Skyward Collapse Alpha 0.950

[x4000]

All right, all right -- removed that.  If there is that much skepticism, it's too late in the game to be changing something like that.  And you raise good points on complexity.

[Mick]

I'm a bit relieved. Learning the costs is difficult enough without having them change on you.

[Pepisolo]

I'm a bit relieved. Learning the costs is difficult enough without having them change on you.

Exactly. Even if it is a good idea, it would have significantly decreased the accessibility of the game, and made it much tougher to learn.

[Cinth]

Mick & Misery, do you have a late game save from a recent version I could look at?  I'm curious to see how you two are playing.

[Mick]

Mick & Misery, do you have a late game save from a recent version I could look at?  I'm curious to see how you two are playing.

Unfortunately, I did not want to stay up too late last night, so I only got 39 turns in, but that was enough for a simple "how easy is it to meet the first score gate" test. The save I attached on the first page of this thread shows what things looked like on turn 37.

This was with 40 turn rounds.

Here is a link to the specific post: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13144.msg148019.html#msg148019

EDIT: For some context, I had the vanity woe for about 7 turns followed by a woe on blue where they got spies in their first town. I think there was a collapse woe somewhere in there too.

[Cinth]

I just want to get an idea of how you build towns and stuff like that.

Edit: Good grief your board is a mess   You definitely building more support than I do.  If you look at the ss I posted on page 1 of this thread, you can see how I build up.  From there I add towns mainly for military buildings and the support for the units I want to build.  I'll add resources as needed.  The amount of units on your board smells heavily of tokens .  I hadn't placed one by that point.  And holy .... at the amount of siege units you produce.

[chemical_art]

Running to work, don't have time to make new thread.


Is the tutorial going to be updated any more?

If not, then at least, please, make it abundantly clear you should create several save files especially during setup. I feel that the tutorial is almost there, but has several key roadblocks which make getting into the game harder as these roadblocks jar you out of it, as described early in this thread.

[Mick]

I just want to get an idea of how you build towns and stuff like that.

Well, I don't think I build exactly the same every game, and I don't have a very specific pattern to how I do things. I take a very heuristic approach to building.

At the start of the game, I give Norse 1-2 barracks. Usually two because their military units are weaker. I then pick a unit in the tooltip for barracks arbitrarily and just lay out one of everything they need. If I have AP left, I try to get down a wood, rock, carpenter, stone cutter as well. If not, those are what they get in the first turn.

Greek only get one military cause they are stronger, and I arbitrarily pick a barracks or a archery. Follow the same pattern.

During the first turns pretty much fill out the remaining space with rocks and wood in each town. If the military building shows me that the are particularly low on a specific need (often iron) I'll toss down 1-2 more of those in there. I don't yet 'replace' the fields near the town with buildings in the first town, I keep those kinda in my back pocket to give stuff to them later. Maybe more military, maybe a tower or two, maybe resources. Depends on the situation.

Second town I start with the same pattern. I give 1-2 military buildings, trying to do something different than what the first town got. If one side is getting backed up at this point, might even give them 3 military, whatever. Fill out military needs, I often need more rocks at this point, maybe a wood or two. Space left, I start to work on 'advanced economy'. Stuff that's needed for myth tokens. I like to never worry about clay, so I might just smash a bunch of them down.

Often in the second Greek town I feel like giving them a horse. Ranches provide something like .0001 horses every turn so they end up getting like 75% of their space as horses. Horses are needed for some Greek myth stuff anyway so it's all good.

So now I have to start worrying about score, so I need to start pumping out siege units. I keep using extra resource space in towns to pump out more clay, diamonds, incense.. all that good stuff.

One of the first things I do every turn is pretty much look at the resource bar. If I see a resource getting very low (like only 20-30 wood). I'll just spend the turn throwing down 3 woodcutters (or whatever) to boost that up.

[Mick]

Running to work, don't have time to make new thread.


Is the tutorial going to be updated any more?

If not, then at least, please, make it abundantly clear you should create several save files especially during setup. I feel that the tutorial is almost there, but has several key roadblocks which make getting into the game harder as these roadblocks jar you out of it, as described early in this thread.

chemical_art, I think you are getting too caught up in making sure your setup is "perfect". That's not really necessary at all.

[Misery]

I think this ties well into the whole "buildings do not die fast enough". If your buildings are getting scorched often, then resource management should become an actual issue. If not, then yeah, it's pretty much easy to build forever.

If they get scorched too easily though, it ends up likely being a frustrating thing, with the player unable to keep enough stuff going to use the more interesting things.

With siege units though, to me, buildings seem to fall quite fast.  I'm not seeing it as being about the health of the buildings.  In my games, if a city gets attacked, under the current health of buildings and power level of siege units, something is going to fall.   But.... my playstyle leads to these not being attacked often enough to cause me any real trouble, so I quickly reach the point of resource bloating (at which point everything that isnt diamond stops mattering) and an easy run through the rest of the game, even while using tokens of various sorts.  This is with trading active, too, so "excess" resources are being shed regularly.  I still end up with WAY too much though.  I'd say, I stop paying attention to any of the numbers much right around turn 25-30 or so.  This is on Medium OR Hard, which are the two I've been using to test.   I'll occaisionally glance at it past that point to make sure nothing loopy is going on with it, but beyond that I tend to ignore it, and with new cities, I just place whichever buildings I havent placed in awhile (or I might just choose at random). 



As for the cost increase idea, I hadnt meant increase the cost of EVERYTHING.... just increase the TC costs specifically.  It's those central buildings that are the main points;  everything else is really just fluff.  A city hasnt fallen until that main building is destroyed, and it determines where you can build everything else;  having it be easy to construct essentially means the player can just keep farting them out whenever they want.   That wouldnt fix the resource bloat as a whole, but I dont see that as that big of a problem, not compared to just having a gazillion buildings in general.

Mick & Misery, do you have a late game save from a recent version I could look at?  I'm curious to see how you two are playing.

I dont really have a good one either, as I tend to constantly overwrite the things.  I could put one up later though, as I'll probably have a game or two later tonight.

My playstyle overall is generally conservative/defensive, as I usually am with strategy titles.  Though, as is the usual for me in any genre, I'm naturally aggressive and a bit prone to random chaos, so if things are getting stale, or if I'm getting (more) impatient, or just for the heck of it, I'll throw out some large effect.  Doesnt have to make strategic sense entirely for me to do this.    And I wont hesitate to use really major effects to solve problems.  I build frequently and my cities mostly consist of resources.

Generally, I have 2 or 3 military buildings per city (and connected schools and such)   Anything more than that seems very extraneous.  I tend to focus early on on getting the basics down (stone, wood), and then going through the process that I need to do in order to A: get mythologicals available, and B: get diamond and sun/moon production going.  All the while producing units and micromanaging where necessary, including throwing out tokens and such.   I'll increase the unit count (and thus the military building count) as needed based on woes and whatever is going on.  I tend to leave a few spaces open in cities where I can place extra things of that nature.   I dont use towers much, because it's bloody annoying to funnel attacking units through there, and siege units tend to be ranged anyway.  I put out more barracks and archery than siege buildings.   Tend to build more siege only when I think it's actually necessary, or if things are getting dull.

Early game for me tends to be mostly about resource gathering.  This changes by mid-game, and at that point I likely have tons and am not really looking at the bar too much (unless something changes the situation, of course).   I do alot of micromanaging of battles overall when possible via pretty much every available method, from smiting and "unit up" to crazy token effects.   


Dunno how much that helps, but that's the best description of it.

[Cinth]

It looks like our starts are similar.  I'll set up the Norse with 2x barracks and the buildings for marauders. Then I add the resources.  I shoot for 4x wood stone pigs and iron in the first turns.  Greeks get 1 racks for Xiphos and the support for those guys. 4x resources in the rest.  Then I set the second towns for each mainly for resources.  Norse town 2 is just for my archers and resources, Greeks get one more military producer and then resources.  I try to get 4x all resources except horses (not placed at all) and sunstones (2x per faction).  I'll add military buildings as bandits and balance require in the first round. 

I don't want a ton of units running around in the first round at all.

@ Misery: Similar to the SS I have on the first page maybe?  Above is how I open.  Though it sounds like you hit more on resources than I do. 

[Pepisolo]

I do the same thing for my second town -- resource only town.

[Misery]

It looks like our starts are similar.  I'll set up the Norse with 2x barracks and the buildings for marauders. Then I add the resources.  I shoot for 4x wood stone pigs and iron in the first turns.  Greeks get 1 racks for Xiphos and the support for those guys. 4x resources in the rest.  Then I set the second towns for each mainly for resources.  Norse town 2 is just for my archers and resources, Greeks get one more military producer and then resources.  I try to get 4x all resources except horses (not placed at all) and sunstones (2x per faction).  I'll add military buildings as bandits and balance require in the first round. 

I don't want a ton of units running around in the first round at all.

@ Misery: Similar to the SS I have on the first page maybe?  Above is how I open.  Though it sounds like you hit more on resources than I do.

Heh, you definitely have alot more military in those couple of cities there than I do and are muuuuuch more organized based on that screenshot.  I'm unorganized to begin with and my short term memory is bloody horrible and I'm easily distracted, so alot of my cities end up looking like jumbled heaps.  My starting Norse city in my current game is:  3 rock, 4 wood, 1 seer, 2 pigs, 1 sheep, 2 iron, 1 barracks and 1 archery, the production buildings necessary to get shotput, mauraders, and huscarls, and then 3 or so blank tiles where I can stick extra military or schools or whatever.  None of these organized into nice lines or groups or anything.   I assure you it makes sense at the time.   Probably.   

And I generally dont like having huge numbers of units early on either.  I prefer to increase/build based on what's going on, rather than following a static strategy, so I keep the numbers lowish until I see how things are playing out.

[x4000]

And yeah, a few updates to tutorial are incoming, I'm just all over the place this morning.

Just in for next build:

* Changed up how attacks from units work a fair bit.  Previously, most units would end their turn after a single attack, unless they had the "attacks multiple times per turn" ability.  Now:
** Units move and attack using "action points."  Each movement usually takes one AP unless they are crossing rough terrain.  Each attack generally takes multiple AP, but it depends on the unit.  The AP are the same as what movement points used to be.
** Units can over-spend their AP.  If a unit is down to 1 AP but is within attack range, they can still launch an attack that costs 3 AP.  They'll start their next turn with full AP, no problem.  Units only have to stop acting when their AP is reduced to zero or below.
*** This applies to movement and attacks, so that actually is a change from the movement side of things, too -- making slow units less bogged down in marshes, for instance.
** This both makes the "how many attacks can I make per turn" more clear, but it also makes it so that more combat happens per turn between when players can take actions (something advanced players were commenting is a good thing, and we agreed).
* Added a new tutorial step called "survive the first turn" that explains combat a bit more, before launching into the "survive the first 5 turns" step.

* The camera no longer follows the projectiles of shots from enemies, since there are so many now and that gets very jarring.  The zoom option makes it easy to see them if you're having trouble, and the battle sites are just as good as anything on that, too.

[Mick]

I think that sounds great. A ranged siege unit planted next to many buildings is going to be much more deadly now.