ogredpowell

Join Date 04/2010

review of 3B so far

Ok, so i've put a bunch of hours into 3B so far today. here are my thoughts so far.... (and sorry Stardock, ive been having fun!!!

BUGS:

Crash to desktop with caravans enering cities (especially foreign cities)

Have to make a spell a 'favorite' in order to use it in combat. unable to make 'hurl boulder' a favorite at all

animation issues with Gilden (my guys had inverted torsos)

NO BABIES!!!!! For some reason, my married couples arent popping any babies out!

Goody huts not disappearing

When attacking a city, goes into automatic 'autoresolve'. Don't get to fight in the city

Tactical Battles: So far, AWESOME and a LOT of fun. areas of improvement:

PLEASE uncouple movement and attacks, and have one stat for movement over tiles, and one stat for number of attacks.that way we can design infantry units (like beserkers) that although arent as fast as cavalry, get lots of attacks once they get in close. Also, this will help 'uncripple' units with plate. Its frusturating having a unit that cannot move at all.

I saw frogboy mentioning theyll put counterattacks in: looking forward to that mechanic. also looking forward to special abilities.

Bows seem overpowered currently, as does combat speed (hit and run with combat speed, bows do massive damage)

pre-combat placement, ala HOMM 5. Could be a skill relating to 'warrior'/general heroes. This would allow better use of the overall battlefield, as of now units start too close together AND give a dynamic for 'ambushes'

ADVENTURING/HEROES: A LOT more fun this time around, i love the variations in quests! areas of improvement:

WAYYYY too many goody hut spawns. although a neat mechanic, these good huts prevent you from being able to build a city in their tile OR roads through the tile. This is frusturating, and i find myself not progressing down the adventure tree as fast due to wanting to plop down my cities first (and forgo all those great quest rewards). continue the spawn, but not nearly as many....maybe limit the spawn to a player's territory and slighlty outside.

Please make some fallen heroes for the fallen races. Its wierd having all-human heroes running around with hordes of fallen....who hate humans...at their back. Could be a mechanic were theres a 'friendliness' factor of NPCs along racial/moral lines. This way, 'evil' fallen and human NPCs are more likely to join empires and ATTACK kingdoms, and vice versa.

City Building: Kicka*&! I love the new changes. No suggestions.

Tech Tree: ditto. like teh varying tech trees, looking forward to more.

Dynasty:

As above. Doesnt seem to be working.

More 'genetic algorithm' with marriages- past games had gimpy, wussy kids even though my warrior soverign married a tough adventurer.

AI:

Does a LOT better. Good job! Its designing better units, building better cities.

-still doesnt defend cities well. General C built a city, walked outside, and it got burnt down, gimping him at the beginning of the game.

-AI will build starting cities not near a food source, gimping iself

Other suggestions...

SPELLS TO CREATE ARTIFACTS! please?

All in all, AWESOME!!! game is shaping up nicely.

elemental

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2419

Thanks for the feedback.

Here's some answers that I hope help:

Will check in on the infertility problem with the sovereign. I know there were some changes made there.
There are a TON of crashes we're working on right now.
Lots of changes coming to tactical battles to make them deeper
We won't be doing forging until post release (forging of magical items). It's a plot point in the game.

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thanks frogboy. appreciate all the work yall have been doing.

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 1

Thanks for the feedback.

Here's some answers that I hope help:

Will check in on the infertility problem with the sovereign. I know there were some changes made there.
There are a TON of crashes we're working on right now.
Lots of changes coming to tactical battles to make them deeper
We won't be doing forging until post release (forging of magical items). It's a plot point in the game.

Can you clarify something about the forging of magical items? Why are we able to produce magical rings if forging is plot related? Or are those rings being merely "found" ?

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 1

Can you clarify something about the forging of magical items? Why are we able to produce magical rings if forging is plot related? Or are those rings being merely "found" ?

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Babies are now a 1 in 250 chacne per turn, or suc.

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Well ... I think goody huts should probably dissapear after they have been used ... unless the goody hut is a potential spawning site (and hasn't been fully explored yet)

I am not against having certain dungeons that can be explored multiple times until someone finally kills the boss and escapes alive. (potential to escape alive without killing the boss, and potential to kill the boss and die)

IF someone kills the boss and dies, someone else simply has to kill remaining enemies and then picks up the loot.

but yea, once the final boss/ final loot/ final quest of a Hut is completed, it should dissapear imho. Unless multiple players can use the site for the same quest. Then its a repeatable/ permanent I guess (and should probably be a spawn point for mooks)

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It feels kind of strange that new places/monsters appear on the map even as you have explored it. That just doesn't feel plausible (perhaps there's some good reasoning for this approach). I'm aware that the game mechanics have been possibly designed this way to scale with the player (easier monsters early on ie.). It would still feel nicer if there was some quite fixed set of monsters initially that just grew in experience as the player does instead having many sudden spawns like now. Of course there could be tough monsters initially like now but it's up to the player to avoid those (it's supposed to be a dangerous world anyway ).

There's one area that's quite lacking from my point of view: automation. I would really like to be able to set production modes for cities (ie. focus on knowledge, food, whatnot), supply routes (amass an army in this place), adventure behavior (cautiousness, cautious adventurers should try to get reinforcements from the cities), waypoints ie. I suppose improvements on this side may well be on its way as I reckon the game gets kind of tedious once you have heaps of units/cities to manage. In this case you should be able to delegate the responsibility and focus on the interesting aspects of the game.

So far I have been quite impressed. I'm well aware it's nothing like the finished product being beta. Of course there are issues but nothing that cannot be solved in my view. It's going to be interesting to see it progress towards final release.

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Quoting bebraw,

reply 7

I agree about the goodie hut issue. I think the basic idea (quests) is fine but the implementation could be a bit different. I might be willing to forgo huts altogether and deal with quests using a user interface of its own. In this case there would be a specific view containing all possible quests (visible based on adventure level). There would also be means to assign adventurers to quests and perhaps even automate them (I'm not a fan of micromanagement myself ). Even if the goodie huts remain, it would be nice to have a user interface for them.

It feels kind of strange that new places/monsters appear on the map even as you have explored it. That just doesn't feel plausible (perhaps there's some good reasoning for this approach). I'm aware that the game mechanics have been possibly designed this way to scale with the player (easier monsters early on ie.). It would still feel nicer if there was some quite fixed set of monsters initially that just grew in experience as the player does instead having many sudden spawns like now. Of course there could be tough monsters initially like now but it's up to the player to avoid those (it's supposed to be a dangerous world anyway ).

There's one area that's quite lacking from my point of view: automation. I would really like to be able to set production modes for cities (ie. focus on knowledge, food, whatnot), supply routes (amass an army in this place), adventure behavior (cautiousness, cautious adventurers should try to get reinforcements from the cities), waypoints ie. I suppose improvements on this side may well be on its way as I reckon the game gets kind of tedious once you have heaps of units/cities to manage. In this case you should be able to delegate the responsibility and focus on the interesting aspects of the game.

So far I have been quite impressed. I'm well aware it's nothing like the finished product being beta. Of course there are issues but nothing that cannot be solved in my view. It's going to be interesting to see it progress towards final release.

I couldn't disagree more. We need the Inns and other stuff to make the world seem more alive!

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I saw frogboy mentioning theyll put counterattacks in

that would make me relay really happy, it feels all wrong without it.

Also it would me nice if adjacent allied armies get to participate in the combat that way you could get help from your allies in attacking and defending, like the Age of Wonders 2.

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@sean w:

I know what you mean about a living world. however, the spawn seems.....asymmetric? of the huts. This gets frusturating 2/2 all the huts being in a certain location (like a prime city spot). We can raze other cities.....but cant burn that inn down? why not .

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I think I disagree about automation. I suppose if the game became something where you had 20 cities to look over it would be tedious. I think players should be actively involved in the development of their cities, adventuring and such.

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Yea ... an addition somewhere down the line where you are able to explore your own city (within a turn) and pick up quests or intel from the townsfolk.

This could be done relatively simply or very complex.

For instance of simple ... you have an overhead view of the city with certain Buildings highlighted ... you can click on a building to open a selection of dialogue trees, and talk to that person. Etc.

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Denryu

Join Date 07/2006

+93

I really love 3b. Very stable on my system and much more fun than previous builds. Most of the problems I am seeing are typos/misspellings in text, and there was one time that I got into a tactical battle over some armor, and I lost to the spiders that were protecting it, but I still got the armor when my sovereign ported back to a city. I suppose conceivably he could have snagged it, but it seemed like I should have had to defeat the mobs protecting it to get the loot.

I am really looking forward to the full release.

(One misspelling I see a lot is the use of the word "earn" where the word intended is "urn". A typo I saw (I can;t remember where) was learning was spelled "leraning".

Research is looking very very good, but it still seems to take a while to develop much. Not necessarily a bad thing, I want games to be longer and feel more epic, which would not be the case if knowledge comes to quickly.

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