review of 3B so far

Thanks for the feedback.

Here's some answers that I hope help:

• Will check in on the infertility problem with the sovereign.  I know there were some changes made there.
• There are a TON of crashes we're working on right now.
• Lots of changes coming to tactical battles to make them deeper
• We won't be doing forging until post release (forging of magical items). It's a plot point in the game.

thanks frogboy.  appreciate all the work yall have been doing.

Can you clarify something about the forging of magical items? Why are we able to produce magical rings if forging is plot related? Or are those rings being merely "found" ?

Can you clarify something about the forging of magical items? Why are we able to produce magical rings if forging is plot related? Or are those rings being merely "found" ?

Babies are now a 1 in 250 chacne per turn, or suc.

Well ... I think goody huts should probably dissapear after they have been used ... unless the goody hut is a potential spawning site (and hasn't been fully explored yet)

I am not against having certain dungeons that can be explored multiple times until someone finally kills the boss and escapes alive. (potential to escape alive without killing the boss, and potential to kill the boss and die)

IF someone kills the boss and dies, someone else simply has to kill remaining enemies and then picks up the loot.

but yea, once the final boss/ final loot/ final quest of a Hut is completed, it should dissapear imho. Unless multiple players can use the site for the same quest. Then its a repeatable/ permanent I guess (and should probably be a spawn point for mooks)

I agree about the goodie hut issue. I think the basic idea (quests) is fine but the implementation could be a bit different. I might be willing to forgo huts altogether and deal with quests using a user interface of its own. In this case there would be a specific view containing all possible quests (visible based on adventure level). There would also be means to assign adventurers to quests and perhaps even automate them (I'm not a fan of micromanagement myself ). Even if the goodie huts remain, it would be nice to have a user interface for them.

It feels kind of strange that new places/monsters appear on the map even as you have explored it. That just doesn't feel plausible (perhaps there's some good reasoning for this approach). I'm aware that the game mechanics have been possibly designed this way to scale with the player (easier monsters early on ie.). It would still feel nicer if there was some quite fixed set of monsters initially that just grew in experience as the player does instead having many sudden spawns like now. Of course there could be tough monsters initially like now but it's up to the player to avoid those (it's supposed to be a dangerous world anyway ).

There's one area that's quite lacking from my point of view: automation. I would really like to be able to set production modes for cities (ie. focus on knowledge, food, whatnot), supply routes (amass an army in this place), adventure behavior (cautiousness, cautious adventurers should try to get reinforcements from the cities), waypoints ie. I suppose improvements on this side may well be on its way as I reckon the game gets kind of tedious once you have heaps of units/cities to manage. In this case you should be able to delegate the responsibility and focus on the interesting aspects of the game.

So far I have been quite impressed. I'm well aware it's nothing like the finished product being beta. Of course there are issues but nothing that cannot be solved in my view. It's going to be interesting to see it progress towards final release.

I couldn't disagree more. We need the Inns and other stuff to make the world seem more alive!

that would make me relay really happy, it feels all wrong without it.

Also it would me nice if adjacent allied armies get to participate in the combat that way you could get help from your allies in attacking and defending, like the Age of Wonders 2.

@sean w:

I know what you mean about a living world.  however, the spawn seems.....asymmetric? of the huts.  This gets frusturating 2/2 all the huts being in a certain location (like a prime city spot).  We can raze other cities.....but cant burn that inn down? why not .  

I think I disagree about automation. I suppose if the game became something where you had 20 cities to look over it would be tedious. I think players should be actively involved in the development of their cities, adventuring and such.

Yea ... an addition somewhere down the line where you are able to explore your own city (within a turn) and pick up quests or intel from the townsfolk.

This could be done relatively simply or very complex.

For instance of simple ... you have an overhead view of the city with certain Buildings highlighted ... you can click on a building to open a selection of dialogue trees, and talk to that person. Etc.

I really love 3b. Very stable on my system and much more fun than previous builds. Most of the problems I am seeing are typos/misspellings in text, and there was one time that I got into a tactical battle over some armor, and I lost to the spiders that were protecting it, but I still got the armor when my sovereign ported back to a city. I suppose conceivably he could have snagged it, but it seemed like I should have had to defeat the mobs protecting it to get the loot.

I am really looking forward to the full release.

(One misspelling I see a lot is the use of the word "earn" where the word intended is "urn". A typo I saw (I can;t remember where) was learning was spelled "leraning".

Research is looking very very good, but it still seems to take a while to develop much. Not necessarily a bad thing, I want games to be longer and feel more epic, which would not be the case if knowledge comes to quickly.

There is an epic setting.

Yeah it sucks that you can't fight in cities.  I don't get to cheat with my sovreign hit and run tactic...