This was one of the most mentally engaging strategy games I've ever played. I truly am my own worst enemy and I loved it. I should note that while I won my first game, I used the unlockables cheat, but zero save scumming. I'm a fan of FUN!!!!, and a binary win/loss unlock system would have tempted me too much too end turn through 10 easy games. This TripleH game was exactly the dose of Fun I was looking for. I completely destroyed the first 4 towns I built with a Fun early use of Labyrinth, entering the age of monsters almost at the score gate for turn 60. I tore up the ruins with a 9 town powered Midgard serpent and rebuilt the middle.
The closest I got to losing was right after the Age of Gods transition. Fury of the Gods was active for the transition. Athena and Odin spawned almost on top of eachother, I built up the Norse military to compensate for Athena's powerful 2x health passive. I also sent Odin across the map from her to his spear, Hera hadn't been much use to me, and those 3,000 points looked juicy. To my horror, he managed to kill Athena before making it to his spear, leaving the Greeks godless just two turns into the age of gods. Because of my early mutual-self-mass-destruction, I didn't have any siege units at all really, due to the score gate not being a worry.
Frailty was next up, and I thought now would be a good time to pop Yggdrasil and a hefty score boost. Oops, frailty doesn't apply to the doppelgängers. By the time the effects wear off there's nearly 300 Norse, and 49 Greeks. All Greek town centers are on the brink of destruction, and several of my attempts to start new ones are immediately shot down. Finally using Norse ap on land tiles, I'm able to access remote town center locations for the Greeks. For the rest of the game, I have two Greek too five Norse towns, my attempt to turn one of my Greek towns into a Trojan siege factory doesn't come to fruition, but I still manage a victory with 70,797 points.
Overall I loved my time with this game, and I only have a few suggestions/concerns.
Midgard collapse(I believe it was called, the one that shuffles all the land tiles) should either be restricted from hard difficulty, or not clear all of the unsmiteable ruins on the map.
I know there are already a thousand restrictions on tc placement, but I think one more is important. One of the ways I saved the Greeks was being able to build a town on an island created by the Midgard serpent. It still wasn't particularly easy, two bandit keeps spawned on the island, but under other circumstances it could have been cheesy easy. I think the best way to prevent this is to just require that all placed town centers have a land bridge to an enemy one.
I would also appreciate slightly more freedom when it comes to repairing and smiting. I would lower smiting and repairing of buildings to 2 ap, and allow smiting of ruins and tiles with units for 3 ap. A whole turn of actions is quite a hefty cost. When a Minotaur can destroy 3 buildings in one turn(this is post 1.002, I shudder at those ranged death machines I never had to suffer.), it's simply not overpowering to be able to fix one of those per turn. If a town is doomed, clearing one block, or removing one attacker simply won't be enough.
It also really bugs me that "the creator" can't place lakes and mountains. I completely understand why this ability was removed, but I think some way of balancing them is possible. Perhaps 3 ap and a lengthy cool own(longer for lakes), would be sufficient.
The only bug I ran into was double occupied tiles with Yggdrasil. I'll post a save when I'm able, I'm not on my play computer.
Overall a very Fun and enjoyable game, and one that I would be incredibly proud of if it was mine.
