Songs of Conquest , sing for me a song of pixely glory. (Early Access)

Games
#59

I’m on the 4th map of the first campaign and, after playing the game a lot, I’m happy to say that the initial issues and questions I had about it have all been resolved by learning the ins and outs of the game. It’s actually a really good game and I’m enjoying it a lot. For a EA game, it’s really polished.

I’ve had zero crashes and no major issues at all with it. All it needs now it a little more polish and more content. I need to check out the map editor next to see what shape that’s in. Hopefully, they add in the ability to create campaigns and the random map generator fairly soon. If they do, I think this one will be around for a long time.

#60

I’m on my second try of campaign 1, mission 3: the first time I didnt build up fast enough and got wiped by an enemy stack. They havent shown up yet this time, but between map knowledge and playing better Im optimistic.
The way leveling up magic skills goes is pretty different and interesting: if you have order level n then you can cast an order spell n times for the same flat mama cost. and some of them can be cast several times on the same unit! Ive been using that to get my archers initiative hogh enough to shoot first.
Question: there are a number of spells that use a combination of mana types, how do you get upgraded versions of those?

#61

I’m assuming that maybe that you have to have chosen the upgrade skills for each of the spell’s schools in order to cast the upgraded combo spell. Not positive about that though.

A warning about map 3. As you’ve noticed, green heroes will suddenly pop up randomly near your cities. I think there’s four of them that do that. The last two are tough.

#62

I have only just started playing this today. Just going by playing a couple of hours, it seems like about the most HoMM3-like of these type games I’ve seen. I do have the concern of Turin Tur above – are the factions all sort of vanilla? The factions and monsters in HoMM3 were so good.

#63

Made it through mission 3. Any tips for mission 4?

#64

I don’t think they are. Arleon is typical medieval knights but with a fae alliance and troops/heroes included. Rana are lizardmen with some pretty nasty troops. Barony of Loth is an undead faction and pretty fun. Barya seems to be a tinker based faction with guns. Pretty cool factions overall, imo. I assume they will add more if the game does well.

Mission 4 is tough. The first undead battle you face is brutal and I had to reload about 4 time to finally win. After that, when you make peace with the fae, grab all the fae troops you can from guardian stacks, you’ll need them all. I just ran into the first enemy hero and he kicked my butt. Going to try again.

#65

I agree with you on the 4 existing factions - they all seem very interesting, with unique buildings and play styles. There are 4 more factions planned, iirc.

#66

A note to anyone playing the campaign - remember that no matter how interesting (or instructing) a campaign is, dropping them and going over to skirmish maps (the meat and longevity of a game like this) is always recommended.

Playing this as a “board game” is (at least for me) so much more enjoyable than the canned/scripted content. I appreciate the campaigns are short and don’t seem to take up a lot of time, and provide a good challenge while also some variation in gameplay, but I would hate for someone to bail on the game due to the campaign being diffuclt/frustrating without at least rolling up a skirmish map or two.

#67

I agree 100% with this. The campaigns are totally on rails. Everything is scripted and the AI really doesn’t play the game like you do. The skirmish maps are really much more of a sandbox experience where the AI has to build up strength and play the game just as you do. Completely different experiences.

#68

Seems this dude on the Steam internets thought it was a good game.

5-15-2022 8-35-11 AM

#69

As someone who loved HOMM 1-3 in its time, but hasn’t really been able to go back and play any of them because they don’t recapture that same feeling, what does SoC do to inject some freshness into the formula?

#70

The tactical combat has a few new wrinkles, why units with ranged or melee overwatch, and the tactical magic system is very different. The high-level play seems very much the same – you start in your sector, Find independence and grab nearby resources thenneventually You and or the enemies breakthrough the mobs that gate access to other sectors,
Right now there aren’t enough factions and units per faction for the game to have a huge shelflife but it’s still early access and hopefully they will be adding more.

#71

I just won my first skirmish, on the “ruckus” map. Four players in fairly tight quarters. Winning conditions are either destroy all the AI or tag five “beacons.” I wiped out one AI and Green wiped out another and then I won on beacons.
Both ais I ran into used many more heroes than I did, But my main stack could fight two of theirs in a row with minimal losses.game ended at turned 30, And I hadn’t done any research or built a top tier unit, guess I need a larger map for that.
Post game summary showed that green was racking in almost twice my income by the end.

#72

Try the “fours corners” map. It’s a large map against 4 players and you can pick your faction to play.

  1. Magic is completely different. You need essence to cast spells in battle. Your hero starts each battle with some small amount of essence of a particular type or types. There are 5 or 6 types of essence which can be combined in various ways to cast different spells. Each troop in your heroes stack generates one or more of an essence type per battle turn. Some troops generate more than one type of essence per turn. Which troops generate what essence types determines what spells your hero can cast. Your hero can choose skills at levelup that increase the level or spells or increase the amount of essence the hero generates.

  2. Each hero starts with 3 ‘Command’ at level 1. That means he can only have 3 troop stacks in his army. Each levelup, you can choose to level the ‘Command’ skill which adds another troop slot to your hero’s army. A hero can have a maximum of 9 command (9 troop stacks). The more troops in your army, the more essence per turn and the more spells you can cast and the faster you can cast them.

  3. Troop stacks are limited in size. Initially, all stacks are quite limited. For example, you can have up to 10 rangers or 5 horned ones per stack. You can build a large town structure that will allow you increase the number in each stack by a certain amount. This can be done up to 3 times (3 tiers) for each troop and costs the celestial ore resource to do it.

#73

This isn’t the first time I have seen someone say they were gifted a copy but the review doesn’t have that “product was received for free” thing at the top. Did Steam stop doing that?

#74

Well, he says he didn’t use the gifted key, the gave it away to a friend, the implication is that he bought his own copy which is what he reviewing.

#75

Ohh no more armies with 4000 or 6000 people in a single ‘unit’. No Fun Allowed.

#76

He doesn’t actually say that. He says the developers gifted him a key but he enjoyed it so much and had planned on supporting the project anyway so he bought a friend a copy. To me the clear implication was that he used the gifted key and then bought another copy for a friend but people are loose with their language so I suppose it could go either way. We have him right here so @Scotch_Lufkin can clarify!

#77

What happened was I wrote this review on my phone while I was out for an early morning walk, and when I clicked Submit I saw as I was touching the button that I had forgotten to check that box to indicate I received the product for free (it’s not automatic, that tag). I went to edit the review, but that doesn’t seem to be an option on the iOS version of the Steam app, so I had to wait until I got back to my PC (and remembered) in order to update it. I figured since I was up front about it in the review, forgetting to click the button wouldn’t be a huge deal. I did update it not much later, in fact it was later that same afternoon, so I’m not sure how old @lordkosc 's screenshot of the review is, but presumably prior to my update.

And to clarify, I did get a key from the developer, and that’s the key I played with. Later, since I enjoyed the game so much, I wanted to show my support to the devs so I gift a copy to @ShivaX as he also likes these kinds of games. Then yesterday morning when I was getting ready to go for my walk the devs actually slid into my DM’s and asked me to write a review - they didn’t need it to be positive, just some sort of thoughts on the game, and I thought that was more than fair, so I complied right away… though typing that while walking was a huge PITA.

#78

Great first impression from the first map and a half. Exceptional UI (couple places they could add tooltips & such but clearly designed with some proper thought behind it). Art style is surprisingly inviting, looks better in motion than in stills.

Magic system reminds me of Spectromancer more than anything. Spectromancer is awesome so that’s fine. I think that’s where the game needs the most work though; numbers are all over the place (6 damage for a spell? Really?) and the UI is not great. But still, I think the underlying design totally works and gives the player a lot of levers to mess around with in terms of how you generate & spend essence.