Well...... uh, this is just the test version of the map!!

Day 5, Dwarves

We realise that we can buy the loyalty of a mine-guard and builder's guild guard, when we have the money.

What is the street value for beholder corpses? I've got two of them.

TS

Surrendered because of the glitch mentioned earlier.

Did nothing in order to save up some gold to buy some allies.

Patiently waiting for gold

Jorulbagga of the Dwarves, Day 7

Today I suddenly realised that however much gold may be lacking, I can summon two boars, and more besides. So I did so.
Was that caused at all by the map, or is it just an AoW1 thing in general? Anyone know?

I've seen the glitch on other maps too. The easiest way to reproduce the 'disappearing glitch' is to place armies of 8 around a city, attack but only dominate a unit and then leave the fight without losing any of your units. Bam! The dominated unit will be placed onto the same hex as one of the army of 8. During that turn you can select both groups (click on that hex multiple times to cycle through which group you want to select, much like an army sitting on a city). When you end your turn, one of the parties will permanently disappear. I suspect the creators were aware of the glitch on release because they disabled the ability to cast summon spells during combat (which would have also lead to this condition). I'm not entirely sure of all of the conditions that will cause the glitch.

My experience on Xelm was when I was splitting a party (boat + army) to conquer a gold mine and attempted to recombine the party. Two parties overlapped. I recognized what was going on, move my army back to the goldmine, repositioned my boat one hex over and successfully recombined the party following that. It might be caused by the split party / recombined party over a conquer location (hidden autocombat effect?), or it might be the number of independents on the map and something with how the save states are handled. Xelm has a lot of charm and it would be a shame to strip away from it without knowing for sure what the cause is!

One of the neatest elements of Xelm so far (especially compared to the earlier release) is the wide range of heavily defended locations that forces decision-making for where to start to expand. I think starting with a transport ship is great too for its ability to block other transports from entering your territory and that adds a whole new dimension to the game I haven't seen in any other map. So far the only tweak I would give to the map is a bit of starting gold to reduce the idle time (but not too much because scarcity forces the player to pick and choose which friendly mercenaries to hire). If you're worried about the glitch, I think it would be better to try to reliably reproduce the glitch and then experiment with map design to see what makes it tick.

Your compliments for Xelm are enough motivation to make a 2nd edition at some point. And do keep the criticism coming, there's a lot of stuff that can be reassessed.

The main changes would be:
- 60 starting gold
- 5 players instead of 6. 6 felt a bit cramped as I started adding more details.
- two routes to the upper levels. Currently the only way up is via the teleporters in the centre. 2nd edition I'm thinking of also giving everyone a teleporter upwards in their starting area, but which requires repairs and is guarded perhaps.

As for the bug, perhaps it would be advisable to move all flaggable structures 1 hex away from the shoreline? But that'd likely require a larger mapsize, which might or might not be a good idea.

Another thing is that I actually hadn't considered at all that the various guard groups could have their loyalty purchased, so I might give them some more thought as to placement with that possibility in mind. I think it turned out interesting already though.

I have a little fire sprite following me around!

TS

Day 8, Dwarves

With our four newly summoned boars, we finally overtake the neighbouring undead village,

I, um, moved a few paces. TS

Undead: we do some travelling.
TS

Took over a town so I could make more money.