[Issue] Not enough guidance in empire building

I'm still at a loss about how to properly build up my empire. I've no idea how big of a gain is +0.5 into growth, for instance. When focusing on non-civic research you kind of forget you even have any cities as the champins do all the work.

I have no idea what crystal is fore. I beelined to the channeling tech to be able to build on the resource next to my starting position, but I've no idea what to use the crystals for.

When building the crystal mine, it didn't tell me how long it would take to finish the mine or what the material costs of the mine are.

The techs need some descriptions as to what their main benefits are. Sure, listing what the tech unlocks is essential, but it would really help if the techs had a short description on them like "Logistics allows for bigger armies, and is an important stepping stone to improve the effectiveness of your rank and file soldiers."

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its just used for stuff farther down the tech tree in later game, kind of iron is not used until middle game. AFAIK it seems there is currently no reason to beeline it.

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The point is that I don't really care that much about what the actual purpose of the crystal is, but rather that I'm completely in the dark as to what crystal does even though I can quickly research a tech that lets me start gathering it.

It's a good example where at the very least the tech that enables crystal mining should tell the player what kind of functions the crystals have.

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Or to say it another way: It's impossible to make informed decisions, without...information.

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Come on, seriously> Crystals are for creating magical items and armor, you should have known that from WOM (should probably be added info about that somewhere though) They probably figured most people would just know it.

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Crystals are (or should) also used for trading as opposed to Gildar (or at least, used to be). So it can help to have some for a trade. Otherwise, like BlackRainZ says, they're used for making the more important magically stuff.

Regardless, more information ALWAYS = BETTER.

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@blackrainZ Considering the stardock development team is interested in broadening the market to those that have not yet played the first game of the series: War of Magic, Linque raises a fair point. While it is positive that the ability to obtain the material comes before the techs to use it (so you will have time to gather the resource), it shouldn't be necessary to travel through every portion of the tech tree or manual to figure out what it does.

There is also no mention about how faction prestige functions as related to the growth or that it is reduced base on the number of cities or by what ammount.

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BlackRainZ, when developing a game you can't make assumptions that the players "just know" things. KaiLae's comment sums it up perfectly, I hope the devs take it to heart. I'll post it here again just for emphasis.

And good point about the faction prestige, too. I kind of missed that since I already knew what it did, but it definitely needs to be clearly explained to every player. There is a lot of stuff like this in the game that needs better descriptions.

Quoting KaiLae,

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Or to say it another way: It's impossible to make informed decisions, without...information.

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