Feedback: First Weekend of Playing



I picked up the game this last Friday for a change from my usual genre; the release trailer is what sold it for me. I have put some insane hours into Total War games and many different tactics games, which is why the trailer hooked me.



I had 3 main sessions (and the tutorial) over the weekend omitting an unrecoverable the crashed save, that would crash the game on load, repeatedly. I am going to talk about the sessions in chronological order then throw in a small summery at the end.

• Wild Walkers - Normal vs 5Ai - Default World Generation
• Cultists - Normal vs 5Ai - Default World Generation
• Broken Lords - Hard vs 5Ai - Default World Generation
  
  

Wild Walkers

This was my first completed game not counting the tutorial, I opened with an early land grab of 3 regions; on the 4th region I had quite heavy approval penalties. Everything just seemed to slow down, and at the time I didn't realize how important it was to not have low approval ratings and how important it was to build cities in an open space for district upgrades, I was building them in long lines next to mountains.



Having crippled myself until I gained access to more approval technologies I relegated myself to just waiting out the approval pains, and at this point I didn't know about the power of luxury resources for increasing approval amongst other benefits.



The Wild Walkers military play style (micro gameplay) was quite fun, archers with 4 range made it quite easy for me to achieve multiple 'clean' victories. I had no idea how powerful the combat bonuses were for having a unit in 'woods' or on a elevated position or really what any of the numbers meant (attack vs defense), all I knew was that I have 4 range and I must "Kite and Fight" to win; keep my army in range of the opponent while not allow them close on me.



Having upgraded my hero up the ranger line and with the ability (Wild Walkers racial trait) to see hostile armies in the fog of war allowed me to rapidly reposition my army to always be in the right place at the right time. Looking back on the hero upgrade tree I did not utilize arguably their most post powerful traits, the industry bonus.



I had spent a lot of time reading through the research tree trying to understand what the most efficient things were for me to pickup; often wishing there was an auto research button so I didn't have to deal with decision block.



The first combat stumbling block was when I went toe to toe with a Roving Clans army (the score leader), the battle was in an open plain with no bottlenecks and the end result was their cavalry sitting on top of my archers. My reaction was to invest in a few 'bottlenecks' adding assimilated ogres to my armies, this combination would eventually see me through the whole game with ogres being replaces with Ended from the Haunts faction at the end game.



Cultists

After my experiences with the Wild Walkers I wanted a change of gameplay, reading through the faction traits I settled on the Cultists. Putting what I learned from the previous game into action I placed the city in as open and efficient a space as possible, my macro strategy revolved around rushing as much population growth to take advantaged to the Cultists hero skill upgrades.



The goal was to finish the game as fast, luckily I had the Haunts faction in my capital and my micro strategy was to simply build as big an army with powerful unit as possible, using Haunts I gained an advantage in my sphere of influence, which would eventually be replaced with Kazanji faction units towards the end game.



This combination of micro and macro strategy was just too oppressive for normal AI to handle; in hindsight I should have played this game on higher difficulty, again I am going to have to replay the faction at a later date to get a better feel for how they work.



Broken Lords

This game was quite enjoyable; firstly I was unlucky to spawn in a region that lacked a river or a good set dust tiles and the AI (second place score leader) quickly colonized regions around me and began to choke me out, I was struggling to keep up in score.



When war eventually broke out I had an army of 4 Stalwarts and 2 Dust Bishops, this is where I stood my ground and held the boarders against multiple armies, the micro gameplay of the broken lords is extremely enjoyable, holding the phalanx line with support from the Dust Bishops felt very rewarding, however it also highlighted my frustrations with the battle system.



Firstly Dust Bishops on ‘Hold’ orders do not attack enemies in range and secondly Dust Bishops who are forced to counter attack do not use their healing attack, this combined of issue made the Broken Lords micro gameplay frustrating. There are other points that annoyed me with the battle system but I will mention them in the summery.



Sadly there is no reason to have a Broken Lord hero lead an army, they are simply outclassed by others, they have no health regeneration passive, have no interesting micro mechanics and have no unique purchasable combat skill upgrades (I could not buy “Distributed Defenses” bug?), boring and relegated to sitting in town.



The Stalwart health passive is adverse to the core micro gameplay and identity of the Broken Lords; it encourages the alpha strike of a single unit in a round, while overall the micro gameplay of the Broken Lords should be one of attrition and unrelenting assault, army of living armour out-sustaining their foes both on the micro and macro scale.



The Broken Lords main quest is not enjoyable, in one quest step you are given a hero then in another he is taken away, in another step you have to colonize a region half way through the quest line by which time all of the position on the map have been taken, while the final quest reward gave me a Tier2 research reward, the quest line is not enjoyable and counterintuitive to what I am actually doing at that stage of the game. A good quest should seamlessly intertwine with what my gameplay behavior is or what it should be steered to.



The macro gameplay of the Broken Lords is slower than other factions but I guess that is by design, they have a slower startup but a powerful endgame. Several important technologies are frustratingly behind quest gates and one simply invalidated and older one.



Summery

I like this game, but I have to mention some of the most glaring issues that I experienced.



There is no automation system for research; I spent a lot of time dealing with decision block trying to understand what was best for my situation, even in the 3rd play session.



The battle system clunky and frustrating; it is trying to achieve the elegance of a tactics game with the battle automation of a 4X title, please choose one or the other do not force fans of either genre to have to suffer through the current implementation.



It has many obfuscated mechanics, what is the interaction between attack vs defense? How is a critical hit triggered? Where is the combat log? Why can’t I tell a unit to move to a tile that is currently occupied by another unit?



Having a unit in elevation is very important, just as standing next to another friendly unit or on a forest/town tile but the automation chooses to move the unit away, please embrace the tactics genre with both arms open and allow for precise unit control.



I don’t want to go into more detail as I have spent more far more time on this post than originally intended, please accept these thoughts and criticisms as those of a fan, someone who likes the game, the ‘Endless’ family of games and your company. I wish you guys all the success that you rightly deserve.

Welcome to the forum, Arekandaru

Good review, nice to read and well explained!



In response, your WW game is pretty much how everyone learns to play, through trial and error. That's good. Your Cultists play was good to learn the faction. You'll find that they are strong on small maps and very weak on the largest map. Your BL play turned out to be a good example of how "broken" they are. They are either too weak or too strong depending on how developed they are. Its a hot topic of discussion on these forums.

Agree 100% on precise unit control. I see no reason why you shouldn't simply be able to command each unit one at a time, even if you keep the order determined by the initiative. I see no reason why you have to move all units for the phase, and in fact there are good reasons (discussed already) not to.



As far as attack vs defense goes, it would be more intuitive to call attack = accuracy, and defense = evasion, because that's how they work in the game - they are chance based, and "attack" and "defense" modify the chances. Critical hits are basically just very good attacks, and are a percentage of your damage. If your opponent's defense is low and your attack is high, there is a high chance of your attack being a critical hit and a low chance of your attack being blocked/evaded.

Tigregalis wrote:
I see no reason why you shouldn't simply be able to command each unit one at a time, even if you keep the order determined by the initiative.

I'll give you two.



[LIST=1]

Commanding every unit one by one makes combats longer and eventually tedious because you're trapped doing it because nobody ever trusts the auto-combat. It makes multiplayer boring for players not participating.

It adds the interesting layer of trying to anticipate your opponent's moves when creating yours, rather than of allowing the optimal choice for each move.

[/LIST]



Of course, you may not care about these, but there are definitely reasons why Amplitude went with this system.

I do care, and these are the reasons why:

1. The difference in time taken between the current approach and the proposed approach would be negligible. Seriously. Each unit still needs to be commanded individually now. Each unit still needs to take action and go through the animation now. The only difference is that now you press Next Phase, instead of the turn ending on an attack command.

2. Not "interesting", "irritating".



The current system is a compromise between (as the OP describes) "the elegance of a tactics game [and] the battle automation of a 4X title", but it is not a good compromise, it is a poor compromise. It could be so much better than it is now, if you just commit to one or the other. It would be a shame to commit to the latter (4X battle automation) when you've got a rich geography and elevation system and clever unit-unstacking system, so it would be best to commit to the former (tactics).

Tigregalis wrote:
I do care, and these are the reasons why:

1. The difference in time taken between the current approach and the proposed approach would be negligible. Seriously. Each unit still needs to be commanded individually now. Each unit still needs to take action and go through the animation now. The only difference is that now you press Next Phase, instead of the turn ending on an attack command.

2. Not "interesting", "irritating".



The current system is a compromise between (as the OP describes) "the elegance of a tactics game [and] the battle automation of a 4X title", but it is not a good compromise, it is a poor compromise. It could be so much better than it is now, if you just commit to one or the other. It would be a shame to commit to the latter (4X battle automation) when you've got a rich geography and elevation system and clever unit-unstacking system, so it would be best to commit to the former (tactics).

2. The system is, at th emoment, both interesting and irritating.

It's interesting because itadds some guessing game that will prevent optimal builds or "perfect play". A grain of salt in a plan is always something that should be anticipated. That creates some interesting thinking about the best way not to give most damage, but how to find the best plan that will let you prevail in whatever situation your units will be.

It's irritating because the guessing game is flawed due to the stupidness of the AI. Once the AI will be more clever, you'll be able to have a really educated guess of what can happen. Even now you can already give some guess thanks to the attack/defensive/holdPosition stances. For instance you can issue move order to a unit that has the Hold position stance.

The AI is a side-issue, albeit a big one.



I feel like we're hijacking the thread here, but anyway: The combat system is... clunky and lacks control. As the player, you want to be able to control your units. If you didn't, you would auto-resolve or watch in spectator mode.

As for perfect play, well, technically it is impossible to have perfect play when attacks are chance-based, and it is impossible to have perfect play when you're up against an opponent who might also have "perfect play". There's always going to be an element of luck with a system like this, but there is a difference between having a predictable range of possible outcomes (good) and completely-out-of-left-field outcomes (bad).



In current combat we're often trading a bad outcome for another bad outcome which we hope is less worse, because the outcomes are unpredictable. For example, either we command a unit to attack another unit directly (red arrow to target), and trust it will move in the way we want (i.e. attack from the hex we want - only if we're lucky). Or using CTRL we queue a move (to command a hex) and attack the target (white arrow to hex, red arrow from hex to target), and hope the target doesn't move too far. Hell, the unreliability of melee units is another factor that makes ranged units so superior - because even if you "miss" the enemy position, the ranged unit can usually still attack at range, but the melee needs to be adjacent. Not just that, but if a melee gets attacked, it doesn't get to do its commanded move because its move gets consumed in a retaliation strike - the ranged unit however does. To add to the chaos, should the target be killed because it attacked and received a retaliatory strike from a unit on the other side of your squad, the unit which you sent out proactively basically ends up walking into the middle of nowhere. Or here's another one, a unit (yours or your opponent's) moves into the space you commanded your unit to attack from, it can't complete the order and it's got the "attack" stance on, but instead of going after the unit you targeted, it goes after a completely different target. It doesn't come down to clever thinking at all, because whatever clever thought you put into commanding your units is betrayed by the inherent chaos of the system, and unless you have a high-initiative ranged unit (hello Dekari Ranger) it often comes down to pure luck (and your opponent's bad luck).



Giving more control to the player, by commanding units one at a time, puts the outcome firmly in the players' hands instead of Lady Luck / the terrible combat AI. The players get to struggle against each other, rather than against the combat system.



I would go even further than just that. I think you either need to A) remove automatic retaliation (like ranged units currently), or B) make all retaliations free. That way, it doesn't consume the melee unit's move in a retaliation strike. More control for the player, more viable options for the player. Predictable range of possible outcomes. Initiative less OP.

As the player, you want to be able to control your units

There's some games where that sentence is false. Dominions 3 for instance.

The focus of EL is on the grand scheme of things, so a battle should be 80% settled before starting. Less control is there to add a bit of "randomness". It's not HoMM or King Arthur the Roleplaying wargame or Total War or BAttle for Wesnoth or any wargame you could think of of Final Fantasy tactics.

I'm an avid wargame player. But in EL I wouldn't like a too precise battle system. It needs to be fast and furious while opening situations where you could have a battle last for 3 or more turns on the map.



So the best answer to the actual problems isn't more control, but meaningful options as a commander. And as the AI will try to follow your orders, the AI needs to be at least "correct".

Think of that : once the Ai will be good (and I'm fairly sure it will be one day not that far away) you'll have enough control to get the same result as if you played with full control.



Anyway, there's already the full control option : you can chose to give orders each round instead of every 2 trounds.

Tigregalis wrote:
1. The difference in time taken between the current approach and the proposed approach would be negligible. Seriously. Each unit still needs to be commanded individually now. Each unit still needs to take action and go through the animation now. The only difference is that now you press Next Phase, instead of the turn ending on an attack command.

Your proposed approach would probably not be significantly slower in single-player, but it could be a very great deal slower in multi-player, for two reasons:



1) Right now, both players issue their instructions simultaneously; in your proposal, only the player whose unit is currently moving would issue instructions, so they'd have to take turns. This could plausibly double the time it takes to finish a battle.



2) In your proposal, each player has many more separate periods of control interspersed with periods of waiting. Considering that both players could plausibly be looking away from the battle to manage other parts of the game whenever it's not their turn (remember: they probably have a time limit for the entire turn, they can't afford to waste their time watching you think about your move), you will often lose quite a bit of time for every control switch. This could plausibly make the battle take many times longer.



So while your proposed approach would probably work fine in a purely single-player game, as long as Amplitude is trying to support multi-player, I can't see them doing something like that. Battles are already one of the slowest things in the entire game, and waiting for other players is already one of the biggest obstacles to multi-player.



Also note that the player with higher initiative currently has a significant planning advantage because they can more reliably foresee the outcomes of their orders. Your proposal would take that advantage away, which would make initiative less valuable, which theoretically means a whole slew of unit and equipment stats need to be rebalanced.

@Antistone

On Initiative alone, initiative as it stands is overpowered. Units and equipment need to be rebalanced anyway, regardless of whether my proposal is implemented or not. Initiative should be less valuable, and certainly much less valuable than it is today.



You make a good point about the simultaneous instructions, but to counter-balance that, commanding each unit would be faster because it would be a much simpler affair and more predictable, and battles would take less time to resolve because of the greater predictability of damage dealt. Less "misses", less "wrong targets" and so on.



Either way, multiplayer needs special options. For example, auto-resolve always, or timed battle phase planning (or in my proposal timed unit control phases).



Another factor that contributes to the time taken are reinforcements. That you can only get up to two reinforcements per phase is fair enough I suppose, but if all of your units on the field get wiped out before being reinforced, often (albeit not always) that indicates you've lost, and the last few phases are just your reinforcements getting killed, two at a time, until the battle ends. I think the battle should be won, and the remaining reinforcements put in "retreat".

VieuxChat wrote:


The focus of EL is on the grand scheme of things, so a battle should be 80% settled before starting.

If the focus of EL is on the grand scheme of things, ALL battles should be auto-resolved, a la Civ.

The fact that they have this pseudo-tactics system, indicates all battles should not be resolved, but many or most should be commanded, but as it stands it is a half-measure. Trying to get the best of both worlds, but failing to do so, and instead getting something less than either.

Think about this, almost every single review praises the unit-unstacking on the map, but criticises the battle system. Many reviewers deal with it by auto-resolving every time.

VieuxChat wrote:


Anyway, there's already the full control option : you can chose to give orders each round instead of every 2 trounds.

I'm starting from the point of giving orders every round, as in every match I've played. I can't even imagine giving orders every 2 rounds; I would probably just auto-resolve or spectate since I barely have any input. Giving orders every round is not the full control option, it is the half-control option. Giving orders to each unit is the full-control option. Giving orders every 2 rounds is the... quarter-control option.

Giving orders every two rounds is very staisfying when everything follows the plan you created.

It's a very different kind of "fun". You really feel like a commander and not like a player that move its chess pawns.

Moreover it creates situation where you have to use your wits. But the problem is... the AI will make your units do stupid things too often.



I don't say full control is bad, it's not, but they are more meaningful when the tactic level of play is the main one, like in king's bounty where every other gameplay will help to get better in battle.

Here it's the reverse, battles are a way to get a better empire. Most of the time, you'll be good to auto your battles. But sometimes, you'll need to take the role of the commander to be able to change a predictable draw or loss in a victory. That's why they got for a semi-auto system. Personally (so it's my mileage), once the AI will be fixed, I'd love to have a "once every 3 rounds" or even a "once per battle" orders.

I don't understand your point of view at all. Why don't you just auto-resolve or spectate?

I usually auto most battles, but sometimes I play them to lessen loses and to maximize damage.

I did some testing : A battle that ended in a draw if I auto it and that also end in a draw it I manually play it. In auto I lost 4 units and the enemy lost also 4 units. When I manually play them I lose 2 units and the enemy loses 6 units.