Having clocked 14 hours on the game so far (I'm unemployed right now, can you tell? ), completed 3 whole games as Wind Walkers, Vaulters and the Necrophage i thought I'd post up my thoughts on this lovely 4X thus far



The good

• the game is visually wonderful. love the look and shape of the game map
• the combat system flows well (though the AI's choice of targets between orders seems a bit random, maybe they ought to aim for whats closest?)
• LOVE the city building mechanics, both visually and mechanically
• the minor factions system and the assimilation side of it is a great way to gain extra units, i feel it spices up the usual unit unlock systems very well
  
  

The bad

• Diplomacy, or rather the lack thereof. i appreciate this is an alpha, but please, PLEASE prioritize the more complex diplomacy for the AI. all they do is declare war within a turn of meeting you, and slaughtering their 1-2 unit strong armies they throw against my hero led 6 unit strong forces is getting dull
• the uncompromising lack of city defense without a garrison. while i understand that the mechanic is ment to make you leave a garrison everywhere, it is extremely irritating to lose a whole city without warning merely because a single unit minor faction wanders out of the FoW and clicks once on my city
• many structures seem unbuildable. for example as the vaulters, i get a quest to build a winter stronghold, but i can find no way to do this. has the building not been added yet? fair enough but why is there the quest then?
• Necrophage too easy? a single, tanky build hero with an army of 5 foragers and 1 proliferator was an unstoppable horde that wiped my 2 opposing factions (WW & V) off the map by turn 93
• on that note. if i take a city from an AI, it will throw wave upon wave of small numbers of weak troops at the city to try and take it back. which they fail to do. am i the only one seeing this behavior?
  
  

minor gripes aside, i absolutely love this game, looking forward to every little content patch. keep up the good work guys

Regarding the vaulters, you will have the building, if you followed the questline, but you need to choose the vaulters' "Holy Resource" in the empire screen to build any of their special buildings, including the winter stronghold.

Nosferatiel wrote:
Regarding the vaulters, you will have the building, if you followed the questline, but you need to choose the vaulters' "Holy Resource" in the empire screen to build any of their special buildings, including the winter stronghold.

well, that clears that up. thanks

My feedback so far:



I have put in about ten hours. I really like it and think I will like it only more as it gets more and more finished. It has a few things that struck me as needing fixes that may or may not be on the list.



I found it too easy to dismiss heroes and minor factions. Perhaps an "are you sure?" pop up



I wasn't always certain if a city was under seige. Maybe it was just me but sometimes it didn't seem very visually obvious or indicated in the management menu.



In combat when positioning units you can't tell the health of the units before the combat starts, unless I'm missing something. This made positioning tricky.



I found the quests hard to follow up on. Maybe it is something about my play style, but I wasn't always sure about where to go. Maybe this becomes more clear with xp.



It took me a few hours to realize the whole how to place mines thing / I can build mines thing.



I second more units diversity, but i never made it beyond era 2 so they may exist further down the line.



City placement is crucial. I'm not certain the total output is accurate when you are hovering over terrain and looking to place the city. Is the total output the city total out put if you build there? I would like to see my city change over time.



My initial impression with influence and diplomacy is positive. In multiplayer this may be a solution to techspam trading which in my group of 5 or 6 for ES created a lot of different opinions.



Overall, really positive. I showed a friend who really liked the look and another friend bought it as well and likes it but decided to wait for it to be finished before going back. Congrats on what has been done so far. I really liked ES and I think this will be really cool. I like the magitech feel. Good job so far!