bugs, issues and thoughts

from Stardock Forums

Bugs or issues:

  • Still having memory issues that freeze the game up just on teeny or small maps
    • Afraid to try larger maps because of this reason
  • Still seeing the tag of a town change to an opposing side during game play
    • When I move a unit in or out of a town to change the tag back to my name I can continue to hear the units movement until I restart the game. 
      • I have noticed this for many rounds all the way up to when the game will freeze up due to memory issues or I quit playing, either way it causes a restart.
  • During tactical battles I might cast a spell or strike for 20 damage, but the person or creature really only takes 8 damage.
  • Caravans showing up under the city info panel and as not meeting their destination or not arriving (or something like that) yet they are moving back and forth between the two cities each round.  I do not know if this is a bug or not.  Can you only have X amount of caravans going to a city?  If so why is the damn thing moving back and forth?

 

Game balance:

  • Right now the only thing that bothers me is right at the start I can win the entire game fast just by purchasing a warstaff during character creation.  With the warstaff you can walk right up to every enemy and pulverize them.  I have done this and it makes for a very short game and if you take the ability that gives you two sentinels as damage soak it goes even faster besides the fact they can slow up your movement per turn.
    • This is why I believe every enchanter should start with some kind of basic magic attack.

 

Cities:

  • Our starting city should be our most important one.
    • I hate the fact that I create a city later on or capture one that is better than what I consider my capital just because of resource nodes.
    • Give some kind of bonus to our founding city that makes it the most important city in our kingdom.
    • Our first city should be the backbone of our economy, food production and knowledge.  It should be our largest city that we upgrade the most and try to build every single improvement in.  It should be the inspiration and symbol of our kingdom which can only be rivaled by other kingdoms capital cities.
    • Obviously if we take over a different kingdoms or empires capital it would lose that bonus and be given to a different city they own.
  • Due to the way tech tree works I think we should be able to construct more than one building at a time.
    • I find myself often mid game to late just sitting around doing nothing because I am waiting for my city improvements.  I like my cities and I want them to be built up before I go and destroy all of the opposition or just going to war, but it has become quite boring to sit there and wait for that to happen.
      • I don’t like to play a run and gun type of game, but it feels like I am being pushed into that direction due to boredom with waiting for the building ques and tech unlocks.
      • I like to feel that I have turned my cities into something special and I like to feel that all the time and energy I put into researching something has a purpose and a reason to be built before I can finish the game.  If this is not the case remove all buildings from the tech tree and have these buildings open up only for the city size.
    • Maybe we can have the ability to move some of the unused labor force into construction to give us a much faster build time like in MoM or construction of multiple buildings at once.  I find myself at mid to late game with 500 to 1000 or more people that are doing nothing but eating my food and taking up room.
  • I think we should have a level cap on cities we can get from pioneers for multiple reasons
    • One this will leave open land on the map allowing new monsters and heros to spawn which is not seen in the late game.
    • Two it leaves the map a little bit more open for exploration
    • Three it gives incentive to attack other cities for expansion
      • Obviously this means taking over a city does not count against your total.
    • Four it forces you to make strategic decisions for resource nodes on where to place cities and just not about filling in the sphere of influence.
    • I find myself just city spawning at times and once I get going I can just roll over the competition.
    • Have it to were we can only start with X amount of pioneers at the start and than it can be raised based on the level of our enchanter divided by some number or you can start another city at certain population levels.

 

Tech Tree and Arcane Research

  • Spellbooks under the tech tree?
    • If you are not going to let us specialize our enchanter at creation than let us learn spell books under Arcane Research.  I hate the fact that if I want to learn spell books I have to waste my tech time researching them.  Put each book in the spell book and let us unlock them under Arcane research just like we unlock spell level.
    • How do a bunch of people that can’t cast magic or know magic even begin to research magic?  They are trying to figure out how to use ancient technology not magic.
  • I don’t like the fact that I am forced to learn things I don’t want at this time or never want due to my play style.  Everyone has a different play style and when they begin a game they know what things they want to focus on in the tech trees.  It would be nice to spend the time learning the stuff I want and not what you decided I needed to learn before I get what I want.
    • Example:  I want housing.  I need to learn entertainment than education than I can get housing.  To me this does not make any sense because who ever thought entertainment and education were more important than housing to a bunch of people that having been wandering around the wastelands.
    • Let me choose if I want to learn housing or education.
  • How come I have to learn farming twice for irrigation?
    • This should be comparable to entertainment that I have to learn it once for both buildings (inns and pubs) and the city level determines which one I can build and when.
    • This applies to all of the crap we have to keep relearning over and over just like training field to something else to war college.  I just feel like the war and civic tech branches are so redundant and are there just to add game time with nothing new, exciting or a purpose.
    • We should be learning something new, not repeating to learn the same thing.
  • Can we get the weapons under warfare tied into the training field, the 2nd level choice I forgot the name and war college.
    • Once again I keep having to learn the same things over and over just to move on.  Tie it to the building and the building is tied to the level of the city which makes getting a city up to level 5 important.
  • I will say it one more time warfare and civics are over bloated and because of this I spend more time researching them and skipping the adventure and magic branches because you need those two more to advance a society in this game.

 

Magic:

  • Mana pool was a great move for this game
  • Spells are still a disaster, but I know you are working on these
  • Terraforming I love it, but it does not serve much of a purpose minus that it is useful for strategy every once and a while which can be replaced by hero/military units.  Also hero and military units do not take up character creation points. 
    • I terraformed my entire sphere of influence into flat ground including the water and mountains which at the time was half the map.  I saved the adventure tech for last so I could reap the rewards of new resources so I could build up more cities.  What a waste, I unlocked the farmland one and got two farms with over half of the map under my influence plus more due to filling in the water.  Needless to say I was really pissed off over the time I wasted there.  I think after that I got one gold mine, one ventri mine and one crystal crag.  Now I find myself not picking terraforming because it would only serve a purpose every once in a while for strategy that can be replaced by military and creating military units does not burn up character creation points.
  • Really the only thing I use magic for is teleport and no this is not saying teleport is overpowered.  It is just saying there is no need to use magic at all in a game that is called war of magic.
  • Intelligence should give something to magic besides giving you the ability to cast a certain spell.  As it is right now I do not put any points into intelligence unless I need a spell.

 

Character Creation:

  • Very boring and not much going on here that makes a difference in the game except at the start of it.  Need to get rid of the +1 this or +2 that and start to give some real bonuses like percentages that matter in the mid to late game.
  • What is the purpose of being able to pick all of those traits that give movement when later on you are moving as slow as the slowest person with you?
  • Attributes really don’t mean much right now.
  • No reason to pick any of the bad traits besides getting extra character creation points that you do not need as of right now.
  • Terraforming should be moved into the earth spellbook.
  • Combat book is just not worth it when you can kick the crap out of people with a stick.
  • Yeah just not much here that can make your character unique or setting up different play styles.

 

Other:

  • I just feel like land has no value. 
    • I can have half a map under my influence and the only advantage to this is not having creatures spawn other than that tiles do not mean much unless they have a resource attached to them.
  • 4X game, but it really is a 3X because explore is not really part of this game except at the start when placing cities.
  • I miss running into legendary creatures or badass groups of creatures like we had at launch.  I know this was a bug, but i miss saying ah crap I am dead.

 

Final note:

I just would like to say I have only played one of your games before this one and it was Sins.  I did not like the game, but everyone plays games for different reasons and there is no way to please everyone. 

 

Prior to this game I knew nothing of Stardock or their reputation not just in the industry, but with the gaming community all together.  The only reason I purchased this game before launch was because of the hype of it being a successor to MoM.  I was a huge MoM fan and I have never found anything since to replace it, which made me put a lot of hope into this game maybe too much.  From the launch of the game up to v1.08 I only played it a handful of times because I felt it was a horrible game all around with not much of a purpose or sense of being. 

 

I have stuck around and have kept up to date by reading the forums because of your gaming community bragging about the unheard of support that you guys give to your games.  I did not believe these people because no company in this market would have done this much work up to date that you have done.  I have to admit I have been shocked how much attention you have given this game and I am very pleased because I did feel like I was ripped off when this game first came out.  I have never seen so much interaction by a company on the forums as you guys have given from the head guy down which that alone is amazing.  I am also amazed how much you listen to the community and this is the only reason why I made this post because you have made me believe that you care about my opinion.  This has also shocked me and given me faith at the same time.  Now I have hope that one day this game might be great.  At that point in time I will not hold anything against you for releasing this game in the state it came out in because at that point I will feel like it was money well spent.

 

Thank you for all of your time and effort for the work you have already done and continue to do.  I hope some of this information listed above helps out with the current state and future of this game and I am sorry this post is so long.

 

Thanks,

 

elemental
41,828 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Nice post. Aside from the building queue being too slow and level cap on cites, I agree with everything here. I like my pacing on the slower side, so the first is just personal preference. As for the number of cities, I think that this could probably handled with other mechanics.

But, like I said, I agree with about everything you've said here.

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

I agree I like the game to last for a while, but I just find myself constantly clicking the end turn button mid to late game just to get my cities finished being built.  I guess if there was more to do than just waiting maybe I would think the building que was not so slow.

TouchTasks - Access tasks with ease on Windows touchscreens.
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

MORE USES FOR POPULATION!

I don't believe the starting city needs to be the most important city but I do think you should be able to change capitals, and there should be special improvements for capitals.

Also, there needs to be a bonus for population once you reach city level 5. Otherwise what's the point of all those extra prestige buildings? Population needs to modify tax percentage, troop build time and resource throughput more significantly.

Troops should cost more than one population. Maybe the population cost for a troop should be something like cost/5 or /10. Something to represent that a fighting unit requires support staff to function. You know, like a knight might have retainers or something like that. So your dirt cheap peasant might cost 1 pop, whereas a knight with a warhorse, longsword and armor might require 100 pop.

This population would not be "used" as in buildings, but directly removed from the city pool. If you lose that unit,you lost your pop investment. 

 

Finally, Sovs/Champions/NPCs should acquire experience over time when garrisoned in a city. The experience should be proportional to their charisma trait and competitive with running around battling/killing monsters. A character that devotes ALL his stat points to charisma and staying in a city should be the same level as some other character that runs around fighting stuff. Make it so maintaining a high level of charisma would be critical to leveling up at a reasonable rate.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top


Finally, Sovs/Champions/NPCs should acquire experience over time when garrisoned in a city. The experience should be proportional to their charisma trait and competitive with running around battling/killing monsters. A character that devotes ALL his stat points to charisma and staying in a city should be the same level as some other character that runs around fighting stuff. Make it so maintaining a high level of charisma would be critical to leveling up at a reasonable rate.

I would disagree with the charisma experience gain. Yes charisma must give something more than just prestige and lower champions buy price, but giving xp for doing nothing is a no no.

Why is quite simple. First of all it will unbalance how a strategic game is played. A hero sitting at a city with high charisma lets say he provides more income etc, but growing stronger by it is not reliable.

Maybe have a hero training building could provide such a compensation, but imagine having a multiplayer game with someone. You just sit in your city playing your "sim-like

" build the best city game, while your opponent rsik his hero at every possible turn to gain xp. Do you think is fair for him when he gets to fight you as hero to hero for you to be at same lvl and stregth as his hero? I say no, whoever fights get stronger, whoever sits must gain something else, but not power to my view :)

 

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

I really like the idea of special improvements for your capital city, but I still believe your first city is the most important one otherwise why did you start with it and not some other one.  I know we are basically spawned next to the spot we are going to start our first city, but for RP reasons it should be your capital because that is where you decided to start your kingdom.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Character and faction creation were and still are a pretty big area of disappointment. I've never, ever taken starting gear. Now I can see why. The traits, flaws and talents of both factions and sovereigns are fairly uninteresting when they're even working at all. I hope this is one place they just haven't gotten around to dealing with. But it's quite silly when your custom faction has like 6 positive traits and no flaws.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

@OP - Glad you stuck around.   I think you'll find agreement from most of us that Elemental was pretty rough, but I honestly think it will get there, and I don't think Stardock will give up on it.   They have a reputation of patching their games for a long time (seriously, even years after the game is released).    

 

It will get better, plus if you ordered soon enough (sounds like you did), you'll get the expansions for free.  :)

 

 

Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Murteas, reply 7
It will get better, plus if you ordered soon enough (sounds like you did), you'll get the expansions for free.  

 

 

 

Not worried about free expansions which I know I will get.  I have no issue with paying people for their hard work if it is good work.  Like I said in my first post once they finish working on this game and it does turn out to be everything they promised, from interviews and expos, I will have no hard feelings and never regret my purchase.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting TarlSS, reply 3
MORE USES FOR POPULATION!

Also, there needs to be a bonus for population once you reach city level 5. Otherwise what's the point of all those extra prestige buildings? Population needs to modify tax percentage, troop build time and resource throughput more significantly.

I was going back reading old posts that I have made and this is a great idea by TarlSS.  As of right now I usually tear down all prestige buildings once I hit level 5 because I need the tiles for actually things that will still count for something.  As it is now once your at level 5 there is no need for the prestige buildings at all.

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

I think the framework for population being so important is already there, between population as a resource and population as a tax base.

For the tax base, so long as I place importance on heroes or raised units from the negotiation tree in the game I'm playing, the tax base is already important for giving those heroes the best equipment (in many games, I just rely on units, and at some point gold is no longer a limiting factor).

For population as a resource, I tend not to run into this wall. The only time I've hit this wall at all was in a game where I played the golem faction in Heavenfalls expanded faction mod, which kills 5 population per soldier in addition to using 1. I do like the idea that well equipped troops require additional population. Something like if the unit uses a metal cuirasse it requires a squire to help them don it. I don't think that 5-10 should be required to support one soldier though (excepting a faction like that golem faction for which that was a good limiting factor for an otherwise powerful faction). Instead I think some of the common buildings should use more people. Studies perhaps? That could mildly impact the study spamming problem.

If population as a resource were a little more limiting, I think that between the two benefits of population it works as a tradeoff between destroying and keeping the prestige buildings.

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

I understand what you are saying, but like TarlSS said currently prestige buildings are usless and you have no need of them in your city once they reach level 5.  This is a flaw to have buildings that serve no purpose at all once your city's level is maxed out.