Initial Thoughts

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All Forums >> [Current Games From Matrix.] >> [[Fantasy]] >> Sovereignty: Crown of Kings >> Initial Thoughts

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Initial Thoughts - 4/22/2015 2:16:55 AM

desicat

Posts: 542
Joined: 5/25/2008
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I have had the opportunity to play several scenarios using various countries and I would state that the game runs relatively smoothly at this point for an EA game. I have only experienced a "crash" during computer controlled combat.

Realm Diversity - This is a strength. Each Realm has a unique background, "feel", military and/or economic objectives, and unit roster. I would like to see either another Orc or Dwarf Realm in either the far west or southwest portion of the continent, just to break up the mass of human Realms. I also like how each Realm has differing numbers of agents and heroes. To me this adds to their different "feel". Many are calling for more heroes, agents, and forts via building options - I'm not sure I agree. Maybe and additional hero or agent could be made available per a set number of captured provinces or landmarks?

Combat - I played on the "hard" difficulty. In the tactical battles the AI made some solid moves, but it could make better use of archers, siege units, and overall army diversity. The strategic battles seemed to be too bloodless and not very decisive. I do like how both methods of battle are required - it makes one decide where to place leaders for best effect. The various unit special abilities add excellent flavor to the game. It would be nice if the realms had more unique unit cards instead of sharing.

Diplomacy - The UI needs work as it is clunky and there isn't always a lot to do. Trade is nice but individual goods tend to pile up over time. I don't think the "good" "evil" "neutral" alignments should have as much weight on relations as the current geopolitical situation and current Realm power levels.

Economy - Each province can be upgraded by a cost dependent upon their racial affinity. Elves can build up forests cheaper than dwarves - who can build cheaply in the mountains, etc. I have fount the this needs to be balanced as over the course of conquest many boarder provinces end up with a zero economy and never get built back up. It is more economical to build up the core capital province as it is always aligned with the racial affinity. Realms like Icespire would take forecver to build up a decent economy with all the surrounding plains provinces.

Magic - This seems underpowered and not really worth the gold investment. It may be better to use resources like "alchemy" or "contraband" to cast or research spells. The spells need to be reviewed so they make more sense for the countries involved, and not every country needs to have a magic track. Maybe some Heroes could come with a few spell powers?

Leaders - It would be nice if the leaders were unique with individual cards, or at least unique to each race or realm. Powers like "Taskmaster" are great thematically for Orcs but don't make seance to me for humans. Things could be jumbled up by having different race leaders available as mercenaries, or possibly available on the open market.

Campaigns - Each Realm has numerous campaigns to choose from, some are economic, conquest, or diplomatically oriented. It would be nice if there were differing branches for the campaigns to enhance replayability. Right now some of the campaigns are a bit too difficult or unbalanced, but that is part of EA.

I really enjoy the game. It currently isn't too deep, although many on the Steam pages are requesting to make it more like EU, CK, or Dominions - I hope the developers don't send the game into the weeds. They are taking suggestions and I'm sure they are planning on implementing much more depth into the game.

Post #: 1

RE: Initial Thoughts - 4/22/2015 11:31:42 AM

Breca

Posts: 231
Joined: 12/19/2012
Status: offline

Many valid observations here, desicat. I'll touch on a couple here.

Campaign objectives are uneven at the moment, and will get a balancing pass. Some players have made observations on specific realm objectives, and those are already tasked for balancing.

Magic is at present underpowered, mostly because other systems have become more prominent over time. I think Landmarks are also in that category. Some interesting landmark features that have been somewhat eclipsed by an overall "powering up" of the rest of the game. We definitely want the Landmarks to present a bit stronger thought-provoking locoalized decision areas.

Keep up the feedback and enjoy the game as it evolves!

Good Hunting!

Breca

(in reply to desicat)

Post #: 2

RE: Initial Thoughts - 5/5/2015 4:23:01 AM

Jim D Burns

Posts: 4013
Joined: 2/25/2002
From: Salida, CA.
Status: offline

Played around with the game a lot over the past few days and am really enjoying it even with all the crashes. Some things I think need to be addressed in game:

The diplomacy page needs a new tab that allows players to access the same pages players see for countries when they select them initially. Currently there is no way to tell what race, alignment or mission goals each of the different nations may have unless you leave the game and create a new game to look at the starting pop-ups. They are awesome and need to be available to be seen by players in game.

Overall I feel it is too easy to conquer provinces in game. I think provinces should get weak free militia/peasant type units if attacked. One or two units per economy level of a province would suffice. Currently it seems far too easy to see entire regions of the map get gobbled up in no time. In one game Jotun had conquered all of the north all the way across to Dragon Hold within 30-40 turns of game start. You could make this a �tougher provinces� option at game start or something for players to choose as an option.

Conquered capital provinces should never be pacified. Currently a conquered capital loses the risk of rebellion if you build its economy to level 5. Building the economy should reduce the risk of rebellion somewhat, but players should be forced to keep a full 20 unit army in capital regions to have any chance of stopping rampant rebellion. And if rebellions succeed in a capital region they should revert to the nation that originally owned the province and become active as a nation in game again. Capital provinces should have much higher risk of rebellion overall, 10% or 20% higher than it is now.

Resource trades should be able to be set up for persistent trades. So for instance if I want to trade iron for salt I should be able to set up a trade so every turn the trade is made so I don�t have to constantly go into the trade screen to check markets. Setting it up for a certain number of turns would be good as well, so having a trade occur every turn for 10 turns and then it stops for example.

If I select a card or province and it locks in the top right window, currently it unlocks and drops away as soon as I move the mouse. This is aggravating if the locked card has a scroll down arrow as there is no way to read the text. Either make it so a card will not auto-unlock or have the mouse wheel allow players to scroll the card text without having to be hovering over the card first.

If you disband the last unit in an army your hero gets disbanded too. There needs to be a pop-up warning players they are about to delete their hero. Preferably the hero would not get deleted though.

Auto battles should not have to be clicked on six times just to auto resolve to the end of a single fight. Please give us an option in the settings menu to simply skip all the mouse clicks and have them auto resolve themselves to the end. Watching each phase might be interesting the first dozen or so battles but then it turns into a huge tedious click fest and becomes annoying as hell. I found myself turning off allied battles just to cut down on all the clicks, I would really like the Intel on those fights, but the clicking gets to be far too much.

Jim

< Message edited by Jim D Burns -- 5/5/2015 9:09:09 AM >

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RE: Initial Thoughts - 5/5/2015 12:40:36 PM

budd

Posts: 2972
Joined: 7/4/2009
From: Tacoma
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

Auto battles should not have to be clicked on six times just to auto resolve to the end of a single fight. Please give us an option in the settings menu to simply skip all the mouse clicks and have them auto resolve themselves to the end. Watching each phase might be interesting the first dozen or so battles but then it turns into a huge tedious click fest and becomes annoying as hell. I found myself turning off allied battles just to cut down on all the clicks, I would really like the Intel on those fights, but the clicking gets to be far too much.

Jim

It's useful because you can retreat if things are going badly. Sometimes ill attack with an army without a hero for a few phases to weaken an army then follow up with my hero stack.

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*I'm in the Wargamer middle ground*
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Post #: 4

RE: Initial Thoughts - 5/5/2015 1:21:31 PM

Breca

Posts: 231
Joined: 12/19/2012
Status: offline

Thanks for your feedback Jim. We'll add a pop-up confirmation for disbanding those heroes when the player disbands the last unit in a stack.

A couple UI tips that may not be immediately apparent.

You can set up Trade per turn by the highlighting and clicking on the Resource in the Your Demands column. Set Lump sum to 0 and Per Turn to 1. This is something that will need to be more apparent the future.

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< Message edited by Breca -- 5/5/2015 2:20:41 PM >

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Post #: 5

RE: Initial Thoughts - 5/5/2015 1:22:12 PM

Breca

Posts: 231
Joined: 12/19/2012
Status: offline

You can rapid resolve auto-battles using the arrow button in the lower left corner. For your own battles, this will simply speed up the attack wave. For foreign battles, this will rapidly resolve the entire battle.

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RE: Initial Thoughts - 5/5/2015 6:44:02 PM

Jim D Burns

Posts: 4013
Joined: 2/25/2002
From: Salida, CA.
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Breca

You can rapid resolve auto-battles using the arrow button in the lower left corner. For your own battles, this will simply speed up the attack wave. For foreign battles, this will rapidly resolve the entire battle.

Understood, but I'm asking for the ability to bypass the clicking all together and simply auto resolve without needing to click the axe then the arrow then the axe then the arrow, etc...

Maybe add a new button next to the axe that takes the fight to the end in one click?

Jim

< Message edited by Jim D Burns -- 5/5/2015 7:43:56 PM >

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RE: Initial Thoughts - 5/5/2015 6:52:30 PM

Jim D Burns

Posts: 4013
Joined: 2/25/2002
From: Salida, CA.
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Breca
You can set up Trade per turn by the highlighting and clicking on the Resource in the Your Demands column. Set Lump sum to 0 and Per Turn to 1. This is something that will need to be more apparent the future.

Great to know thanks. That said I have never seen the AI use this so it needs to make use of per turn trades. Had it used per turn trades I would have eventually figured it out but since it doesn't use them I assumed it wasn't in there.

Jim

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