Overall impressions were very positive.

A lot better off now than endless space was even after early release in many ways.

Great visuals, good job of making the world interesting and alive (much better than es event systems)

Engine seems solid, and UI is amazing as usual

Overall mechanics feel interesting and can promote choice, without feeling forced or only using civ style mechanics



Obviously an alpha in many ways, but I am very excited to see where this goes.



General Impressions

Equipment needs a major balance pass. Tier/type interaction is all over the place and rather confusing

Research balance is also odd - some techs feel like must haves, while others seem very specialized. Weapons seem like a good baseline - they are helpful, but if you don't get them then there are at least iron equipment. Certain others there are no alternatives.

Starting Age 3 pacing started to feel off - I didn't really have any more building or city improvements to do, besides unit spamming or stockpiling

Stockpiling creates helps new cities get started nicely, but also makes production feel VERY powerful - more a use for everything than save for specific spots (winter, new cities)

Leveling up (units) is disappointing - presumably done to keep the difference between ages minimal. However, leveled units then become much less important than there were in es

Buroughs don't seem very useful. Cost ramps up quite quickly, and terrain bonuses are usually pretty small. Even late game upgrades only give a small bonus (eg +1 on forests, or +1 more x if already getting x). Burough leveling also gives only a pretty small benefit for its high cost. In my game, the vast majority of my fids came from "modifiers" than "city tiles", even when I tried focusing on productive terrain (extra science from passive, settling along rivers and building extra dust/food buildings).

Population also felt fairly unimportant. Late game, having 10 population producing 15 science a turn each was nice, but for most of the game I didn't feel that they contributed much. Flat bonuses and % bonuses from buildings ended up providing most of my fids.





Bugs

In combat sometimes a unit gets two damage numbers over its head. The unit does take damage from both of them. Could be a hidden feature?

After capturing a city and building a +dust on river improvement, received no dust from river

Extractors/watchtowers showed up on map as enemy after capturing the territory from an enemy. This eventually fixed itself, but not for quite a few turns

Approval updating seems weird. Cities with 100% are sometimes not fervent, and I believe I saw others that seemed incorrect

Hero with 4th accessory slot refused to save any changes made to slot #4.

Attacked a city several times: each round I killed 1 enemy unit (no reinforcements) but did not capture city. Sometimes there were no enemy units, but could not attack city. After about 6 turns, suddenly attacked and there were 8 defenders. After this captured city normally

Resources can't go above 999 (reset to 999 to avoid 4 digit UI problems?)

Late in the game, army battle reports stopped showing results (enemy units panel was blank)

Reached age 5 after researching enough techs



UI

Create army from city - selecting city center and dragging a unit to an existing army works wonderfully. Why not allow that for new armies? At the very least, allow a way to access garrison (flag icon over city?) without going into full city mode

Empire Plan icon/notification should dismiss (not minimize) on accepting new plan

Battle stance is not clear - If I have a unit hold position and order it to attack, the attack overrides the hold position. This is fine, but should be made clear, or given an option which is higher priority.

Not being able to see unit type/hp/stats during positioning is a pain. Even during combat, mouse should give hover-over info, instead of only showing active unit and target.

Boosters should be usable from city menu

Should be able to queue multiple boosters at once (no confirmation popup would be enough here)

Unit abilities need tooltips

I should be able to see enemy garrisons in cities - at least # of units (rather than just attack and hope there isn't anything going to kill me)

Right clicking a moving unit should fast move[disablemoveanimation] (unit movement is painfully slow sometimes)

Units that level up from production shouldn't need a notification

Clicking on a city (either from production report or city list screen) should select city, not just center map on it

cities show extractors for resources you don't have vision of (and thus can't build)

Science stockpiles should auto-use and stack (unless done to limit overall science you can gain from stockpiles, even if so should auto-use)

Strategic Affinity needs better description. I have no idea what these techs/buildings actually give

In battle, when reassigning orders should have a button to quick-switch general stance (eg all to offensive from hold position)

I would prefer not replacing resources tooltip with generic extractor after upgrade - from visually interesting moonleaf and other pictures to a single generic extractor for all 5.

Battle animation speed. Again, right click for fast animation would be nice. An auto until next order phase would also be nice. I can see why slow is available (for immersion, and to allow other players to watch battle if they have vision), however it can be extremely frustrating.



General Balance/Feedback and Minor Suggestions

Neutral enemies seem to only scale with level, rather then equipment (or they only use iron and no armor/trinkets). This makes them absurdly easy from era 2 onward

AI doesn't seem to understand unit abilities - eg harmony had a choice of targets, but chose the one that did not take advantage of its line damage

Quest rewards/difficulty: there seems to be no relationship. A hard quest will give 160 dust, and easy one will give a hugely powerful free tech

Quest rewards are sometimes super powerful ; getting tier 3 special weapons in the 2nd age is a massive advantage

Many general mechanics are not clear: what do forests do in combat. Height? Does moving before attacking do anything? How do archers get a bonus vs flyers?

Similarly, city expansion and leveling is sometimes very unclear

Forestry food tech doesn't actually do anything on forests

Ocean and Rivers center doesn't do anything on rivers

Why are there two types of ruins?

Winter really isn't a big deal. Looks impressive, but the equivalent of an es event that gives all factions -10% food/dust in terms of impact

Flyers (or flying only armies) should be able to cross impassible/water

Mercenary costs are insane - over 1k dust base cost for a single unit that is way worse than my units, and not even upgradeable?

Stockpile upgrades: Double effectiveness for only 5x cost! Yes, it does allow for a faster rate of use, and it does affect previously built stockpiles, but still...

Stockpile values seem quite high (output per input). Especially the 1 to 1 for production - this leads to an exploit - use production stockpiles to build production stockpiles in a city with a hero for a decent stream of free xp

Main quests (vaulters anyways) are a weird combination of utterly necessary (for unique techs) and pointless (for some of the 'unique' hero equipment that is useless or minor resource rewards)

Very first part of main quest (assimilate nearby minor faction) was very difficult, for only minor reward, yet other parts were very easy. If main quests are meant to be game-changing (as some of the unique tech rewards are), then their difficulty needs to be normalized

Late vaulters quest line (level hero to 3 in skill, stop using holy resource) kinda arbitrary / not fun

Empire Plan:

+2 district science in winter - this is laughably bad (especially since it doesnt even apply on city, only expansions)

why is +dust in military - reduce upkeep or something instead?

+ food is very late in expansion - by that point probably less interested in fast growth (already established)

Endless recycling (and most +output on city expansions) are pretty useless

Tier bonuses are all over the place: Pretty big deal in bows, no tier bonus at all for x-bow, no change between tiers for shields

Glasssteel and Mithrate are very powerful. In addition to giving a large init bonus, they also increase defense and armor compared to baseline equipment. Since I don't know exactly how criticals work, and crit doesn't seem that powerful, this makes glasssteel equipment early game a no-brainer and mithrale pretty likely in later game.

The last 2 strategic resources are straight upgrades of the first 2 strategic resources. Why not just have 4 strategic resources with additional tiers in that case? Something should be done to differentiate / make early strategic resource equipment at least a viable alternative for later game

Dust orchid strategic benefit seems huge : 25% all fids vs 50% of one? Maybe change this to 20% all.

Market cost balance needs work. Possibly because AI doesn't use market (and was mostly dead by the time I got around to it), I was easily able to buy huge amounts of luxury resources at very low cost. Possibly limit amount you can buy in one turn to prevent buying out a lot at a low price.

Allow typing in amounts in market.

Sell prices seem pretty bad: .7 vs 3.9 (buy) for a strategic resource? I expect a market fee but 85+% makes selling virtually useless.

More valuable resources (tier 2 and 3 strat/luxuries) should have a higher base cost

Units variety feels underwhelming - a few points more or less hp/atk/def/crit/init quickly become negligible compared to how large bonuses from equipment can get.

Vaulter winter unique winter building is underwhelming - should cost less, also eliminate dust penalty, or just be a passive

More sources of approval - anomalies are random, and there are only 2 buildings and 1 passive from the tech tree that modify approval

Why is there no city happiness penalty on conquest? This was a great feature in es. Makes conquering feel very strong.

I have no idea how city sieges/city defense works. Is it a bonus to your units during city combat while active?



Suggestions (larger scale)



More unit differentiation! Units without passives/abilities should get one, even if its just a passive bonuse (eg +10% attack on unit) to help differentiate units. Otherwise, might as well just have one unit base, allow us to select archetype (cavalry, infantry, etc), and then only customization is from equipment.



More buildings. Especially in Eras 3-4, I quickly ran out of things to build. This was NEVER a problem in es. Even when focusing techs solely on buildings and neglecting military/passives, this was still an issue.

One possible solution that also help solve tech balancing (some techs are essentially required): each era, have a few "generic" buildings unlock. These should be fairly expensive, and fairly inefficient per upkeep compared to the more specialized tech buildings. Eg era 1: scrapyard, +3 production for 1 upkeep. era 2: bureacracy: +1 fids per pop assigned, 2 or 3 upkeep



More item choices! Trinket variety is quite good. Armor is decent, although I wouldn't mind seeing some differentiation between helmet / breastplate/ boots. Currently they are all just + armor, - init, + special (if applicable), with helmet / boots being identical. Could have boots also add terrain effects (no forest penalty, combat bonus in forest, no uphill melee penalty), or similar passives for headgear. Weapon and shield variety seem the worst. Why not have different types of shields? Tower shields reduce ranged damage, but otherwise perform worse than regular shields. Melee units could have polearms, which provide a bonus vs cavalry but otherwise perform worse.



Make terrain matter more for cities: Currently buroughs don't feel very useful. Could change average tile yield up from 2 to 2.5, with some 4 yield tiles. An easier alternative would be to have more terrain specific upgrades. Instead of only + dust/food on rivers and + production on forests, could also have + science on snow/high ground, + food on open (not vegetation, desert, or snow), or other upgrades.



Watchtowers could provide +1 science if built within a city.



Palace or city center could come with +2 production to make early game a bit faster



May be coming later, but shore anomalies or better uses of ocean (more ocean tile benefits, or possibly a trade bonus per ocean tile)



Having older units be less powerful just because they were built earlier is dissapointing. On reaching a new age, existing units could receive some xp. Alternatively, could have each new age unlock a passive unit bonus (the same +4 hp, +1 atk/init/crit). This would also allow for unit leveling to be more meaningful.



Winter is pretty underwhelming. I would suggest adding an additional food upkeep per population (2-->3) and disabling natural regeneration. Making neutrals spawn more quickly/act more aggressively would also make it feel more dangerous. Could also add additional 'cataclysms' each few winters, with worsening effects to show auriga being damaged.

As is, after building the +10 food building in every city and otherwise ignoring food (no major focus on food citizens or other food buildings), I have never undergone starvation in winter or felt a need to prepare.



In es, a major problem with AI in combat was their poor unit design. (AI Ships mod helped AI be significantly more effective without any actual ai changes). Same thing seems to be in effect here - AI and neutral have terrible unit designs. I can often win battles with no damage by having a single unit with more defense than any of the ais have attack.



More economic uses for strategic resources - besides a few military / production buildings requiring them, there really isn't any use for them. This is especially true for the tier 1 strategic resources later in the game. I would like to see them either remain militarily viable (if not as good as newer ones), or have more buildings that make use of them. Perhaps even allow them a (weak) stockpile effect?



Battle system - have general orders act more like "cards". That is, in addition (or perhaps as a separate system) to controlling behavior, have stances give a (small) combat effect. Eg : Pincer : cavalry attempts to circle behind enemy, any flanking attacks do extra damage. Arrow storm : ranged units gain damage but are more vulnerable, etc.

Hello EcthelionHelm,



Thank you for the feedback and the suggestions! We have a long journey ahead of us but with your help and the rest of the community we'll build something really nice! Here are a few answers to some questions and comments.



Cheers,

In combat sometimes a unit gets two damage numbers over its head. The unit does take damage from both of them. Could be a hidden feature?

The second is the damage done by the critical. A critical has a probability to happen, and will deal damage equal to the critical value, ignoring the target's defence.

Many general mechanics are not clear: what do forests do in combat. Height? Does moving before attacking do anything? How do archers get a bonus vs flyers?

We indeed need to improve / clarify the mechanics but for now, here's the answer:

Forest and City tiles both lower the damage taken unit.

The altitude factor may increase or lower the damage delt to the target: higher = more powerful

Moving before attacking increases the Cavalry damage (charge ability)

To get a bonus against Flying unit, you need the Flying Slayer ability which is linked to a weapon type.

Why are there two types of ruins?

Ruins have different odds: they might trigger a loot or a quest. And, isn't it cool to have different visuals? ^^

Winter really isn't a big deal. Looks impressive, but the equivalent of an es event that gives all factions -10% food/dust in terms of impact

Yes we have to work on that! We already have some ideas, but if you have suggestions we'll be happy to expand our horizon!

Flyers (or flying only armies) should be able to cross impassible/water

We still need to work on these so we deactivated them for now.

All very, very good points. The game is amazing, but as OP showed, there's a lot of potential to make it absolutely mind-blowing.

Meedoc wrote:
Yes we have to work on that! We already have some ideas, but if you have suggestions we'll be happy to expand our horizon!

My suggestion for winter would be:

(1) Keep the current flat reduction and add additional -50% (or even -75%) relative penalty on top of that.

(2) Keept the current movement speed reduction and add an effect that deals damage to all units outside of their home territory (or just global damage that can be counter-healed when in home territory), something like -5% HP/turn would. This would mean winter has serious impact on warfare - an early winterfall could force a player to either rush for the objectives or abandon his advance until summer.

(3) Add 2-3 techs that allow the player to reduce the impact of winter. Place the first in Era I and add the rest to later eras.

(4) Another interesting idea could be to move a low-tier version of a food stockpile building to Era I, to allow players to prepare for the harsh winer and keep citizen production up during the cold season.

Meedoc wrote:


Yes we have to work on that! We already have some ideas, but if you have suggestions we'll be happy to expand our horizon!

I actually had quite a few suggestions up above! Still in general its probably more important to note what people consider as needing tweaks than their proposed solutions.



However, I feel that my winter idea is a pretty good one. The effects need to be larger (either additional flat costs, extra pop costs, or small percentage lost)to make winter matter. One easy way that also builds lore is to have additional winter effects each time winter strikes, as more cataclysms damage auriga. Things like the no regeneration/damage each turn, % food production penalty, more powerful/active/numerous neutral could all be "additional" winter effects.

3ntf4k3d wrote:
My suggestion for winter would be:

(2) Keept the current movement speed reduction and add an effect that deals damage to all units outside of their home territory (or just global damage that can be counter-healed when in home territory), something like -5% HP/turn would. This would mean winter has serious impact on warfare - an early winterfall could force a player to either rush for the objectives or abandon his advance until summer.

Perhaps combine this with tech / equipment / accessories that make units able to withstand the winter. Would be interesting to bring certain units in and to let loose your Winter Garrison.



As well: consider removing unit healing outside of cities in the winter.



Also, lacking specific knowledge of how winter works later and later in the game this may seem like an odd suggestion, but perhaps winters could get worse as the game goes on and have harsher effects.



Strangely, influence works kind of like I imagined Winter would: every so often I'm suddenly prompted to spend a large amount of a stockpiled resource; if I didn't plan properly, I need to scale back my empire's plan.

Just finished a Broken Lords game



Overall

Very similar to previous.

Terrain / burrough still didn't feel important (outside my starting hero ridiculous riven bonus)

Dust is super easy to get and abuse : had over 20k + 1k/turn by end, with massive buyout bonuses

Resource scaling seems to get ridiculous - not sure we need es scaling (from single digits to 4/5 digits economies) A 100x change of the course of the game is standard, and probably easier to balance.



Bugs/UI/Features

Broken lords citizens sometimes get applied to food automatically - once there, can't drag them to something useful

Food/growth cost should only scale on base population, not base + minor faction bonus pop

Heroes need to get more expensive the more you have - I could buy as many as I wanted it seemed

City approval really buggy: had fervent on 15% approval city for most of the game, and happy on 55%

Broken lords should be able to buy population from city overview screen

heal costs quickly become insignificant, making their non-healing an advantage

loss of science progress on research cancel



Quests

Still really important - getting tier 3 weapons / trinkets (both tier 1 and tier 2 strategic resource versions) gave me a huge advantage from trivial quests (settle a new city, explore a target ruin)

Faction Quests : must assimilate certain faction (and thus settle in certain region), must do specific empire plan : these dictate major policy decisions

Especially capturing enemy cities (forcing diplomacy and warfare choices), speccing heroes in a certain way, or requiring a specific level 6(!?) unit to do faction quests.

Id love it if the winter over the games course got worse and worse.



The the point that even the terrain begians to crumble and rupture, the sea reclaims the land and the whole planets gets colder and colder....and colder....