My Observations of 5.4

from SorcererKing Forums

Gettino close to the finish line now! Hope the rest of development goes smoothly! Looking forward to the final product. As I've said many times before, this easily ranks among the best fantast 4X games of all time. That's not hyperbolic. 

That being said, I think 5.4 was a move in the wrong direction. Weapons balance has swung too far in the negative, random mobs are ridiculous, flagons are nearly non-existent, and the extra Urxen for the SK leads to non-existent chances for actually expanding, as my three games have proven. Scouts being targeted is much more of an issue than you'd think, as the constant need to fight and escape is mana draining and the alternative, letting the scout die, ruins any chance you have at scouting out areas before the SK colonizes. Not to mention that it further handicaps the player by making Rival faction discovery very difficult and finding heroes to recruit just as much so.

Speaking of Rivals, they're now even less likely to expand (and they were already very unlikely to expand) because the SK is busy gobbling up EVERY SINGLE SETTLEABLE AREA, so that new mechanic meant to create tension is nearly non-existent.

Also, there are too many shards being spawned at every level. I can't possibly defend them all when there's 17 on a small map with "few shards" selected. Why was that changed the last couple builds? 7-8 on a small map is much more feasible and fun. 

Speaking of crystal shards, as has been reported already, attacking enemy mobs that sit on shards is impossible and moving your armies to do so does not initiate an attack, but rather stacks your army on top of the enemy army. Big big and pretty frustrating. 

Laaltly, I continue to see the FOW bug where sometimes (too frequently) when a game is saved and reloaded, the FOW disappears and even reloading doesn't fix it. Hell, you can load an eearlier save of the same game and the problem persists.

Unfortunately, this patch was a bit of a step backwards and some of the changes really don't make much sense to me. What's the plan moving forward?

14,273 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from SorcererKing Forums Top

Yeah, I fear this update was a 'too many cook in the kitchen' situation  :(  Lots of us making lots of different changes resulted in some over-compensation.

We're actually rolling back the weapon tweaks,  and putting in some code to tone down those mobs you're seeing everywhere. And I'm looking into the scout issue as we speak (Edit: Fixed the Scout Bug!)

Tons of stuff going on over here - we'll keep you guys posted as changes are made and bugs are fixed! 

Reply #2 from SorcererKing Forums Top

Very good comments XWerewolfX :thumbsup:

 

Thanks for replying Scott.  Good news >> Scout fix= really good news :w00t:

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from SorcererKing Forums Top

My impression is similar:

 

One thing I do think should change:   SK at higher threats needs to send up far fewer mooks, and save up (if he has to) for forces that can give the hero stack a challenge.   95% of my battles were auto-resolves just out of sheer monotony (and this was on normal settings)  On hard settings, I consider it an unplayable slog right now where it's more grind than strategy.

 

Also, I think on normal it should be easier for SK to get to threat level 1 or 2.  It's too easy to keep him at 0 for too long.

 

BTW the priestess's building when they get to build clerics, are they supposed to be able to get mages from it as well?  If not, minor bug.

 

Reply #4 from SorcererKing Forums Top

Yikes, kinda sounds like the SK team isn't really getting a week off...

I am glad to hear that changes are being made and the scout issue is fixed! Huzzah! That was probably more important than most realized!

Reply #5 from SorcererKing Forums Top

Quoting Alstein, reply 3

One thing I do think should change: SK at higher threats needs to send up far fewer mooks, and save up (if he has to) for forces that can give the hero stack a challenge. 95% of my battles were auto-resolves just out of sheer monotony (and this was on normal settings) On hard settings, I consider it an unplayable slog right now where it's more grind than strategy.

 

Very good points.  Like the idea of Sk saving up his forces.  On normal my hardest fights were against monster lairs (some were V hard).  SK armies were, like you, auto resolves