About a month ago, we hosted the Victor OpenDev to give you all a glimpse of what we’ve been working on since the Lucy OpenDev last year, and to get your feedback on the direction we are taking. Many of the Victor OpenDev players confirmed that they think we are on the right track, but as always we also received a ton of constructive feedback.
Before we dive into the details of the feedback, and some of our plans to address it, we want to thank you again for your continued support of the OpenDev program. The amount and quality of feedback we receive continue to impress us, as do the participation and excitement by both players and content creators.
Without further ado, let’s take a look at some of the most common feedback we received.
- Eras progress too quickly and Era Stars are too easy to earn.
- Research, on the other hand, was much slower than era progression, causing a mismatch between progression.
- Maintaining high stability in cities was too easy.
- All basic resource yields still grew too quickly.
- Food in particular was easy to manage, diminishing the value of farmers quarters.
- Money was too easy to earn through various means, including vassals.
- Buyouts with both money and Forced Labor (sacrificing population) were too cheap and powerful.
- Influence was difficult to earn in the early game when it was crucial for expansion, but too easy to earn later when there was little left to spend it on.
- The War Resolution screen was difficult to understand and use.
- War Support changed too quickly even from small engagements.
- Vassalization was too easy and provided too much money.
- Many players disliked being unable to conquer another player's last city.
- Some players are worried about ranged units being too powerful and giving too much “first-move advantage” to the attacker.
- Players disliked armies being automatically included as reinforcements and losing their movement because of it.
- Players have once again raised their concerns that the battlefield overlay is difficult to read.
- Gaining a large amount of population in the neolithic era is still too easy.
- There was no good reason to invest in naval units.
- Embarked units were seen as too slow; moving across land was often faster.
- Independent People were too easy to assimilate.
- Religious tenets were unbalanced, with a few far too strong for proper game balance.
- Apart from balancing, Tenets were seen as too general to inform gameplay decisions.
- Many Civics were seen as not impacting gameplay strongly enough.
- Civics points were too easy to earn.
- Cultures without a Faith-producing Emblematic Quarter had no immediate counter to religious cultures.
- Some affinities were seen as not affecting gameplay enough.
- Among all feedback on balancing, emblematic Garrisons were seen as too weak particularly often.
As you can see, that’s a substantial list of feedback, so let us take a look at some (but not all) the solutions we are working on now:
- We are adjusting Era Star thresholds and Research Costs to slow down era progression while bringing scientific progress more in line with it.
- We’re looking into diminish the rapid population growth possible in the neolithic era, for example increasing growth thresholds for neolithic nomads.
- We will re-examine naval units and naval trade to increase the incentive to engage in naval gameplay.
- We’re continuing to tweak the economy: Food consumption has been increased, buyout costs have been increased, tribute from vassals has decreased, stability sources will be less potent, etc.
- We’re still improving the War Resolution screen, and will add a “Zoom to territory” function to it.
- We will re-examine War Support, vassalization and extermination of other players.
- Armies will no longer lose their movement unless battle actually begins, so you will not lose movement on reinforcement armies if the enemy retreats.
- We’re exploring how to make tenets and various civics more interesting and impactful.
- We will also replace Civics points to give players somewhere to spend influence in mid to late game.
- Ranged units will take a bigger penalty in close combat, and we have a number of other changes planned for mid and late game ranged units that should have far-reaching consequences.
- We’re tweaking the affinities and adding new abilities to some of them.
Once again, thank you for your continued support and your constructive feedback. We will try our best to keep you informed about our progress in addressing your feedback.
Until next time!
- The Amplitude Team
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