[0.98] Beta 5 

Good Morning

I’m going to continue my "comments series" as I play my games. Don’t know if Stardock is listening/reading, but some people are, so I’ll keep posting. This will be my seventh game to post. I'm going to run with Cersea again and see where it leads... 

Game Seven, Part 1:

• [Applause] WOW. Nice intro cut scene! Sound was a little too much base, but that might have been just my sound setup.
• [Suggestion] Looking at the “Who are you” when selecting your sovereign, it would be nice if there were two circles below the current sovereign choices: One for ‘create your own sovereign” and other for “randomly select sovereign”.
• [Tweak] Audio when reading off the ‘book’ at the start is still quiet. I would say that it’s volume has been increased since 0.952, but it is still not enough as I barely can make out the woman’s voice.
• [MAJOR BUG] Ctrl-N can crash the game VERY easily.
• [Balancing Concern] Started a bunch of new games to take a look at starting location and what is given from game to game. Overall, I am unimpressed as essence is RARELY given and most sites only gave a few settle options with nothing around for miles (game terms of course).
• [Balance] Looking to recruit Miredesi. 106 gildar is too much for her services, but I really have no choice unless I want to just walk around with a single hero.
• [Tweak] When I open up the ‘build’ menu, the topmost improvement is STILL highlighted for the auto-build function. Maybe you don’t realize, but this is SOOO annoying, as it makes for accidental builds all the time. Please remove the highlight, making the player have to click the improvement he wishes to build, even if it’s the topmost one.
• [Applause] The ‘end turn’ button lights up very nicely once all units have moved.
• [Tweak] There is still the occasional lightning strike sound that is WAY too loud.
• [Balance] At first glace at the tech trees; it appears that everything is going to take longer to research…not shorter. This is backwards as too many initial techs need to be developed before you start your troop production.
• [Tweak] I haven’t even been able to build my first building yet (a merchant) and I already need to switch production to that of a pioneer. This needs to be fixed.
• [Comment] The ‘cliff’ animations still look really goofy. There should be shores and beaches that the waves crash into…not more water.
• [BUG] Not sure what happened. All of a sudden I lost half my UI and things starting to move VERY slowly. I could still do most things, so I saved and reloaded and problem is now gone.

Well, it was short, but I'm going to take a break. City queue is taking way too long to build things. Even outter city improvements are taking painfully long to build. Will continue later this evening...

 Adding comments, Game Seven, Part 2:

• [Applause] City took an acceptable amount of time to level up. Like the information given to help decide which direction you want to go.
• [Tweak] Sad thing is that I have JUST finished building 1 pioneer when my city leveled up. That's the ONLY thing I completed in the queue. Everything is taking WAY too long to build.
• [Applause] Monsters are stronger and attack passer-by more easily. This is excellant EXCEPT for the fact that you are now stuck hitting end-turn for 50 turns till you can build a troop or two to help your heros. VERY boring.
• [Disappointment] Ahhh! This is getting too boring. I'm just moving my heros around. Only have 1 city and NO where to build a second. Boring hitting end-turn all the time with nothing to do. Starting a new game to find and area that's more appealing.
• [Disappointment] Starting umteen games. Everything coming up has little or no essence, and has no other building locations. I don't want to play 'one-city'! I want to build an empire!

Sigh...taking another break. Will start game Eight on the weekend. I'll give it another try, but I can see myself skipping this beta and playing 0.952 until they FIX the build queue times. Scratching my eyeballs out might be more fun.