Any interest in another playthrough?

from Elemental Forums

A few months ago, before Beta 4, I posted two playthroughs: a Conquest on Ridiculous, and a Master Quest on Insane.

Now that there is a new version, I am thinking about attempting a new playthrough.  I just won an Alliance victory without fighting anyone but monsters on Expert, and wonder whether one can succeed on Insane without being a brutal britzkrieger.

So if there is any interest, I will try a game like this: (Well, I'll try the game anyway, but I will keep snapshots and write comments if anyone cares)

 

The rules:

All settings maxed: Large map, dense everything, 8 insane AIs (no Capitar and Umber, they keep starting headless for some reason)

No cheating, but full abuse of production rushing, city snaking, troop blocking, outpost spamming, etc...

No restoring except for crashes.

Start position: rerolled until I get at least a 3/4/2 location.

The handicaps:  Only Conquest and Alliance victory are allowed.  In addition, the player nation will never declare war first, i.e. no steamrolling.

 

The insanely overpowered custom race:

Formal name: Kingdom of Men

Short name: Men

Race: Men

Advantages: Enchanters, Master scouts, Heroic, Wanderlust

Weaknesses: No ranged weapons, Vulnerable to magic

 

The leader:

Name: Lord Petar

Equipment: Procipinee's Crown, Rusty short sword

Talents: Brilliant, Clumsy

Magic proficiencies: Earth disciple, Life apprentice

Profession: Armorer

21,382 views 29 replies
Reply #1 from LittleTinyFrogs Forums Top

Beta 5 is due out this week. Excited to see what you think of the various little changes.

 

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top


Did I hear you correctly frogboy. Beta 5 this week... I'm excited to see all the tweaks that you've been working on behind the scenes.

As to the original post I would like to see a playthrough like that. I'm never good enough to try insane on anything. Also your links are broken Tuidjy.

Fences - Organize your desktop icons today!
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Yep, due this Thursday.  Feature completion time. Polish. Bug fixing. Content. Balance from here on out.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Well, with interest from the Game Master, who am I to argue.  I'll just play the current version until the new one comes out.  To be honest, I am not very hopeful that I will be able to survive by the rules.

Thanks, parrottmath, I fixed the links.  They should work now.  I am still editing the rules...

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

That... is some awesome news, Frogboy.

 

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

I dont like the fact that you reroll your starts mister. Thats a cop out.  :troll:

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Well, I don't like to waste my time trying to win on Impossible, with handicaps, when the RNG, in its infinite wisdom, has stuck me in a location that will force me to spend 20 turns researching civics.  I have seen starts with no resources over 2 and with no essence in sight.

But I would love to see you demonstrate how to pull a win out of that.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

I am not saying I can beat the settings (havent tried). I dont custom make my sovs either. Just use the stock ones. I play on hard, medium map and dense monsters. My biggest problem right now is that the world is so tame, that you can expand with little chance of being whipped by the wild.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

But I am always game for watching a playthrough by the way. I am not trying to criticize you here. I just like to play with the hand you are being dealt.

Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top

Beta 5 already? Awesome! I can't wait to get it and play it over the weekend.

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

High hopes for beta 5! But cautious that it is happening so soon...

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Heavenfall, reply 12
High hopes for beta 5! But cautious that it is happening so soon...
End of Heavenfall's quote

In the same boat.

Still a few mechanics in the game that needed some tweaking (says the lowly non-programmer), so I'm hoping that they're intergrated into beta 5. I get the tingling impression that they're not though...

Are they game breakers? No, probably not.

Are they the difference between an 8/10 and an 11/10? Again, imo, yep.

 

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

very interested in a run on insane, doing one myself right now (which i will stop and wait for beta 5), but since i missed couple of releases i would love to see your strategy - mine is not working very well ...

Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting GFireflyE, reply 13
Still a few mechanics in the game that needed some tweaking (says the lowly non-programmer), so I'm hoping that they're intergrated into beta 5. I get the tingling impression that they're not though...

Are they game breakers? No, probably not.

Are they the difference between an 8/10 and an 11/10? Again, imo, yep.
End of GFireflyE's quote

Exactly. Well said. Of course there will always be requests from different people but there are some areas that are still lacking and would add much to the game experience. I hope they keep a long enough beta 5 to ensure a high quality and polished game at release, ensuring its success.

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

Beta 5 this week? That's fast, how long has the last version been out, less than 2 weeks? I wonder how much could have been added/changed in that time..

Reply #16 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Satrhan, reply 16
Beta 5 this week? That's fast, how long has the last version been out, less than 2 weeks? I wonder how much could have been added/changed in that time..
End of Satrhan's quote

Well, we don't exactly have any idea how long some of the changes have been in development. It could be they've been working on them for much longer, but none were ready for the beta 4 series.

Reply #17 from Elemental Forums Top

It's been a month since beta 4. Usually we have to wait 2 months, but maybe this cycle wants more public testing since it is focusing on polish, not content.

Reply #18 from Elemental Forums Top

While I'm aware that at this point a Spells & Magic Overhaul was unrealistic, I kind of hoped for a longer development cycle for Beta 5. Too little time has passed for any significant changes in Magic to surface now :(

Well this weekend I'll see, I guess... 

Reply #19 from Elemental Forums Top

@CogBurn; could be, but 'wait until you see what we have in our internal build' is something we heard more than once in the weeks before WoM's  release. As it turned out, there was very little we hadn't seen yet. Not saying that this will be the case again, but I'm not going to assume certain things are added/fixed until we have actual evidence.

@Sean; I hope they will take their time. I'm not sure about the focus on just polish and balance, not content though; Frogboy clearly posted

Quoting Frogboy, reply 3
Yep, due this Thursday.  Feature completion time. Polish. Bug fixing. Content. Balance from here on out.
End of Frogboy's quote

 

Reply #20 from Elemental Forums Top

Feature completion time according to Frogboy probably means feature lockdown and refinement. You might see a few new spells or something small that was held back from beta 4 for extra development, but nothing major. Content probably means more spells, events and quests. Those are the only things that have been previewed.

Reply #21 from Elemental Forums Top

Keep in mind, Stardock can easily be holding back aspects of the beta's on us. They could have all sorts of features (like the campaign) that they've been working on, but don't want to let us beta test...

Beta 5 could be much better than beta 4......it could be much worse. :pout:   (I'm doubting it thought)

Reply #22 from Elemental Forums Top

A couple of random thoughts...

 

1.  I'm thinking they're holding back some surprises for the game's release too.  I'm torn about this because I like surprises, but I'm afraid the surprises might be riddled with bugs/poor design, etc., if we don't get a chance to beta test first. 

2.  Since Beta 5 is about polish and bugs, I plan on re-reporting all of the polish and bug issues I've reported previously if they're not fixed yet.  I wish they would just post a bug list for us to see so that we could self-check before reporting the same bugs.  The problem is we don't know if they've seen our reports, agree with our bug vs. WAD, can't recreate our bug, etc.

 

Reply #23 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Trojasmic, reply 23
I wish they would just post a bug list for us to see so that we could self-check before reporting the same bugs.  The problem is we don't know if they've seen our reports, agree with our bug vs. WAD, can't recreate our bug, etc.

 
End of Trojasmic's quote

 

Some Developer managed stickies could do wonders for the beta.

Reply #24 from Elemental Forums Top

Well both the workshop and the campaign are currently unavailable so those are pretty big things to hold back on. Hopefully they've been polished for release.

Reply #25 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm just hoping they have had enough time to fix the user interface issues,