J747L:
Oh, I see what you are saying. Personally, I don't mind a little bit of customization. My experience playing the game is that, for a particular *type* of enemy, at a particular level, there is consistency. That is, most level X Goblin Soldiers are pretty much the same. They seem to do the "customization" you refer to based on the type of the critter. Goblin leuitenants or chiefs, I don't remember what they are called, are more powerful, at the same level, as the normal soldiers. Same for shamans, healers, etc. Beholders are a lot more powerful (not that they necessarily do a lot of damage, but they might have fireball, and they might have more hitpoints, resistance, and maybe a healing spell).
Black Ring soldiers and rangers are a lot tougher, at the same level, than goblins or skeletons, etc.
I don't think, except for a few exceptions ("Named" enemies) that they ever really customize the enemies on an individual basis. They probably, I suspect, just have a basic template for each type, and probably use some code to automatically scale equipment level, powers, etc. Perhaps the code has something like a semi-random inventory spawn (so maybe occasionally certain enemies will randomly spawn with a healing potion to heal themselves, etc).
At least, if I were designing a game with 5000 enemies (I don't really know for sure how many there are in Ego Draconis, but man, it sure *feels* like there's 5000 enemies), I wouldn't hand-craft all of them. That's time I could spend more productively on other aspects of the game, and let the computer generate. The actual *locations* of spawns, I think, are static, but with a good game-editor system, a level designer could basically just point-and-click to place a spawn of skeletons here, and another spawn of skeletons over there (maybe choosing the level of the group), choose a spawn of black ring fighters and click, click, click to place them around, etc.
