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[0.915] Game Pacing

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[0.915] Game Pacing

from Elemental Forums

I have heard several good reports about the beta 3 series so i gave it a shot. After starting 5 games, i am running into some issues.

 

1. Research Time

Most of the researches take 20+ turns, so i often find myself surrounded  by ogres and other nasties (20+ attack, ~5 armor), my sovereign needs armor. Waiting to get leather armor takes an eternity.

 

2. MOBS

The mobs near my starting position are normally ok for 5-10 tiles out. Then suddenly, death demons and other really nasty things (40+ attack, 10 armor etc) are around. After I kill my starting mobs, my sovereign and maybe another hero are level 2, with what ever loot they found. I can't really explore any further without getting killed.

 

3. Construction/Train Times.

I normally settle on 3+ material locations. It still takes 15 turns for the staircase building (not momument...name is escaping me. adds prestige and reduces unrest).  Again this leads to many turns of my pressing "End Turn" and doing little else.

 

4. Water World

Most of the maps I play on are nearly filled with water. This further reduces the amount of exploration I can do (likely leading to the MOBS problem i'm having).

 

For reference, I play on the following settings. If someone has a suggestion for map settings that could allievate one of these, please let me know.

Map: Medium or Large.

Players: Max recommend number

Map Type: Balanced

Difficulty: Challenging.

Pacing: Normal

Monsters: Moderate

Resources: Average

Magic: Average

 

One thing I'm very happy with is the AI. It is much better and can keep pace with me on challenging.

 

This is shaping up to be a better game than WoM. I'm just concerned with the number of "filler" turns. To complete training, construction or reserach, i find myself spamming the end turn button; normally i don't do that in 4X games.

 

Edit-

I tried playing the game on fast pace. The only thing that appears to have changed is the research time. I would like to also have the option to increase production and or leveling. This way If i wanted to play a "Dark age" game, I could have high production and slow research.

The only good games I have had were on medium maps. This is because more of the map is land based. When i play a large map, they all seem to be a archipelago, which limits my exploration options. Another suggestion would be to have a world type (Islands, continents etc) and to give water a purpose beyond blocking terrain.

20,280 views 28 replies
Reply #26 from Elemental Forums Top

Are you maxing research/production through your tax rates and city buffs? 

On normal pacing your city (with no race/sovereign modifiers) starts at out 1.86 research a season which takes 16 season to research a tier 1 upgrade.  If you set your taxes from normal to zero and cast inspiration (always available) your research goes up to 4.95 and a tier one upgrade only takes 6 seasons.

Production is a little harder to since the production spell requires earth magic to cast but a 3 material square production starts at 11.2 goes up to 16.2 by reducing taxes and up to 21.6 with enchanted hammers.  This reduces the time to build the tower of dominion from 11 seasons to 6.

Normal taxes impose a huge penalty on production and research and at turn 1 are bringing in less then 1 gilder a turn.

I suspect the culprit isn't so much early pacing as the game not explaining how to control the pacing through taxes.  I often end up with the other problem in that my research outstrips my cities growth so I can a ton of buildings I can't build due to my cities being to small.  My fault for not turning up the tax rate sooner but I always want just 1 more upgrade.

 

Reply #27 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting SheRat, reply 26
Are you maxing research/production through your tax rates and city buffs? 

On normal pacing your city (with no race/sovereign modifiers) starts at out 1.86 research a season which takes 16 season to research a tier 1 upgrade.  If you set your taxes from normal to zero and cast inspiration (always available) your research goes up to 4.95 and a tier one upgrade only takes 6 seasons.

Production is a little harder to since the production spell requires earth magic to cast but a 3 material square production starts at 11.2 goes up to 16.2 by reducing taxes and up to 21.6 with enchanted hammers.  This reduces the time to build the tower of dominion from 11 seasons to 6.
End of SheRat's quote

I think that the point that you HAVE to go through these steps to be competetive at all is a very limiting design and even poorer for new players.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

WindowBlinds - Free yourself of the default settings, customize your desktop.
Reply #28 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Sethai, reply 22
I'd agree about the early game techs


Honestly, my typical games break down into three roughly equal stages

1/3 Unlocking things, building a basic couple of towns capable of supporting a couple of units and training champions up to survivability

1/3 Actually playing the meat of the game, improving my troops, fighting my first war and pursuing the things i want to, with some pressure still on me

1/3 mopping up because i've already won, and indulging in quests, spells and cool things that i don't really need

The proportion of that middle stage needs to be increased at the expense of the other two.

 

End of Sethai's quote

 

I agree with this statement as well.

  • It should be challenging to get a toehold and solidify your first two cities, but it should be doable using several different strategies and not require numerous restarts to find "the specific kind of spot" that supports your choice of strategy.
  • The mid game arms race, and tech development has WAY too much to do with how effective your early game city-vomit was, which in this game means how available spots to build on were, and how much room you had to expand before hitting another player.
    • Because Production and Research are almost entirely population based, and because you need techs to increase your population, there is a VERY real problem with getting cornered in early game and being literally unable to compete.

I LOVE mid-game in 4x games. Early game is fun to experiment with, but you really don't have much latitude for experimentation in FE. You NEED a 4 grain city with Agriculture to get a Level 3 city, minimum. Period.

Without a Level 3 city, you will have a really low cap on Research and Production regardless of how many cities you create. Period.

That means in almost all cases, early game sprint to grab up land and hit Agriculture to be able to grow your city, and access buildings which are useful, or even build buildings in less than 40 turns.

 

Fortunately, Beta 4 is coming up, and we will be seeing a rebuild of the City Management aspect of the game, as well as the Economy. Hopefully, this will address a lot of the "slow start" issues.