My first 1.001 suggestions

[Ipkins]

Hello all!

Finally I got the game when it came out on Steam yesterday. I have followed it quite closely on the forums the last weeks, but did not have much time on my hands, so I did not sign up for Alpha.

Anyway, after I completely screwed up the Tutorial and barely made it into the Age of Monsters before dying (trying to fix an unbalance and screwed up so badly that it spun out of control in the other direction) I started a game on "Easy" and found it actually a lot easier than the Tutorial, because I did not have to place myths in the setup round. 
Also the way the units tend to "one-shot" on the lower difficulties was not making my life easier, on the contrary: There was one blue ranged unit standing on the edge of the red town and whenever a military unit was produced it was shot down in the same turn.

A few suggestions from my side that could help improve the game:

- It has been suggested elsewhere: Show the number of raw material producing buildings you have for the current faction. This could easily be part of the tooltip of the raw resource on the right hand side. Right now it shows the amount produced last turn (and what was spent), but this is not the same, since there are these "limitied time only producing" things. The tooltip of the town center could also give a rundown of the buildings in this town.

- In the same vein: One problem I had after building up a few towns and getting the economy going: Once the carnage starts, things might get a little confusing. Sometimes buildings are destroyed that might be vital for a town. In the round directly after the kill it is possible to see WHAT has been destroyed by hovering over the combat message, but if you miss it you have no chance in later rounds. Suggestion: The tooltip for building ruins could show what building it was.

- This one may be harder to do: It would be great if one could see if a building is a raw material producer, a finished goods producer or a military building at a glance without the need to learn to tell apart the individual buildings. This might come after a while of playing, but for a newbie this added to the sense of confusion.

That's it for the moment. I have been playing only a few hours, but I had a really, really great time and I can see that I will spend a lot of time with this baby. Very well done! Thanks for this gem, I hope many people will be getting it. 

Regards,
Ipkins

[Misery]

Hello all!

Finally I got the game when it came out on Steam yesterday. I have followed it quite closely on the forums the last weeks, but did not have much time on my hands, so I did not sign up for Alpha.

Anyway, after I completely screwed up the Tutorial and barely made it into the Age of Monsters before dying (trying to fix an unbalance and screwed up so badly that it spun out of control in the other direction) I started a game on "Easy" and found it actually a lot easier than the Tutorial, because I did not have to place myths in the setup round. 
Also the way the units tend to "one-shot" on the lower difficulties was not making my life easier, on the contrary: There was one blue ranged unit standing on the edge of the red town and whenever a military unit was produced it was shot down in the same turn.

A few suggestions from my side that could help improve the game:

- It has been suggested elsewhere: Show the number of raw material producing buildings you have for the current faction. This could easily be part of the tooltip of the raw resource on the right hand side. Right now it shows the amount produced last turn (and what was spent), but this is not the same, since there are these "limitied time only producing" things. The tooltip of the town center could also give a rundown of the buildings in this town.

- In the same vein: One problem I had after building up a few towns and getting the economy going: Once the carnage starts, things might get a little confusing. Sometimes buildings are destroyed that might be vital for a town. In the round directly after the kill it is possible to see WHAT has been destroyed by hovering over the combat message, but if you miss it you have no chance in later rounds. Suggestion: The tooltip for building ruins could show what building it was.

- This one may be harder to do: It would be great if one could see if a building is a raw material producer, a finished goods producer or a military building at a glance without the need to learn to tell apart the individual buildings. This might come after a while of playing, but for a newbie this added to the sense of confusion.

That's it for the moment. I have been playing only a few hours, but I had a really, really great time and I can see that I will spend a lot of time with this baby. Very well done! Thanks for this gem, I hope many people will be getting it. 

Regards,
Ipkins

On the note of the building ruins thing, that's a suggestion/request I've seen in multiple places now (and one that I also think should be there), so I've gone and created a Mantis report for the idea here:

http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=11653

That one, to me, is a high-priority sort of idea; it sounds like a simple thing but it really would be tremendously helpful and make that aspect less aggravating during times of heavy combat against cities.

EDIT:  Yeah, this one keeps being suggested over on the Steam forums.   Just pointing that out to stress this a bit as being a highly requested addition.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I suggested raw material production income as well, and I think that wouldn't be hard to implement. The biggest challenge really would be finding UI space, right? I'm also supporting the 'say what kind of ruins it is' idea.

[Cinth]

Ranged units got you pinned? Try dropping mountains between the archer and town

I've suggested building counts a couple of times during alpha. 
You can see what the town still produces by hovering over the TC and checking the bottom half of the tool tip.
You can see your turn by turn income and expenditures by hovering over the resources on the right hand side resource bar (though I know you all want to see a simple +- 10 by the wheat ).

About the ruins idea, unless Chris wants to spend time making more ruins (one for each building?), it would be a line added to the tool tip... I can't say how many times I've said read the tool tips....  The easy solution would be sufficient but I don't think it help.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I think the important thing is that if a structure is recently destroyed and you get curious you can just mouse over and be like "NOOOO MY BUTCHER" or w/e. Then you know what to replace on the short term, or what to base your decisions on on the short term in case you weren't able to check out what happened right away.

[Cinth]

In that case the tooltip for your Town Center won't show you have any butchered meats (no mo bacon). 

[Ipkins]

Thanks for the answers. I now saw that there is a tooltip showing the buildings for each side (if you hover over the population and town count at the top), but I still think that it would be more useful to show specific raw material producing buildings while looking at the raw material in question.

One completely unrelated thing: Do commandments actually work? I am in the Age of Monsters, there are two lesser gods on the table (one for each faction). Out of curiosity I have placed a commandment of the opposing faction on each of them... and nothing happened. Even the military units close by ignored the opposing god and did their usual thing. The bastards.

Or maybe I was interpreting the tooltip in a wrong way?

[Ipkins]

And one more thing regarding balance: I think the greek siege unit (not the horse, the other one) is quite overpowered. It has 4x the attack of the norse siege units and attacks at least three times per turn.

Well, maybe Ares complicates things for me a little, now these things attack six times per turn. One alone can easily devastate a complete town in a few turns. Granted, they die easily, but still... 

[orzelek]

Thanks for the answers. I now saw that there is a tooltip showing the buildings for each side (if you hover over the population and town count at the top), but I still think that it would be more useful to show specific raw material producing buildings while looking at the raw material in question.

One completely unrelated thing: Do commandments actually work? I am in the Age of Monsters, there are two lesser gods on the table (one for each faction). Out of curiosity I have placed a commandment of the opposing faction on each of them... and nothing happened. Even the military units close by ignored the opposing god and did their usual thing. The bastards.

Or maybe I was interpreting the tooltip in a wrong way?

This was reported as a bug by me some time ago. I don't think it got fixed.
It seems that military units are looking at the commandment as more of a guideline than an order.
It makes killing gods a bit problematic tho.