First Impressions

[solops]

This game reminds me of Dominions-3, from what I have seen. How does it compare?

[Rosseau]

Have you played Dominions 3? I don't think they are much alike.

[FroBodine]

Well, maybe I spoke too soon, and I apologize Fabio. I am still on the Human campaign. I just read the comments on this forum, and it sounded like the first few campaigns were very easy, leading up to the one true final campaign. I should not comment on what I have not played yet.

I am having a bit of trouble with the trolls in the human campaign. I guess I should get some siege units, because I cannot beat the last two cities guarded by the uber troll. I forgot I could buy siege engines, so I will try again with one of these and see how it goes. I guess these missions are like puzzles, and you have to figure out the exact unit composition to beat them. My one cavalry unit, three archers, one regular infantry, one light infantry, and one hero cavalry (I forget his name), are just not getting it done. They cannot penetrate those last two trolls sitting in the city and village.

[henri51]

After playing a bit, it is my impression that this campaign consists of small tactical puzzles. Although this game has more and better units (archers shoot from 3 hexes away for example), I amnot sure that I don't prefer the larger and more beautiful maps and more strategic aspects of the free game Battle for Wesnoth.

[FabioBelsanti]

ORIGINAL: henri51

After playing a bit, it is my impression that this campaign consists of small tactical puzzles. Although this game has more and better units (archers shoot from 3 hexes away for example), I amnot sure that I don't prefer the larger and more beautiful maps and more strategic aspects of the free game Battle for Wesnoth.

Please play the whole game, you'll find larger maps and a lot of strategy and tactics typical of a true wargame.

[ComradeP]

The missions where I'm fighting the dragons are unfortunately not as exciting as they could've been. The maps are still fairly small, I have to scroll at most 2-3 hex rows and that's mostly for the initial deployment area.

The AI, in every mission, seems to have 2 main behaviour patterns:

-defending certain objectives and remaining fairly passive.
-attacking with most of the units not defending objectives (usually a unit in the objective and a ranged unit in support), even disregarding odds.

In the missions against the dragons, that means the AI will send a couple of waves of units against my forces. The attackers often attack at bad odds and tend to suffer high losses for little gain. They are quickly destroyed. They ignore whether there's a unit in support and in many cases also ignore defensive strength it seems.

The dragon usually remains fairly passive, until an objective is captured (when it will suddenly start to attack and will occupy the objective if you leave it open) or it decides to kill one of my weak units.

There's also the issue of objectives either being achieved or not achieved. You can't lose an objective if you've achieved it. If you lose control over an objective, you still get the points for it. If the enemy takes on of the objectives you needed to defend, you'll lose the points for it even if you take it back. The latter is visible in the first defense of Fabel, where the AI has much better units than your initial line and will take the military encampment on the first turn because the rookie heavy infantry there is too weak.

Just moving in range of AI units can trigger the suicidal wave attacks. It's like the Soviets in WitE: the most efficient way for the Germans to damage them is letting them attack at poor odds, as the casualties they sustain when attacking are often higher than those you can cause.

The first two campaigns were enjoyable and challenging, the Dwarven campaign was a bit easy, and the final campaign is thus far mostly a challenge in terms of getting an Epic victory on time, which depends mostly on the rolls you get against the dragon.

I've also noticed an issue with one of the missions: if you move into/capture the Beholder tower before capturing all the magic circles, you still get an epic victory and the speech that a powerful ally has joined, but Endhor isn't actually freed and won't join you. The secondary objectives header is also still in Italian, like those in the abandoned mine mission.

[FabioBelsanti]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

The missions where I'm fighting the dragons are unfortunately not as exciting as they could've been. The maps are still fairly small, I have to scroll at most 2-3 hex rows and that's mostly for the initial deployment area.

The AI, in every mission, seems to have 2 main behaviour patterns:

-defending certain objectives and remaining fairly passive.
-attacking with most of the units not defending objectives (usually a unit in the objective and a ranged unit in support), even disregarding odds.

In the missions against the dragons, that means the AI will send a couple of waves of units against my forces. The attackers often attack at bad odds and tend to suffer high losses for little gain. They are quickly destroyed. They ignore whether there's a unit in support and in many cases also ignore defensive strength it seems.

The dragon usually remains fairly passive, until an objective is captured (when it will suddenly start to attack and will occupy the objective if you leave it open) or it decides to kill one of my weak units.

There's also the issue of objectives either being achieved or not achieved. You can't lose an objective if you've achieved it. If you lose control over an objective, you still get the points for it. If the enemy takes on of the objectives you needed to defend, you'll lose the points for it even if you take it back. The latter is visible in the first defense of Fabel, where the AI has much better units than your initial line and will take the military encampment on the first turn because the rookie heavy infantry there is too weak.

Just moving in range of AI units can trigger the suicidal wave attacks. It's like the Soviets in WitE: the most efficient way for the Germans to damage them is letting them attack at poor odds, as the casualties they sustain when attacking are often higher than those you can cause.

The first two campaigns were enjoyable and challenging, the Dwarven campaign was a bit easy, and the final campaign is thus far mostly a challenge in terms of getting an Epic victory on time, which depends mostly on the rolls you get against the dragon.

I've also noticed an issue with one of the missions: if you move into/capture the Beholder tower before capturing all the magic circles, you still get an epic victory and the speech that a powerful ally has joined, but Endhor isn't actually freed and won't join you. The secondary objectives header is also still in Italian, like those in the abandoned mine mission.

I'm sorry if you do not like the last campaign.

I find interesting in this campaign the chance to lead the heroes together and have the Human, Dwarven and Elven armies recruitable together.

Maps are larger and battles more challenging than before.

Dragons AI is very difficult to balance. Dragons are really powerful and the risk is that they could really destroy the armies of the less experienced players.

Probably we had to develop a difficulty setting, but we had not the time to do.

Thanks again for your detailed feedbacks and the bugs/errors reports.

[ComradeP]

My criticism might sound a bit harsh, but it isn't intended that way: I still feel the game has enough content for the price, and that it is overall enjoyable, there are just a handful of things where I had the feeling there were some missed chances in terms of how to make the game more exciting.

I agree with the argument that the game might quickly become too difficult with a tweaked AI, particularly if the AI uses its area of effect spells well. The Dragon, if using its freedom of movement through ZOCs, could fairly easily kill weak units, or just kill a hero resulting in a failed mission.

Like you, I also like being able to field a mixed army, with the strengths of all races combined (my army isn't entirely "min/maxed" to full efficiency currently, as I want to keep some infantry from all races in my army).

If I disliked the game, I wouldn't be playing all the campaigns;)

With some minor changes, like a slightly different AI behaviour and the AI not attacking units in terrain with significant defense bonuses as often as it does now, it would already become a more varied and even more entertaining experience. A slight redesign of some levels, placing secondary objectives closer to primary objectives so it becomes more difficult to miss secondary objectives, could also be an improvement for the handful of scenarios where it can be a problem to get to the secondary objectives before meeting the primary ones (such as the scenarios where you have to kill certain enemy units, or kill an X number of enemy units).

Considering the limitations of flash, I still feel you and the rest of the team did a good job.

[FabioBelsanti]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

My criticism might sound a bit harsh, but it isn't intended that way: I still feel the game has enough content for the price, and that it is overall enjoyable, there are just a handful of things where I had the feeling there were some missed chances in terms of how to make the game more exciting.

I agree with the argument that the game might quickly become too difficult with a tweaked AI, particularly if the AI uses its area of effect spells well. The Dragon, if using its freedom of movement through ZOCs, could fairly easily kill weak units, or just kill a hero resulting in a failed mission.

Like you, I also like being able to field a mixed army, with the strengths of all races combined (my army isn't entirely "min/maxed" to full efficiency currently, as I want to keep some infantry from all races in my army).

If I disliked the game, I wouldn't be playing all the campaigns;)

With some minor changes, like a slightly different AI behaviour and the AI not attacking units in terrain with significant defense bonuses as often as it does now, it would already become a more varied and even more entertaining experience. A slight redesign of some levels, placing secondary objectives closer to primary objectives so it becomes more difficult to miss secondary objectives, could also be an improvement for the handful of scenarios where it can be a problem to get to the secondary objectives before meeting the primary ones (such as the scenarios where you have to kill certain enemy units, or kill an X number of enemy units).

Considering the limitations of flash, I still feel you and the rest of the team did a good job.

I know you are a veteran strategy-war-gamer and beta tester and and it is clear that your comments are constructive.

I agree with you that the game, for its price, it is definitely valid.

As you know from the development diary, even I would not have wanted to develop this project in flash and I wanted to have more resources, time and people, to make this game not only good but epic.

Good luck for the final battles!

[FroBodine]

ORIGINAL: Fabivs


Dragons AI is very difficult to balance. Dragons are really powerful and the risk is that they could really destroy the armies of the less experienced players.

In my opinion, I don't think this should be a factor, especially for the last campaign. The last campaign should be the toughest. The less experienced players should still be learning the game on the easier campaigns. If you design a game to cater to less experienced players, then the game does not post enough of a challenge. As long as a well developed strategy and good tactics can beat a mission, then that's good. Please don't dumb down (for lack of a better term) the game or AI to help the beginning players.

Matrix Games and Slitherine sells grognard level wargames. Sure, you want everyone to have a good time, but the people who buy games here want a tough challenge.

[ComradeP]

OK, after a few days of not playing the game, I finished it. The final battle was a bit of an anticlimax. Without spoiling too much, if you just Freeze the ultimate bad guy or dragons, killing them becomes really easy. Magic resistance or immunities of some sort would help the stronger enemy units a lot.

The flash engine also suffered from pretty serious slowdowns when multiple area of effect spells were active, which was particularly visible in the Forest of the Death mission with all the altars casting Poison Cloud each turn.

When facing Khudruz (?), I couldn't get close to the secondary objective as he moved right into my line of units, so I more or less had to kill him to prevent him from killing some of my weaker units.

The final campaign felt a bit too methodical: kill supporting units, gank the dragon/ultimate bad guy with everything (with Endhor, this becomes easier as you can Curse them), restart if the enemy gets a critical on one of your units or a hero, repeat. The final battles would've been quite a bit more difficult without Endhor though, because the player's heroes have low HP (when you've upgraded attack) compared to enemy units and heroes and no other friendly unit can cast mass heal unless you have clerics (I prefer the Elven magic user due to the buffs she can give).

Oddity: in the final mission, even if you capture the two Chaos Circles, the secondary objective is not noted as being achieved (possibly only after moving units off of the circles after capturing them).

[ecc83tad]

Very good game! i liked it too much![:)], for be perfect only i could add a scrolling with the mouse, the system with arrows works ok but in the turn`s beginning you must use the keyboard,...i had a lot of fun with this game, i played 2 times full because only if you win epic victorys...could play extra scenarios, tactically is very complex but it is easy to play (if you compare it with pc board´s wargames) like the SSI series games, tactically and strategically is superior to this SSI games because the terrain factor...is more important, the face of the units is a decisive factor, the good use of the magic too has a important role, you can admin the upgrade points of your units(like a role game), the different objetives in each mission do it very fun,...really an awesome game with thounsand of new great ideas in this genre...where only existed the SSI games(and now the great Panzer Corps series, Drums of war, and this game Eukarion Wars), continue with the good work please!,...and...if somebody know another game in this style with this quality....please...say me it that i`ll buy it