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Messages - Kjara

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1
Skyward Collapse LPs/AARs / Re: First full game
« on: May 07, 2013, 08:04:20 PM »
Ah heh ok.  Looks like this may be changed in the .805 patch anyhow :)


2
Skyward Collapse LPs/AARs / Re: First full game
« on: May 07, 2013, 03:02:13 AM »
Ah, so there are two types of buildings: Town and Resource.  The pig farm counts as a Resource building (not a Town building), so it can't be built there.

3
Skyward Collapse LPs/AARs / Re: First full game
« on: May 07, 2013, 01:53:08 AM »
"Building a Pig Farm. Says “Too close to a town center: you can only place Town Buildings in the two rings next to town centers.”   Typo? Maybe I don't understand what a “ring” is. I place it three spaces away."

I actually opened a Mantis report regarding the two rings thing myself.  I tried as hard as I could to try to understand what the "ring" represented, so glad it's not only me who was confused by this.

I think the ring concept originally comes from civilization, where each town can work some number of tiles around it, often referred to as a ring

The rings there are slightly different, but the same idea:
For example, in Civ 4:
X222X
21112
21T12
21112
X222X

X is not in any ring, 2 is in the 2nd ring, 1 is in the first ring, T is the town center
(The idea here was that you started being able to work the tiles labeled 1, then after the town developed a bit, could also work the tiles labels 2, so they were referred to as the first and second rings).

Here (I think):
22222
21112
21T12
21112
22222


2 is in the 2nd ring, 1 is in the first ring, T is the town center

4
Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - Victory Points
« on: May 07, 2013, 01:43:09 AM »
I'll wait to see how its actually implemented, but do I think there needs to be some sort of score/VP system in place.  One possibility is tying it in some fashion with the edicts?  Aka, if your two edicts are have "Dudes kill each other" and "Achieve 10 Town centers", you could gain VPs from dudes killing each other, and for each Towncenter that is in place at the end of the game.

This would potentially allow for two things:  First, it might let the player tweak the difficulty of the edict (Aka, the player sets the goal and the edict in question).  Second, you could require X points of "dudes kill each other" and Y points of "Achieve 10 Town centers" but X+Y+Z total points, where the player is allowed to make up Z from either of the scoring types available, depending on how the game progresses, giving the player a challenge with a bit of flexibility. 

5
Skyward Collapse LPs/AARs / Re: Alpha Feedback
« on: May 04, 2013, 03:10:18 PM »
Logs can be restrictive early on.  Right now, I'm having more trouble with Bread than anything else...

I still haven't tried the Military Commandment out...

Bread became more of an issue later I agree.

6
Skyward Collapse LPs/AARs / Re: Alpha Feedback
« on: May 04, 2013, 03:24:06 AM »
Finished out the game, mostly just placing down a few tokens here and there if the battle started to swing too far one way or the other. 
Felt it was perhaps a bit too easy to recover from one side winning, since as noted above, you can use both sides turns to help fix the problem.  Not sure what the solution is here, is there really any reason that the two sides have separate action counts?

I thought that the tutorial + the building tooltips gave more than enough info to play, however it did take me a while to figure out that I really needed lots of resource sites to support decent sized armies on both sides.  In fact I think I went a bit overboard here, and probably didn't have enough workers, since many of my production sites were still stuck at full capacity most of the time.  Would also be nice to be able to put down collection points that don't have the requirements of town centers (distance + needing military to deal with crime).

Save attached if anyone wants to see what the world looked like in the end. 

7
Skyward Collapse LPs/AARs / Re: SC Score Contest!
« on: May 04, 2013, 03:10:45 AM »
491K with default tutorial settings.  Edit:  Actually 495k after the last round's combat.

8
Skyward Collapse LPs/AARs / Re: Alpha Feedback
« on: May 04, 2013, 03:00:11 AM »
Just finished round 2, thoughts:

Is it intended that you can have one side build resource buildsing for the other (indirectly, by placing them in an easily conqured area)?   Additonally, seems odd that Greece could drop a couple of myth tokens in the safe, back area of the norse to power them up.  Would increase the difficulty if you couldn't use blue actions to help red and vice versa.

Feel that the extra influence tools are quite needed(hopefully the planned god tokens, etc will handle this).  I've got a decent stalemate going, but it doesn't feel like I can do much besides keep placing more and more production structures, and the ocasionally new town center.   

Possibly because so many of the options are not yet in the game, but it almost feels like the game is too long (even on the default setting).  Many of the boardgames where you have to balance buildup of resources vs point generation that I'd like to compare this to (Kingsberg, Saint Petersberg, Through the Ages) force you into hard choices because you don't have time for everything.   Hopefully the challenges, editcs and other things still to be added will take care of this issue.

I found myself skipping the unit animations every round, as it took far too long to watch 100+ units fight each round.  Really need some sort of summary, besides just a forest of green and red numbers rising :).   Also, need some way to picked out enhanced units (such as the one with adamantite).  Only reason I spot him ocasionally is the ocasional large number rising.

9
Skyward Collapse LPs/AARs / Re: Alpha Feedback
« on: May 03, 2013, 11:01:25 PM »
Updated to 8.002

Building upgrades.  Might be more interesting if they also gave other boosts, such as better converstion rates or resource production rates.   Since most of my turns so far seem to be building resource nodes to fuel the increased production of units, it might make it easier on the player if they could just upgrade production facilities rather than having to keep placing them?


Turn 7: Greeks are starting to overrun the Norse, as they have 3 infantry units avail at the start, vs the two of norse (since you can't build either wells or breweries yet).    Also just had a crash bug--reported on mantis.

Arsonists seem to like to suicide against units, perhaps they should instead sometimes prefer to run at buildings?


Regarding resources:  Might be nice to have the resources available to each faction somewhere when you are on that factions turn, rather than having to mouse over the town hall each time.  (just symbols and numbers somewhere or something?)  Also, +/- summary information for the turn so it would be easier to find which resources you need more if would be great.

Archery units seem poor on defense, as they tend to stand on their production building, and keep it from producing on the following rounds.  Perhaps have them prefer to move to a nearby hill or woods to shoot from?

Resource stockpiling:  There doesn't seem to be any disadvantage (besides the turn cost to build them), to producing lots of production buildings, and having a large surplus of resources seems to givee you the flexability to use unit upgrades to control the follow of battle. 


You probably shouldn't be able to place resource buildings anywhere on the map, since you can put red resource buildings next to blue for free points/distractions.


Bandit battering ram just ran through number of my buildings to hit a unit (doing 0 damage).

Building capture is a bit wierd.  When production buildings are captured without the town center falling, they sit at 0 hp/white.  Might it instead make more sense to have them switch so that the original owner can capture them back?

Town centers can be placed within 2 squares of resource squares, but the opposite is not true.  While I understand you are trying to prevent people from clogging up their building squares with resources, might be better to give a warning, but allow if the player wants to?

Cerebus might be too good at keeping things a stalemate (where both sides are losing units, but not buildings at a steady rate).  Might be balanced by making it so that building kills are much more important for score.  Might be too easy to game it by saving up 9 actions, and building a town center + 8 buildings somewhere vulnerable for the other team to kill though.

End of round 1.

10
Skyward Collapse LPs/AARs / Alpha Feedback
« on: May 03, 2013, 08:24:49 PM »
Just got home and updated to 8.001.    I'll try to add a summary of thoughts at the end, but for now, going to be whatever comes to mind:

I like the menu music, though its default might be a little bit loud(but easy to fix).  After updating, looked that the options a bit, but decided to launch with the default settings for the tutorial. 

I wonder if the player should have some sort of budget for the first 5 turns (point or otherwise), that goes away when it ends, rather than just making all buildings free -- as it seems like I have an incentive to priotirize the more expensive buildings (although at least a goodly number of them seem to be locked).  Have to see if that intuition plays out after a few games.

First turns:  Trying to place a blue town center in the lower right corner was a pain due to the tooltip for the town center being fixed to the lower right covering up where I wanted to place it(near the ruin).  Barracks had a worse issue(tooltip covered 80% of the map--Notice this is already reported by others).  (Note I am playing in windowed mode 1280-720).

Since resource buildings produce in the first 3 5 rounds, but barracks don't, seems optimal in most cases to get the resource buildings up first.  Might want to make them start to produce at turn 0?

Smelter and Sunstone shrine should be on the row below? (as they turn resources into other resources?)

# of actions remaning:  The location of this feels a bit odd, I keep trying to check the info bar at the top for it (perhaps it might fit better next to the round/turn info)?

Tooltip for barracks before placing it still claims I am missing a butcher + smithy even after I've built one.   Doesn't seem to be considering the buildings in the town that it will be placed in (reported on mantis).  Also related to the tooltip, might be nice to mark in some way any units you won't ever be able to build that game, such as the peltast/hersir the first few games, since you can't place a well?  I was building up the supply chain to them, then figured out that I needed to switch.  Also might be nice

Starting turns when units move.  Its rather had to follow how the units are moving.  Not sure how to fix this, perhaps a ghost trail that shows where that unit traveled this turn?  Also, the numbers rising over the buildings (production, crime) seem a bit jerky as they rise, and don't last long enough to really read all of them.

Minor typo:  Huscarl tooltip: A comboination (combination?) of ...

Balance wise, seems like logs are required for almost all buildings (and lumber for some weapons) and additionally is produced slower than most of the other resources.  Not sure how intended this is, but I didn't plan for it my first game (only built one woodcutter per faction--which also seems to be the only building that requires its own resource--might want to make this take stone), and managed to get myself quite blocked on logs.  Finally figured out I could just drop logs to fix this.

Units could stand to be a bit more salient (outline or something).  At times its hard to pick out a unit thats ontop of a building.

End of turn 5.

11
Skyward Collapse / Re: Details on multiplayer
« on: April 19, 2013, 06:26:21 PM »
Regarding not owning individual units, you could always have an influence system, where each unit has some belief/respect/fear whatever in each god, and have things based on that.  So at any given time, some units/buildings/tiles/whatever "belong" to you without you being in direct control, but can also be stolen.  (such as in carcassonne, where stealing pastures/castles is half the fun).

Random other thought for events: Something like each player chooses an event, then 20 turns later one of them is chosen at random gives you a nice mix of strategy + randomness and doesn't rely on the players actually controlling pieces/tiles (but would only work if there was some short term ownership/influence involved or different goals for the different players).  Or even in single player, you are given a list of 6 events, you get to veto 2 of them, then some number of turns later one of them is chosen at random (so you have some idea of whats coming, but only partial control).

12
Skyward Collapse / Re: Details on multiplayer
« on: April 19, 2013, 06:07:31 PM »
So I play a large number of various board games (mostly eurogames), just wanted to share a few mechanics that I think might map well to a competitive setting (idea dump):

Hidden, but global objectives.  One example of this would be the game Santa Cruz.  The idea here is each player has two objective cards that can be played to give points, but when played, they give points to everyone.  An example: one gives 3 points to each player for every river adjacent location they control.  So you never know exactly if someone has this card (as river's can be quite nice for expanding over a distance), but if you are too obvious about only grabbing river tiles, then everyone will suspect you have this card.  Another fun aspect here is that it costs a turn to play one, so it might be worth it if you meet a condition and one of your opponents is close, but it also sets you back  towards meeting the conditions your opponents might have.

Common global objectives that have a higher reward if less people have achieved them already (I.e. in Thrun and Taxis, the first player to finish each goal gets one more point than the 2nd person, who gets one more point than the third, etc). Even if you and another player achieve the same goals over the course of a game, the order you try to achieve them in can make a huge difference.

Some sort of limited resource to compete over.  See any worker placement game ever (such I.E Agricola,Stone Age, etc), most of the 4x simulators (Eclipse, Twilight Imperium) and many others (Saint Petersberg, Dominion/Thunderstone/Ascension, Vikings, Power Gridetc).  I suspect that this will already be in there in some fashion as all players are interacting with the existing locations and units for each of the two factions, but might be worth pushing for more of this, as it generally leads to more interaction between the players.  Such as in Eclipse, you might sacrifice an early turn to grab a crucial tech, and because of this lose out on being able to explore and control the direction of the wormholes in a crucial area.  Many of the boardgames that my group hasn't enjoyed lack much interaction, and it basically a bunch of people playing solitare against the same random draws.  One idea here that might not work well with simultaneous turns is having some global limit on the number of each type of action that the pool of players can take (scaling with number of players of course).  Not exactly sure the best way to work this into a simultaneous turn without rewarding someone who clicks/plays faster.  Another example would be power grid (bidding over the power plants and limited fuel supplies).  Could perhaps start each round with some sort of auction for access to something to add this in without going fully turnbased.

A food clock(or whatever you want to call it).  A prime example of this Agricola, where you need to feed your family every so often (with this ramping up later in the game so you have to balance development with short term goals).  You already seem to be hitting this with the edict idea.  This doesn't necessarily have to be a game loss, but could easily instead be significant point loss or some other sort of opportunity loss (don't gain access to some extra action if you fail this "quest") if you don't meet the criteria (see also games like Trajan).  (I.E, control 4 cities by turn 40, for each city you are missing, -10 points).  Having strict loss conditions can be poor if its intended for group play, now one of your 4 players is out of the game (rather than just behind and still possibly able to influence the outcome or even come back).   Kingsberg does this by having invasions (with some randomization), that you have to deal with every so many turns, etc.  - This would prob be good even for a single player setting, as its nice to force people to balance longterm + shorterm.

Some randomization besides just mapgen, but not too much.  (Example: Through the ages -- Even though all "random" events besides the first few are chosen by the players, when they happen is somewhat random, and what order the various techs become avail is somewhat random as well).    Just wanted to make sure that it doesn't boil down to, evaluate starting situation and calculate the optimal flow of the game from there, but also that there isn't too much.  Our group no longer plays Settlers because the game is a bit too random, nothing like a game where 6 of the first 10 rolls are 11s.  Seasons is a much better example of adding in randomness in my opinion, where the first player (which rotates in each round), gets first choice out of a number of dice showing various choices, but then the 2nd player gets to pick out of what remains, etc. 

Barter of some sort?  Unsure if this would fit here, examples might be 7 wonders, where gaining access to resources lets your neighbors buy them (which gives you money to then buy other things or resources from them back), or less likely, an actual barter system like settlers of Catan.

Other player interaction could be like Puerto Rico or TI, where each action you take gives some (lesser) benefit to the other players, again might be hard to adapt to a simultaneous move game though?

13
AI War / Re: Poll: which basic human unlocks need a buff?
« on: April 17, 2013, 04:15:05 PM »
I think that turret costs need to be standardized first.  Right now, it can cost between 2250 and 7000K to unlock Mk III turrets.
Yet all the turrets have roughly the same cap-damage stats, and similar multipliers (please ignore the HBCs; they're special.)

How much should a Mk II turret cost?  They're twice the damage, HP, and have radar damping.  However, they can't move.  That last factor being quite significant, I think a Mk II turret should cose much less than a Mk II fleetship.  I unlock Basic IIs sometimes during normal games, so somewhere in the 500-750K range should be about right. 
-- Spider Turrets would need to remain higher, maybe 2000K?  3000 has always seemed a little high, but they are pretty impressive turrets (if not in DPS).

What about Mk III turrets then?  Again, they're three times the base turret stats - but still can't move.  I'd suggest 2000K for Mk III turrets - a third of what the Mk III fleetship costs, but you don't get a Mk IV turret for free and they still can't move.

Finally, I'd love to see Mk IV turrets - same stat progression, but costing 3000-4000K.


Agree with standardizing somewhat, but if you plan on riding the super-terminal AIP train down, mk II and III missile + laser's at least pay for themselves (based on how much extra AIP you can reduce vs the knowledge you can gather with that AIP), and they both help to take care of bombers that forts and shields fare so poorly against.

14
AI War / Re: (Bonus Ships) Comparing Swarmers to Pseudo-Starships
« on: April 17, 2013, 01:49:18 PM »
One issue that I'm running into is that when the AI has a bunch of pseudo-starships unlocked AI eye planets are a pain, esp if most of your unlocks are swarmers.  Laser gatlings vs spire stealth battleships kinda sucks when you are only allowed a 2 to 1 ratio.

15
AI War / Re: What happens if you don't get the (AIP) memo?
« on: April 17, 2013, 01:43:06 PM »
Not so bad so far, besides having to deal with almost 2k mk V spire blade spawners from the superterminal and the pain that spire stealth battleships + tackle drone launchers + spire blade spawners is on any planet with an ai eye (200 fleet ships cope poorly with 100 stealth battle ships)   100 tackle drone launches have alooooot of hp.

Have a solid choke point and then a weaker front one to eat up threat/waves.  30 or so safe planets are more than enough for econ purposes, just going to grab knowledge from the rest I think (though I've basically run out of useful things to research).  Haven't hit any of the huge special forces issues that other have yet though.


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