I played one game on medium and took sporadic notes about what I experienced in the Victor open dev. I would have played more but it was exam week last week and I needed to be responsible. Below are the notes I took edited a little and loosely categorized and in no particular order. In general I went in without much knowledge about what how to manage resources so I focused on production and I found the game was way too passive with the AI and they didn't instigate any wars with me so I was always the aggressor. I also should have taken screenshots of the graphical issues that I had but I forgot to do that as I was playing.


General Gameplay

  • I think that those special modes for cities shouldn't be all in and should just transfer half of the resource to the designated type (prod/gold/science). At least I'd be more willing to use them if they weren't as all in.
  • Hard to know where the districts that are in the queue are building. Highlight the tiles maybe or put a big number over them for where they are in the queue? Like a big 1 over the science district being built at the moment and a 3 over the production district that is being built along with the color related to the quarter types.
  • I don't understand how religion or cultural influence work at all. Like there’s pressure from cities but raw population trumps everything else from my experience.
  • Some decisions for RNG events don't make sense after a certain point in the game as +/- 10 resources for x turns and should be percentage-based multipliers instead to add more weight to a decision. For example, -10 production when I have 300 in a city isn't much of a threat.
  • Byzantines should be Late Romans, Byzantine Romans, or something because it’s done for other cultures like the Persians. “Byzantine” is not something anyone called them until like the 1800s. Also, why is it the Varangians for the unique unit? Those are just some mercenaries they largely kept around the capital. Usually in games like these the unique units are the cataphracts which were an important unit within their armies.
  • I have literally no idea where any of the territories are when negotiating a peace deal. Like is it supposed to show me what I am asking for in some way? It should highlight the territories like it does in the paradox games. Also the UI takes up too much space when making those peace deals if I would want to see the territories.
  • There should be different tiers to settlers. Maybe a colonist for an earlier era that is slower to build the city and I don't know 2 pops maybe?
  • End of game story thing is too slow and doesn't really say anything too interesting. Popping up with the stars on a screen over thirty seconds for each era and then for each character isn’t good. It could compare the player with the AI that did the best in that era as well to highlight the era competition aspects.
  • Why do peace negotiations have to require the other nation to have zero war support?
  • Why can't I take the last city of an empire? Why can't I eliminate them outright?
  • I want boats to move faster. I shouldn't need like ten boats moving exploring through the new continent to get anything done. Give us a 5/6 movement boat earlier in the game. I don’t care if it’s weak and exploration focused.
  • I have no idea what the requirements for the badges are beyond more trade=merchant and surprise war=traitor
  • Why do wars reset cultural influence so drastically after a peace is made?
  • I want the hamlet to show up earlier and it could be nerfed if you want to. Most island chains are useless until you can build the hamlet and there are definitely outposts that I could have placed better where a hamlet would help make up for that.

 

Resources

  • Not sure how well influence or really any resource scales with time. I also don’t understand how the cost of anything scales with time. Why does one outpost cost 20 influence but one right next to it is 80? I can only guess that it’s because it borders another empire but I have no idea what the math is and it would be nice to see it to help me understand why it jumps so much.
  • Going back to scaling, my production output is definitely exponential with other values being similar with huge swings probably related to city powers and RNG events that give boosts.
  • Curiosities could scale better with time.
  • Influence for creating a new city does not scale well at all. It gets too big too quick.

 

Independent Peoples

  • For independent peoples I want to know how global proximity is determined numerically. I understand it's based on civics but not much beyond that.
  • Why is integrating a free people instant? Why can I just pump them full of money and then integrate them after 5+ turns of even knowing that they exist in the first place?
  • Grievance for taking a city that someone was a patron of when I think that I did a different city. This is probably because I have no idea what the territory names and it was using that instead of the independent people’s name.
  • I got a few random grievances related to independent peoples when I had no interaction with them at all.
  • It is ridiculous that I can assimilate cities that are on the other side of the planet from me. And that I can do it like five at a time. The only limit is merging them together after getting that one technology that allows cities to merge.

 

UI

  • Unsure how to rearrange research easily and I want to be able to see the queue that I have setup for the researches.
  • Need to be able to minimize tutorial or close any of them without affecting progress of them. I don't want to not get help but I also need to see what is behind these things some times.
  • Need better colors/shades/outlines to understand internal divisions between cities and outposts at the medium view of the map. At the highest view level it's better but the internal borders could have thicker lines.
  • Need to see what an outpost produces more easily when I am considering attaching it to a city. food/pop/production. This is important when attaching the first few since influence is so precious.
  • Are there supposed to be more kinds of interactions with vassals? I want to get their cities somehow. Like integrate them with influence probably.
  • Placement details popup obscures the terrain too much and I would want it to have the net result of the placement. I don't want to shake around the mouse to see the other popup that shows me the net effect of placement.
  • Planting a forest doesn't show you the effects it has on the tile yields.
  • When building infrastructure with the list mode on it needed to refresh the UI when there was no longer a row in the list. So I’d setting a city to build all the food infrastructure and it would temporarily disappear as it refreshed.
  • The trade UI should be clearer that the player has access to their vassal’s resources. Right now it just tells me that I can’t buy the resources when it should say that I already have access.

 

Little things

  • Speed up unit movements or give us a slider for that.
  • Alert for outposts that can build on a resource. I didn't know that outposts could do that and I kept forgetting after I learned about it.
  • Let me hit enter to confirm things.
  • Needs to remember settings for the toggled views in the bottom right and buildings being in list mode. Shouldn't have to reset those every time.
  • I like the little pop up next to the score telling you that you're close to some of the stars but it could display the level of the star you would get as well.
  • No alert that production has stopped because there is a fully filled army in the city (I don't know how the production is used when this happens either but it should tell you).
  • Some of this wording is so weird for what happens after making a decision. Especially for religion. Just tell me if I'm better at converting or resisting other religions I don’t need “+100% time to convert to another empires religion on a Tuesday” as a tooltip.
  • I don't want to detach and then reattach to another city; just let me transfer ownership of territory.
  • For grievances give us one or two options. Sometimes I don't want war and just want to try to extort money easily and not get their random territory.
  • In the declare war option tell me how much war support I need. I know that it’s 80 but I shouldn’t have to memorize that on the first playthrough.
  • Is there going to be a way to manufacture grievances or declare war easier? Grievances can be manufactured for border territories in the third or fourth eras after borders are more stable.
  • I should be able to just vassalize a much smaller empire if I have good relations. There could also be some kind of tributary relation than can transition to vassalage after certain conditions are met. 
  • In the all military forces screen why can't I just select the unit that I am interested in while using the interface?
  • Is there a button for disbanding a whole army? Early on I want to disband a scout stack and multiple clicks isn't the best. I’ve also finished up wars and wanted to demobilize but it takes like 20 clicks to get rid of an army with five units in it.
  • When making a civic decision show me what happens when the civic slider moves to a new area. I don't have that memorized and it would be faster to see the changes. (this is already done with other dynamic decisions)
  • It's confusing to see Carthaginians progressed to being Carthaginians or whatever it says. Tell us who or what changed with a designation outside of the changing cultures with the name of the player/AI.
  • Sort trade goods by the price within type. I shouldn't have to check every single silver buy option to see which is cheapest. Actually just show the price next to it with either land or sea routes.
  • At the end of the game the stability graph tells me nothing since it is largely a city by city value from my understanding.
  • Didn't realize that secularism would remove my state religion and so many bonuses that I was getting. Can there be a way to suppress a civic decision that I don't want to take. Also tell the player that they will no longer have a state religion it makes sense but isn't explicitly said.
  • I don't like that battles auto end a turn without considering reinforcements. It is easy to forget about them.
  • The UI should tell me how much health an enemy has (as a number) in the combat popup close to where it tells me the damage that I’ll do to the unit.
  • I don't understand line of sight with gunpowder units. I think I shot through a hill once but I couldn’t shoot through a forest(?).
  • I don't like that when I try to check my stars it always prompts me for the next era. I usually wait a few turns before advancing so it isn't useful to see those new era options every time especially near the end of the scenario.
  • If I have a nation fully occupied I would expect it to lower their war support instantly or let me know that it will plummet to zero in the next turn. It initially gave me the wrong impression by saying it would only drop by ten points or something.
  • I don't like that initiating a battle removes all movement and that it also removes all movement from units that might have been reinforcements for the battle that didn't happen. It completely immobilizes a front when trying to fight a size 1 army to get it out of your way.
  • Why do the boats keep turning auto-explore off? I would have a boat in the deep ocean, then I would turn on auto-explore and they would go to a coastline and then switch auto-explore off. There were unexplored tiles within range.
  • “Hipster” bias should be Contrarian or something like it. Hipster is already a really dated term. Like this isn’t the early 2010’s guys.
  • When the stability resting point is above 100 tell me what it actually is. I don’t want to add up all those modifiers to know how many more districts I can build before lowering stability below 100.
  • Tell us how civics become available. Like why can my classical era empire make a decision on “Press Freedom” or whatever. The mystery is fine on the first playthrough but it would be convenient to know on future playthroughs and players will figure the triggers out regardless. 

 

Glitches

  • Glitched out and didn't let me interact with my cities at one point.
  • Glitched out and didn't resolve a turn during a combat encounter. (This was the second round from what I remember not the third)
  • Glitched out and wouldn't let me load an autosave and kept me on the initial screen with Victor and the other players. I was essentially caught in a loop of trying to load the save and being put back on the start screen.
  • Pops up with the at war tutorial portion for when other players are at war but I am at peace.
  • Click and drag for movement broke after clicking on an opponent’s city and seemingly randomly at times.
  • Crashed when saving.
  • Multiple glitches opening the diplomacy UI, including one that crashed the game.
  • I think it gave me trespassing grievances when it wasn't supposed to.
  • Game crashed again during UI bugs for diplomacy.
  • Babylonia loves to T pose.
  • During a battle the game embarked a land unit onto a land tile. Like what? How are there boats in this desert?
  • Error with battle preview not going away when I decided not to attack and it stayed around including when I did start an actual battle nearby.
  • Diplomacy screen UI problems with the game became much more prevalent after turn 100 (not sure when exactly but I had to exit and reload saves more and more as time went on). The game also somehow messed up google chrome which I was running in the background. I have had that crash with the game somehow.
  • There were grievances between my empire and my ally for me being at war with their other ally and that war didn't exist.
  • My ally started to hate me and broke the ally treaties for trade and the other things after I forcefully vassalized a fourth empire. They didn’t break the actual alliance but they did get rid of the other treaties related to trade and military.
  • A few times when I discovered something it gave the feat to an AI I had map sharing with.