But in this post apocalyptic world the mood is oddly cheerful. Adventurous upbeat music is playing. There are cute little inns scattered about the map with happy people in them, with enough gold in their pockets to send you off to do menial tasks like killing rats. This is a generic fantasy setting and not the gloomy post-apocalyptic Mad Max world I envisioned. I'd like to see more refugee camps and makeshift forts and less pretty buildings.
+1. Indeed it's a bit cheerful, and what are all those nobles doing in those taverns in the first place? Inns should pop up as the players build the world back, they shouldn''t be there beforehand.
My second pet peeve is the over the top micromanagement. This includes the RPG stats for Sovereigns, the decimal level up increments to said stats and the tedious city building. I think a feat based sovereign build would be more than sufficient. E.g. picking feats like Combat training, Strong and Hardy to make your Sovereign a powerful warrior. Or Arcane Scholar, Fire Mastery and Powerful to make a caster who burns things down in lots of creative ways but is vulnerable in melee. Feat of Pathfinding instead of putting points into Movement, picking Charismatic instead of having a charisma score etc..
+ 0.5. I don't mind the stats but I do mind the decimals. These serve no purpose, are ugly as hell. Give each player 1 or 2 points per level and ditch the decimals.
As far as city building goes, I find it tedious to build all these numerous food producing things and housing. Having to actually place them on the map is just overkill and serves no purpose that I can see. The squares also make the cities look blocky and I think looking good is more important than getting to decide where your 7th garden is built exactly. Food production and Housing are basic needs for every city that should probably be abstracted. And I think a couple of upgrades for buildings is generally better than having 3 or more different buildings for the same resource.
+1. Too many buildings to build, resulting in scattering stuff on the map based mostly on what you've been researching so far. It looks very ugly in the end. The big variety of buildings that do exactly the same thing is overwhelming. Get rid of those duplicates. Provide generic bonuses. Abstract more.
For me at least the fun is about designing units, researching spells, using them in tactical battles and waging global magical war. In the beginning its fun to explore and fight with your Sovereign. But I find myself spending most of my time on the city grid, placing down more gardens and houses and checking population caps and food production numbers. It's a little boring.
I actually dislike designing units, and I have some trouble understanding why one has to research long swords and claymores as 2 different techs... To me fun is about exploration, and I have a lot of trouble finding out where unused units are. The popups that keep telling me that city XXX finished building a hut are a PAIN. I have to click on them to get rid of that thing wasting space in a part of the screen, and then it moves me to the city. I don't care. I don't want to go to the city unless it's finished its build queue. When it's still got 3 buildings in the queue, I want to click and get rid of the icon but not center on the city. At the very least have the choice of getting rid of all the popups without centering the viewpoint.
So +1 for too much emphasis on cities.
