Before I start, yes, TL:DR is an appropriate response if you don’t work for Stardock. This is intended to be beta feedback, not conversation.
I played 5 games, all on normal, ‘default’ settings: two as Relias, two as Carrodus, and one as Irane. I like where the game is going. I enjoy the challenging world, I enjoy the natural hazard/adventure areas (Torax desert, etc), I like the initiative concept for tactical, I like earning specific traits/skills for my champs.
In 5 games I had 4 crashes: 2 freeze-ups, one crash when my computer went to sleep and woke up again, and once where I exited the game but the process didn’t close, and so I was still getting bird and insect sounds from my computer 2 hours later.
I didn’t go looking for problems, rather I played and just jotted down notes whenever I noticed something. I haven’t included anything about the AI, as I know most of the work on that is still to come. Yes, I’ve included a lot of detailed things, polish that would normally come much closer to the ‘gold’ version of the game. However, having experienced WoM, I’m inclined to note everything right away, and not assume it will be spontaneously fixed later.
Strategic Map
- lady irane movement broken on strategic map. until I got her onto a horse, she would take off in random directions, waste remaining movement points by doubling-back, and refuse to move any more after a battle.
- when an army is too large to enter a city, there’s a sound effect but no other notification – it just refuses to move. similarly when you try to create an army that’s too big.
- influence from ‘adventure areas’ doesn’t go away when boss killed
- camps often just disappear after monster killed, or, if you grab the camp before killing the monster, no reward
- the number of moves allowed to an army doesn’t show up correctly after exiting a city.
- similarly, adding and removing units from an army resets the move counter.
- automatic turn change is inconsistent – sometimes it works, sometimes not. also, frequently skips units with moves left, wasting their turn.
- can’t see terrain resources except when settling
- strategic map does not give indication of where it is possible to settle or not, requiring a trip out with an escorted pioneer, often only to find that it’s not possible
- ruins of varda quest broken: nothing happens
- cloak of stars quest broken: speak to mage, get crystal from ophibians, get dragon-killing spell, but never directed to dragon location
- card game between wildings & townsfolk quest broken: if you choose “I’ll take the map” nothing happens
- save villagers from wilding slaver quest broken: pioneer doesn’t appear
- ‘arena’ high-level quest broken: got tech to build masterwork weapons, but no sword as promised
- scale of ‘adventure areas’ in some cases not appropriate. particularly if there are mountains around (as in case of Torax’s desert, or the scrap golem valley), the area takes up a disproportionate area of the total map, often leaving a wasted single-tile strip of land around the edges between the mountains and sea
- I don’t like the way cities are implemented on the strategic map. there, I’ve said it. first of all, their scale is totally disproportionate on the map – they cover huge swathes of territory. second, the way the rules work, the best strategy is to make them as long and stretched out as possible, this blocking enemy movement, gathering in resources, and giving instant travel over long distances. this is the complete opposite of how medieval cities actually looked – they were as compact as possible to make them easier to defend, and relative to the landscape they were tiny, surrounded by extensive fields. now that we have a city details window to give all the information about them, the need to see and place each individual building is not there, except for cheese as described previously.
- quests have unknown difficulty before entering combat. this would be ok, except that without a retreat option in the early game you have to choose between committing to battles that could easily kill you, or forgoing early quests that are key to getting experience.
- please don’t put locked things on the strategic map. it ruins the immersion (ie. “your hero has found a location that has been locked by the game designer”). I’m referring specifically to quests here. if the justification is that it’s too difficult or dangerous, let us try and fail. if the justification is that its location is hidden or that some secret knowledge is required to make sense of it – don’t show anything at all until we have that information/knowledge/tech.
- don’t tell me I can’t climb a mountain! I’m playing as a powerful spellcaster who’s the leader of a kingdom/empire, I can kill dragons, teleport, and unite the friggin shards of magic across the entire world. I can even create a mountain, but I can’t climb one? this is a real immersion-kill. sure, keep mountains as barriers – make the movement cost super high (like rivers are, or worse), but right now I feel like I’m being told I can’t climb mountains because the game engine can’t handle it. boo.
- can’t pass ‘enemy’ trade caravans on the road, even when you’ve got a peace deal with them
- taking 10 minutes to level up champs after getting 4K experience from master quest is waste of time, as game is finished!
Tactical Battles
- initiative broken: enemies moving up in queue for no apparent reason. e.g. at start of battle, all champs w/impulsive, not even showing enemy in initiative queue at all. but then one attack and the enemies jump to halfway down the queue, and another attack and then it’s their turn! particularly noticed with ignys, ophibian, and shrills, but not exclusive to them.
- units that are groups don’t attack with less strength when damaged. I can understand why a design decision would be justified to say heroes or individual monsters don’t lose effectiveness when injured (not realistic, maybe), but when 3 out of 5 guys with axes are dead, the remaining 2 shouldn’t be just as deadly as 5 were.
- can’t use turn to change weapons. why not have 2 separate weapon option slots, that champs could use a turn or more in combat to change between? when my sovereign has been firing off arrows in support and gets rushed, why would he/she keep the shield and sword on the back?
- movement tiles all screwed up around Abeix
- can’t target Abeix with ranged weapons or spells, but as a result can’t use special abilities like bash or stun for melee either. can attack with spells if don’t need to target, eg. lightning
- big unit death falling animation (ground shakes) is good in tactical battles. doesn’t make sense on strategic map though, and completely redundant to do both. also, is not consistent; ie. trolls and drakes and ogres all do this, but enormous death demons do not?
- targeting blizzard can lock up if the only possible place to cast it has teammates in range. I needed to auto-finish the battle because I couldn’t find a way to cancel out
- I have repeatedly had issues with fireball spell not finishing. ie. start cast and need to wait turn, but then the next time that unit has a turn the spell isn’t ready to be cast, and so have to restart casting.
- ‘defend’ skill (with shield) buggy on horseback, ie. locks up and requires a bunch of random clicks to get past.
- movement options very limited the way the new initiative system implemented: can only move once, then act. Why can’t I act then move? or move partially, then act, then move the rest of the way?
- auto-resolve uses mana unnecessarily. preserving mana can be really important, and I tend to automate battles that are boring because they’re quick and easy for my army to win (eg bears vs epic champ horde). so it’s really annoying to see mana wasted when unnecessary. maybe some calculation of odds, weighing estimates of damage taken vs. mana used as a value trade-off?
- buff spell animations (haste, fog) can get stuck in square.
- using the spell ‘shrink’ got rid of 100% of attack value of guardian statue (this happened twice)
- ‘double strike’ skill gives double healing if umber stone equipped when enemy killed
- can’t retreat. the history of warfare is a history of retreats – almost no-one has ever fought to the death when they had a choice, and yet right now every FE battle is like this. that is, until you get the escape spell, then you’re free to leave at any time. of course, the battles you most need to retreat from are low-level battles, before you have the spell. this is maddening and counterintuitive. if I can run faster than the enemy, let me get away!
- can’t move through friendly units! this wasn’t so much of a big deal in WoM, because before the FE initiative system, you could always juggle your turns to let someone in the back through. now though, often I have high-initiative units that are completely randomly placed at the back of my army at the beginning of the battle. they waste their initiative by running around the outside of the army just to get to the enemy. similarly, in combat, it’s easy for a unit to get stuck at the back or the front because their turn is after everyone else’s.
- please let me place my units at the beginning of a tactical battle. right now it’s a mishmash, and I’ll wind up with vulnerable units in front, and high-initiative melee units stuck in back.
World, Equipment, Units
- no magical greaves that I ever found. variety is the spice of life!
- in my experience, magical equipment comes in ‘runs’. so one game, got endless umber stones and boots, then next game shields but no boots, the only game I got a scroll of escape I got 3, etc. Nothing kills the excitement of a new magical item more than to discover it’s redundant already, and it can be frustrating to have 12 capes but no boots.
- assassins blade isn’t removed from inventory when you choose to destroy it in the quest
- Deorcnysse too easy, doesn’t seem to give much reward either
- Sculla’s mace (with auto-shrink spell) is overpowered. Torax was a kitten after being hit with this thing.
- things you sell aren’t available to buy. as a result, I run around with a whole warehouse of items on my sovereign and champs, just in case I need them later. the game shouldn’t require hoarding behaviour.
- why does selling an item only give half-value? if I can’t buy it back later anyways, it’s not like the merchant needs a margin.
UI
- flickering/jumpy cursor when selecting units in city or army using the ‘shift’ key
- trade screen and equipment screen are redundant. almost everything you do on equip screen can be done on trade screen, plus on trade screen you can switch between units and trade stuff back and forth. recommend getting rid of current ‘equip’ screen and moving functionality to ‘trade’ screen.
- trade screen organization is poor. better to have one champ on one ‘card’ on the left and another champ on another ‘card’ on the right. each ‘card’ could be tabbed to be able to switch between equipment, appearance, history, level and traits, etc…
- ‘custom’ partial-3d views of champs look terrible. frequent animation bugs (shield through forehead, shield sideways, holding end of staff) or poses that are attempting to be dramatic but manage to just be confusing. please please please EITHER go full-3d positionable views (a la GalCiv II ship builder) or pick one straightforward view and background that maximizes descriptiveness.
- can’t reorder buildings/units in a city’s build/train queue without cancelling and re-ordering manually
- “battle” notifications on right side of screen (eg. declarations of war) are blank/have no graphic
- in general, formatting/animation of notifications on right side of screen is clumsy. ‘category’ notifications should stay from turn to turn even if nothing in them. lists are not updated correctly: eg. when you click on something in the middle of the list and it moves your view to that thing, the notification disappears, but the one below it will now be doubled up. also, there’s quite a delay noticeable when expanding or contracting the lists, or even selecting one of the notifications
- startup splash screen doesn’t scale to screen resolution properly (appears stretched)
- the main menu screen is zoomed in too much, and so the graphics for the earth and fire elements are cut off
- main menu itself has clunky buttons and text that’s too bold, which doesn’t match with the subtlety of the rest of the artwork
Gameplay
- not clear what ‘grain’ does, and the hiergammenon doesn’t appear to say anything. assuming more grain = faster growth.
- internal inconsistency in logic re: the value of gildar. specifically, gildar used two ways: to manage kingdom and to buy equipment for sovereign and champs. it’s value for managing the kingdom is at one scale – earn single- or low double-digit amounts per turn from cities, spend single-digit amounts per turn on maintaining units and improvements. it’s value for buying equipment is on a completely different scale – one boring and unimproved shield costs 180 gildar! it’s really easy to spend an entire treasury of thousands of gildar just to buy a couple of suits of boring chainmail, when that same money in kingdom-management terms is a fortune! where this can really be put in contrast is between equipped champs and trained units. equipping one champ with full armor, shield, and sword would require the gold output of literally hundreds of turns from even a large city, but training a half-dozen members of a unit that are similarly equipped takes only a dozen or so turns. so the result is that the friggin sovereign and the famous and important champions of the kingdom get the worst deals possible when going shopping. that’s, uh, counterintuitive to say the least.
- building and training is SLLLOOOOOOWWWWW. as a result, I wind up playing with a death-stack of champs but few actual units. in particular, almost no units in the early game aside from pioneers and caravans, because the opportunity cost of building them is prohibitively high.
- tech research is, if possible, even SLLLLOOOOOOWWWEEEERRRR. The one game I researched the spell of mastery I was nearly bored out of my mind by the end, because I’d done everything else there was to do in the world, and just kept hitting ‘next turn’ to research. despite building many, large cities and playing day-long games, I’ve never got past half-way on any of the tech trees, and because the costs jump so much as you get to higher techs, there’s no advantage to specializing in one tree. can the research rate not scale with map size, like it did in GalCiv II? and likewise, be an option to adjust?
- ok, here’s my one independent ‘brilliant idea’: we should be able to enchant items! need spellcaster with certain level of skill in the particular element, plus appropriate improvements in a city with an appropriate shard, plus materials. So, for example, to enchant a sword with fire damage, need a city with a weaponsmith, a temple of essence, a fire shard, a caster that’s a fire mage, plus a certain amount of crystal and metal and mana. Or for a cold-dmg ring, need a city with blacksmith, temple of essence, water shard, caster that’s water mage, plus a certain amount of crystal and metal and mana. Strength of enchantment depends on caster skill level (i.e. mage vs archmage, etc), magic researched, and intelligence; quality of base weapon depends on technology.
This is a good synopsis of many of the issues that I have experienced as well. While I don't agree with several of the OP's suggestions, I can verify that I have hit almost every single one of the bugs he has identified in the game. Here is my general comments by section:
Strategic Map - Basically the only comments I have here are that I don't mind the locked resources and Mountains don't bother me. We have spells that can lower a mountain range (if you have chosen Earth) so if you need a path through a range, you can create one. Conversely, raising a mountain range to make it a barrier to stall off attacks is a good strategy. All the other OP's points and bugs I agree with.
Tactical Map - Here I agree with every point that the OP makes so I'll just touch on some of his points to add support. I also think we should allow Champions to change weapons at a loss of one turn. I agree that should be a toggle on autoresolve that tells the game to solve the battle without the use of mana. I agree that there should be a mechanic to allow units to escape from battle at lower limits. I would like to see barriers on the map also be barriers for line of sight so that arrows and LOS spells are blocked. And finally, I would like to see flanking and attacking from rear bonues be implemented or if not bonuses to the attacker than defensive penalties to the defender.
World, Equipment, Units - My only comment on the OP's thoughts is also around shops. I don't understand why items are shown with a value of 1000 gildar and then sold at 500. Since there is no apparent way to effect prices I wouldn't show the player the 1000 price at all and just show the sell value of the item. Since the shop does not retain the item, resale value is moot. However, I would like to see items that we sell to the shop be made available for later re-purchase. Also, if you visit a AI controlled shop, you might be able to find something that they sold that you need or want. Shops should always offer some type of healing item, this is not the case early in the game. I can't seem to upgrade or create better pioneer units. When I attempt to upgrade a pioneer, the unit seems to lose the ability to create cities and outposts but can Build Roads instead. I think we need something like the pioneer pack to come back to unit design.
Cities leveling - I love the idea, but you don't make it unique enough. You should take a poll of the beta testers and see which improvements are usually taken and which are not. I suspect most of us always take the same bonuses per city level. I would love to see a greater variety of buildings and special effects. As it is, many of the special buildings are just not that special. For example, I would love to see a special building that automatically adds a certain trait to trained units above the ones you can pick. Buildings that can add special abilities to units (like the ability to cast heal once in tactical combat or throw a flame dart) a building that allows certain special items that can be sold ONLY at the store in the city area. Things like the bell tower, should improve over each level up. A militia unit is fine for a level 1 citiy, but that needs to improve to a better unit at each city level. And I would like to see the lists be variable much like the Champion trait level up.
UI - Trade/Equip screen need to be incorporated into one screen and you should be able to shop directly from that screen as well so that each champion doesn't have to be selected and go through the shop. As it is, this should be something like a Inventory screen and you do everything for everyone from this screen. PASS should be on the main Unit screen. When we highlight a city on the left side of the screen, what the city is building should be visible as well. If you highlight a unit on the right side, if it is in GUARD mode, it should be easily visible. I think I would like units in an OUTPOST be invisible much like a city. When you get too many cities under your control, they all do not fit on the right side and when those that finish production you get no visible indicator.
Gameplay - I have no problem at the moment with the pace of the game especially since you can address this at the game start. The taxation/unrest mechanic needs further thought. I keep it at normal until I go negitive on gildar and then bump it to high. By that point I have already built enough improvements to add to production/reasearch that my rate is still pretty high so it really doesn't serve any real purpose in the game. Higher unrest should do something like spawn bandit groups around the city that destroy improvements - something that makes unrest something that is undesirable. I also would like to see some way in the game to craft unique items for my heroes, although I realize that this is probably something beyond the scope of the game in the present state. Again, going back to city leveling, a level 4 city should have awesome level ups which should encourage the player or AI to get a city to level 4 to get something very special.
Final thought: I love the idea of Caravans but I hate everything in the game that I have to do to create the trade routes. I would like to see this moved to a city building and have the caravan route generated by the city on a level by level basis. Once you build the building (level 2 city required) 1 trade route is created, then at level 3 another is opened and finally at level 4 a third is opened. Let the game determine where to send the caravan.
Just my thoughts. Great job to the OP.
My report. There are many things I do like but below I wrote only bugs and annoying ones.
* Unit creation - Hairstyles still connected to hood clothes
* Faction workshop - Add colour of terrain shade - Empire still too dark
* While at loot dialog box it would be nice to have items stats at tooltip or rightclick image
* TAC - healing potions, pork effect isn't shown immediately. After first enemy hit.
* Borders, tile highlight and field border isn't all visible sometimes on uneven terrain.
* Not enough different interesting sounds. Just like in EWOM
* Ambient music/sounds almost non existant
* Too small tactical battles area
* Units animation, especially mounted - choppy
* Mounted defend animation - lasts 10,15 seconds
* TAC - on some enemies/environments there is still struggle to find the attack cursor
* Auto End Turn skips non idle units. Like in EWOM.
* Zzzz marker on town not big enough, also needed similar for units.
* TAC - too small spells icons
* There should be small percentage of chance for champions death and for unknow champion joining the ranks.
* While improvement destroyed at least allow to focus on its thet location. The same applies to loot, quests and all other events
* City is getting wiped out in one turn
* Sometimes the pickaxe icon doesn' disappear after improvement is built. Or showing again after some turns
* Add level to tooltip info about unit and info if it's channeler or not
* TAC - While chosing 'Defend' action the cursor for a moment switches to AoE
* TAC - Pass action after Defend action shouldn't discard the Defend
* TAC - Some spell efects are silent (Haste)
* TAC - No (non-lethal) hit visual effect of Deat Deamon
* TAC - HP loss is shown at tooltip BEFORE the visual attack
* After trading res potion it is still shown at army details window and I can use it from there but with no effect. I need do select the hero that is carrying it to work properly
* Blood Curse spell <goodiehut> - wall of text when found with small fonts.
* After designing a unit the picking poses buttons are greyed out
* Can design but can't train wilding warg riders (have warg and have wildings)
* Watching river from certain angles makes some tiles overlighted
* TAC Poison shot from Rock Spider generates black wound numbers - barely visible
* TAC Sometimes Defend markers stays on tile when the unit moved
* QUEST Varda - no stone statues guardian appeared - what to kill?
* TAC After enemy attack, when hero have the counterstrike skill (that'll kill the enemy) there is shown an animation of falling enemy BEFORE the counterattack takes place
* QUEST Cave - Explored and after second explore dialod nothing happens
* QUEST The Crone - After finding 2nd wave of nests AI built outpost in range of the quest camp
* Sometimes the sound effects (spells attacks) are gone.
* Forests often flickers
Also the Firestorm effect persists for longer than the turn it is cast. If you go to the enchantments window it is shown as still active but draws no mana. If you disSpell the effect, the effect lingers still for a couple of turns.
Ok, one more game and one more crash (but not unexpected - it seems to do so every time I let my computer 'sleep'. so did GCII for that matter). This time as Procipinee. Vetrar and the winter playland are awesome. Why do all the bosses have to be physically large though? Why not any ninjas or mages?
Noticed a few more things:
- archery needs some serious help. so far as I can tell, none of the level-up traits improves archery damage or rate of fire, and aside from accuracy and crit chance, no stat increase helps either. So more or less, a level 1 sovereign with a bow does the same damage as an end-of-game sovereign with a bow.
- even the bows themselves don't improve much. in real life, one of the advantages of a long-bow was the great power it had, which was a result of the great strength training of the bowmen. in FE, a longbow still has a -100% strength bonus.
- I haven't run across any magical bows either.
- on a different note, why do new units appear outside of the city, instead of safely inside? units are so easy to miss in any given turn, and they're vulnerable out there.
- procipinee seriously needs at least one minor damage spell to start off with. my game started off with her essentially shut down, because there were no other heroes nearby, and drakes and air elementals blocked exploration routes. I built units to support her, but they got mowed down too. very painful.
- oh, also, I did uncover 2 great items (axe and shield) right off the bat, only to have them sit unused in my inventory because I couldn't level up sufficiently to use them. not the first time that's happened either.
- tactical battle bug: when attacking the empire-oriented champ Csilla in his camp, he jumped the queue and started the battle by failing to cast "mass curse", which meant I had to auto-play out of the battle to unlock it.
- seems like enemy caravans count against the caravan limit of a captured city.
- minor UI: the date at the top of the screen changes by season, except that each season's name has a different number of letters, so the whole toolbar jiggles back and forth as the date changes.
- death demon attacks don't show floating damage numbers
- there appears to be some cap on the number of strategic buffs a champ can have. I tried casting every one I could find on Procipinee (as her crown makes their mana maintenance = 0), but after a while it stopped applying them (I think it was 6 or so). I never did get mantle of oceans or flame blade to stick.
- trained units melt like frost in a frying pan in any sort of late-game magic battle. one blizzard or fireball does them in. almost no point to building them, except to tie up the strategic map in more places than your champs can be.
- why do resources that are attached to your city get built at a disadvantage compared to wild ones? wild improvements are build-queue independent. city-adjacent improvements tie up the build queue.
On a final note, please disregard the "- units that are groups don’t attack with less strength when damaged" point in my original post. I've paid close attention since and it hasn't repeated, so that may be my error. Similarly, with regard to "- strategic map does not give indication of where it is possible to settle or not", I have since discovered the toggle button for this, which shows me just how little of the map can be settled. how depressing.
Very much agree with the different gilar scales; In the game I have been playing currently, I have been funding my empire with loot found by heroes, rather than ever balancing my economy.
It also seems crazy that so many buildings have an upkeep of exactly 1 guilder.
And that my troops all get the same pay.
Another game in progress, this time one map size up from 'small', and for the first time I have more than one computer opponent. Every other time the rest have died to monsters. Now I think all 6 or so survived. They won't, of course, survive me. Playing as Markinn.
A few more notes:
- I discovered negative mana. I achieved this the first time by using a blizzard scroll when I was already at low mana. Once you break 0, there's no bottom limit to the mana deficit you can rack up. definitely broken, and OP as heck.
- in tactical battles, sometimes the 'obscuring fog' graphics aren't showing up on the units, even if the effect is active
- the tactical battle UI does not indicate the effects of debuffs active on your units
- the tactical battle UI does not indicate magic resistance or dodge scores, for you or your enemies. this would be very useful information to have, and certainly wouldn't be any more difficult to justify than giving us exact damage and HP information.
- in tactical battles, large creatures that have been successfully with a 'shrink' spell still CRASH to the ground when killed (e.g. tiny trolls)
- on a similar note, bosses (vetrar, torax) that take up multiple squares should not still take up so much space once they've been shrunk. maybe 4 squares instead of 9?
- the cost of leather armor does not reflect the effectiveness. eg. greaves = 45G per +1def, cuirass = 50G per +1def, everything else = 90G per +1def
- haven't run in to any magic spears yet. why not (instead of just something with higher stats) some interesting utility, like being able to spear across the tactical map as a skill?
- there doesn't appear to be a "find unit with movement remaining" button on the strategic map. so I have to hunt for units to avoid wasting moves.
- the level-up notifications for cities (on the right) are redundant, because when a city levels-up, you get notified anyways when you get to choose the upgrade
- there should be more variability in the upgrade buildings available. right now the first two choices are always the same.
- there should be more variability in the opening quests. I'm getting tired of returning the noble daughter through the bandits. next time I may just hand her over.
- being stuck without an air mage severely limits mobility. but if you don't luck out on your champs, no 'cloud walk' for you, and you're gonna be walking everywhere.
- getting redundant champ skill options is boring. I have many times been faced with a choice between 'dexterity' and 'grace', or 'quick', or 'acrobat'. why not categorize the upgrades so that, for example, only one dex will come up at a time? that gives more options, because it frees up the redundant slot for something else.
- performance issues are getting on my nerves. there are short pauses between everything. use tactical ability or spell? short pause. move unit? short pause. center strategic map? short pause. click on notification? less-short pause. access city screen? short pause. reveal some fog? short pause for redraw. to be perfectly honest, I'm happier to wait between turns than have the whole game respond sluggishly. sure, I'm not playing on a powerhouse machine (intel core i7 @ 1.6GhZ, 8MB Ram, win 64 bit, ATI mobility radeon 560v), but IIRC stardock has always made it a point of pride to develop for as wide a range of hardware as possible.
There is an option to have new units spawned inside the city.
I had a similair situation with her. But I made out ok. I was just forced to turtle and build up my starting city. Once I had researched enough military to fight my way out, she was unstopable. In short, I disagree. It's more interesting to be put in a tough spot and forced to take a different path to the one you had planned to be successful.
I agree with you in principle, but turtling a single city that early can only be so effective. As it was, I was way behind even the mindless AI opponent. Whether catch-up would have been feasible on a map with multiple, competent AIs remains to be seen. I'm not suggesting a major buff to her, just some way to do more than 1hp of damage. Maybe a custom spell for her, like a "minor mana surge", that costs 5 mana to cast and does 10% of the mana pool in damage up to a max of 15. Battles would still be tough, she'd still have to turtle and wait a bit, but it would give the player something to work with.
BTW, thanks for the tip on the unit spawn location. I haven't made my way through all of the options yet.
She becomes stupid-powerful mid/late game. It's a trade-off. Plus, my one city was far more advanced than other cities by the time I fought my way out of my corner and my units were all more advanced. We'll agree to disagree. But yes, let's see how things play after the next patch.
That is true, she was a beast by the time I wrapped the game up, but she needed to be because I only ever found one more hero. That's really the key - had I found even one melee champ early game, it would have played totally differently. The variability in finding champs means that the trade-off you describe isn't consistent, game to game. If it were more consistent, so that I could tell myself that it was a trade-off intended to work that way, I don't think I'd disagree with you.
Very good post crass_monkey.
One of the most important things to me is the two tier economy. Nothing spoils immersion like your thriving capital producing a +5 gildar per turn profit and needing to spend 500 gold to buy some basic armour for your hero! This really, really needs fixing, it is just stupid.
It needs to be setup so that heroes can use mundane items (ie non magical weapons/armour) but to really get ahead they want magical equipment. Then by all means make the magical equipment expensive but at least that makes sense - I can just about swallow the idea that a suit of mithral chain with flame retardant properties could take 100 turns of profit from my capital (ok it is still a stretch but a much more comfortable one!).
Part of this is of course just relabeling things (ie renaming the current items you find/buy for your hero to be magical) but it goes deeper than that because of the need to fit in with the mundane items that your kingdom is researching. Still, it needs to be done.
This is one thing that has absolutely driven me crazy, ever since E:WoM. I absolutely agree that heroes should have either free or cheap access to mundane items as they are unlocked by the tech tree. As for magical items, that's what adventuring is for.
In fact, I'm not super-keen on cities "manufacturing" magical items at all, even after techs. I'd much rather see individual magical items being crafted and enchanted by the champs, but that's a slightly different topic, and would be a whole additional gameplay mechanic.
Finished my 'next-size-up-from-small' map with multiple opponents. As predicted, Markinn was victorious by alliance with Tarth and Capitar. Noted a few more things along the way:
- you can rename enemy sovereigns on the strategic map. needless to say, my final victim became known as "sir losesalot'. childish, I know.
- it would appear that you pick up loot from downed enemy champs over and over again. for example, one of the resoln champs had the toxic dagger. a nice and unique piece. until I killed that champ 2 times and (amazing!) multiplied the dagger, picking one up after each battle.
- using the 'sweep' skill while riding a warg causes a delay of 15 seconds or so between the animation and the damage being applied. during that time the game hangs.
- sometimes when casting spells in a tactical battle, the map goes really light, almost white. it's like there's a layer of atmosphere underneath most of the rest of the graphics that is popping up on top, or something. it then goes away once the spell has been cast. frequently happens to me when casting 'obscuring fog', but also recently for a 'storm'.
- killing city-less sovereign with strategic-map spells makes them disappear, but their faction doesn't, preventing you from winning the game
- I've kept from making AI notes because it's essentially not there at all, but I couldn't believe how few of the resources they use. there'll be a gold mine right beside their city, undeveloped.
- similarly, the AI seems to completely ignore swarms of monsters running around inside their borders.
- final note on that same topic, the AI in this game had been successfully mounting a campaign against the monsters in the howling chasm/storm dragon playspace, but hadn't been taking any of the lairs. I walked through and picked up like 10 magic items in a row.
- building city improvements near a hill or mountain causes the terrain to change shape
That's the end of my 0.77 feedback. I've reached the end of the replayability of this version, at least for me. Looking forward to the next patch!
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