I'm not a big fan of the Act II starting positions. If you don't have the resources to overwhelm Karthan immediately, he does nothing all game but mass units at his capital and ocassionally attack yours with them. Sure, it increases the difficulty, but not in a fun way in my opinion.
Yeah, that's exactly right. Karthan's AI keeps all his troops on the island.
This seems to be a problem with the strategy map AI - it doesn't really know how to deal with starting on an island. I checked on the "Arena of Aurora" Custom Campaign, where everyone starts on an island, and two of the AI's pretty much didn't expand at all. They also built up troops on their islands and only occasionally moved out. The third AI landed, spread and used land-based war factories to capture half the continent by turn 10, meanwhile two other AI only had like 3 countries each not on their starting island.
I don't know a good way to fix the Karthan situation. If the AI is fixed so he uses transports more, he'll constantly invade your capital. If the status quo remains, it'll take a long, annoying buildup to beat him. I certainly remember the first time. I plopped about 20 transports onto it and learned that the models will shrink if there are too many units on a territory.
A little bug i noticed from act one to act teo that breaks the cap of 50 gold and 30 research for a turn. Posting so Larian can see it and fix if unintended and unwanted. If you take all the territories -1 and the capital and build as many fold mines/academies you want/can then take the capital, the cap is taken off but you get an extra turn in act one on account of there being a hostile territory left.
It far from game breaking at best you can come out with about ninity gold/fifty research into act two could prob get higher if you play your cards right.
I didn't do that, but I took the capital and there was still an empty transport in open water, so I had an extra turn to kill it, and that also broke the cap. I entered Act 2 with 94 gold and 50 Research.
