Player Feedback requested - New Tutorial

[Winge]

Box text: Build a butcher.
Hover text: This is where logs are cut into lunber. Lumber is used to make military units, to make/upgrade buildings as well as other things. Each town only ever needs one butcherr and it will handle that town's needs, provided there is enough pigs and/or sheep from farms for it! This must be placed no more than two squares away from the town center.

Is that where Bacon comes from?  /shudder

I fixed a few errors and tried to tidy it up a bit.  I also made a few changes that I thought would help the player.  Of course, others may feel free to offer suggestions on this.

Box text:  Build a Butcher.
Hover text:  This is where Pigs are made into Bacon--obviously the best resource--and Sheep is made into Mutton.  Bacon/Mutton are used to make military units, as well as other things.  Each town only ever needs one Butcher:  as long as you have enough Pigs/Sheep, the Butcher can meet the needs of every building in the town.  This building must be placed within two squares away from the Town Center (including diagonally).

I'll go through the entire document after dinner; it'll take me a little bit of time to give the same treatment to the other categories.  Overall, I think it shows a good overview of the various resources.  I may add a bit more to the end of it, to explain a few other important notes for the player (gameplay mechanics such as movement and attack, pickup items, building destruction, etc).

[iozay]

Nice concept, I would personally encourage the player to learn theirselves what to build(For example, not instructing the players to build specefic units/resource production tiles specifically but learn them what they have to build by instructing them to build the items stated in the tooltip that are required to build units

Give a person a fish and feed them for a day, give them a rod and teach to how to fish and feed them for a lifetime.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Is it at all possible to make the boxes of what to build clickable, to give the player an indication of where that is in the menu? Or, maybe add a short little description on where to navigate to find said option? I was kind of able to figure out what buildings I needed, but sometimes I couldn't actually find them in the menu on the left side. I would suggest to just allow clicking on the tutorial to enter placement mode, but that wouldn't teach anybody a darn thing.

[Misery]

One thing:


Even after a bunch of time with the game, I'm *still* honestly not sure just how population actually works, or what it does.   No idea at all.  I look at the population counts, and it's like.... yeah, those sure are numbers, all right.

Better explanation of that aspect would help.


Also, give the players some examples of what Smite can do in relation to these buildings.  Like, if you want to halt the barracks producing units for a time, you can simply Smite the butcher, which'll put a hold on it.  Or even smite the barracks itself.   Very useful thing, smite.   I've found it to be very versatile.

[Winge]

OK, it's going to take me a little bit longer to rework this.  I'm going to try to incorporate iozay's suggestion (below), by guiding the player through how the placement and resource system work.  I think the tutorial should also cover the basic mechanics of the action stage (even though the player has only minimal control over that phase).

Nice concept, I would personally encourage the player to learn theirselves what to build(For example, not instructing the players to build specefic units/resource production tiles specifically but learn them what they have to build by instructing them to build the items stated in the tooltip that are required to build units

Give a person a fish and feed them for a day, give them a rod and teach to how to fish and feed them for a lifetime.

Edit:  here's what I have so far.  I've included formatted and plain text (just in case) in the attachments.  I haven't gotten to unit actions yet, but I think that should be covered.  In fact, I can't help but think that the tutorial should almost be split off from the main game, similar to AI War (if that isn't feasible, I have a workaround).  Let me know how that looks--especially if you had trouble with the first tutorial.

[Cyprene]

One thing I'm really not clear on, even after a couple games, is how the Chapmen work.  Are resources added immediately when a Chapman goes to a resource square, or do they have to "ferry" them back to town?  Do they have to pick up all non "On-demand" resources? 

[madcow]

As far as I've picked up, they need to pick up all the raw resources and carry them back to -any- of the town buildings (not necessarily the one for that resource). If you look at the chapman info, it shows a carrying capacity, and also makes it look like as they get more encumbered their movement goes down.

They also can't pass through friendly units, so its really possible to overplace your chapman and be unable to effectively get any resources.

[JAlfredGoodwin]

Okay, so the tutorial definitely tells you what to do better now.

I'm ambivalent on whether it explains the WHY portion, but that is because I think I already understand it.

I think there should be a note at the end of the Norse portion that the Greeks have slightly different needs, and suggest to the player that they should check the tooltips before placing buildings.

[nas1m]

Definitely better now!
There seems to be a typo here, though (marked as bold):

Box text: Build a Smelter.
Hover text: The smelter takes iron from the mines, and makes it into steel. Steel is used primarily in some of the more advanced buildings. Each town only ever needs one smithy and it will handle that town's needs, provided there is enough iron from iron mines for it! This must be placed no more than two squares away from the town center.

[PokerChen]

 As it is, some players will hit a roadblock after the end of this tutorial.

 There are some deeper mechanics that could be explained later such as:
 - God tokens, this should happen just before/after round-2.
 - How exactly can they stock up on manufactured resources like cut-stone, bread, and jewelry. There are plenty of situations where you end up with 60 rocks and 0 cut-stones or 80 wheat and no bread - and nothing tells you as to why. You can't tell whether it is because your chapmen need to be on the tile to make them, or that they only trigger once per turn, or... What is On-Demand when nothing in town is demanding them?!
 Things like that you can deduce from experienced, but I doubts new players will have patience with them and will just run Cornucopia constantly. Speaking of which...

[Aquohn]

Tutorial doesn't really explain edicts.

Yeah, that's about it.

[Aquohn]

Oh, I didn't know you only ever needed one Carpenter per faction.  I was building one per woodcutter.  The same for the other buildings.  Good to know.

This is one pretty annoying aspect. Actually, I'd suggest either making it impossible to place duplicates in a town, or changing the tooltip of the town center to show the buildings there (with resources being moved to an external panel. There's really no reason to put global resources in an annoying corner).

[Mick]

Oh, I didn't know you only ever needed one Carpenter per faction.  I was building one per woodcutter.  The same for the other buildings.  Good to know.

This is one pretty annoying aspect. Actually, I'd suggest either making it impossible to place duplicates in a town, or changing the tooltip of the town center to show the buildings there (with resources being moved to an external panel. There's really no reason to put global resources in an annoying corner).

I think most of the time you don't want duplicates in a town, but sometimes you *might* want a backup, so I don't know if I'd do away with it completely.

I think the best option is when you have a building selected to place down, highlight all the buildings of that type green or something on the map, so you can easily see which towns have one and which don't (also it would be nice to have a green box for town buildings to show where they can be place, or a red box around towns if you are placing a resource building so you can easily see where they CAN'T be placed).

Also, maybe highlight the buildings that feed that building, so if you are placing a carpenter, have all the woodcutters be .. I dunno, purple or something.

[tigersfan]

OK, it's going to take me a little bit longer to rework this.  I'm going to try to incorporate iozay's suggestion (below), by guiding the player through how the placement and resource system work.  I think the tutorial should also cover the basic mechanics of the action stage (even though the player has only minimal control over that phase).

Nice concept, I would personally encourage the player to learn theirselves what to build(For example, not instructing the players to build specefic units/resource production tiles specifically but learn them what they have to build by instructing them to build the items stated in the tooltip that are required to build units

Give a person a fish and feed them for a day, give them a rod and teach to how to fish and feed them for a lifetime.

Edit:  here's what I have so far.  I've included formatted and plain text (just in case) in the attachments.  I haven't gotten to unit actions yet, but I think that should be covered.  In fact, I can't help but think that the tutorial should almost be split off from the main game, similar to AI War (if that isn't feasible, I have a workaround).  Let me know how that looks--especially if you had trouble with the first tutorial.

Thanks a bunch!

I pretty much took yours word for word now.

[tigersfan]

This has been changed to reflect some of the changes being made to the game (like the removal of chapmen). I've also managed to find a way to get mythological creature deployment in there, as well as gods.