Skyward Collapse Alpha 0.905

[x4000]

Now out: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Skyward_Collapse_-_Pre-Beta_Release_Notes#Alpha_0.905

Features of note:

1. Siege weapons are no longer so ridiculous in the hands of bandits, and your guys will prioritize killing siege weapons better since they are such a big threat.

2. Your guys will go after bandit keeps with a prejudice, too (or at least they should; have not adequately tested that, so let me know if you have a save where that's not working).

3. Black Death is no longer an automatic loss (come on, I'd never intentionally have a feature like that; that was an unintended confluence of events with recent changes).

4. Bunch of changes to some mythological and god tokens to make them more attractive and useful.  Midgard Serpent is particularly exciting.

5. All the "things that generate score" are now properly in place, and your profile shows your high score now.

6. You can repair buildings by using a direct action now (though not if they've been destroyed).

7. Tutorial has been updated to reflect recent changes.

Big things still to come:

Splitting out the difficulty based on Pepisolo's suggestions into three parts rather than one.  One of those three parts would be score-gating (with attendant boosts to max score), again at Pepisolo's suggestion.  If anyone can report on what their average scores are in games started in .905, that could help me set some reasonable gates.  Right now I don't really have any idea, since I've been coding instead of playing.

My questions to you:

1. Did we solve the problem of "not enough depth?"  Aka, is this sufficiently hard to win on a high difficulty in a way that is interesting and brain-involving?  My read seems to be "yes" in the main, although obviously time will tell if some cheesy strategies pop up in the future.  But it seems like we may have squashed the obvious ones.  With the (OPTIONAL!) score gates, that should help even more if you play with those on.

2. Does Easy difficulty feel sufficiently laid back, if anyone is playing that?  It shouldn't really require much strategy.  So long as you don't do anything egregiously silly, it should go pretty smoothly.

3. How about Medium difficulty?  That should be like playing on difficulty 7 of AI War, I think.  It's definitely quite possible to lose, and frequently, but it shouldn't feel unfair.

4. Continuing the AI War analogy, Hard would be more like diff 8, whereas Expert is more like diff 9.

5. As I mentioned in another thread, we're expected to deliver a press build tomorrow.  Waiting is bad because it hurts our ability to have pre-release buzz.  But giving a ridiculous build to the press in terms of it being way too hard -- or having mechanics that we shift on them a ton -- also is a bad idea.  So how are your feelings on the current mechanics?

My read on the situation from what folks have said so far.

1. It seems like we've solved the obvious cheese situations, as I noted.  So the game should be sufficiently interesting to the grognards here for a sufficiently long amount of time to survive a week or two of interest at worst; and if more cheese is uncovered, we can always deal with that on a case by case basis, as with AI War.

2. I'm a little worried that the bottom end of the difficulty levels are too hard now, but I think some of that might have been because of the siege weapons being out of control last version.

3. It sounds like the score and score gating will keep a lot of you interested in a much more direct way, and keep you away from even trying anything cheesy since the score implicitly encourages you to take non-cheesy risks.  So even if we're borderline on #1, I think this #3 does good by the game.

4. I feel like the current mechanics are -- knock on wood -- pretty stable.  The repair buildings option seems like a really obvious thing to have now, though it never occurred to me.  The scorched earth stuff really makes a ton of sense and I think is obvious to keep.  Score is great, and so on.  So I think in terms of a press build, we're not going to be yanking the rug out from under people too much with wildly changing mechanics between now and 1.0.  But I've been wrong before -- it all comes back to the cheese factor, which is why we went through this round of changes today and yesterday in the first place.

So... thoughts?

[Teal_Blue]

Now out: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Skyward_Collapse_-_Pre-Beta_Release_Notes#Alpha_0.905

Features of note:

1. Siege weapons are no longer so ridiculous in the hands of bandits, and your guys will prioritize killing siege weapons better since they are such a big threat.

2. Your guys will go after bandit keeps with a prejudice, too (or at least they should; have not adequately tested that, so let me know if you have a save where that's not working).

3. Black Death is no longer an automatic loss (come on, I'd never intentionally have a feature like that; that was an unintended confluence of events with recent changes).

4. Bunch of changes to some mythological and god tokens to make them more attractive and useful.  Midgard Serpent is particularly exciting.

5. All the "things that generate score" are now properly in place, and your profile shows your high score now.

6. You can repair buildings by using a direct action now (though not if they've been destroyed).

7. Tutorial has been updated to reflect recent changes.

Big things still to come:

Splitting out the difficulty based on Pepisolo's suggestions into three parts rather than one.  One of those three parts would be score-gating (with attendant boosts to max score), again at Pepisolo's suggestion.  If anyone can report on what their average scores are in games started in .905, that could help me set some reasonable gates.  Right now I don't really have any idea, since I've been coding instead of playing.

My questions to you:

1. Did we solve the problem of "not enough depth?"  Aka, is this sufficiently hard to win on a high difficulty in a way that is interesting and brain-involving?  My read seems to be "yes" in the main, although obviously time will tell if some cheesy strategies pop up in the future.  But it seems like we may have squashed the obvious ones.  With the (OPTIONAL!) score gates, that should help even more if you play with those on.

2. Does Easy difficulty feel sufficiently laid back, if anyone is playing that?  It shouldn't really require much strategy.  So long as you don't do anything egregiously silly, it should go pretty smoothly.

3. How about Medium difficulty?  That should be like playing on difficulty 7 of AI War, I think.  It's definitely quite possible to lose, and frequently, but it shouldn't feel unfair.

4. Continuing the AI War analogy, Hard would be more like diff 8, whereas Expert is more like diff 9.

5. As I mentioned in another thread, we're expected to deliver a press build tomorrow.  Waiting is bad because it hurts our ability to have pre-release buzz.  But giving a ridiculous build to the press in terms of it being way too hard -- or having mechanics that we shift on them a ton -- also is a bad idea.  So how are your feelings on the current mechanics?

My read on the situation from what folks have said so far.

1. It seems like we've solved the obvious cheese situations, as I noted.  So the game should be sufficiently interesting to the grognards here for a sufficiently long amount of time to survive a week or two of interest at worst; and if more cheese is uncovered, we can always deal with that on a case by case basis, as with AI War.

2. I'm a little worried that the bottom end of the difficulty levels are too hard now, but I think some of that might have been because of the siege weapons being out of control last version.

3. It sounds like the score and score gating will keep a lot of you interested in a much more direct way, and keep you away from even trying anything cheesy since the score implicitly encourages you to take non-cheesy risks.  So even if we're borderline on #1, I think this #3 does good by the game.

4. I feel like the current mechanics are -- knock on wood -- pretty stable.  The repair buildings option seems like a really obvious thing to have now, though it never occurred to me.  The scorched earth stuff really makes a ton of sense and I think is obvious to keep.  Score is great, and so on.  So I think in terms of a press build, we're not going to be yanking the rug out from under people too much with wildly changing mechanics between now and 1.0.  But I've been wrong before -- it all comes back to the cheese factor, which is why we went through this round of changes today and yesterday in the first place.

So... thoughts?

Yes!  Yes!!   Yes!!!

I do not have this game yet, because i wanted to get it when it goes on launch!! But I am dying to play!!! Anyway, I can hang on a few more days... barely... payday is thursday, so that is the 23rd, which should be perfect!!!

Also, silly question: but will it be ok, or is there a way to order 2 copies when i go to your web-page to get it? If so, then i'll have a prime copy and a backup.    (for my Children of Skyward donation.)

-Teal

[Cinth]

@ feature #3: Discussion on two threads does not constitute a lynch mob.  That's just how it happened.

Q&A
2) Easy has been fairly laid back.  Most of the testing games I have played have been at Easy.  Much easier to hunt bugs when I don't have to remember every little detail.

3) I've got a Medium game going now (same one I was playing earlier).  I've only played two or three here but it definitely is a step up from easy. 

5) I'm having fun.  Can't say which is more fun... breaking the game or playing the game

That said, trying to make comparisons to AIW for me is not easy since I don't play AIW in the "standard" way 

[x4000]

@Teal: Thanks, as always, for your enthusiasm!  And certainly multiple purchases are allowed on the store, though you certainly don't have to do that.  But it's appreciated!

@Cinth:  Yeah, I didn't figure I was being lynched with the BD stuff, but I was amused that some folks seemed to think it was intentional as an auto-loss, heh.  At least from the wording.

2) I know Easy has historically been very laid back, and I'm glad.  My main concern is after the last two rounds of changes, have I totally busted that and made even easy hard.  I'm not sure if that's a big deal for a press build or not, probably not either way as most would choose a higher difficulty anyhow.

3) Good, that's definitely the idea.

5) That's the most important thing of all, really.  All other concerns really don't matter beyond the "is it fun?" question.  Any other concerns really boil down to "this makes it less fun for x, y, or z reasons."  Anyhow, I'm really really not trying to make this game a substitute for AI War in any way.  The idea is that people could enjoy either of the above, or both, but that neither is really competing with the other.  AI War is a certain breed of hardcore that this game will never be, but this game needs to have enough depth to not get stale in a week or a month, you know?

[orzelek]

There is one thing that seems to be quite important for difficulty - bandit mythological units. They might get one and you are screwed or normal units can pop out and you have a bit less Fun. And when mythologicals start spawning one after the other... you need to have some of your own. Or stuff gets bad.

As for BD... judging from description it was hard to decide for me if it's end gaming functionality was intentional or not.
In it's current form... lets say I got it lucky because bandit keep is keeping other side a bit busy. So there is no flood of blues destroying red towns for now. And I have Norns in backup plan so there is a chance here.

More testing tomorrow.

[Pepisolo]

Yes! Getting there now, this is actually starting to be fun. It's a bit chaotic, but that's part of the fun for me. Some points, felt a bit strait-jacketed when trying to place another town as there are so many restrictions. Also, do Gods appear during the Age of Monsters... feel a bit thick as they did on my game, wasn't expecting them until later. Will probably look into your questions in more detail later, wanna finish my current game up for the time being.

[x4000]

@orzelek:

* Bandit keeps, which are the main source of bandits most of the time, are no longer allowed to spawn mythological creatures on themselves.

* Mythological creatures that spawn as bandits through other means beyond the bandit keeps will spawn at one less upgrade level than their human peers do.
** These creatures are tough enough as it is even without the extra upgrade level on them, and this makes the balance fluctuate less by chance.

@Pepisolo: Haha, okay.  "Starting to be fun" is only so encouraging, but glad to hear it. ;

In terms of the requirements on city placement, is there a general feeling that the allowable distance from enemy towns should be more?  And/or that we should allow slightly denser packing of allied towns, I guess?  Allied town density is no advantage that I can see; kind of the opposite, really.  Maybe just removing the special conditions about allied towns in general would be good, and make it "no closer than X to any town" as it already is, and then the existing requirement about range from enemies.  That would allow for a very "industrialized countryside" and essentially super-cities, but I think that could be kind of interesting actually.

For the gods appearing during the age of monsters, yes: two lesser gods appear then.  Then another two greater gods during the age of gods.

[Cinth]

@Cinth:  Yeah, I didn't figure I was being lynched with the BD stuff, but I was amused that some folks seemed to think it was intentional as an auto-loss, heh.  At least from the wording.

2) I know Easy has historically been very laid back, and I'm glad.  My main concern is after the last two rounds of changes, have I totally busted that and made even easy hard.  I'm not sure if that's a big deal for a press build or not, probably not either way as most would choose a higher difficulty anyhow.

3) Good, that's definitely the idea.

5) That's the most important thing of all, really.  All other concerns really don't matter beyond the "is it fun?" question.  Any other concerns really boil down to "this makes it less fun for x, y, or z reasons."  Anyhow, I'm really really not trying to make this game a substitute for AI War in any way.  The idea is that people could enjoy either of the above, or both, but that neither is really competing with the other.  AI War is a certain breed of hardcore that this game will never be, but this game needs to have enough depth to not get stale in a week or a month, you know?

I know, I was kinda the one that sparked the whole BD thing and then realized shortly after it was a true lose condition based on recent changes.  You were fixing it while we were discussing it.  I quickly looked at the other woes and didn't see anything right off that would have those implications.

This tidbit effects 2 and 3.  My medium game... I built it up and ended turn through the Age of Gods. I won, barely.  My Greeks had one town left and the Norse, well..... not much left and I think 5 bandit keeps pumping out units.
With easy I think I could have ignored the last half of the game.  I only did it to see how it would play out.

5, Carnage is fun.  Whether it's the AI needlessly sacrificing its ships to my chipper shredder or bandits running rampant across my Norse towns.  I know SC=/AIW, I was poking fun at the unconventional way I play AIW

I'm actually going to hand the laptop to my GF this evening and see how she likes SC.  She's shown some interest at the bits I've shown her.

The blurb about town plalcement:  I think it is just OK at this point.  It works.  I'd like to be able to set a city up directly behind the first city as a two deep styled line, but the restrictions in place don't allow it.

[x4000]

All righty:

* It's now possible to create mega-towns by placing allied towns right up next to one another.

Seems fun.

[Cinth]

Now that will stop those pesky bandits from planting their creepy keeps right on my borders

[Mick]

My only issue with town placement is that it's not very easy to tell where you are allowed to place the town until you extend out the terrain in some direction and hover over with the town a bit. The town tooltip also doesn't mention this restriction at all, so it can be surprising the first time you try to place one.

Being able to place them closer to your own will help this a bit, but I imagine it will be kinda ugly, hah. Are you going to allow them to cross radius now? That just seems like it's making it easier to screw yourself. Is there a way to make the world just show where towns can legally go when you have one selected? Green to show where they can go "right now", yellow to show where they can go "if terrain is extended to it".

[Misery]

All righty:

* It's now possible to create mega-towns by placing allied towns right up next to one another.

Seems fun.

Hmm, isnt this kinda similar to how it was originally though?   Where each side just had this great heap of buildings with no branching out necessary (which honestly wasnt very interesting).   Not to mention this soiunds like it's going to make it MUCH harder to do concentrated damage to towns in general;  the more they're grouped up, the stronger they'll be, because of giant unit heaps all coming out of the same general area.   The "spaced out" placement seemed to make it so there was alot of strategy/decision making in building these, since they werent always super easy to place.    I agree with Mick in that my only problem with the spaced-out system was a lack of feedback on WHERE I could place a new one, I have to wave the TC around to see where is possible.

EDIT:   Also, I'm thinking production buildings will stop entirely making sense here.  They're tied to the city they're in, but that'd be confusing as all heck with too many buildings in one area. There'd be alot of "Ok, wait, this military building says it's not got any bacon, but I put it right next to a butcher!" sort of thing.   



Aaaaaaaanyway,

I've only just started a new game.... and I dunno how much I can get in on it tonight because my arm is flaring up again (bah!), but we'll see.  So far, so good.   It's clear that Iv'e missed some stuff in updates here, since I just had a bandit fortress pop up 2 tiles away from a blue town center in a city that isnt finished.    That's not a bad thing, mind you, it should be interesting to see just how I can deal with this one... with nobody having siege units or myth stuffs yet..... and the vanity woe going on at the same time.    I'm thinking bandit forts in general are a superb idea.

No glitches yet.

Also, yay, production info on town centers!   That was definitely needed.

Nothing else to say yet on the other stuff till I've had more time with it.   But I'm liking the sound of most of it pretty darn well.


More feedback later in the night!

[Winge]

Patch looks really good; I can't wait to try it out.

[x4000]

I shifted it to be a single row of gap between all towns, both for aesthetics and the bandit keeps.   But that's still super close compared to before.

Also:

* Improved the tooltip for "you can't place this tile here" to show you ALL the reasons you can't place that tile there, rather than just the "most important" one.  That way you can tell when you can place a town center if you just build out a bit more land, for instance.

Thanks!

[Cinth]

So all my towns become mountain towns