[FEEDBACK] The setting and needless micro

from Elemental Forums

I dig the idea of a post-apocalyptic world that is barren. It gives an empire building game a clean start.

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.

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..

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.

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.

8,699 views 55 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

+1 to all above, also too many nobles daughters and long swords after apocalypse  :D

Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Speaking of Nobles and their daughters... there can't BE any nobles in a post-apocalyptic world with no civilization. In that world money means nothing and the strongest will take what they can.

Also, a Sovereign should concern himself with the bigger picture instead of running around saving random people. Like saving a village of people to get their allegiance.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top


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.
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I don't mind the building part, but I do find it annoying how it turns into a crazy balancing act of destroying buildings to make room for houses. The food mechanic is meant to limit city spam and force you to decide where you want your larger cities to be (as food is limited and not every city can be huge), and in that sense it works pretty well. But the housing part starts getting old when you realize that you can't use half the tiles your city has for anything except house spam.

My suggestion in the other thread was to take housing off the city tile limit. Right now you have limited space, and have to build both gardens AND houses in that limited space, along with actual productive buildings like merchants, schools, and archery ranges. If houses didn't consume space, it would at least make it less of a burden.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm pretty certain that most of the current crop of quests are placeholders. I doubt there'll be Inn's and Nobles littering the lands in the full version.

Also the game takes place 200 years after the cataclysm; more than enough time for minor settlements and city states to have developed.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

My suggestion in the other thread was to take housing off the city tile limit. Right now you have limited space, and have to build both gardens AND houses in that limited space, along with actual productive buildings like merchants, schools, and archery ranges. If houses didn't consume space, it would at least make it less of a burden.
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You'd still have the burden of clicking more houses and gardens all the time when you run out of housing or food. The thing about building houses and gardens is that it's not really about player choice at all. Not building more houses and gardens and intentionally limiting your city size is not a choice that gives you some special benefits. There's just nothing to be gained from forcing the player to manually build these things that every city needs, on or off the city grid.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Many others agree with you on the tediousness of city building, including me. Particularly all of the food buildings. I agree the world is cheerful, but remember, it's been a while since the cataclysm, as Thiryn mentioned.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

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.
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+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..

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+ 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.

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+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.

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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.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

If each stage of your city automatically contained enough space/housing for the populace, you could control its growth with food storage and prestige buildings.  (I believe prestige effects the population increase per turn.)  That way you could keep some towns smaller if you desire.  and focus your available food resources on your main city or two. 

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top


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..
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I am personally a huge fan of perks( fallout 3 style), I think it really helps along the rpg element, when instead of simply placing a point into health you can chose a perk (hardy?), which does the same thing, but :D Makes it more awesome!

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

In Neverwinter Nights they were called feats.

 

Could be interesting; not sure about it yet.

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Yeah the feats / perks are actually a stronger RPG element than ability scores, if they are looking to give more character to the Sovereigns.

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

I would also be a fan of a feat/perk/talent system upon level up as opposed to increasing stats by a few decimal points.  At the moment leveling up feels pretty lackluster, and not very rewarding.

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

- I like the perks/feats idea as well, it would be nice to have some sort of growth for the characters than just a couple points here and there. That might make you feel a little more attached to your heros rather than just distributing their points every level up.

- The cities do seem like building spam, with too many identical buildings. An upgrade system and/or the ability to use the buildings you have in new ways as you tech level up would be nice to see. Polishing what you got rather than saying Ok I need to tear down my schools and build universities now.

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting WhiteWolf1144, reply 14

- The cities do seem like building spam, with too many identical buildings. An upgrade system and/or the ability to use the buildings you have in new ways as you tech level up would be nice to see. Polishing what you got rather than saying Ok I need to tear down my schools and build universities now.
End of WhiteWolf1144's quote

Having random encounters where a building becomes unique would be pretty badass, the oldest school +2 research points and +2 prestige... :D Or some cool stuff that would make a few buildings unique would add a nice touch. :) 

Reply #16 from Elemental Forums Top

Perks and feats would be awesome. They add a lot of flavor to the game, are fun to pick instead of generic stat increases (even if that's what the perks/feats only do) and it's exciting to see what perks you have available the next time you level up. However these should be rare enough to not make you have to spam perks each time any of your children or low level champions get experience.

I would say that getting a perk every 3 or 5 levels would be good, just like in fallout. After all, there's no shame in copying loved systems from the most acclaimed games, right? I'm ok with getting just one or two stat points each level and then a perk every now and then. Maybe give perks more often for sovereigns / offspring / adventurers when compared to the non-fighting people, such as administrators, inventors and so on. Off the top of my head, once every 3/4/5/6 levels for sov/kids/adv/other. Of course different kinds of champions could have their own special perks, too.

Heroes of Might & Magic 5 (or was it 4 I forget) ran into the problem that the perks became really generic because you got them too often. That was not good either. The Fallout games have a very good balance in giving them enough so that they add to the flavor and are fun, but still rarely enough to make them feel more special.

Reply #17 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting SpartanFry, reply 15

Having random encounters where a building becomes unique would be pretty badass, the oldest school +2 research points and +2 prestige... Or some cool stuff that would make a few buildings unique would add a nice touch.  
End of SpartanFry's quote

I love this idea. Have random events that make some buildings in the cities special. The effect doesn't have to be anything superb, but to add flavor. "The annual festivities at your market become better known around the world - now the market provides +1 prestige in addition to whatever it provided before."

Reply #18 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Sir_Linque, reply 16
Perks and feats would be awesome. They add a lot of flavor to the game, are fun to pick instead of generic stat increases (even if that's what the perks/feats only do) and it's exciting to see what perks you have available the next time you level up. However these should be rare enough to not make you have to spam perks each time any of your children or low level champions get experience.
End of Sir_Linque's quote

I really don't see any difference between adding +2 strength or buying a feat that adds +2 strength.

Reply #19 from Elemental Forums Top

I only found food to be an issue if you ignore fertile grounds/oasis/bee keepers etc.    Also, I'm not sure why housing spam is even an issue.  I mean the population growth > 1000 may take a couple of houses,  but at that point, you are going to need a TON of prestige buildings to hit the 1000 population growth.

 

Honestly, at this point in the beta there seems to be no reason to build a population to 1000.  There just isn't that many options enabled to make this worthwhile.

 

I personally LOVE the unit designer.  It's just damn cool you can change your units to match what you want.  The problem is we are stuck on the base peasant unit.  And let's be honest, a peasant with plate mail and claymores is still a peasant with 5 hp, (or 7 with veteran.)  The gold, workshop, and turn numbers are still a bit skewed too IMO.  It shouldn't take 10 turns to build a company of peasants!

 

 

As for the Sovereign, I think the leveling up and stats are great.  The problem right now is most of the stats don't matter, so its skewing the results. Perks + Feats are going to come into effect via history and talents I believe.  Like Organized gives the same movement speed to the army as the Sov leading it(except it doesn't work atm.)

Reply #20 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Genetic_Strife, reply 19

As for the Sovereign, I think the leveling up and stats are great.  The problem right now is most of the stats don't matter, so its skewing the results. Perks + Feats are going to come into effect via history and talents I believe.  Like Organized gives the same movement speed to the army as the Sov leading it(except it doesn't work atm.)
End of Genetic_Strife's quote

Stats do matter.  Constitution increases HP, Strength Increases Attack, Dexterity increases defense, etc. 

History and talents were in the previous beta build and had nothing to do with leveling up.

Reply #21 from Elemental Forums Top

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.
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I completely agree here!

quote quoting="post"
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.
/quote

I do not agree here. Building you cities allows for instance to block areas which enemies can not ignore (coast or valleys). That makes the game much more interesting. That's what I did in one of my games.


Via

Reply #22 from Elemental Forums Top

Placing huts and gardens is interesting in some cases from a tactical perspective, but the vast majority of the time you just spam them away. After all it needs to be interesting for more than a couple of first times. When you build up city number 15 in game number 100, will the rare occasion of being able to block one path between mountains really worth all the micromanagement you have to do to achieve it? With other improvements this is alright, but housing and the gazillion gardens, not so much.

Reply #23 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Sir_Linque, reply 17



Quoting SpartanFry,
reply 15

Having random encounters where a building becomes unique would be pretty badass, the oldest school +2 research points and +2 prestige... Or some cool stuff that would make a few buildings unique would add a nice touch.  


I love this idea. Have random events that make some buildings in the cities special. The effect doesn't have to be anything superb, but to add flavor. "The annual festivities at your market become better known around the world - now the market provides +1 prestige in addition to whatever it provided before."
End of Sir_Linque's quote

This had me thinking that it would be cool if we had ruins of destroyed cities on the map to explore with random rewards or hazards. Finding lost knowledge, unearthing some ancient artifact of power or discovering a statue of an old king that would give a new city a prestige bonus... or unleashing a horde of vengeful spirits.

Reply #24 from Elemental Forums Top

Even in that screenshot the city would block the valley just the same if it was some default square or circle shape.. you can still have strategic city placement even if you can't build them in I or L shape or whatever. Which would actually look pretty silly.

Reply #25 from Elemental Forums Top


I dig the idea of a post-apocalyptic world that is barren. It gives an empire building game a clean start.

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.

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..

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.

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.

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Mad Max? Man, that's not apocalyptic enough. Go Dark Sun, go!

I'd have to agree with that decimal thingy. I spend most (if not all) the level ups just trying to raise the HP (due to silly initial HP count) because it's too low and monsters too hard. Those decimals don't help. Feats by itself are not good enough. How many times could you pick Charismatic to increase your charisma? Feats tend to be a one-shot thing. Feats as an extra though...

Housing and food being so important, seems correct to decide things like how many you build (the where is actually a bit pointless except for map access control, I'm hoping for expansions to make it more meaningful).

I like city building so I don't find it boring. Not saying it cannot be improved or tweaked, but I'd need to be able to play a big map with all the tech trees to be able to decide relistically how fun city building really is.