Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: sath

I bought the game first thing this morning. First thing try not to confuse this game with the original Fantasy General. I notice some bugs in the game right away. You start the game with 2 light infantry. They don't appear to give any advantage for anything combat wise except they move faster than the medium infantry. They don't appear to have combat bonuses in difficult terrain. The cavalry units that you buy don't appear to be that powerful. Perhaps I just need to play more to get better feel for the game.

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ORIGINAL: ComradeP

I've been playing the game for a couple of hours, it was already available at 4 pm GMT+1, so seemingly a bit earlier than expected.

Aside from the random graphics glitch I didn't run into any crashes thus far.

The manual is good enough, but clearly not written by a native English speaker which results in some descriptions being somewhat confusing.

Some descriptions in the game are also still in Italian, such as in the abandoned mine mission.

The fundamentals work fine, but a bit more polish wouldn't hurt.

The Courage of a Knight campaign is interesting thus far, although the difficulty is somewhat random. I finished some missions on the final turn for an epic victory and some well in advance.

I'm not a big fan of super units appearing behind my lines, or those Harpies which ignore ZOCs and go straight for your weakest units, but a couple of restarts and switching deployment locations solve that problem.

The AI is adequate thus far, although the suicidal charges also present in the AAR still happen. Units in cities also don't seem to attack units adjacent to them, even if they're weak.

The graphics are fine for what the game wants to be, the unit counters tend to have enough detail to compensate for the simple yet effective graphics. The graphics are not ugly by any means.

As you can't change units from one type to another as far as I know, you'll end up selling your veteran units of weaker unit types (like light infantry or heavy infantry) at some point presumably. This also means having to level up the new units during more difficult missions, requiring careful unit management.

All in all, it does give that "one more turn" feeling, but I wonder what the replayability will be like after I complete the campaigns. For 20 euro's (including taxes), it's a mid-price game and I feel it's worth it thus far, but I will wait with my final comments on the price/content ratio until I've completed the game.

The game plays like an advanced flash game, it's more complicated than I expected. My compliments to the developers for dealing with the limits imposed by using flash in a way that makes the game this entertaining.

I intended to write a small AAR, but that will have to wait for tomorrow, or until the next campaign as I wouldn't want to spoil some of the surprises.

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ORIGINAL: ComradeP

Hmm, the AI issues suddenly become very visible in the Dwarf campaign, as the AI units keep making suicidal charges against my Dwarven units in the mountains. The Human and Elven campaigns were more enjoyable than the Dwarven campaign for that reason, as the Dwarven campaign was a walk in the park of sorts.

On the other hand, the high level Infernal units are nearly impossible to damage. I only won the last mission in time for an epic victory due to some lucky critical hits. I didn't capture the objective in the upper right, though. Units in any hex with buildings are really, really tough. Getting siege equipment in range might've been possible (though still difficult with all the trolls around in the center), but I used the two I had to occupy the Dwarven temple on turn 1.

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ORIGINAL: Agathosdaimon

if this game had a skirmish mode that would definitely get my interest also, but i guess that relies on a game have a more dynamic ai?

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Trolls Have an Aggressive AI, it is not an error and I'm sorry if you don't like this behavior.

On the other hand Trolls have the regeneration and have a powerful damage.

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ORIGINAL: Fabivs


It's in this final campaign that you will see all the AI combined and I belive you'll not be disappointed.

Good Luck on the battlefield.

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ORIGINAL: jglazier

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ORIGINAL: Fabivs


It's in this final campaign that you will see all the AI combined and I belive you'll not be disappointed.

Good Luck on the battlefield.

Well, that is a problem for me. If it takes until the final campaign for the A.I. to give you a challenge, then the first three campaigns are kind of throw aways. That is basically 2/3rds of the game where there is not much challenge.

I sure hope there are more campaigns in the near future, or I think I have wasted my money, just to get to a single final good campaign. I like the game, but I don't think it's worth it to have three campaigns of easy peasy small battles, just to get to one last REAL campaign. Especially since there are no difficulty levels to make even the first campaigns much more of a challenge.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.