Sorcerer King: Your wishlist » Forum Post by Frogboy

-Starting units get skills,and more HP with each level.As you have said a level 10 warrior stronger than a level 1 paladin(or something like this).

-Balance as still some heroes and sovereign aren't as good as others.

-Better town siege.Graphically and in unit size.Capturing a city must not be an easy option.

-For city diversity we need some hard choices.For cities choose between a library(gives more powerful spells to research),and war academy which lets you produce a new unit or unlock some special ability that depends on which sovereign you have chosen.Each city upgrade should have one hard choice between 2 buildings.The same could be done for outposts with a final upgrade option between 3 choices for their zoc.One with big mobility(or even stealth?),one for attack power,and one for more defense bonus like more hp and something like that.

-Have a slider at the pre-game setup where we can choose if there is a limit to how many cities and outposts we can build.

Graphics related below

-A bit more variety in sites which you get a quest.A pond,a forgotten tower,an ancient tree,an old dwarven armor,a fountain,ice tower.

-A new town screen like heroes 7.

My suggestions are copied from other posts i have made.I love the fact that you speak about the future of this game.Communication is necessary and very welcomed.

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oddrheia

Join Date 11/2007

+4

My wish list:

1)More detailed random map generation.

Something like we had in Legendary Heroes, with ability to specify the various terrain %, number of minors regardless of map size, maybe even number of hero statues (thought that might make balance a bit tricky). Definately more detail on map gen tho, please! I don't see why you cant select 5 minors on a small random map, when some pre-made tiny maps have 6 of them.

2)Bit more agressive wildlife ai, sorceror king troops ai, and sk outpost troop ai.

Currently, my cities are rarely ever in danger from mosnter dens and SK outposts slowly get peppered by my outpost and town towers till a single hero or a bunch of reserve troops with no equipment and training can finish them off. Would be nice to see some more excitment!

3) Assaultable outposts.

If not somehting like Legendary heroes where enemy could outright destroy undefended post, then at least let the enemy ruin its offensive capability so it needs to be repaired.

Thanks for listening

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I think sovereign offensive casting for certain sovereigns like Tyrant needs a huge boost early and mid game. He feels incredibly weak right now. Perhaps early game buildings which pump up magic generation from shards.

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Some Wishes:

Different Endings. If you pile up the cruelty and scoundrel, maybe you can't resist Curgen's Bane?

Make the end of the game more urgent. . If you spend too much time dawdling, have Curgen's Bane (i.e. the DM) allow the SK to respawn a killed Lieutenant. . maybe with a few levels added, or an extra map move to increase city stomping potential. Or maybe the revived Lieutenant can make their army immune to Outposts, or have a rapid healing ability which amounts to the same thing.

The Doomsday counter should eventually spin out of control, no matter what you do. Diminishing returns on reduce doomsday would help. Allow SK's doomsday generation techniques to improve over time would help as well.

Maybe make an event where the sorcerer king personally decides to destroy the forge. Something like Curgen's Bane infuses SK with new power, and he announces that in 25 turns he will show up at your cap. with both (revived?) Lieutenants. . unless of course you stop him first.

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My main 3:

1) Unit Balance: Give me a reason to get units other than paladins.

2) Spell Balance: Make late game spellcasting more competitive with units. Recognize that as the game proceeds the action economy shifts more towards the actions a spell takes, not the mana or the number of spells I have.

3) Doom Clock Balance: Its too slow and too easy to control. I end the game due to boredom not due to having to bum rush the SK because of the clock.

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Thecw

Join Date 08/2012

+84

My wishlist (for now).

Doomsday counter.

A doomsday floor as i proposed in the Proposed doomsday floor mechanic thread.

Outposts.

Outposts and roads are buildable by an engineer unit (not by a pioneer). Building an outpost does not consume the engineer, but consumes all movement points of the engineer.
Outposts do not cost logistics.
The engineer unit can upgrade outpost: upgrade from level 1 to 2 takes 2 turns, upgrade from level 2 to 3 takes 3 turns, upgrade from level 3 to level 4 takes 5 turns. Multiple engineers can cooperate to upgrade the outpost faster.
Units can be garrisoned in a outpost.
Outposts (and cities) only damage enemy units within its ZOC if at least 1 military unit is garrisoned inside it.
Enemy units that are destroyed (by the outpost/city) give XP to units who are garrisoned inside said outpost/city.
If an outpost has no miltary garrison, any unit can simply walk through it and miltary units can destroy the outpost.
Outposts have no owner, they will 'work' for whoever has an (military) unit garrisoned inside it. Including barbarians and the SK.
Attacking an outpost should result in a battle on a tactical battle map (like the city tactical battle map) on which the outpost level is represented by a number of turrets* that is equal to the outpost level.

Cities.

On a tactical city battle map the level of the city should be represented by a (or more than one) main turret* that does damage proportional to the city level. Additional turrets should be given for the Watchtower-, Battlements-, and Bastion-improvements. Working the 'Defend Borders' project increases the damage done by turrets.

Units.

An engineer unit that can build outpost (see above) and roads. Building a road consumes 1 movement point of the engineer.

Building a pioneer should cost civilians. And the number of civilians it consumes equal to the number of civilians that are generated when founding a new city.

The logistical administrator units should only give logistic points when garrisoned inside a city, not when they are in the field.

Notes.

*Turrets work as stationary unit with an average initiative. And they show up in the initiative list.

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My wish list would be more emphasis on the explore part of the game, with cool stuff to find and being able to talk to stuff you encounter. Inns are cool and so are warlock towers, treasure chests are boring and so are bandit camps. Could we interact with the bandits maybe try to bribe them to move or try to hire them? I think more could be done here (its already great!) and it would benefit me as this is what I spend most of my time doing. Yes Im aware there is already tons of stuff. Moar cake plz!!!

The 2nd thing I'd like would be more involvement with the cities. I realise this isn't civ4, but the city management could be a bit more in depth, managing resource tiles being worked, seeing how much food its going to take for the city to grow again that sort of thing.

Lastly I would really really like a proper in game database like a civilopedia if you will. One that lists all the units, all the spells all the buildings. How to get the units cross referenced with buildings, which are sov specfic (eg knights). What do the wrath and chaos books do? does 4 books give you 12 spells 5 gives you 16 and 6 books give you 20? or are there dimishing returns? If I aboslutley "must" have summon coolthingy do I need 5 books in summoning coolthingys or is anything over 4 a waste. What are all the spells and what do they do. Let me read through the cool toys bestiaries, factions, all the possible recipes I might be able to aquire.... A nice in game reference that gets me going out to look for the cool stuff would be great.

I notice the above posters commenting about ways to increase the games difficulty. As someone who can finish the game on beginner, but has yet to survive easy I would suggest rather then blanket player nerfs/sk buffs you do more to graduate the difficulty levels. Right now some of the above suggestions would push the game beyond my skill level. Perhaps those challenging game mechanic changes should be added to hard and insane difficulty levels.

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mqpiffle

Join Date 10/2010

+44

I'd like to see crafting and enchanting balanced and enhanced a little bit.

Balance. I have yet to explore a full game, but even early to mid game I'm seeing items which I think to myself "I would never craft that....it's just not worth it." For instance the Aspect(s) of Fire/Cold cost four crystal resources plus mana plus some other stuff: this seems ridiculous to me for a simple +1 elemental attack, especially since I can craft a ring with +5 initiative (a much better effect) for much fewer ingredients. Instead of getting resources directly involved as ingredients in crafting recipes, I propose recipes which can convert resources into crafting ingredients, for example 1 crystal resource could be crafted into 3 flawless crystal or 5 crystal flagons, or perhaps 3 metal resources could be crafted into two platinum ingredients. Also along these lines I believe all of the crafting recipes could use a heavy balance pass.

Crafting vs Enchanting. I mentioned this briefly during the middle stages of the beta when the crafting system was first introduced. I feel like there are a couple of issues with these systems:

1. Crafting should require the working of ingredients to form an object, enchanting should require the casting of spells upon an object to enhance it in specific ways. As they are now, the two systems are basically the same: mash some objects together to get another object. Why even have the enchanting mechanic if it's the same thing as crafting? Enchanting spells could be researched like other spells and I believe they should be more unique with distinct effects - leave the +2 defense type effects to the crafting side of things. I believe the mechanics can be further enhanced by distinguishing them and who is good at doing what...

2. Distinguish who is good at what. Right now the tinker has a monopoly over both crafting and enchanting. Maybe the tinker is really really good at crafting - better than currently, even. He could get more recipes, recipes unique to him (how about some bombs or contraptions or kite wings which grant a unit flying,) and his crafts should just be better...that ring that's +1 off another sovereign's forge he can make +3 with the same ingredients. But maybe he's mediocre at enchanting. But maybe there's a sovereign who is just awesome at enchanting, perhaps the mighty Galor, or the priestess, ooorrr maybe a new Enchanter sovereign who brings with her a new Enchanting spellbook? The possibilities are almost endless!

Anyway, food for thought.

+1

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Thecw

Join Date 08/2012

+84

Addition to my wishlist.

Tile improvements.

And with these i mean that a map tile can have an improvement on it, and this improvement will give a bonus to a city if said tile is claimed by that city. And these tiles can be defended by 'monsters', so that before you can get any use out of them you first have to defeat them.

For example:

Wizard tower - when claimed will give an additional lore;
Mana well - when claimed will give an additional mana;
Training grounds - when claimed will give an extra attack or defense to units build in the city. Possibly different kinds of training grounds: Archer range (for archers - duh), dummy field (for sword men), jousting lane/arena (for riders, knights) etc...

Of course to prevent them to become overpowered, these tiles should give no or limited yields. This also would give some extra strategic depth: go for a tile with yields (food, hammers, essence) to improve your city or go for the tile with the improvement.

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I thought of a few more. Some UI improvements:

1) Tell me how much food to get to the next level.

2) Tell me how many hammers things cost.

3) Let me see the yields of all of the terrain when I have a settler.

+1

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I still like LH better than SK. You basically addressed some of the major issues in LH here... unfortunately, you took out many of the things that make LH such a great game so my wishlist is put them all back in! I know that's not going to happen so let's start with the basics.

1. Let us play the other factions. Have their cities, buildings, and units be unique so that they play differently from each other.

2. Force us to make choices in hero skill trees so that each time we play through, those heroes will play a little bit differently. Today, we just choose every skill in their tree.

3. At the end of each game, we end up with too much garbage (goods) that never get used. We need a way to sell it, convert it, or trade it (i.e marketplace) or better ways to spend it on our troops.

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Agree with Stalker0 above. Please do those things. I've pointed out the food issue before and hope you can implement that.

I"ll post an old post from May but it's still relevant:

#1. The only way to figure out how a city grows is by clicking on a city and looking at the small bar in the bottom lefthand corner of the screen. I’d be nice if this information (in whatever method you want) was added to the bar above the city (next to the production bar). Additionally, when I double click over a city and hover over the food/wheat symbols, I’m told how much food I’m getting but not how it affects growth. I’d have no way of knowing that I require 40 food and so I’ll grow in 10 turns. Adding that to the tooltip or another obvious place in the city screen would be an immense help. I find it really annoying to figure out how much food I need all the time. If anything, just add the info to the tooltip and it would be the simplest solution.

#2 City screen – progress section

a. Add production cost to each item you can build. Right now, it only tells me how many turns it will take to build something but not the actual cost. This can matter a lot when I need to know if I want to cast a spell that gives me more production

b. On that note, the 0 of X turns could easily be the easiest place to put that production cost info

c. If I put the garden into production and then hover over the artwork for the garden, it does not tell me what the garden does. This would be a nice to add.

#3 Would be nice to have a tooltip when hovering over a skill like compassion. I just have no real idea what it might do. A hint here would help.

#4. Boat and road should be starting spells for most sovereign but at least the commander.

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Alstein

Join Date 07/2004

+55

Quoting Trojasmic,

reply 11

I still like LH better than SK. You basically addressed some of the major issues in LH here... unfortunately, you took out many of the things that make LH such a great game so my wishlist is put them all back in!

I know that's not going to happen so let's start with the basics.

1. Let us play the other factions. Have their cities, buildings, and units be unique so that they play differently from each other.

2. Force us to make choices in hero skill trees so that each time we play through, those heroes will play a little bit differently. Today, we just choose every skill in their tree.

3. At the end of each game, we end up with too much garbage (goods) that never get used. We need a way to sell it, convert it, or trade it (i.e marketplace) or better ways to spend it on our troops.

The first one is going to be the focus of the expansion

The second is something I don't think is fixable without expanded skillsets or nerfed levelling for heroes.

The third one is what enchanted forge is supposed to be for.

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A bit of input which I think it more UI related:

1. A way to see the actual cost of buildings/points needed to next Sovereign level. (Unless I'm missing them somewhere)

2. An easier way to see where a road will connect to when placing an outpost or settling a city. Perhaps highlight the tile the road will connect to? Having said that I love the way the roads are currently built, since I can focus less on the micromanagement and more the RPG aspects.

3. A way to paint roads when casting the 'Place Roads' spell. Currently I have to go to the spell book, find the spell, cast it, click the tile I want to place it on and repeat. Can definitely get a little tiresome.

Otherwise I'm loving the experience. Looking forward to seeing where it goes.

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BlackSmokeDMax

Join Date 03/2006

+60

Quoting Chromatism,

reply 14

3. A way to paint roads when casting the 'Place Roads' spell. Currently I have to go to the spell book, find the spell, cast it, click the tile I want to place it on and repeat. Can definitely get a little tiresome.

A strategic hotbar for spells in the UI would be ideal. At the least, a recent history of spells used. And on the very desirable side of that, a customizable hotbar as in the LH tactical battles.

+1

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Just thought of some things as I was playing...

1. When I'm offered trades by the minor factions, I'm not familiar enough with what's being offered so will you please provide a tool tip so that I can hover over things like "wolf pelt" or "clouded topaz" to provide some visual clue (what it looks like and what it does) of what I'm trading and what's being offered? For bonus credit, let us minimize that window, check our inventory, then make the decision.

2. Summon ship spell says to summon a ship to explore the ocean riches so I did. Unfortunately, there were no ocean riches. So how about adding some ocean riches to the game? Maybe some flotsam and jetsam, mermaids, whirlpools, or something?

3. Add a way for me to craft multiple potions in one click. For example, instead of clicking the craft button 10 times, I would like to be able to modify the quantity from 1 to 10 then click the craft button 1 time.

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More depth to the tactical battles.

You already gave the casual gamers enough attention by allowing to resolve the battles automatically, or to put the AI in charge in the middle of one and so on.

Please make the tactical battles more interesting (more variety in the battlefield generation, possibly bigger and with LOS obstacles and the likes, for example) and the AI better. As it stands now, it is way too easy to win battles you are supposed to lose, and at the same time they are just not interesting enough most of the time, to the point that you just auto solve them or put autoplay at a very fast speed in the middle of it.

Don't get me wrong, having the possibility to do so is very welcome. I just feel that it happens way too often and way too early.

Aside from that, more attention to the minor factions, maybe more ways to interact with them, like suggesting to attack a specific objective or defend a specific shard (like in civilization IV for example).

Aside from that, more and more and more and more quests variety and possible outcomes to keep the game fresh.

Thanks for the good work.

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XWerewolfX

Join Date 02/2006

+31

I definitely second/third the need and desire for a strategic spell hotbar.

And the need to ask minors to protect shards.

hell, pretty much everything here is great.

More re and more victory conditions need to happen, too.

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ive been thinking about this game a lot. playing it, playing other similar games, and then thinking about it some more. ive had this feeling like something was missing.. that the 4x and asymmetrical(rpg) aspects of the game weren't entirely integrated, and subsequently were suffering a rocky honeymoon. for some reason i wasn't drawn back to the game like i expected; but i was determined to find out why.

after many games, many weeks, and much pondering i finally figured it out. every game began wonderfully, the 4x and roguelike elements exciting my creative juices as i personalized my path to victory; but then ultimately all of my creativity was funneled into 1 of just 2 possible choices for how to end the story - attack sk or defend against sk. what appeared to be a sandbox turns out to be a ride. problem: for all its 4x rmg mechanics, sorcerer king has the replay value of a linear rpg.

reason: there are only 2 possible ways to end the story.

solution: more victory conditions.

Quoting XWerewolfX,

reply 18

More re and more victory conditions need to happen, too.

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