Hi,
Overall a very good game. I jotted down some suggestions I thought would help improve the game.
- Update the manual to cover all game mechanics, such as economic treaties. Explain the factors involved in faction relationships. Explain damage calculation for attack and defense.
- When creating a game let computer randomly generate a new sovereign for an opponent. True, the random abilities and skills might not mesh but it would add an element of surprise.
- Add a greater variety with the troop types of different factions. Slight differences in equipment aren't enough. I am aware that there are some more major differences with certain factions.
- Make spell of making victory condition more difficult. Perhaps increase the casting time to give the AI a chance to intervene. 10 turns is not a long time of the AI to penetrate your borders and stop the spell.
- Have more 'world wonder' improvements and improvements that are not simple economic buffs - like Civ's the Great Library offereing a free technolocy. How about some type of United Nations building that makes it more difficult for factions to declar war? Things that shake up some of the mechanics.
- Add a scavenger trait which allows the winning side of a battle to scavenge a portion of the materials from units lost in combat after the battle.
- Improve the tactical AI to pick better targets for their special abilities and spells. Berserker is used too early and causes units damage before they get close enough to enter melee. Spiders use web against characters unlikely to need to move like spell casters and ranged units.
- Have web ability also decrease accuracy and spell mastery since the unit is entangled.
- Add an audible cue for an idle city. Better yet, have an option to get a popup message when a turn is ending with an idle city. It would need to be an option since sometimes cities are left idle intentionally. The best case would be to have a global option for a popup message that can be set to ignore in individual cities.
-The hiergameon falls short in several areas. The details about city improvements are only displayed in a tooltip instead of the item’s description which leads to unnecessary hovering and waiting. To avoid confusion it would be nice if spells and other items only available to a particular faction were marked as such.
- Some of the fonts at 1920x1080 can be a little small. Luckily the text is clearly rendered and the size was never an obstacle for me, but I can see people with less than perfect eyesight having a bit of trouble.
- Some abilities or spells have a cool down period, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to see that for your enemies in battle. It would be nice to know how frequently that earth elemental can hurl a bolder at my guys.
- According to the tech tree the Destiny’s Guard unit should unlock with Leatherworking, but Training is also needed due to its shield. This caused me to waste a significant period of time while I tried to figure out why I couldn’t train the unit. There are other units that have the same problem.
- A couple times during the course of one of my games the unit path finding on the map didn’t work correctly. I had a clear path to an enemy unit and ordered one of mine to move next to it. It high tailed it in the opposite direction – appearing to take an alternate route. When I ordered it to attack the enemy unit it moved as expected.
- A combat log exists detailing the different exchanges in battle, but it would be nice if it provided more detailed information, such as the % chance to hit (accuracy and dodge), attack, defense, and spell mastery, etc… of each exchange. This would allow a player to more easily see why their troops performed how they did.
- The player is presented with a ranking and score at the end of the game, but there doesn’t seem to be any hall of fame or high score list. These types of games usually have such a feature to mark your accomplishments (time sinks) for posterity.
Again, very good game. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to review it. For those interested it can be found here.
