Author Topic: Suggestions / feedback / feature requests after ~20 hours of 2 player co-op  (Read 1776 times)

Offline vehementi

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Hi developers,

I've played for something like 20 hours with my GF on LAN co-op with latest version since we bought it 2 days ago.  Here is my initial feedback and some feature suggestions.  Sorry it's poorly formatted and somewhat disorganized; wait until you're in a good mood to slog through it ;)

Informational / UI / UX / cosmetic change suggestions
  • add a way to filter or somehow identify really strong human units who e.g. touched adamantium
  • when placing buildings, highlight valid spots
  • when placing a military structure like barracks, highlight supporting buildings (e.g. if a barracks needs bacon, highlight all butchers), or maybe give a balloon popup over each town stating which supporting buildings they have/don't have, maybe split out per unit type the barracks can build (need smithy for this one, horses for that one, etc.)  Also highlight schools at this time.
  • Highlight schools when I go to place a school
  • just for fun, mouse over could display the age of the unit so I can say hey this guy's been around since the start!
  • add an age visualization in the form of a heat map - colours on blue/red scale for each unit, newest ones blue, oldest ones red, so I can easily tell which ones are going to act first
  • let me right click -> add beacon to a spot, or maybe ctrl+click.  Going into the menu kinda sucks to quickly point something out to co-op buddy.
  • let me place beacons on places where there is no terrain to tell buddy to put terrain there
  • let me edit the currently selected filter during playback mode, it sucks having gods only selected or something and hitting end turn and watching a long playback with the whole world dimmed
  • on screen log (maybe in message log) of all the things all co-op players are doing.  Buddy 1 smited tile, Buddy 2 built barracks in Athens, Buddy 1 undid last action: "Buddy 2 built barracks in Athens", Buddy 1 placed Minotaur near York, ...
  • option to lock/sync/link battle playback speed across all players so someone doesn't hold everyone up at 1x while we're at 8x
  • list the current world effects due to tokens in some window so I don't have to find the tokens and mouse over them.  "Palladium: All blue buildings currently invulnerable (3 more turns)" "Yggdrasil: all red and blue military units doubling (2 more turns)" etc.
  • give a view that highlights military structures with different colours depending on: 1) is able to build a unit (resources available, butcher type buildings available, etc.) (green), 2) can't build a unit due to lack of resources (yellow) 3) can't build a unit due to lack of butcher type buildings, but building on cooldown (orange) 4) wants to build a unit NOW but can't due to lack of resources or butcher type buildings (red)
  • Need an option to turn off battle markers (the X's) - I get no value from them and they're distracting.
  • Add 16x, 32x, and "skip combat" options to make things process as fast as possible.  Some turns were a drag with 300+ unit orders to process even at 8x.  (At some point there's just so much crap going on that you don't care anymore and just evaluate the state of things after the dust settles)
  • Soundtrack is lovely on its own but it seems extremely inappropriate at times - we'll have hundreds of frost giants and minotaurs fighting in a ruined world, to the background music of a self help infomercial.  Maybe calculate various metrics and play music depending on things like 1) lots of cities are destroyed 2) bandit presence is significant 3) mythological presence is significant 4) large % of population died recently (would happen when an event makes things super weak/strong and causes lots of carnage), etc.
  • Let me change the combat fast forward rate during my actual turn
  • Add "score so far this turn", score since last turn, etc. things on screen (disableable)
  • Add "+500 score" etc. pop ups every time something generates score (disableable)
  • Add "100 dmg" etc. pop ups every time something does damage (disableable)


Gameplay confusion / feedback / suggestions
  • it seems that events that destroy tiles can destroy icons that have world effects like Yggdrasil and end their effects :(  Since I can't smite that tile it kinda sucks that they can be destroyed by random events.
  • do guard towers actually do anything or is their effect entirely that AI is dumb and attacks them for no rational reason?  Maybe guard towers should make the rest of the town invincible (i.e. must target guard towers first).  Or make them give a defensive bonus to units inside.
  • is there in game math about ranged damage reduction based on distance?
  • how do damage multipliers work?  My 2000 damage guy with 1.2x multiplier didn't do exactly 2400 damage to a target.
  • how does retaliation work?  Do both units do their entire hit each time?
  • the 3x heal modifier Ruins bonus seems to suck, should probably increase it to like 10x or 50x.  Healing is almost never a factor in whether a unit ends up surviving.  They're either totally screwed or handily won; the 2% heal/turn wouldn't have mattered.
  • similarly the degen effects from e.g. Valkyrie are rarely a factor
  • I tend to get huge bottlenecks everywhere - could we make friendly units pass through other friendly units (as long as they won't end their turn inside the unit), or maybe make all friendly units stack up to 2 like catapults can, which would go a long way toward helping this.
  • Gods seem to suck and I've never made one attack or do damage to anything ever.  Are we playing the game wrong?  They won't go through people or do a path of destruction through people, especially if there's friendlies in the way.  I end up dropping their tokens right next to them to get the token effect ASAP.
  • Let me build under friendly units and tokens, I don't get why they block things.  It's stupid to build a cerberus and have it block that spot forever, or have a lumber token (which doesn't even have a pickup effect and isn't a killable thing and might as well be a global buff)
  • I was playing on normal (i.e. no veterancy) and at later levels found a lot of high level mythological creatures were around - how is that possible?
  • Why do units ever attack a Cerberus?  That seems like a really dumb thing for units to do.  We had a game where a lot of Cerberuses got duplicated by Yggdrasil and it basically stalled everything for the rest of the game because everyone would just attack them for no reason instead of pushing to the enemy base etc.
  • "Oldest unit first" seems to add a lot of inertia to the battle making, making it hard to come back.  Like if there is a strong unit in my base and I produce 3 dudes from my barracks, the unit will kill all the units before the dudes can act.  If this were reversed it'd make bandits a lot more scary because they would actually get a chance to act during situations where blue/red have control of the map.
  • I found that the default 30-turns-per-phase makes for an excessively long game.  Maybe the default should be 15 or 20 in order to not scare off first timers?  In any case there needs to be a way to make a game shorter than 20 turns per phase for people who like speedier games.  Even 20 turns took more hours than we preferred.
  • Score targets need to adjust automatically to # of turns per phase.
  • Split the difficulty things further; give me individual checkboxes/sliders for things like "veterancy enabled" "bandit spawn rate" etc.
  • We noticed building sorta degenerated into both sides taking turns expanding laterally by building 4 plains as a land bridge and putting a new town there.  We ended up having a weird lattice of towns with the rear towns never seeing any action.  That was pretty weird.  Maybe the # of blocks that comes each turn should increase with the # of towns, and maybe they should perferentially try to connect towns or something.


Thanks for reading, hope this feedback helps to make the game better.
« Last Edit: June 22, 2013, 09:13:14 pm by vehementi »

Offline Misery

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Let's see if I can help with a few things here:

Quote
Add 16x, 32x, and "skip combat" options to make things process as fast as possible.  Some turns were a drag with 300+ unit orders to process even at 8x.  (At some point there's just so much crap going on that you don't care anymore and just evaluate the state of things after the dust settles)

To skip that, just hit the "end" button when the playback thing is on the screen.  Skips the entire playback. 

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Add "100 dmg" etc. pop ups every time something does damage (disableable)

This one is actually in the Settings menu, under "extras".  "Display battle popups", I think is the option, and it will show exact damage numbers with each attack and counterattack.

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it seems that events that destroy tiles can destroy icons that have world effects like Yggdrasil and end their effects :(  Since I can't smite that tile it kinda sucks that they can be destroyed by random events.

Yep, events that destroy tiles can indeed destroy pretty much anything that you cannot.... this includes tiles that, if destroyed, would cut off a town center from the rest.   Important to keep this one in mind... most tiles arent safe when this one occurs!

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do guard towers actually do anything or is their effect entirely that AI is dumb and attacks them for no rational reason?  Maybe guard towers should make the rest of the town invincible (i.e. must target guard towers first).  Or make them give a defensive bonus to units inside.

For the most part, what they do is that normal units cannot cross over or step on enemy towers.  They can be used to block off access, basically, and normal units also cannot fire over them.  And they have 30,000 HP.   The problem though is that beyond a certain difficulty level you'll see alot of units, generally bandits, with the "Bloodlust" ability, which allows them to simply ignore these things.  And some types of siege units, Trojan Horses and a similar unit that bandits have, can destroy even these in a single hit with their ability.

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how do damage multipliers work?  My 2000 damage guy with 1.2x multiplier didn't do exactly 2400 damage to a target.

Well, firstly, make sure that the target is the correct type, or the multiplier carried by the attacking unit simply wont go off.   Beyond that though, there's also the terrain to consider, such as forests or marshes or hills, which can have an effect on damage done/recieved by units standing on them, and of course any special effects the units may be carrying.   I *think* there might be a couple of small glitches in the damage calculation though, as I've recently noticed a few oddities with it myself, where examining the situation and things like land tiles and buffs simply didn't add up right.  I'll see about getting a good example of it caught and submitting that one to the bug tracker.

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how does retaliation work?  Do both units do their entire hit each time?

Yep.

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similarly the degen effects from e.g. Valkyrie are rarely a factor

Yeah, that one I've brought up a few times... I keep thinking their special effects should be changed, same with the Light Elf.   For these units, those effects arent the real reason to use them.   The Valkyrie is good because of it's incredibly high about of AP;  they're stupidly mobile, fairly strong, AND they have a bit of range to their attacks (yet not too much, so they're pretty easy units to manage).   Wheras Light Elves often kinda act like mobile turrets, with their massive attack range and multiple shots... they just wont move around all that much, particularly if there's many enemy units anywhere remotely close to them.

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I tend to get huge bottlenecks everywhere - could we make friendly units pass through other friendly units (as long as they won't end their turn inside the unit), or maybe make all friendly units stack up to 2 like catapults can, which would go a long way toward helping this.

That one's just part of how the game works... honestly, if you're getting these alot, even with 2 units on one tile, you'd likely STILL be getting them.   It's really all up to how the map is shaped, and how you're setting things up, and I think you'll get the hang of it over time.   Dont forget that aside from ruins, tunnelled mountains, and bridged lakes, you can always delete tiles with smite, to remove mountains/lakes in the way, as well as place new tiles yourself.   These things can be important to keep things moving smoothly.   Also pay attention to the TYPE of tile!  If you've got a long 1-wide path that has marshes or hills on it, for example, well.... that's just asking for a bottleneck.  Yet at the same time, that can be useful for defense....

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I was playing on normal (i.e. no veterancy) and at later levels found a lot of high level mythological creatures were around - how is that possible?

Might have been a woe that went off at some point.... I cant think of anything else that can do this.

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Gods seem to suck and I've never made one attack or do damage to anything ever.  Are we playing the game wrong?  They won't go through people or do a path of destruction through people, especially if there's friendlies in the way.  I end up dropping their tokens right next to them to get the token effect ASAP.

Originally, they actually DID attack anything that got near them.... and the problem with this was that they killed way, WAY too many things, and could often defend a town pretty much indefinitely.   So now, they're passive for the most part.... but they WILL strike back if attacked directly.   There's also a particular woe that makes all gods go totally berserk.... they're definitely a threat when THAT one happens!  For the most part though, they exist for their passives and tokens.

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Why do units ever attack a Cerberus?  That seems like a really dumb thing for units to do.  We had a game where a lot of Cerberuses got duplicated by Yggdrasil and it basically stalled everything for the rest of the game because everyone would just attack them for no reason instead of pushing to the enemy base etc.


WHY do they do it?  Because they're dumber than a sack of hammers  :P  ....or because the Cerberus is in the way and they cant get by.   Depends on the setup.  But yeah, your guys, they're not too good at.... focusing on stuff.  They look at an enemy Cerberus, go "OOH A TARGET, BETTER STAB IT", and then probably get all splattered by it's counterattack.   That's just how units are in this game, they're not meant to be the brightest bulbs around. 


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I found that the default 30-turns-per-phase makes for an excessively long game.  Maybe the default should be 15 or 20 in order to not scare off first timers?  In any case there needs to be a way to make a game shorter than 20 turns per phase for people who like speedier games.  Even 20 turns took more hours than we preferred.

This one goes faster once you've had enough time with the game, but in part it can depend on playstyle, or it can depend on how often and how long you are looking at replays.   If you're looking at alot of 100+ unit replays with a speed of like x2 or something.... yeah, it's going to add up.   Actually spending your actions though can be as fast as you can do them.   

Quote
We noticed building sorta degenerated into both sides taking turns expanding laterally by building 4 plains as a land bridge and putting a new town there.  We ended up having a weird lattice of towns with the rear towns never seeing any action.  That was pretty weird.  Maybe the # of blocks that comes each turn should increase with the # of towns, and maybe they should perferentially try to connect towns or something.

Sometimes this one can depend a bit on luck;  I've had plenty of times where I'll have an intended land bridge, thin and defended by stuff, usually leading to a resource-only town.... that then gets a pile of landtiles appearing next to it ANYWAY, screwing up my plans for defense.    But yeah, I agree, the land-expansion rate should increase as the game goes further along.  Should go up as ages switch.



Hope some of that helps!

Offline vehementi

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  • Posts: 23
Thanks for the info.  A lot of derp on my part :)

Another question - frost giants have 4 AP, and 1 AP per attack.  Why don't they attack 4 times when they start their turn adjacent to something (i.e. don't have to spend AP moving)?

More notes:
- there doesn't appear to be a way to tell if a Woe is "Catastrophic" for purposes of that mythological icon that stops all woes except catastrophic ones
- the catastrophic woe Mass Extinction (kills all mythological creatures & blocks them for the rest of the game) didn't actually kill any mythological creatures (it did block them)
- encountered a weird rounding thing where I had "5" of 5 sunstone but could not build a thing, I imagine because I really only had 4.99 or something.
- Divine Judgment (kills all bandits) left a bunch of 0HP bandits for the duration of playback

...I just noticed the request/bug tracker app these guys use.  Should I translate this thread into 50 feature requests or whatever?