Idaho wrote:
I want in-game videos for victory conditions instead of just a screen.



Ok, I'm shallow. But I do like polish on a game.

+1 this. The endings in Endless Legend are extremely lack luster and underwhelming. After spending so much time in a game, it would be really nice to get a more rewarding ending than a simple image that tells us what type of victory we obtained.

When I originally wrote this, I had only begun playing multiplayer games. I have a few more comments in regards to multiplayer:



Good

• There's a very fun military game in there that's very asymmetrical and all about movement and visibility.
• Among players with even skill, strong political play has the potential to make up for almost any imbalance.

Bad

• Retreat/AP mechanics lead to endlessly irritating play at high skill levels.
• Water tiles act as "nyah nyah can't get me" ground.
• Strategic equipment so vastly outperforms iron equipment as to be must-have tech, even for RC and Cultists.
• Single player game leaves most players completely unprepared for the realities of multiplayer games.
• AI problems mean that dropped players turn into exploit-the-AI parties.
• Interface for multiplayer games is confusing.
• Serious security problems, client gets full information about game state; if nobody is cheating right now, it's only because the game isn't popular enough.
• Siege mechanics encourage outside reinforcements rather than garrisons, making militia a liability rather than a strength
• Too many race situations (Drakken trying to get force truce+close borders at the end of the timer, for instance)
• Early combat leads to losing your turn for units involved when timers are in play, and prevents too much play that has nothing to do with combat (moving a unit into battlefield, or even queuing a village contained in the battlefield)
  
  

Great comments, as usual. There are a lot of annoying "tactics" that make EL difficult to take seriously in multiplayer.



A couple thoughts:

Strategic equipment so vastly outperforms iron equipment as to be must-have tech, even for RC and Cultists.

I'd specifically point to the gigantic jump in power between Era 1 T1 Iron and Era 2 T2 Glassteel as the big problem. An empire that faces an Era 2 teched army might as well hang it up if they are still in starter gear. Here's an example (the worst example due to Technolover)







If Common Strategics (Titanium/Glassteel) were hard to gather and/or the combat mechanics allowed for a large number of lesser opponents to be viable vs a small number of elites, this wouldn't be too bad. Unfortunately the way Initiative works allows the higher Initiative army (especially if they are Ranged and can ignore terrain) to make a big dent in the opponent before they even get to activate. Initiative + Damage is a deadly combo and too much is available in T2 Glassteel...

Among players with even skill, strong political play has the potential to make up for almost any imbalance.

The ability to gang up on a player should not be leaned on as a balancing mechanic.

Serious security problems, client gets full information about game state; if nobody is cheating right now, it's only because the game isn't popular enough.

Agree this could be a problem, but it's a necessary evil to allow for host migration. If the server had all of the data, host quitting would end the game. Host quit, game over is fine for FPS and RTs games that take 30 minutes, but in a TBS that takes 2-6 hours to play, it is disastrous.