Hello folks, I would like to start by saying that I am greatly enjoying the game. It has already paid for itself in entertainment value as far as I am concerned. Thank you for producing this game StarDock and I hope that you continue to produce these games in the future because while I like shooting people in the face in FPS games there is nothing like a good 4X adventure game where I can get my MoM fix on!
Now onto the recommendations!
Hardware: Yea, I notice that the game is single threaded. I highly recommend that work be started on making this game at least dual threaded. I have a Quad core but just about everyone has a dual core. It would be nice to see the game run 64-Bit as well so that people with a lot of RAM can take advantage of that RAM, but I say nice to have because that requires you to support 32 & 64 bit platforms which may be asking too much right now. But despite that I have not had a performance problem with the game, only the bugs and crashing. There is definitely a memory leak somewhere as I can see it grow and grow far beyond the 2 GB a 32 Application should normally be addressing without some nifty programming. O yea, any attempt to load a Game once RAM use is over 2GB causes a crash 100% of the time for me.
City Considerations: Cities should have 2 build queues. And 1 Special Queue
1. Queue that is for building improvements.
2. Queue that is for Training Units.
3. Special Queue for Making Hero Weapons, Armor, Items, etc...
I understand that there are supposed to be pro's and con's to selecting which order to build things, but lets make things a little more realistic. I know this is a game and reality is not supposed to be the most important factor, but it seems unreasonable to belive that a cities building capacity has anything to do with putting together a rusty group of defenders equiped with broken tree limbs from the nearest bush or rotten tree. We should be able to Build an Academy while Training a few Archers. One major positive side effect of having at least a Build Queue and a Unit Queue is that I can get started on waging war right out the gates! This should drive the entertainment factor up by quite a bit because right now I find that I am hesitant to move my hero away from my city because I do not want to stop a building 1/2 way through queue losing all that progress just to train and garrison a decent unit. The default defenders are nice to have but are just short of fodder if an enemy hero comes knocking. Allow Production to be 100% effective for the build queue and 50% effective for the Unit Queue with the other 50% coming from research and improvements.
On the special Queue, make this appear if say a Hero with the artificing skill is present and make that hero use materials and mana to craft special weapons. This would add the path of the Black Smith/Artificer as a Hero perk. Pair the Black Smith Hero with an Assasin Hero or Assassin/Herbalist Guild Improvement to make weapons with poison dmg, Pair with a Mage or Magic Guild to make magic Staffs, or Pair with a Governer or Relations office to make Banners affecting Cities/Armies the hero is stationed with. Allow the Hero Smith on his own to craft to craft better weapons for new units, or refit older units with better equipment or magic equipment with the necessary research and improvements or heros. Require the Hero Smith and supporting hero's to remain in city until upgrades/builds are completed or lose progress.
Pioneers should only require 1 Turn to make and move only 1 square a turn (research tech to make them faster). When a new city is founded it should be considered a hamlet consuming the resources of the City the Pioneers came from. So the Parent City will litterally share its pop growth, food, material, and gold with the newly founded city until it has grown enough to support itself. This support should come in the form of caravan carrying set Pop, Food, Material, & Gold each turn. Which means it will need to be guarded and goes faster once roads have been built
Population should be able to be adjustable to a certain degree. For Example, I would like to have a slider that lets me adjust how much I want my poplation dedicated between Labor & Research. I would also like to have a slider that lets me set my Tax vs Pop Growth/Unrest rates per city so that I can 'encourage' a city to grow faster sacrificing income. The city specific improvements can be used to enhance the flexibility of the sliders for example...
(P)<****|==|****>(R) 1st level City Slider 10% to the right or left adding 10% from one side to the other.
(P)<***|===|****>(R) Conclave Improvement allowing for a total of 70% Research and 30% reserved Production.
(P)<****|===|***>(R) Fortres Improvement allowing a total of 70% production and a 30$ reserved Research.
Additional improvements can further extend the range of the sliders. I know that Pop only counts towards Gold right now, but I should be able to use my city popluations for other things besides Taxes and City Level.
As a bonus, make significant amounts of unrest negatively affect the units that the city has created. So if a City is at 50% unrest make the units stats drop by 25% for example. If a cities unrest is at 90% make the unit risk a rebellion adding 10% chance to each 1% of unrest and turn on stationed heros and other units. For example 99% unrest makes all units that city builds 100% rebellious regardless of their location/station and at 100% the city itself goes neutral and you have to retake it. Units stationed in the city but created by another city without high unrest will not be affected by the cities unrest and will also reduce the amount of unrest.
I know this was a long read but I thought these elements might add some extra flavor to the game without adding too much micro management! Most should be easy to incorporate without distrupting the balance and or improving the balance/flow outright especially where the pioneers and new cities are concerned. Which would help to prevent the massive land grab that is absolutely necessary at the begining of the game unless you want only 1 town being protected by heroes that have to quest for better equips.
1 Last thing, require seige equipment to be able to conquest a city with walls. For example allow Archers and units to stay inside the wall gaining a Defence bonus while the Militia guards the front gate. Make spells and units designed to deal with fortifications. Allow outposts to be upgraded to a Garrisoned Keep complete with a Moat full of nasty little water dragons or skaths... Good Times!
Cheers!
