Hi players and devs!

After 3 runs on Victor Opendev, I think I'm able to provide another detailed feedback. As I've done a similar post about Lucy Opendev, I decided to bring it back to make an analysis of what has improved and what's not, as well as new issues that emerged over time.

So, for easier visualization, content from the previous post will be always RED and the new notes from Victor will always be BLUE.

1 - PERFORMANCE in general was ok, but I experienced consistent slowness and crashes after turn 120. It made it difficult to me to end my playthroughs completely in order to fill the official feedback form. If other users are going through this as well, Amplitude may be losing a bit of valuable feedback from players that couldn't reach the very end of the scenario.
Much better, but still not perfect. Sometimes I suffered from a slight lag, but nothing beyond that. Very good!

2 - USER INTERFACE: for me it's the main problem with the game in this moment. And a good UI is key to attract or scare new players to the game. I suggest an extensive reevaluation from the dev team on this. For me, several steps in the right direction were taken, but we still have some problems here.

a) In diplomacy screen, I could not know what the badges things meant to be... At war, peace agreement screen was buggy as well and the cities appeared duplicated with different costs.

I still coudnt know how to get or lose the badges... I guessed something about the traitor one but the others I couldn't get at all. Peace agreement is still confusing, but due to other reasons related to territories names that I'll talk about later.

b) City production panel: occupies too much space and even after I set UI to 85% it was very unconfortable to navigate between the constructibles options to choose one.

Better as well, but I personally still play with 85%. I missed that hotkeys we had from Endless Legend to manage city production order...

c) Trade screen: I could not understand what was happening at all with trade. I had to read on the forums to get a glimpse and yet for me it was very difficult to understand the effects of trade on my empire.

Trade routes lines were a nice addition that helped much. But I still didn't understand very well the effects from trade routes being halted and destroyed. If they are destroyed I have to make it again? If halted, then, what may I do about it? It wasn't clear...

d) Culture/Influence and Religion screens: I'd like to know how my culture/religion was expanding, which variables were influencing it... Don't know if it's explained somewhere else, but these screens only show the current situation.

I think I could understand better what was going on because of my experience with the game, I couldn't tell if some text was added as well, but it felt clearer.

e) Mouse PAN on map is still very slow.

Definitely better

f) Zoomed out vision on map doesnt help to distinguish map elements very well. I think territories could be slightly colored to represent the empires and icons should be a little bigger and clearer on map.

Changes here were awesome! Only thing I found very difficult to find is the name of the territories. I think that maybe on outpost icons, instead of the name of the culture, it could show the territory name, because we already know who is the player by the icon. I will talk more about this later, too...

g) I felt the need for some additional "hints" when passing the cursor above some game specific terms like the "celebrating" status or "heresy" action on civic choices screen... On ideology panels as well, I could not know what each of the symbols meant until all them appeared on events. We can't know by simply accessing the ideologies tab... and so on...

I saw some improvements in this area, but there is still room for more. For example, on build outpost action I'd like to know the cost without the need to click on it.

h) Notifications should say immediately what is happening instead of needing to click on them to know. Example: "Empire X changed the position..." - It should present the relevant information immediately, that could be: "Empire X is feeling PLEASANT" or "Empire X wants to get a Trade treaty"... And so on... Hence, curiosities disappear so fast that 80% of times I could not even know what I just got from them...

MUCH better! But, there are still notifications that could be more direct, like those from mood changes. I still had to click on them to know what was happening... Furthermore, what bothered me the most now was that I would like to see the name of the characters always together with the current culture and their icon. I think it would help very much in my experience. I'd always be remembered, for example, that Aminata is the owner of the "rose" icon and right now she is playing with the Celts. I also believe it is more elegant to refer to other players by their names... Perfect notifications would look like this: "Ralf (Huns) is feeling PLEASANT about you" or "Your trade routes with Aminata (Celts) that passes through <TERRITORY_NAME> were halted because of violence" < this would decrease the amount of notifications about different resources...

i) Fame/Era stars screen/notifications: I would like to know which one was the last star I earned as well as get a timeline of all stars and fame I got through the game.

Completely solved.

j) Specific bugs: sometimes notifications appeared duplicated and the "death" warning from "lost army at the sea" appeared even it was not going to die next turn because it was a "navigator" unit.

There are several new graphical glitches: On tech screen, haven icon appeared instead of harbor one; sometimes battle previews stuck on screen and the army disappeared - only way to correct was to reload the game; some texts were missing or were not being exhibited (Example: Irreligion civic - secularism choice - didn't warned about losing my religion); Map tooltips about district didn't seem to calculate yields right or district effects descriptions were outdated - sometimes the tooltips were completely absent.... And so on, there were many, but I think those are the main ones.

NEW THINGS ABOUT UI AND UX:

k) I could not tell what religion each AI was following. I needed this information several times because of the various effects related to "correligionist" states... I could know that some regions were dominated by my religion but never which was their state religion.

This made me think about how intel could be a feature in this game as well... Maybe some information could be revealed gradually with the level of intel we have of the other players... And we could build it with treaties and later with some form of espionage system...

l) Related to the previous topic, I don't think the game handles well information about things other players already picked or are doing... I'll explain: If I don't know, for example, the yellow player yet, or don't have the right level of intel with them (if it someday exists), I don't think I should know that they picked culture X or Y in that era, or that they claimed that wonder, or things like that. I think that, by default, this type of information on wonder, religion, culture and etc screens should show only "This culture/wonder/tenet is already taken by another player". It should demand intel for us to know who took it, I think it would be more interesting gameplay wise...

m) Army actions: we need upgrade and disband actions available for entire army at once, please!

n) What would be that "clear ruins" action be? I don't get it...

3 - I strongly believe AI is still very WIP, but it was definitely braindead even at serious difficult. In tactical battles, however, it seems to be competent. A competent AI is key for the success of this game because of two main reasons: a) It's a single player heavy game and b) It's an opportunity, once it's a common complaint among players.

It's better compared to Lucy, but still very bad. They seem to have difficulty on growing their cities and even on humankind difficulty they seem to get lost after classical era. Besides that, I noticed they go to the next era as fast as possible and don't seem to focus on gaining fame points at all...

4 - MAP regions can take the strangest forms and are not very intuitive. I believe map making needs some tweaking for the regions to better reflect how humanity divided the world through history. Yet, I believe it could be more variability on terrain anomalies, but I think it's a WIP as well.

Region forms were much better, but I think terrain could still be more varied. But it's okay we can't have it all...

5 - FIMSI RESOURCES need urgent rebalancing.
a) Food and production are very much abundant on map. The way districts and expansion work I can accomplish high values of both with minimal effort.
b) Food is specifically bad in my opinion because of growth tiers. I know of the administered and unadministered thing, but yet, it's very easy to get to "abundance" level. And from there, you have absolutely no incentive to invest in food unless you are a agrarian civ. I think food need to be reworked a bit to make sense. Maybe creating more tiers or increasing food consumption across the board....

c) Science is a bit scarce but even so I was done with all research between turns 80 and 100 even when I did not picked any scientist civ.
d) In general, resources are extremely snowbally. Despite being initially very fun, it can make the game feel dull very fast.

I think this is much better overall, I like the new growth system and how the costs scale. But I think it could be a bit harsher, because it's still easy to get snowbally, but now I don't know if it's because of other aspects of the game, such stability, that is still in bad shape (more on it later)...

Resource wise, i think INFLUENCE, as a currency, is too abundant after classical era... I think the game needs more ways to spend it or tone it down a bit in terms of quantity available to player. I liked how we needed influence to make diplomacy on other Amplitude games, maybe this can make a comeback?
      

6 - DISTRICTS also need rebalancing.
a) Harbors, even with double cost, seemed broken as hell with their feature of exploiting many coastal tiles and not only the adjacents.
b) Market quarters, on the other hand, felt underpowered. The adjacency from farm quarter seems strange.
c) Farmer quarters did not seemed very useful but I think it's because of how food is abundant in this game and growth tiers.

Overall, I think it's much better now. I had reasons to build a bit of all districts. I liked how some of them were set to one per territory.

BUT I think that in every era we should have a diverse set of emblematic districts where some are limited to one per territory and others don't. I think it may be difficult to balance, but maybe it's not, because it reinforces the idea of assimetrical balance and bring a new kind of decision making about when and how to pick new cultures.

7 - STABILITY feature was meant to act as a soft barrier to player expansion but it fails in this aspect because of how easy is to get it. There is a extensive web of options to get stability and the only moment I felt I had to worry with it was the very early game. Stability is a very interesting feature but it needs to be more valuable and rare... Or demand a real effort from the player to get it. There is one specific action called "Procession" that is absolutely broken.

Steps in the right direction were taken, indeed, but still shy. Procession is still broken - it should give 1 stability per pop and its cost should scale with pop number as well.

A direct consequence of stability being unbalanced is the civic points being a bit abundant too, but as you need high stability to get them fast, i think that is the source of the problem.
Besides that, I think that stability issues are affecting various other aspects of the game (more on it later)....

8 - ERA STARS: I felt science and builder stars are very easy to get. On the other hand, merchant and expansionist ones were very difficult, mainly after medieval era.

Builder and population ones are still easier and merchants are still harder but overall it's more balanced, yes, in my opinion.

9 - AFFINITY ABILITIES: i think some of them need rework
a) Merchant: I think this is more of a UI problem, but I simply could not know what is happening here.

UI improvements allowed me to understand this passive, but powerful ability. I like it.
b) Military: I think this is not useful for the purposes it had to be. I think that if we could build an army with our emblematic unit would be very interesting and game changing.

Guess it didn't change at all. It's just bad. Military cultures should be feared and this ability is just a joke.
c) Expansionist: Very difficult to use... Personally I simply could not see an valid opportunity I could use it. It has to be easier to use or reworked completely.

Found some opportunities to use it this time. I think it should be faster. We are expansionists after all, if they are upset with me taking their stuff should they get them back in a proper war!!!!
d) Builder: Weaker version from science one. Maybe because production is already very abundant, I didn't see the need or advantage to use it, once the other resources are more valuable. Maybe a rework is welcome or the general rebalancing of the game could solve this. I liked the addition of a stability malus nulifier here, but as stability is still very easy to obtain, it didn't feel relevant at all, but i think it's a problem there and not here.

e) The other abilities I think they are very interesting and powerful.

Agrarian and Aesthete still rule them all!!

10 - INFRASTRUCTURES: They are still a bit uninteresting with few exceptions. They are too much cheap and not impactful. And I think once we researched the next level of one given infrastructure, we should not be able to build the previous ones. The advanced one would then "absorb" the effects of its older counterpart and its some of its cost too.
Still, I think they should be more expensive, use more of the resources and be more impactful, encouraging city specialization.
Additionaly I think that some "National" infrastructures would be nice. They would be built only once per empire and be extra strong or with regional effects.

Didn't see any advancements on this front. Infrastructures in general still feel sooo bland. I hope you look at this next time.

11 - RELIGION: I liked how it's simple, dynamic and relevant all at the same time. But one thing is bothering me: we had access to four tiers of tenets, cool and all. But after that, nothing. I'd like that Amplitude doesnt repeat the same error from their competitor, thinking that with science advancement religion lost relevance and after renaissance nothing new happens. We know it's not true. I hope there are nice features involving religion post early modern era like schisms and the influence of capitalism and mass media on how people see religion nowadays. I trust in you, Amplitude team!

Here, as well, no improvements noted. BUT I saw how freaking powerful that "per pop" tenets are OMG they need to be nerfed hard. But be careful, religion needs to keep interesting!!

12 - INDEPENDENT PEOPLE: I liked the change you made setting different ideologies for each one, but I could not see yet the differences in our relationship with them. I think it's still WIP. But I hope IP will be important actors in world scenario all across the board. Hope they have personalities (maybe different bonuses) and that great empires treat them as real nations as well, like with diplomatic relations (even if they are limited) and so on...

Nothing changed here as well... Independents keep playing a very minor and uninteresting role in this game. Easy to absorb and to dominate and almost no reasons to maintain them.

13 - NATURAL WONDERS: I'd like to see each one having their individual bonus. I don't know if it's already on dev road map, but I think it's a valid feedback.

I still have hope on this!

14 - GAME PACE is almost ok. It's still a bit fast and very snowbally, but you will get there certainly!
Still feels the same way, but steps in the right direction were taken

NEW TOPICS THAT AROSE ON VICTOR OPENDEV:

15 - DIPLOMACY

a) It's nice, but I think we could use more direct interactions as well, along with the treaties. I'd like to bribe someone to declare war with my neighbour, trade specific technologies, send gifts and make demands. Additionaly, I think diplomacy actions should cost influence, since it's a abundant resource when considered as a currency.
b) Vassal and liege mechanics seemed glitched. I get that I control my vassals diplomacy, but why I keep receiving grievances from others that refer to my vassals actions? I think these things should be separate. Else, I think that the gold tax we received from vassals is too high.
c) I think we need some mechanic to integrate vassals at some point of the game. Furthermore, we should be able to make them demands beyond their tax, like "give me this territory you just claimed".
d) Didn't played as a vassal, but I can see the philosophy of the Amplitude team behind it. You want it to be possible to a player in multiplayer sessions to be vassalized without being slaughtered and I think it's a nice touch, but there is a lot room for improvements.
e) Alliance treaties did not seem to work or I did not understand what they do, maybe it's a UI thing. Free trade didn't gave me free access to my allies resources, I couldn't know how I or them were benefiting from science and culture treaties as well and so on...

16 - EVENT SCALING
Almost all event-choice rewards/effects need to be scaled/rebalanced with the moment of the game they happen to remain relevant throughout the eras, with the exception of the percentage and stability related ones. Besides that, some empire actions, like "Inquisition" could see some love on this matter too.

17 - CULTURE DOMINATION
Effects from culture domination on territories seemed unimportant, at least for me... Beyond the influence and osmosis events, is there something else? I think it should affect stability and maybe other matters as well. Definitely, it should not be okay to let another empire's culture to dominate mine and vice-versas

18 - RANSACK AND CHOPPING MECHANICS
a) Ransack didn't seem to work as intended or I didn't understand it as well. I don't know how that "Combat Strenght from ransacking" work at all. Sometimes, putting more people on army halved turn time to get a ransack done, sometimes not. That civic "Army Wages" didn't seem to affect it.
b) Chopping is completely useless. I think it should be a viable choice to speed up things. Humans have chopped down forests forever. It should be scalable with eras as well, maybe add something on tech tree to illustrate the gains on productivity on deforestation. There should also be incentives to maintain them intact as well.

19 - MISCELLANEOUS
"Blossoming of beliefs" event-choices DISSOLVE and LEAD had the same rewards.

20 - SOME NICE THINGS ON VICTOR OPENDEV THAT CHANGED COMPARED TO LUCY:
a) Very interesting new take on civic axes effects, I liked it how the middles boost stability and extremes boost other things. BUT, stability needs serious tweaks for it to be a nice choice between radicalism and poise.
b) Influence punishment on city number excess is nice, I liked it as well, but the stability problem allowed me to avoid it completely without hurting my expansion because I could squeeze as many territories as I wanted on megacities.

So, that's all folks!
Thank you for the opportunity and I have all confidence that this is going to be a great game!