JM1
2721
Same problem when holding Shift, Naeblis.
Dejin
2722
I haven’t tried it, but according to the manual, the ‘V’ key will vacate city of all units (see p. 30).
The mouse does seem to move a bit awkwardly when I try to ctrl-select units. It works, but the mouse doesn’t seem to move as smoothly as it normally does.
I am not a fan of the campaign. Did you happen to notice how your gold income was working after you built your initial market? My various readouts reported a 1 gold per turn income, but I rarely actually saw it. I Assumed it was something campaign related. It was certainly silly.
I have three Action points per combat round, and casting Fireball (or Lightning Bolt) uses all of them. But only if I cast it first! If I do some other action that doesn’t use up all of my Action Points, like moving two spaces (costs 2, leaves me with 1), I can still cast Fireball. This gets pretty crunchy when you are actually fighting, because then I can make two melee attacks with my sword (1 AP each!), and then also cast Fireball, all in one round. Unless I cast Fireball as my first action–if I do that, then I am done. Surely it’s not supposed to work that way?
I have a couple of problems here. As to the action point thing, it’s fixable if you make any attack action use up all remaining action points (a much saner approach that keeps some flexibility). The second is: who the hell thought it was a good idea to make me have to manually attack each individual time (and wait for a counter attack)? Why don’t I just take all of my attacks at once? If you really want to keep some of the granularity, if I kill a monster you can dump my remaining action points back into play and leave me in control of the unit. I can’t say I’ve ever played a game with tactical combat like this where you had to attack repeatedly, manually, and felt the combat was an improvement on the MoM model. I’ll grant you I am supremely lazy. This mechanic makes the combat feel overly complex for no reason.
I bought this largely because 1) I like TBS, and 2) I just got paid for my summer teaching. Actually, I bought it a couple days ago, BEFORE reading the latter part of this thread–I had just looked at the sheer volume of posts and figured, hell, the anticipation is high, why not? I assumed it would be buggy and probably a bit wonky, given the type of game, the developer, and the comments I did read, but I also figured it would be bearable.
I’ve only played with it a little bit, but I still think it’s bearable–but I agree with most all of the criticisms. Especially, I find nearly unforgivable the opacity of the game. It’s 2010. Basic item comparisons when shopping/looting, tooltips, clearly defined mechanics, tutorials (stand-alone or integrated) that actually explain mechanics and concepts–these are things that really should be standard procedure. And while the game looks pretty decent, the dialog and some of the character are is kinda hokey (a very minor issue really, compared to the map oddities others have noted). It makes me yearn for the (comparatively) logical Age of Wonders.
Still and all, it has a lot of potential, and I think that in dorking around with it trying to penetrate the opacity I’ll enjoy myself enough to make it worthwhile. But if I didn’t have a soft spot for TBS and an old-timer’s resignation/acceptance of glitches and stuff (though that’s becoming more and more balanced out by an incipient codgerdom’s impatience with crap), I’d be much less sanguine.
And I have no idea what Mr. Wardell’s political views are, though it does seem most entrepreneurial game developer/publisher types are fairly conservative, as it might figure. As long as he’s not running for office here in Vermont I really don’t care though.
Uhhhh don’t look now but EB Games is showing a 5 dollar price drop.
Hmmm, I’ve been looking at all the forum posts that say the game won’t even start and it doesn’t fill me with the urge to spend money…
Razgon
2727
Does anyone know when Stardock will shop the LE editions of the game? I havent been able to find anything on it, and didn’t get any kind of information when I bought it.
Oh, I’ll be getting it. I have faith in Brad…
Therlun
2729
Well, this pre-day-0 post-1.0 patch pretty much makes the game unplayable for me. I get random CTDs every 10 to 15 minutes.
I got one or two of those with the 1.0 version too, but nowhere near as many. Fun times. :D
Seems several people have that problem though.
Dejin
2730
Well it does give you a bit more flexibility.
The only situation in which I can see using it is if you have a unit with a good attack and high defense and then a bunch of other weaker units with low-defense. If the high-defense unit takes an enemy’s health down to somewhere in the 1-3 range, switch targets and let your weaker units finish it off. Ideally you want to make sure any low-defensive units can kill their target on the first attack without having to take a retaliatory hit. So having your tough guy attack a bunch of different units weakening each of them instead of just going all out and killing a single unit might be a good strategy.
Also I don’t know if there are any magic weapons or creatures with special attacks that might do something like confuse or freeze a target, but it might be useful to make attacks on multiple targets for those cases as well.
Jag
2731
I didn’t have a single PC issue with the game after hours of play, but I do have issues with the lack of game feedback and I am a hardcore 4x veteran. I’m hoping most of those issues will be patched in.
Jorune
2732
According to a recent journalby Brad W.:
"The day 0 version, as most of you know, is the version that was originally expected to be the first version most people would ever play. We’re definitely glad, however, that people got to play the pre-day 0 builds because we got a lot of very useful feedback and some crash reports that were not known about. "
With that said, what version will the reviewers review? Out-of-the-box gold, pre-day 0 or 0 day, the version that Brad feels should have been the first version being played?
Jorune
The abstraction is more elegant.
Dejin
2734
The abstraction certainly is easier to deal with and is less clicking.
It’s what happens when you code something fast to shut up consumer’s complaints, you don’t test stuff as you should, you don’t think the new changes as carefully as you should, etc.
I know what i am speaking about, i have been there :P :P.
And is more elegant. If you want to give out special powers and multi-target/AoE attacks, do so. Divying up each attack into it’s own action adds flexibility but is kind of absurd, turning combat into a far more finnicky affair. Not to mention you lose the ability to reasonably differentiate between “fast” units and “slow units”. Now action points dictate everything. It’s weird to have a slow, high attack unit and a fast, low attack unit that attacks 7 times because it has 7 ap. Setting aside the math (which is now more complex).
I haven’t seen so much whining as in this thread in a long long time. A bunch of hand holding tutorial needing nancy pants! :) What happened to learning the game without it telling you to “right click to move your unit”?
“The game tells me to talk to a dude but doesn’t tell me how!”, it’s ridiculous. Mouse over the dude, see the mouse icon becoming a chat bubble? What the hell do you think it means, you need a tutorial or a manual to tell you to right click there, genius?
Yes, the documentation and feedback could be better. But it’s not nearly as bad as some making it out to be. The same goes for the UI and the design in general.
So many people think they are good armchair designers now, it’s ridiculous when they start proposing their “own” systems (which are usually just some rehash from other games they used to like) without even understanding how the game’s current systems work.
I played the game for about 4 hours yesterday and enjoyed it a lot. I didn’t have any CTD’s or noticable bugs besides some text inconsistencies in that hengamonga civilopedia thingy (haven’t alt-tabbed either knowing that the game is sensitive about it). Yes, the game could use some polish but what’s already there is a fun, original game. I am definitely glad I bought this game.
Interesting points, Stridergg. I haven’t had much time to get into the game just yet despite my pre-order (which also gives me the benefit of waiting for the true “day zero” patch), but it’s rather interesting to see the clamoring for some things that seem to have not only been taken for granted but rather looked down upon in the past.
“Tutorials? Just a waste of time until the real game starts” is a common refrain I’ve seen elsewhere. In this thread, not so much. Perhaps the game needs a pop-up bubble to remind people to read the manual, now that many of us have grown used to just tossing them in the trash unless they had arcane, hard-to-read cd keys printed on them.
Heck, there was once a time when a good manual was seen as a mark of a good, deep, complex game that was right up a PC gamer’s alley. Perhaps that time has truly passed us by.
Well, I’d say that’s half the issue. The other half of the issue is that the choice made by Elemental simply isn’t very good. Even if that mechanic were explained up front in crystal clear terms, it’s still a wonky mechanic. Hopefully that doesn’t veer too far into armchair designer territory; I’m not sure how one could possibly criticize any game element without at least implying that there are better ways that it could have been done, though.
Honestly, that spellcasting Action Point thing is so utterly bizarre, it makes me wonder if it might be a bug.
I guess it is only a problem when reloading in game.When I rebooted the game and reloaded ,it was ok. I still had a unit I did not have before and lost the counciler, I had had.
