Author Topic: Alpha Feedback  (Read 7845 times)

Offline Kjara

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Alpha Feedback
« on: May 03, 2013, 09:24:49 pm »
Just got home and updated to 8.001.    I'll try to add a summary of thoughts at the end, but for now, going to be whatever comes to mind:

I like the menu music, though its default might be a little bit loud(but easy to fix).  After updating, looked that the options a bit, but decided to launch with the default settings for the tutorial. 

I wonder if the player should have some sort of budget for the first 5 turns (point or otherwise), that goes away when it ends, rather than just making all buildings free -- as it seems like I have an incentive to priotirize the more expensive buildings (although at least a goodly number of them seem to be locked).  Have to see if that intuition plays out after a few games.

First turns:  Trying to place a blue town center in the lower right corner was a pain due to the tooltip for the town center being fixed to the lower right covering up where I wanted to place it(near the ruin).  Barracks had a worse issue(tooltip covered 80% of the map--Notice this is already reported by others).  (Note I am playing in windowed mode 1280-720).

Since resource buildings produce in the first 3 5 rounds, but barracks don't, seems optimal in most cases to get the resource buildings up first.  Might want to make them start to produce at turn 0?

Smelter and Sunstone shrine should be on the row below? (as they turn resources into other resources?)

# of actions remaning:  The location of this feels a bit odd, I keep trying to check the info bar at the top for it (perhaps it might fit better next to the round/turn info)?

Tooltip for barracks before placing it still claims I am missing a butcher + smithy even after I've built one.   Doesn't seem to be considering the buildings in the town that it will be placed in (reported on mantis).  Also related to the tooltip, might be nice to mark in some way any units you won't ever be able to build that game, such as the peltast/hersir the first few games, since you can't place a well?  I was building up the supply chain to them, then figured out that I needed to switch.  Also might be nice

Starting turns when units move.  Its rather had to follow how the units are moving.  Not sure how to fix this, perhaps a ghost trail that shows where that unit traveled this turn?  Also, the numbers rising over the buildings (production, crime) seem a bit jerky as they rise, and don't last long enough to really read all of them.

Minor typo:  Huscarl tooltip: A comboination (combination?) of ...

Balance wise, seems like logs are required for almost all buildings (and lumber for some weapons) and additionally is produced slower than most of the other resources.  Not sure how intended this is, but I didn't plan for it my first game (only built one woodcutter per faction--which also seems to be the only building that requires its own resource--might want to make this take stone), and managed to get myself quite blocked on logs.  Finally figured out I could just drop logs to fix this.

Units could stand to be a bit more salient (outline or something).  At times its hard to pick out a unit thats ontop of a building.

End of turn 5.
« Last Edit: May 03, 2013, 09:37:47 pm by Kjara »

Offline Kjara

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Re: Alpha Feedback
« Reply #1 on: May 04, 2013, 12:01:25 am »
Updated to 8.002

Building upgrades.  Might be more interesting if they also gave other boosts, such as better converstion rates or resource production rates.   Since most of my turns so far seem to be building resource nodes to fuel the increased production of units, it might make it easier on the player if they could just upgrade production facilities rather than having to keep placing them?


Turn 7: Greeks are starting to overrun the Norse, as they have 3 infantry units avail at the start, vs the two of norse (since you can't build either wells or breweries yet).    Also just had a crash bug--reported on mantis.

Arsonists seem to like to suicide against units, perhaps they should instead sometimes prefer to run at buildings?


Regarding resources:  Might be nice to have the resources available to each faction somewhere when you are on that factions turn, rather than having to mouse over the town hall each time.  (just symbols and numbers somewhere or something?)  Also, +/- summary information for the turn so it would be easier to find which resources you need more if would be great.

Archery units seem poor on defense, as they tend to stand on their production building, and keep it from producing on the following rounds.  Perhaps have them prefer to move to a nearby hill or woods to shoot from?

Resource stockpiling:  There doesn't seem to be any disadvantage (besides the turn cost to build them), to producing lots of production buildings, and having a large surplus of resources seems to givee you the flexability to use unit upgrades to control the follow of battle. 


You probably shouldn't be able to place resource buildings anywhere on the map, since you can put red resource buildings next to blue for free points/distractions.


Bandit battering ram just ran through number of my buildings to hit a unit (doing 0 damage).

Building capture is a bit wierd.  When production buildings are captured without the town center falling, they sit at 0 hp/white.  Might it instead make more sense to have them switch so that the original owner can capture them back?

Town centers can be placed within 2 squares of resource squares, but the opposite is not true.  While I understand you are trying to prevent people from clogging up their building squares with resources, might be better to give a warning, but allow if the player wants to?

Cerebus might be too good at keeping things a stalemate (where both sides are losing units, but not buildings at a steady rate).  Might be balanced by making it so that building kills are much more important for score.  Might be too easy to game it by saving up 9 actions, and building a town center + 8 buildings somewhere vulnerable for the other team to kill though.

End of round 1.

Offline Kjara

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Re: Alpha Feedback
« Reply #2 on: May 04, 2013, 04:00:11 am »
Just finished round 2, thoughts:

Is it intended that you can have one side build resource buildsing for the other (indirectly, by placing them in an easily conqured area)?   Additonally, seems odd that Greece could drop a couple of myth tokens in the safe, back area of the norse to power them up.  Would increase the difficulty if you couldn't use blue actions to help red and vice versa.

Feel that the extra influence tools are quite needed(hopefully the planned god tokens, etc will handle this).  I've got a decent stalemate going, but it doesn't feel like I can do much besides keep placing more and more production structures, and the ocasionally new town center.   

Possibly because so many of the options are not yet in the game, but it almost feels like the game is too long (even on the default setting).  Many of the boardgames where you have to balance buildup of resources vs point generation that I'd like to compare this to (Kingsberg, Saint Petersberg, Through the Ages) force you into hard choices because you don't have time for everything.   Hopefully the challenges, editcs and other things still to be added will take care of this issue.

I found myself skipping the unit animations every round, as it took far too long to watch 100+ units fight each round.  Really need some sort of summary, besides just a forest of green and red numbers rising :).   Also, need some way to picked out enhanced units (such as the one with adamantite).  Only reason I spot him ocasionally is the ocasional large number rising.

Offline Kjara

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Re: Alpha Feedback
« Reply #3 on: May 04, 2013, 04:24:06 am »
Finished out the game, mostly just placing down a few tokens here and there if the battle started to swing too far one way or the other. 
Felt it was perhaps a bit too easy to recover from one side winning, since as noted above, you can use both sides turns to help fix the problem.  Not sure what the solution is here, is there really any reason that the two sides have separate action counts?

I thought that the tutorial + the building tooltips gave more than enough info to play, however it did take me a while to figure out that I really needed lots of resource sites to support decent sized armies on both sides.  In fact I think I went a bit overboard here, and probably didn't have enough workers, since many of my production sites were still stuck at full capacity most of the time.  Would also be nice to be able to put down collection points that don't have the requirements of town centers (distance + needing military to deal with crime).

Save attached if anyone wants to see what the world looked like in the end. 

Offline Shumbok

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Re: Alpha Feedback
« Reply #4 on: May 04, 2013, 06:20:16 am »
I think this "Move whole Army here"-Marker is a bit to attractive for the Units. In a 1v1 Town Conflict it could easy stop one side from fighting as long as i need to recover the other side.

Offline nas1m

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Re: Alpha Feedback
« Reply #5 on: May 04, 2013, 08:02:32 am »
Just finished round 2, thoughts:

...

Feel that the extra influence tools are quite needed(hopefully the planned god tokens, etc will handle this).  I've got a decent stalemate going, but it doesn't feel like I can do much besides keep placing more and more production structures, and the ocasionally new town center.   

Possibly because so many of the options are not yet in the game, but it almost feels like the game is too long (even on the default setting).  Many of the boardgames where you have to balance buildup of resources vs point generation that I'd like to compare this to (Kingsberg, Saint Petersberg, Through the Ages) force you into hard choices because you don't have time for everything.   Hopefully the challenges, editcs and other things still to be added will take care of this issue.

I found myself skipping the unit animations every round, as it took far too long to watch 100+ units fight each round.  Really need some sort of summary, besides just a forest of green and red numbers rising :).   Also, need some way to picked out enhanced units (such as the one with adamantite).  Only reason I spot him ocasionally is the ocasional large number rising.

I can only second this. It's exactly what I felt (but could not quite put into words) after i finished my first tutorial game just some minutes ago. Kudos!
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Offline nas1m

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Re: Alpha Feedback
« Reply #6 on: May 04, 2013, 08:04:53 am »
I think this "Move whole Army here"-Marker is a bit to attractive for the Units. In a 1v1 Town Conflict it could easy stop one side from fighting as long as i need to recover the other side.

Seconded as well.
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Offline Winge

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Re: Alpha Feedback
« Reply #7 on: May 04, 2013, 12:07:29 pm »
Logs can be restrictive early on.  Right now, I'm having more trouble with Bread than anything else...

I still haven't tried the Military Commandment out...
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Offline Kjara

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Re: Alpha Feedback
« Reply #8 on: May 04, 2013, 04:10:18 pm »
Logs can be restrictive early on.  Right now, I'm having more trouble with Bread than anything else...

I still haven't tried the Military Commandment out...

Bread became more of an issue later I agree.