First off, I really like this game! Now that that is out of the way the list of nitpicky things. Trying to play the campaign from the viewpoint of a noob.
1. Tactical combat issues:
-Why does it place some units all the way on the opposite side of the battle from your main troops. I had two poor little peasants starting a battle right next to a set of trolls while the rest of the main army set a comfortable distance a way and laughed at their predicament.
-Casting and missile animation. When zoomed in a little bit on the battlefield, the animation starts way off the battlefield on the right side of the screen and sort of pans in towards the target. Looks funny considering the unit shooting is near the middle of the map.
-After combat the tooltip does not change back to something useful. It gets stuck on the combat results/level up/quest text screen. Then I get to play guess what part of the cursor is actually going to let me close/select. Not good for a cranky old fart with bifocal lenses!
2. Quest oddities:
-Minor, but at the start of the game you get a helpful hint that you can buy equipment at Relias's outpost. Only problem is the outpost has not been built yet, this tip would be better after you build your city, and to actually show you how to get to the merchant screen. From a noob point of view this could be confusing?
-The spell rewards for two parts of the quest were messed up. It said I was to get Summon Stonegiant, and Lightning. I got the lightning spell, but no stonegiant (or anything else to summon) after finding the map in the ship. The 2nd time I think was a text error, it gave me three spells, one of which said it was some kind of arrow, but I actually got mind blast. The mind blast was not mentioned in the quest text, and no spell having anything to do with an arrow.
3. Leveling up stuff:
-When leveling it says on the tooltip when you hover over combat speed that it affects a units dexterity in battle, well then was does the dexterity stat do? Confusing, seems like you have two things that are affecting dexterity?
-When your cities grow you get to select a reward. Kind of reminds me of the TV show "Whose line is it anyway" where the points don't really matter. Do any of the rewards when a city dings make any sense? What good to tech points do, or arcane point increase. Or even the random guardian or extra cash. Maybe I'm too early into the campaign. But it seems there is no research (at least to the point I have played) so why offer this. Have cash coming out my ears, even after upgrading everyone to plate, lack of materials to build the more powerful unit types makes the extra cash pointless (even after having a second city with several mines built). And the guardian, so far I have seen nothing come even close to attacking any of my cities. Maybe an explanation if its not used, but still included as a helpful pop-up or something would be good. Am I screwing myself over later by not selecting some of these options early on? I don't want to cripple myself later in the quests by not putting anything into these rewards, but it is very unclear as to the benefit. Obviously this would be different in a sandbox game.
4. Thank you so much for making this game. I keep dusting of AOW and thinking someone will eventually make a cool game that is not out of date graphics wise. I was so happy when I saw Stardock was making this game, because I know they will support it, and they actually listen to the people playing this game. So rare. I remember when I quit playing Everquest 1 because of the incredibly poor customer support. I had a low level toon appear at the bottom of a high level dungeon one time, the GM accused me of going down the to scrounge loot. Anyone remember corpse runs? I left the game soon after, to this day that poor shadow Knight is still in the bottom of that dungeon probably!
