I first want to give some general praise to the developers: 0.915 was another big step towards release, and the game is certainly very fun (engaging enough to make me play it until 1:00am on Friday night without realizing it!).
Some general quibbles:
- The warfare tech tree is downright anemic right now. It was relatively bland before, but now it is almost a ghost-town thanks to the movement of the squad and army bonuses to the civic tree! You can easily ignore the upper half of it, focus on the civic and magic trees and dominate the game.
- The splash damage trait tends to deal more damage to collateral units than it does to the initial unit. Maybe it multiplies the damage instead of quarters it?
- Every faction needs a penalty. I would like to see more missing techs, missing buildings and/or missing weapons/items. When I play one faction, I should say: "this is a great bonus, but I sure miss being able to build such-and-such, like with factions x, y and z."
- Quality of units still dominates over quantity. While there are advantages to having multiple armies (raids at multiple locations) the best strategy is to create one or two stacks of absolutely beefed-up units to mop the floor with any opposition. Higher quality units have only moderately increased wages and moderately increased build times compared to their lower quality brethren (a "chosen" infantry takes 33 metal, 66 crystal and 495 production. A simple "spearman" takes 12 metal and 135 production (all stats taken from squad sizes of 3 units). That chosen unit can defeat nearly unlimited numbers of spearmen for 5 times the production cost)). A mechanic that allows higher quality units to be tactically "overwhelmed" by lower units may be necessary; perhaps a flanking bonus to attack?
I have had time to play three games (each with different factions) and I wanted to give some initial feedback on those games. I am going to list the bonuses that each faction has, the implications of those bonuses on gameplay and then give some suggestions.
Let's start on the first faction that I was dying to play after reading the patch notes: Resoln.
- Resoln
- Wraith blood: -1 hp per level but restores +3 hp per kill
- The faction starts with the shard harvesting tech and has 40 extra initial mana
- The faction also has four unique spells (according to the faction bonuses screen): infection, corruption, graveseal and dirge of ceresa
- Almost forgot! Can recruit spiders that increase in effectiveness as you invest in the magic tree
- Penalties: the faction cannot research armor past leather armor (ie. no chain, plate or magic plate armors).
First thoughts: I like the penalty. It adds FAR more distinction to the faction than the bonuses and I believe that EVERY faction should have an inherent penalty on the magnitude of this one. The offset? Resoln gets free, unique units whenever they capture a magic shard of any type, and those units vary based on the shard type acquired (ie. earth shards give regenerating tanks and fire shards give burning elementals). On paper, this is an EXCELLENT trade-off and gives very fun reprecussions that are suited to the faction's lore! There are some problems with the current implementation that I will discuss.
So, Resoln loses the ability to produce quality armor (this is a late-game problem, as they cannot field higher quality armored tanks). Instead, they receive free elementals from shards (apart from the excellent earth elemental spawn, these are not durable troops and their damage and hp place them into early-middle game quality). The trade-off -- as currently implemented -- leaves Resoln a little "dry" in the middle to late game.
Also there is a current issue with the spawn of these elementals: after you capture a node, one will spawn immediately and then the node will read as follows: Max Reached.
Now, if you save a game and immediately reload it, you get a timer indicating how long until another elemental spawns! So this begs the question: will there be (1) a max on elemental spawn or (2) were these elementals intended to spawn indefinitely?
If (1): the elementals are not powerful enough in the middle or late game to offset the absence of higher quality armor.
If (2): the elementals are ok fodder, but might overpower nearby opponents in the early game, especially since they seem to have 10 season respawn cycles.
- Resoln suggestions:
- If the elementals are meant to function as in (1), then they need to evolve as the game goes on. Some increases to stats linked to certain magic tree techs would make them functional in the late-game. As it is, they are just going to be giving "clinks" to quality units while dying in on hit (quality is still favored over quantity in the current state of the game).
- Otherwise, as in (2), higher quantities still does not overcome the inherent flaws with the elementals. Perhaps, if they respawn indefinitely, we could combine them into squads of units by spending mana over time? This way, their stats can remain weak, but they grow with power after we start combining our eventual glut of elementals.
- Also, elementals are not all equal. The Death elemental (which has a "squad" based trait that incorporates slain units as an additional demon in the stack) is the weakest and the Earth elemental is the best, by far. Some stat tweaking is necessary.
- The spiders make up for the weak elementals, which is a shame since the elementals are useless after you reach the middle of the game.
- My faction rating: 3 out of 8. I love the penalty, but the stats need to be tweaked on the elementals to make them a good trade-off.
My next game was with the Trog:
- Trog
- Trog blood: + 20 weight and +1 to attack for each unit
- Starts with the training tech and each trained unit automatically starts at experience level 2
- The axes in the warfare tech tree are replaced with great axes with higher damage
- Can create juggernaut special units (high offense, no defense)
- Penalties: cannot create ranged weapons of any type (magical or bow)
Again, another excellent penalty and one that seems appropriate for the bloodthirsty faction! Still, I cannot help but feel that (like Resoln) the trade-off is not equal to the penalty. Trog units are good quality, thanks to their instant level promotion and +20 weight feature, but ranged weapons play a huge role in the late game (again). In this patch, the warfare tree is relatively anemic as well, so this places an even greater disadvantage to the trog player attempting to get to juggernauts and the axes. Ironically, the ability of juggernauts to deal WAY more splash damage to collateral troops seems to even things out, as two juggernauts (spaced out!) can flatten higher quality armies!
- Trog suggestions:
- Juggernauts are a great addition, but the splash damage trait needs to be debugged. I think it either ignores armor or multiplies damage (when it should divide).
- Trog soldiers should have much better bonuses in order to cope with the lack of ranged weapons. I am thinking that they need an inherent defense or tactical movement bonus to offset their lack of range.
- Additionally, the Trog unique weapons are... good... but a little underwhelming, especially compared to the top tier weapons you get in the magic tree. Some additional axes (perhaps a starting "hatchet" in the training tech that is unique to the Trog and a mundane axe that gets a physical damage bonus per level) would go a long way to fleshing out the faction some more.
- My faction rating: 4 out of 8. Very interesting penalty, but there needs to be more of an "oomph" to offset the detriments of no ranted weapons. When people see Trog infantry, they should expect mundanely-armed but BRUTAL warriors, not slightly increases to weight and stats.
Finally, the Altair:
- Altair
- + 10% experience for each unit
- Starts with the Exploration tech
- Heroic: questions provide +50 influence and + 1 faction prestige
- Can build henchmen, champion-like units that have fewer abilities, can only learn basic spells, die permanently, but can be trained whenever you have 50 influence points.
- Can purchase a "quest map" that spawns a new quest point (currently may be bugged; the tile only becomes active if you save and reload the game (sometimes!))
- No penalties
I must admit: when I first saw the patch notes, I thought that the Altair henchmen would have been cheesy champions. Boy was I wrong! They are actually EXCELLENT support units that have leveling paths that are similar to champions! My first henchman was a defender that granted +5 defense to all units in my army. This was a great choice as it gave me an excellent boost in the early game with "naked" spearmen. My next henchman was a bard that could cast slow and gave my army +10% experience. The last bonus was noticeable (and stacked with the inherent Altair bonus (and with the bonuses provided by other bards (this needs to be removed, IMO)) but where my bard shone was with the ability to pick other spellcasting traits (each provides one minor spell, though the last in the ice tree was great since it allowed him to cast ice elemental!) and he could pick the "path of the governor" which gives access to city governance and gildar producing traits. He was excellent support while I leveled him and provided great city bonuses after I parked him in an 8 food city later on.
The addition of henchmen has shown me one thing: this game needs specialized support units. I love the henchmen mechanic and how they give more variety to armies. They are sufficiently different from champions (they are more specialized, can be recruited and can die permanently without accruing tons of negative traits) and they add utility to armies that is typically only available through the more versatile and rare champion units. However, henchmen can be recruited and are thereby more numerous than champions. I would like to see dedicated, mundane healer type units and, perhaps, dedicated, mundane debuffing units. These could be granted by traits during unit design. Such support units have good precedent in 4x games and would add further spice to the game.
Needless to say, Altair was my favorite faction this time around. Apart from some of the weak elementals that Resoln has, Altair is the only faction that has support units that can be trained.
- Altair Suggestions:
- Altair needs a penalty that makes sense for their faction. Otherwise, they will be far too powerful with their bonuses to quest completion and their ability to produce henchmen. Since city management is going to be the focus of the next beta stage, I would strongly suggest that Altair have a penalty that ties in with city building. I imagine heroes to be excellent warriors and insightful poets, but rather uninspired administrators who are bored by the "desk job."
- The experience bonus granted by additional bards in your army should be subject to diminishing returns.
- Also, can you build custom henchmen? I remember trying to make new henchmen templates in the unit creator and could not save my design.
- Finally, you can purchase horses for henchmen, but they just suck up the cash and lose the horse (also documented here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/425659 )
- My faction rating: 1 out of 8. Currently the best faction so far. Still, they need a unique detriment to make them more interesting to play, similar to the penalties for the Resoln and Trog factions.
Thank you for another great addition to the game.
