First impressions and ideas

[drakm72]

After 5 minutes of play :

- Learning the basics of the game by reading the Tips. They are quite useful.
- Really enjoying the music and the general visual aspects of the game.


After 15 minutes of play :

- The pilling of the black boxes (military / workshop / etc.) in order to promote units is annoying.
- I did not figure out how to make a single army from different units. Is this an option that is not available in the game?
- I like the fact that I can choose the hex in which my cities can grow further

After 1 hour of play :

- I just don't get it. Why does some factions declare war against me if : (1) they never entered my island and, thus they don't know me or not suppose to know where I am; (2) I didn't do anything to provoke them, not even spoke a single time to them.
- The AI (in Easy mode) tend to play quite agressive in order to win the game by destroying other factions -- even the friendly worshipers of Nature (do not remember the name of that faction, sorry).
- Playing the Gigantic Map, I thought that some islands would have still been faction free; just after one hour of play, all of them have cities from all the different factions; in my opinion, the exploration of the map by factions and the building of cities by them is too quick.

[jdmillard]

- Really enjoying the music and the general visual aspects of the game.

I agree wholeheartedly.

- The pilling of the black boxes (military / workshop / etc.) in order to promote units is annoying.
- I did not figure out how to make a single army from different units. Is this an option that is not available in the game?

I'm not sure what you mean by black boxes. But I thoroughly enjoyed the unit workshop. I like how you can make a change to an existing model without needing to create a new one, but you can if you want of course. I found myself giving upgrades to existing units and simply renaming them. That way I could easily tell which of the active units still needed to be refitted to the new design (if they had the old name). I thought that the refitting costs were extremely high though. I don't mind paying, but it was almost as expensive as "purchasing" a brand new one in the production queue.

Why does some factions declare war against me if : (1) they never entered my island and, thus they don't know me or not suppose to know where I am; (2) I didn't do anything to provoke them, not even spoke a single time to them.

I agree. The game I played wasn't quite that bad, but many of the AI decisions seem random.

[dalves]

Why does some factions declare war against me if : (1) they never entered my island and, thus they don't know me or not suppose to know where I am; (2) I didn't do anything to provoke them, not even spoke a single time to them.

I agree. The game I played wasn't quite that bad, but many of the AI decisions seem random.

One thing that I would like to know is some overview of the reasons for the AI to like or hate, for example, do they hate me because I have broken our contract agreement, or because other faction has denounced me?

[drakm72]

As for the black boxes, I meant the dialogue boxes. Mea culpa.

The thing is, when trying to improve units, if you click on "Military" and then option "Refit", you have to open the Workshop dialogue box and then create the unit with the specs you want. After that, you got back on the Refit dialogue box, click on the new improve unit, click on "Yes" and pay the price. It is a lot of clicking for just a single improvement on a single unit.

By the way, is there an option to improve all the same type of units in one signle shot? For exemple, if I choose the "Gauss II Armor" for tanks, and I have 10 tanks, can I do it in just one click or do I have to click 10 times (one click per unit)?

[jdmillard]

Why does some factions declare war against me if : (1) they never entered my island and, thus they don't know me or not suppose to know where I am; (2) I didn't do anything to provoke them, not even spoke a single time to them.

I agree. The game I played wasn't quite that bad, but many of the AI decisions seem random.

One thing that I would like to know is some overview of the reasons for the AI to like or hate, for example, do they hate me because I have broken our contract agreement, or because other faction has denounced me?

Yeah. When you hover your cursor over minerals, a window pops up breaking down where the points come from. There should be a similar breakdown or at least an explanation of what actions carry the most weight in in other factions' opinions of you.

As for the black boxes, I meant the dialogue boxes. Mea culpa.

The thing is, when trying to improve units, if you click on "Military" and then option "Refit", you have to open the Workshop dialogue box and then create the unit with the specs you want. After that, you got back on the Refit dialogue box, click on the new improve unit, click on "Yes" and pay the price. It is a lot of clicking for just a single improvement on a single unit.

By the way, is there an option to improve all the same type of units in one signle shot? For exemple, if I choose the "Gauss II Armor" for tanks, and I have 10 tanks, can I do it in just one click or do I have to click 10 times (one click per unit)?

I usually create new units when I get better weapons. Then they're already created when I go to refit other units. So upon clicking "refit," there are options available already. I just have to pay. And about the ability to refit all of them... I think they decided against it because the refitting requires that the unit is in a city. My idea is this: When you change an existing design in the workshop, there the workshop should ask you if you want to refit all the previous designs. If you have enough money and you agree, then all of that unit that are in bases get refitted. The units that were not in bases will have a little exclamation point blinking in the bottom left window (when it's their turn to move). When you hover your cursor over it, it explains that it needs to return to a base to get refitted. The reason that I don't like this idea is because what if it dies before getting to a base? You'll have already paid for the upgrade. It seems like there is no simple solution to this.

[dalves]

Maybe you pay for the refitting of all "parked" units?
Maybe the military screen could show if a unit is refitable, and allow us to select a group of units to refit (through checkboxes, for example).

[jdmillard]

Maybe you pay for the refitting of all "parked" units?
Maybe the military screen could show if a unit is refitable, and allow us to select a group of units to refit (through checkboxes, for example).

You make a point. This would become much simpler to solve if you could refit units way from cities. In some ways I like that we need to bring them back to a base, but I'm not super attached to it.

We should at least be able to refit units in forts.

[JeffGeorge]

Maybe you pay for the refitting of all "parked" units?
Maybe the military screen could show if a unit is refitable, and allow us to select a group of units to refit (through checkboxes, for example).

You make a point. This would become much simpler to solve if you could refit units way from cities. In some ways I like that we need to bring them back to a base, but I'm not super attached to it.

We should at least be able to refit units in forts.

I don't like the idea of being able to refit units out in the field, though I'm ok with it taking place in forts. I like the idea of an exclamation point denoting the unit needs to return to some sort of base for refitting. However, this should only happen when another unit of that type has been refitted, and it should only be an indicator, not requiring prepayment.