As always, a big thanks to Amplitude for all their work and what's overall shaping to be a fantastic game. I always want to start with that since even when I try to give constructive criticism it may come off harsh. Just figure if a picture is worth a thousand words, a vid (a bit long, sorry!) may really hammer home the point.

0. Neolithic Scouts

Per the scout rush thread, you can just stay neo and keep killing the AI. For the sake of tedium, I didn't do that in this vid, though I did stay a few more turns to get about 7-8 scouts before hitting ancient.

Suggestions:

Make scouts cost upkeep, perhaps 1 food/turn. Most games have gold upkeep after all, and food in neolithic is basically the gold. Also have a food "stockpile" So that the adding process is manual - You can choose to spend 20 food, but if it goes down to 0, ALL your units take say, 20% max HP damage per turn (to throw a number out there). That way there's the additional minigame of food management, and people have a real incentive to go to ancient.

I'd also consider having regular scouts having a combat bonus vs neolithic ones (don't want to affect hunting) so that it's no longer viable to stay neo if a neighbor has hit ancient. You can just retreat on your own turn and click the ancient button once you see a neighbor has picked civ. Speaking of civs...

1. Harappans 

Their legacy bonus and civ building will scale later and upfront, meh. Their unit, though, is amazing. At 15 base combat strength vs. the normal 13, you hit Ancient with half the high ground advantage in an even fight, Assuming you are in multiplayer and people have figured out the "best" time to go ancient (which I hope by the time release comes it's no longer close to never), this combat advantage is just oppressive. Oh...and they go 5 move instead of 4 so unless you start in a river and they didn't, you just can't outrun them. If you want to deal with them, you have to lose a pop to make a better unit, and 1 may not be enough :(

Oh and did I mention you can hunt mammoths easily 1v1 with them rather than struggling vs as a regular civ? 40 extra gold more easily yes please as well!

Suggestion:

Simple fix - give them a -2 malus when fighting other scouts and -1 when hunting. That way the scout wars are at least even, and they still retain the somewhat better combat vs other things. Heck just make their attack 14 and -1 malus vs other scouts. No reason to get a bunch of these guys for free on hitting ancient when a Warrior is only 17 (aka high ground vs scouts it's even, vs harappans warriors will lose even if it's river crossing of -3)

2. Huns

One small step for man, one giant leap for HUNKIND. The key issue is the game mechanic where you lose pop if you build a unit....unless you are the huns. You build 1 unit and it becomes 20 in 12 turns from when you queue it from a 1 population town. Oh and their special district gathers ALL resources and can be built anywhere within the region? Yes please

Suggestions:

I'm sure plenty of people will note how overtuned the unit itself is given you just need to have a single horse to build them. 25 combat strength already out-does the more expensive chariot 23, and it shoots TWICE, oh and it shoots...a ranged attack. Hits like a swordsman twice per round from range...yeah

But more importantly, the food mechanic is way overtuned at the moment. I'd suggest each unit taking food (or gold, or influence, or SOMETHING) upkeep per turn, as well as the threshold INCREASING per unit on the field, with the base starting at something more reasonable like 30. When everyone else loses 1 pop to build a unit and you can just lose 1 pop once to have 20 pops worth of units a dozen turns later while spamming their OP unique building, there's really no reason to play another civs if you're a competitive player.

Once again, it's open dev so the whole point is giving feedback, and the meat is there. I just thought it essential to highlight what I consider needs to be fixed if this game is to have any chance at multiplayer. Thanks!

At some point I started wondering if they put these OP things in the game to see if people would notice. Because if not, it would mean that the game mechanics are too opaque to understand.

Very meta, haha.

I'm sure theere's some incentive to provide a bit of flair for demo purposes like on the streams to hype up to game. I'm a firm believer that you can take such thing stoo far though :D

We will hope, they are fix many things at next beta.

Harappan Runners shouldn't have a combat bonus at all, for balance reasons and for "fluff" reasons. The Harappans thirst not for warfare... so they are the best at rushing people in the Ancient, assuming you let others get there in the first place. Remove their combat bonus, make them generate more money from curiosities or give them a bonus for meeting other civs or finding natural wonders. 

That's not the main problem though. The main problem is that this level of Neolithic and early Ancient harassment is possible in the first place, which is compounded by the fact that reaching 5 Tribes is also a route to the Ancient. Has Amplitude laid out their intentions for the Neolithic era? I think and hope they want it to be about setting the stage for the rest of the game and giving you the info you need to make good early choices about your capital placement, Ancient culture, etc. Being aggressive might mean that you get prime spots and the Ancient culture you want, while someone else gets their second or even third picks, but they'd have to make mistake after mistake to get eliminated in the Neolithic. Or do they want players to regularly get knocked out in the Neolithic?

I get a simple fix would to remove nomadic feature from all units ---- it's not nomadic, it's vampire

YichenZhu wrote:

I get a simple fix would to remove nomadic feature from all units ---- it's not nomadic, it's vampire

Funny, I was thinking Zombie. You start as zombies and then Huns embrace the Zombie roots!