raids as well and had to push up my horse production to sustsinably have about 60 heavy cavelery (Ulane). These are able to fight of any raid with 20-30 casualties.
So I changed tactics a bit again and because raids can ONLY come from a place which has the shadow of war on it, I covered the whole map with empty towers so there are no more spawning places left but in one corner. I created an area of death right in front of it for any raiders with elevated fortresses and walls.
So I am back at point “boring” and all raids will be faught of with max 5 casualties.
It must be extremely challanging to create a raid mechanic that is sustainably challanging for players without beeing too difficult or too easy. I have no solution.
I agree, it still become too easy once you build and strategize for it. I have another playthrough with ~2200 people, its built with solid defenses and there isn’t a raid that stands a chance.
On my 3000 population city, I stopped building defensively in the late game. I expanded as large as I could and have quite a few spots that are “hard” to defend. I have a mountain with ~25 gold mines/smelters that is separate completely separate from my city. This is the playthrough where I still have to move troops around and really try in order to not lose a bunch of buildings. Its still fun.
Long story short, I had to intentionally build a village with bad defenses/layout in order to keep the raids “fun”. If i were to build a perfectly defended city, the AI just isnt good enough. Id recommend NOT exploring the entire map, so it keeps them spawning in random places.
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Are your ‘empty’ towers turned on but unmanned? My towers lose their sighting if I remove the guards, I’ve not tried to leave them turned on as that costs 60 gold each per year.
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Weird. My towers do not loose sight. I am in the playtest though right now.
@acox7194 congrats on your cities.
To paraphrase what you wrote a bit: you will limit yourself a bit to keep the game fun, right? Yeah, see, i kind of do too but that should not be the point of a game, right? A game needs a goals.
Should it be like a typical tower game so you will finally loose at some point? Should there be quests or a epic final battle? An unbeatable city at some point?..
It was mentioned many times before in this forum that by all it’s greatness, the game lacks a goal at some point. The way it is right now is not optimal. And you are right, AI will not solve this. It’s a concept issue, not an AI-battle tactics one.
In an ideal world though, with unlimited flow of money for crate, wouldn’t it Be awesome to have total war-like battles with real tactics in raid situations?
Have fun