Skyward Collapse 1.800 Beta "Civilian Reversal" Released!

[Fluffiest]

Also, I've noticed that the Norse Marauders and Huscarls are produced from the same building, cost the same resources (except for Venison vs. Water), and have bonuses versus the same targets. While their stats are different, and the Marauder is certainly more aggressive while the Huscarl is tougher, I wonder if these perhaps need to be differentiated slightly.

Since the Norse have nothing that's any good against cavalry, might it be appropriate to switch one of the Huscarl's defensive bonuses to vs. Cavalry? Of course I may be misunderstanding the design philosophy here, and it could be that cavalry are meant to kick their asses until they bring out the mythical beasts.

[x4000]

Heya, can you log suggestions/bugs in mantis rather than a big blob on the forum?  Thanks!  Otherwise I have to deal with them immediately or not at all, and the former is tough while the later is certainly suboptimal.

Regarding Amantine, that can be used as many times as you want, but each piece you place can only be picked up by one guy.  Same with anything else limited-use.

The basic resource buildings aren't buggy.  The display on there is the base rate, whereas when you place multiple on the map it gives you more based on town specialization.

If you have a save with the mutton issue on unit production, I'd appreciate it -- that is a longstanding bug.

I'd definitely be open to suggestions on the specific values you think resource drops should have.  They were once really useful, but with time have gotten far less so.

The two Bow abilities being the same isn't a bug, and we're not adding more gods to the existing factions, sorry.

I'm not quite sure I understand the issue with sandbox mode; if you were playing on 1.800, that was a bug fixed in 1.801, though.

Regarding undo, I don't think we have a hotkey for that.  It's really not meant to be used frequently.

Good point on the huscarls and marauders, that's another one for mantis.

Right now I'm trying to finish the woes and such for the Japanese, so if you can place the items you feel like are action items as individual pieces in mantis (see my sig), I'd really appreciate it.  Not big blobs in a single ticket -- related items only in one ticket, as with the other 12,000 suggestions we have so far in there. 

Thanks muchly!  There is some good stuff you said in there, I just don't want it to get lost in the shuffle.

[Misery]

.....are there really a whole 12,000 suggestions in there?

[Fluffiest]

I certainly can add these to Mantis; and will do when I get home from work and have access to the game again. I was originally intending to put them in Mantis, but I wanted to get clarification on which were intentional first. For example, the Adamantine thing was clearly a non-issue, I'd just misunderstood what "may be used 1 time" meant.

Regarding resource drops, I'm going to make a forum thread about it, because I'd appreciate contribution from people who've clocked a lot more hours on the game than I have; and Mantis doesn't attract the same volume of discussion.

[x4000]

No worries at all, Valtiel, and I appreciate it.  Asking for clarification is always best done through the forums, you're right; although, honestly, if we have to close a bunch of your tickets with explanations, that's not a bad thing either.  Other people going to add a ticket later will hopefully then see your ticket and not add one, etc.  So it contributes to a sort of knowledge base even if it gets closed.

.....are there really a whole 12,000 suggestions in there?

As of this moment, there are 12,064 issues, yes.  This is across all our games, though.  And it doesn't include about 4,000 suggestions from the first year and a half of AI War's life.

[x4000]

Just a quick bit of not very helpful feedback, but just had a quick go of Idyll mode. Without any understanding of what I was doing I tried just clicking around the high numbers in order attempt to spam my way to victory -- I'm glad to say I lost the game. I did manage to score 5000 out of 8000 by doing this, though. I guess I'll have to put some thought in at least!

Really too early to make any more comments on the hamlet thing other than it seems a bit overwhelming. Has there been any more tutorial stuff added regarding it that might be worth replaying?

Not planning on adding anything to the tutorial about hamlets, because right there giant on the sidebar (one of only six buttons in fact) is a button labeled HELP, which gives you a full explanation.

[x4000]

Hamlets!

So, I tried out the Idyll mode.   This seems like a pretty great addition so far and I found it very engaging.   The replacement mechanic does indeed work here.  I'm thinking though that there's alot of number tweaking to be done yet and it might be tough to figure out just what to tweak and why. The random generation and shape of the area keeps this interesting from one game to the next.

I think that you are right, although that's going to depend on player interest.  There was begging and pleading for something like the "defender mode" in AI War, but when I added it after a couple of years of that, nobody really gave it much play or gave much feedback.  So it kind of languished.  Hopefully the Idyll mode sees more play, or else I think it will be just a smaller curiosity compared to the main game.

Still, though -- if it's fun for a couple of times, then that's just really kind of a great bonus.  It also provides a safe environment in which to play with hamlets while still having a goal (unlike sandbox mode), so it's a good training aid for hamlets.  All that said, I think that it can be engaging on an ongoing basis as a puzzle game, just not to the degree that the main god-game is.

Lots more feedback.

So this is what I did in response to all that, which was great:

* Hamlet Idyll mode now gives you 5 more ruins tiles to spread out into, as you're going to need them now.

* Three civilians are now placed via each tile that would normally place civilians, instead of just one.  This makes those tiles a lot more challenging to deal with.

* The base bonuses and penalties for hamlet buildings have been scaled very differently now from what they were -- much higher in most cases, making placement adjacencies more severe at all times.

* The multiplier from placing from higher slots in the hamlet queue has been toned down quite a bit; the multiplier now goes 2, 6, 8, 10 instead of 4, 9, 16, 25.
** This helps make the entire queue more relevant, which is really important with the base bonuses and penalties being higher, and with more civilians being present.

* Overall the above changes have you playing from the entire queue now, and sometimes having to take some negative points temporarily in order to get a better position later.  Also... slums are just really a problem.  They are a powerful positive force in terms of running out civilians that are blocking you, but then they are really negative in terms of points on some placements later.  Those are tricky, and also encourage playing low in the queue on a combo to place a slums and then replace the slums.
** Thanks to Misery for a lot of the inspiration for these changes.

[x4000]

New one!  http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13707.0.html

[Pepisolo]

Not planning on adding anything to the tutorial about hamlets, because right there giant on the sidebar (one of only six buttons in fact) is a button labeled HELP, which gives you a full explanation.

Yeah, I read that, but it didn't really click, so just thought I'd check if there was any step by step stuff like in the excellent main game tutorial. No worries, haven't invested much time yet, so I'm sure I'll work it out.

[x4000]

I gotcha, no worries.