AndrewM is pretty close. You only get one Stronghold card in the deck. The outpost are located in the Military Facilities catagory in the Deck Builder. They have the Supply and Barracks special abilities. The abilities appear in the detailed card description on the left hand info pad but not on the card because they are implicit in every stronghold or ouptost card. You have to drag and drop the outpost card from your hand on to the hex with a hero or engineer unit card. There are bunch of conditions which must be satisfied. They usually are but they may seem like a lot.
The hex has to be controlled. So the hero can’t be stealthed or if he is stealthed you have to have a combat capable army in the hex.
The hex has to be in supply from some other outpost or your starting stronghold
You have to have enough action points and resources to pay for it.
If you drop it on the hero/engineer with these conditions satisified a facility icon will appear and you will hear a beep. Now if you toggle the supply button you will see your supply area has been extended. Just a word of caution though. The toggle overlay only shows POTENTIAL supply based on what you know about the map and enemy armies/bases. A hex may not be in supply because an enemy army is blocking it. The AI has goals that are created sometimes to try and block your supply. An army out of supply gets -3 attack and -2 defense modifiers and 1 base movement point per turn. You can have a mini Stalingrad on your hands if you are not careful.
Still loving the game despite an ugly thing that just happened to me. I’ve been totally engrossed in a 175-5 Iron Man session as the Mutants. I managed to squash the Xenopods, and I spent a long time building up my forces for a final push against the Imperials to win the game, all the while waging a nasty back-and-forth war with them. I think I was up to turn 51 or 52. Then a dialog box came up that I wanted to close, and being maybe a little tired I reflexively hit the escape key. Since there are no autosaves for Iron Man games, the last three hours of effort are completely gone. It’s already been mentioned several times, so I’ll just add my whiny voice to the chorus: for the love of God, Vic, please change that! If you don’t, I’m afraid you’ll create a lot more frustrated customers than satisfied ones.
Otherwise, even with the interface issues, AE is swiftly becoming one of my all-time favorite strategy games.
A few further comments:
As a general UI rule, you want the player to have to move the mouse as little as possible. With every new dialog window that pop up during combat, you have to move and click the mouse in a new place each time. I would have preferred to have a single popup dialog box for each complete exchange (with the frame and buttons remaining constant, but the information within the frame changing as you advance through each step), instead of one indicating the next engagement, then one for die rolling, then one for Fate point confirmation, then one for final hit results. I assume that all is probably too much to rework at this point, so the second-best solution given the current state of the game is hotkeys hotkeys hotkeys.
If you do add any hotkeys hotkeys hotkeys, I will lobby for having spacebar minimize/maximize the card hand display. Having to move the mouse down to the lower left every time I need do that is a royal pain. Also, have the game remember the end-of-turn state of both the card window and minimap, so when a new turn begins I don’t have to waste any time minimizing them again.
Next/previous army and next/previous facility hotkeys would be nice. Maybe the brack keys ([]) and shift-brackets ({}), especially if “Enter” becomes the “default button-press” key.
Tab to minimize/maximize the minimap, and the QWAS keys to switch between the different minimap filters.
I thought I wouldn’t like the “no reshuffle” rule, but playing this most recent Iron Man game mindful of it convinced me that it’s a great aspect of the design. It emphasizes the post-apocalyptic, all-or-nothing desperation that a game like this should have.
The AI continues to impress in general.
Does the AI voluntarily quit if things look too dire? I destroyed two of the Xenopods’ most powerful units, and the next turn there were no Xenopods left on the map at all, and it was just the Imperials and me rolling turn initiative. If they weren’t supposed to disappear, bug. If they voluntarily resigned because they were in a losing position, awesome!
Maybe I’m not looking in the right place, but I can’t seem to find any in-game indication of a unit’s Prestige, Legendary Army status, or Battle Honors. Is that stuff in the final game? I love getting attached to units in strategy games, and AE has so much character and cool ways to customize stuff that battle experience stuff would be icing on the cake.
I’ve done the accidental ESC-exit, but with a backup autosave. I wouldn’t even consider playing Ironman until that’s fixed, because it’s way too easy to do. I’ll add my voice to the “Hey Vic, this is a dumb mechanic” chorus.
The AI continues to impress in general.
Yeah, the AI seems competent. I just finished my first full game, a Large map with three opponents, and had Master of Orion levels of hatred for the Mutants. I only had one Tactics facility in my deck, something I’ve now corrected, and the Mutants were a Tactics card factory. It was tough going for a while there, but I pulled it around when my facility finally dropped.
The AI’s do a lot of recon, and try to work armies through to hit your weak spots. I was especially impressed when, at the end of the game, I had my Legendary army on the doorstep of the Mutant Stronghold (literally, there was a formerly independent outpost adjacent to it). I was slowly whittling down his forces with bombers, and after losing three or four units, he marshaled nearly everything and attacked.
Whoops, sorry, the game already does this! I am stupid.
Bug: I made a 174-point deck and I got an error message when I tried to start a game with it. I edited it to add the extra point and was able to start the game fine. Maybe there should be a warning about this when you save a deck, or a message when you try to start a new game that explains you need to have the exact point total.
I’m going to be doing a patch early next week. It will mostly be bug, er undocumented features fixes but I promise that the escape key will be terminated :) Any suggestions on an appropriate key for the “boss”?
I’m going to try and implement hotkeys for a bunch of things including acknowledging/starting dice rolls. One thing I’m worried about is people double tapping or getting spastic and misssing info but I guess it has to be use at your own risk. It’s going to take a little thinking and work but shouldn’t be impossible.
Sounds like the Xenopods lost their Stronghold to the Imperials. The AI’s don’t ever give up. Since there is no direct diplomacy I didn’t want any easy bandwagoning happening. I also wanted the fight to the death Phyrric Victory type thing happening occasionaly. When an AI faction is eliminated all his remaing outposts go independent. There is a chance for some armies to go independent as well but they just remain in their hex with the outpost. That way you just can’t waltz in and snap up that wonderful facility that generates resources every turn. I’ll look and see if I documented this in the manual. Probably not. Added to the list for corrections then.
It’s in the manual in the Armies area. Page 17. In game you can click on the unit name in the army viewer and see the armies general stats. It will be displayed there. Battle honors are earned if a certain number of enemy card points are destroyed. The game keeps track of how many times you fight in a hex so you can often get fun Titles like Fifth Battle of the Mutant Wastes
Building a legendary army is one of my favorite things to do. The medals on the unit info pad are really cool. You have to click on the army name on the left hand pad to see it on the stats page.
My mom always said I was smart like an Ox and strong like a Fox. :)
I’ll check that out. You should have no problem starting a game with any point value as long as the game point requirements are met. The big check that is done is minimum of 40 cards, minimum of 1 tile and one and only one Stronghold.
Half of the fun of a CCG is getting new cards slowly trickled to you. It’s kind of the whole point of a CCG. When you get all the cards immediately, it’s both overwhelming to the player and it removes that awesome “carrot” gameplay mechanic of constant reward. It’s also much better for ramping the system to a player.
It would be nice to see some sort of “campaign mode”, where new cards are doled out as rewards for winning a battle. Or even slap it into the current random skirmish system. Make the computer only have access to a set number of cards, reward the player with cards after every battle, and ramp up the CPU hands accordingly.
Yeah I thought long and hard about a campaign. When I initially conceptualize the basic gameplay in January 05 I was loving a lot of Strange Adventures in Infinite Space and the idea of a random jaunt was going through my head. One of the big design goals was playability in an hour or two. And the replayability was big on the list. The campaign just never materialized although there is a huge amount of backstory that nobody will ever see that was created for the game. If I was a half way decent writer I would make a novel out of it.
There are a ton (60+ I think) of obtainable attachments, munitions, facilities and unit cards to aquire in the wastelands if you explore. Some are much rarer than others.
Your Mutant army has a monster named a Termagant which is also a Tyranid creature from Games Workshops Warhammer 40k. Not sure if GW has a trademark on the name but I thought it’s worth pointing out.
I personally think the create a deck feature needs some work. Why do all the cards automatically stack on top of each other? I have to manually drag tons of cards all over the place trying to see what I have in my deck and it seems tedious the way it is now. I think the cards should drop in offset so we could at least read the names easier. You have the # of heroes, units, facilities and air displayed but why not make those buttons that turn on/off the display of those cards in the card selection pad.
Anyway it’s a cool game and I"m looking forward to future patches.
Totally agreed on the campaign mode. I imagine it is a lot of work but I’d happily buy a campaign “expansion” for AE that started me with a basic deck and had a series of scenarios (even if they are just some particularly good random map seeds) that let me build my deck over time, rather than just configuring a full collection. It would IMO be a lot more learnable, as well as fun & addictive. :)
Not really although you get to use them during the game. Some are weapons that you find. Rare ones include attachments for heroes and facilities. Like Jason said there are some nice unit cards that you can deploy from facilities that you capture or have the indies join/bargain to your cause. I don’t want to give them away because half the fun is stumbling upon them. I had to really work to balance them and even so you can screw your opponent or get screwed by them occasionally. An uber card found, deployed and brought on target before turn 20 can win the game…I found it was an extremely rare occurence though. But it was fun when it happened going both directions. I really enjoy getting surprised by the AI. It was proof that the goal based architecture was more than the sum of its parts
Wasn’t aware of that. Actually I heard it first used by Jack Vance in the 50’s in one of favorite all time books The Dragonmasters. It was a tribute to Vance. I tried to be careful with such things. Sometimes I wasn’t sure so I changed the names a bit.
I agree. It’s not going to win any UI design awards. It is functional. Both those are good ideas. I’ll have to see what I can do. Thanks
Thanks
Something to think about. I left an additional space on the initiative bar so that I could add another faction and have a total of 5 opponents if this thing worked and it was well received
Been playing the demo and enjoying it. The Mata Boyd hero might be a bit over powered since I was able to win with him alone (using sabotage and fate points) on turn 19 by destroying several bases including the enemy HQ.
Which just happened to me, coincidentally. I found the installation that houses the… um, a really powerful thing… right next to my home base, and was able to march over the opposition in short order.
I didn’t mind so much, since it was a lot fo fun to do so, but my final score (162) did bring up an issue. Is there any scoring bonus for winning a game quickly? It seems weird that my 50+ turn game netted me 360 points, but by 22-turn game gave me 162. How does scoring work, exactly?
Map Size Bonus
Standard = 100
Large = 125
Huge = 150
Number of Opponents Bonus
1 Enemy = 25
2 Enemies = 50
3 Enemies = 75
These are added together and 1 point for each elapsed turn is subtracted
Then the players victory point bonus is added; This is the total of all the card points for destoyed enemy units, captured or killed heroes, and created support cards.
Map Size Bonus + Num Opponents Bonus - Turn Number + Victory Points
For an Iron Man Game each Victory Point earned is multiplied by 1.5
So the short answer is yes a quick finish is better but there are a bunch of other factors.
By the way this is a real Homer Simpson Doh! moment for me since it should be included in the manual but isn’t. I’ll be adding it to the first update of the manual.
Here’s another suggestion. For units with Multi-Target, the default is only 1 Attack assigned. I use the maximum attack most of the time, and only split it vs. weaker enemies (or if I have over 10 Attack). How about making the maximum the default? I’m getting really sick of clicking it from 1 up to max every time, and I’ve accidentally accepted with it on 1 enough times for it to be annoying. If you switched it around and I made that mistake, I wouldn’t really care.
Also, how about letting you raze your own facilities? I end up with a ton of outposts that I don’t need, but once you control one, there doesn’t seem to be a way to destroy it. There’s no way to defend them all, and the AI will try to capture undefended facilities. You can let them capture one and then Sabotage it, but that’s kind of a lame workaround.
[Edit]: One other thing. When you’re in the process of moving an army, you can’t close the minimap. This makes it impossible to move in the upper left corner of the map unless you close it in advance. Maybe add a hotkey to close it, or at least make it closeable when you have a move active. I like to see what’s coming, which the minimap can interfere with, and I don’t always remember to close it before I start moving. Also, once you start moving an army, you can’t cancel it without losing any further movement that turn. That’s fine if you’ve already moved somewhere, but it’s annoying if you haven’t yet. How about allowing further movement for an army that turn IF it still has movement left for an initiating cost of 0? That would avoid the whole problem, but I’d still like to see an AP refund if you cancel without moving the army.
Vic, the little round resource (and AP) icons on the unit cards? Can you move those to the top of the cards, in the same order as available resources appear at the top of the screen? Further, instead of squishing the row together when there are resource types that aren’t required, can you put them in permanent locations and just leave a blank space in the row where such absences appear? This would be a whole lot easier for my brain to process than the vertical-to-horizontal (oops-I-ran-out-of-room-and-had-to-bend-left-around-the-corner-when-all-five-resources-are-required) shift we have to do now.
As an alternative, or hopefully in addition, how about having the resource numbers from the cards appear near the available resource numbers at the top of the screen when we mouse over them, for comparison purposes? This would also be a lot easier than constantly memorizing strings of numbers.
I’ll look into this. This makes a lot of sense since most multi-targeting cards have large attack point attributes. I remember having a lot of problems with making sure that dialogue box wasn’t misbehaving with things like negative attacks or ending up with more dice than you started. It’s probably not that bad a programming problem for more logical minds.
This is an area that really gave me some design problems. I originally played around with the idea of allowing engineers to demolish controlled facilities. There are a bunch of problems. First I wanted to avoid cheap outpost spam strategies where you daisy chain on multiple axises. Second, it makes you think hard about placement and you have to weigh the risk of capture. With them not being subject to a scorched earth type policy you see a lot of springboarding back and forth. When I ran simulations with demolishable outposts things got static because eventually the outpost ran out. I decided to leave in destruction by sabotage, air attack, nukes, etc. so that there was still some threat to them. Except for the “Kamikaze” variansts, the AI’s are very careful about taking outposts intact and minimizing their own exposure. They will try and eliminate an outpost if it provides a key way to remove supply from a big threat. They’ll also risk destruction if they think a good missile attack will soften things up. I’ll need to think long and hard about changing this
On the list!
I’ll look at this. I think the geeky part of me was thinking of the chess rule where if you pick up your piece you have to move it.
Funny, they originally were across the top but art was getting too covered up because 5 across stacks on two rows. I was browsing through my collectible card collection and I noticed that many cards had info icons going down the sides. I’m going to see if I can’t come up with some type of indicator for which cards have sufficient AP and resources to be played. The code for this is already pretty sphagetti so I don’t want to rush into this and it will need a bit of work.
