Okay, I love the game.
Now for some details.
Poison pills, equipment and survival
Currently there is very little incentive to survive. Go down the hole, grab the perk, suicide. Kill the Bossmob, smash the totem, suicide. As I understand it, the prime reason not to die is supposed to be equipment. Equipment You can only ever have one of, that breaks uncontrollably and is currently very rare.
Now, just making equipment more common does not remedy the issue at all. Die - find a new toy. Or maybe You have found that legendary plushytoy of overlord-obliterating + 9 - in which case dying is of no consequence either, as You would lose that thing long before You get anywhere You might possibly need it as it... breaks.
My suggestions for making survival more appealing and the equipment more interesting:
1. Give us a full blown inventory system. Nothing with an interface or visible stats - the "unknown properties with cool names" idea is awesome. But let us have boots, a belt maybe, a talisman, armor and possibly a weapon that can be used as a talisman. Just create slots of sorts. Make the items breakable by specific hits from bosses - but not otherwise. You lose equipment only by replacing it with an item that goes in the same slot - or by dying. Dying could remove all equipment, which would be super-harsh, or one random piece. That way You would be worried about dying because You could loose Your invincibilizing bigstick of smashing everything + 5 and try to avoid it. On the other hand, You could collect loot that actually feels like something nice to have. Also, then You'd really stand in front of the box and think if the item with the strange name is possibly better than what You have now. Right now I usually just look if it says something crappy and skip it, otherwise I take it, as it breaks anyway before I leave the level.
2. As an alternative I suggest making these items more like talismans - which if I understand correctly they are supposed to be anyway. Give them their own health that adds to Your own, and let them heal with the little green orbs, or maybe ammo, or a third drop type (another incentive to actually kill mobs then). They would become weaker with taking damage as well, but You could refresh them with the life-force of slain monsters. That way, even with only one item You would have a way to protect and keep something nice You found, would also be forced to think about replacing the item with a new one - and of course avoid dying.
The strategic game
Okay, maybe I am just very strategically inept or have missed a point here but I like everything about it - except the challenge. Or rather, the type of challenge. You run around, secureing spots of interest and sending Your people out to build kewl stuff. Now currently I feel that is a waste of time. The strategic game feels less like chess and more like a turn based lava-escape. I get it that the big bad should be big and bad, but having it randomly wade through my buildings - special ones just as well as grasslands and ruining them while I can do absolutely nothing about it? Not nice. Furthermore a simple computation. Overlord has four tiles of movement on rook difficulty. Means he destroys four tiles a turn. I can secure a maximum of four relevant tiles a turn (the one with the generator, plus at best three adjacent ones). The places that unlock by themselves seem to be just caves at the moment, that, for the strategic game's purposes are a meaningless wasteland. The game furthermore tells me that nasty fella is going to gain in speed. Conclusion - the survivors are losing ground. Constantly. Building something is a waste of time, as You can do exactly one dispatch per turn. You need that to clear away those nasty warded towers and towns. And You flee, hoping that the stuff You secure every turn can make up for the production lost to the overlord. In this context more survivors also are a massive liability - they consume more than YOu will be able to afford, sooner or later, while keeping them all in one spot to do the one mission You are allowed per turn obsoletes the idea of having more survivors to lose later. Spreading them out just creates more danger without benefit.
In conclusion, the idea of having all these kewl buildings with different attributes and the option to build new ones, an entire survivor-economy even, but being allowed to keep none of them is frustrating.
Now I do not have smart suggestions. Either You want that feeling of being on the run constantly, but then the environment must be more streamlined for that - all the building and secureing makes little sense, it's more scavenge and run then. Would be a bit underwhelming. Or You want an actual strategic game (anyone else senses the inspiration from those zombie-survival games that circled around the net for a while?).
Suggestions would be
- to allow more dispatches a turn, maybe from special buildings.
- to allow building fortifications that take the overlord one step (not turn!) to destroy, slowing him down.
- to include a basic guideline on how to kite the overlord in the tutorial (as said, I am somewhat challenged strategy-wise, so I have not figured out how the thing actually ticks...) - maybe an analysis of his methods from the time You studied at the keep?
- to create a dispatch mission type that is dangerous to boot and has a high death/injury ratio that will fortify an area against the big bad's attack.
- to create a dispatch mission that will actively attack the overlord to slow him down, same risk as above (maybe a raid on his supply-train?)
- to create a player mission that would slow down the overlord one step - or maybe several, depending on performance but end the strategic turn
- to balance that out by giving the Lieutenants an active strategic role. (Like chess? Only one move in a specific direction possible at first? Later two diagonal ones? Or the classic knight-jump?)
- to have him spend turns re-erecting generators, means, secureing, some of the areas he has trampled?
- to combine the active participation of the survivors with the bestiary idea - slaying more monsters of a type could slightly increase their chances of success or at least survival when battling a lieutenant/the overlord using mainly a certain type of monster as "army".
I would think all of the above could be a way to make the game more interesting strategy-wise, give You as a player more of a desperate-fight-for-survival-feeling, instead of a desperate flight for survival. It would make having more survivors more worthwhile and also make the strategic game more of an economic clash (which is still threatening, as the overlord has no weak spots and will constantly gain in power - more steps a turn means more destructive potential, even if he can be held up for one or more steps a turn). Spending dispatches and player-turns on slowing the overlord would have to be weighed against expansion and secureing of new territory - especially level up mills, as every turn the overlord is stalled the player still becomes more of a whimp by global power inflation. Also You could really "defend" a strategically important place - for example one that allows for another dispatch per turn/ every two turns, at an increasing economic cost and danger to Your population.
I am very aware that these are suggestions that do not yet really add up to a good concept, and so far noone else has complained about the way things work on the strategy map. So... maybe just the part in the tutorial, or help at least, about how to handle that monster?
(Now given that I am rather new to these forums and the thing has come up - it's just feedback based on my personal experience. So I'd be glad if anyone sharing my perception would say so.)
Finally, about the feeling of the game:
It's not as bleak as the predecessor, which as I understood the announcements was intended. Now however we have the tortured hero. Who, while wakeing up in the keep when dying is still not all that tortured in the actual game. Therefore I'd suggest the following:
A tutorial mission where the player is still in training with the overlord. Running around, actually murdering innocent survivors while learning the game. Would display just how great the difference in power between these denizens of darkness and Your average survivor is as well as give the "the things I had to do" sentence some depth. As a replacement for the respawn-stone a Leiutenant could be sent along, commenting and reviving the player/ warping him out if he dies.
[edit: idea already exists, and in much more detail:
http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,12207.0.html ]
Expanding on this idea I would suggest flashback-missions. Maybe every n number of turns or after rescueing a survivor, or capturing a specific landmark - maybe after a level up, or several of these, the turn update sends the player through a flash-back dream of his past. Working for Daimonaica or for/with one of the Lieutenants the player might be tasked to hunt survivors or kill a specific leader (a more generic boss"monster"), capture a landmark for the overlord and build a windstorm generator, destroy a specific item or structure important to the survivors or do some collecting or clearing out missions to expand the keep (i.e. "capturing" a specific type of monster that then is unlocked on the map later). Type of mission could be linked to the reason it pops up (rescueing a survivor reminds the hero of how he would hunt them, and so on). Success in the mission could reward perk tokens, special items, or in an addition to the above ideas for equipment an update to something the character already has. Maybe it could unlock a second active perk per level, or maybe every n missions could do so, or an activation for a perk independent from level.
The clue here I think should be, that if the character dies he just failed the mission and wakes up at that point. No reward, no problem. If he succeeds he gains the reward (having been a more powerful servant of the overlord now also means he is stronger in the present, especially after "accepting" the supressed memory) but morale of the survivors takes a hit and maybe monsters should become one or several turns stronger then, as a successful player on the side of the villain also means that he is stronger to begin with.
