First Feedback

[abroda]

First of all I want congratulate all people who created this game. It is a nice civ game. I tried it around one week with different games option and factions and like it more then the current Civ 5. To be honest I believe that the story elements are weaker then in Alpha Centaury but it has potential and to be honest AC raised the bar very high.

My first question is will be there some content updates or changes in the game in the future? Or just the normal bug hunting?

During the games I recognize some bugs and elements that are in my eyes not a problem. I have not found a separate bug or suggestion forum so here it comes

Bugs / Glitch:
- The AI is scouting with planes. As soon he finds a ruin he will park the aircraft on top of the ruin and wait... and wait... and wait. I assume that the AI script tries to loot it, but because a plane cannot do it in the game it will be stuck there. Ok you can argue that he will keep it safe but nope or at least it was not for me noticeable that after the plane any regular unit is following.
- If you have Xenology and play as Terra Salvum, sometimes the Aliens switch into "attackmode" even before the warning about the increasing aggressivity pops up.
- When you start a new game, the game creates immediately a auto-save file. If you load this one all human fractions disappeared from the game. If you load a game which you already won / lost sometimes the diplomatic screen crashed if you talk to a certain group. You will get after the contact an immediately offer and no matter what you are choosing the game crashes.
- Even if it is in the setting, the Farmers will not grow Fungus automatically. In addition, the AI is never using them, so I assume this part is still open. Another point is that the movement system ignores the danger of the fungus. Specially funny for farmers which die because the AI let them clean one fungus after the other.
- The cool-down timer for diplomatic actions sometimes disappears. This has the result that you can offer the same contract 10000 times
- The AI is overstrained with the diplomatic options. They withdraw from a contract and offers the same deal in the next turn. Or you can offer it again in the next turn and they will agree to it. Also very small tribute or gift payment will stop them from attacking you.
- Even after a farmer is using all his action points you can still give him a terraforming order and you can save a turn. I assume this is glitch, I played many civ-games in the past and you find it here and there. The colonizer for example does not have this problem, after all movement points are gone you need to wait a new round to build the city.
- At the endgame I made the experience that the AI is spamming literally thousands of small soldier. The small attack power imply old technologies. Never saw that the build or use Mechs. Buggies and Tanks were produced at the mid game, but they get also rare at the end.

Suggestions:
- Breaking news: Yeah it is nice to hear news from the enemy, but it can be annoying at a large map. Its possible that you receive the same (dull) message dozen time in one turn.
- It would be nice for the operations with cool down to see the maximum which his possible. For example I plan to attack the enemy with nuclear rockets and build the structure in all my cities. Now I have 15 nuclear missiles, it would be nice to know if some are still stocking and just need a few more days to reload or if I can strike
- I really like the aliens. I prefer to play with a very high Alien Aggression and enjoy the fight for you life at the beginning. But I have a problem with the aggression pattern and the sudden switch. The first rounds nothing attacks you, they just standing around. You can even attack them without a negative response. After a while you receive the information that they turn hostile and they attack you all over the world. I assume its much easier to program such a on / off mentality but it would be much more interesting if you see a slowly change in the behavior. And if they react more on your behavior. Or at least that you receive the warning message earlier so that you have enough time to bring your scouts back home.
- The aliens are just a problem in the first part of the game. As soon you switched to the next technology era they become a joke and not a threat. Maybe some kind of "evolution" over the time would be nice which make them stronger. Or that this happens after x% of all hives are destroyed. I would love to see some stronger god-bugs or at least a sandworm which attacks you
- No world wonders? For sure? Also no planet council? Oh...
- The ruins are straight forward, but it would be cool if you can find something unique inside.
- The tile system need some loving too. Before terraforming is researched you can choose with farmers between a +1/+1; or +2 or +2 tile bonus. Even at the freezing winter area the result are more or less the same like in the warm areas. In compare there is just to less deviation in the tiles which make the choosing of the right position mostly pointless. Forests have nearly no disadvantages. There are sometimes special resources on the map which give you a nice little extra but in compare with the endgame fungus its just a joke. I mean +4/+4 (+ the facility extra bonus)... come on, this is way to much. Buy we are lucky that the automation isn't working and as long you don't want to add a lot of micro management this isn't a problem. And that the AI isn't using them
That you can change the planet so less is in my eyes a large problem because of Alpha Centauri. There terraforming was really possible with new and interesting ideas and here you can do so less. I mean you can even find from the start everywhere trees and the fungus is not even fight back. Also the whole ocean can't be used or formed.
- There is no defense before the fungus damage, so if you use them you have to take care that your own units don't get damage by them. There is no protection against it, nothing for your poor little farmers. I would suggest that one of the +2/+2 fungus technology is removed and instead there will be a gadget which protect you from fungus damage.

Sorry for my worse English, but I hope you can understand what I mean and I hope that this game will be improved in the future.

[SephiRok]

All very excellent points that we have also noticed. We'll definitely work on fixing them.

We do plan to have content updates as well, there should be some already next week.

Thank you very much for your feedback!

[fortydayweekend]

+1 to everything abroda said, all really good points!

While we're talking bugs (unless this is a new feature I missed), I've seen fungus give a 25% combat advantage to infantry defenders in the 1.10 beta. Save game attached.

In terms of terrain, what if there was a mid-game tech that unlocked extra food production from warm non-desert tiles (plains & hills) and another that gave extra minerals from tundra & arctic? Adding variety to the terrain but not affecting the early game dynamics. (I love how starting position isn't as important as it is in say the Civ series or original SMAC, I hardly ever feel like reloading a start, so wouldn't want to change that, but the terrain does need some flavour to direct mid-game expansion - it's all about special resources, mountains and grassland right now, and everything else is just colour).

[boulugre]

Excellent suggestions on which I would like to add my own thoughts

Alien life : Definitively need to be aggressive from the start and scale up in power in time. Perhaps you should add hunter / prey behavior depending on the specie, with the hunters being aggressive towards humans units / cities while prey will just wander around ( and eventually 'eat' down human tile improvement?) Prey could also give a little boost of ressources when shoot down to give an incentive to player to hunt them down.( I really like the fact that killing the 2 behemoth sea alien gives a bonus to unit but i fell those bonuses are one totally overpowered and two does make much sense in terms of lore)

To scale the power of alien life you could implement a growing of the nests, with the queen slowly growing in power while raising the rate of alien spawning

Faction starting bonuses : I feel some of them are way overpowered while other close to useless. Playing as the Gaian faction next to the blue 'spartan' like faction gives a 50% difference in term of power.... Perhaps the fighting bonuses should be brought down to -/+ 10%

Air strikes / nukes etc ... : I love those, they are really well thought and brings something new to the gameplay, however i think it needs to be polished. Right now there are no means to defend yourself if you are out of your cities and it's pretty easy to grief the AI. There should be some kind of way to take down other faction nukes or a field unit with the hability to give some kind of protection to field units. Another angle would be to add a cost in ressources each time you want to fire those weapons in addition to the loading time, that would make it less easy to spam them.

Terraforming & tiles : Totaly agree it needs some serious love...In SMAC terraforming was for me at least counting for half of the fun, with crazy possibilities and awesome strategies. Need more tile variety, more improvments, techs that boost the output of tile variety and improvment, unique tiles/sites (like SMAC's sea of sargasse, Mesa plateau, moonson jungle etc etc ) would be awesome!

Migration : Its a really cool mechanic which makes a lot of sense. Perhaps it could be polished/upgraded by giving the player some kind of tools to affect it? A few ideas : Make each city morale a factor in the migrants flow, add a building to attract migrants or maybe better a production mode for city similar to wealth production but to increase or decrease the migratory flow.

Wonders: need... need...need...

ICS : it has already been raised in other posts. Penality need to be added with the growth of an empire. Right now its really hard to resist a faction with twice as much cities as you have and it kind be of tiring to be forced to grow your empire as big as possible each game.

Plane mechanics : As existing planes are more like civ's choppers ( a quick ground unit that can go over water) and it really bothers me when a plane get counter attack and shot down by infantry, it just doesn't make sense. Once again I would rather have a SMAC style system implemented ( which is in my opinion superior to the CIV 4 or 5 one)

Tech tree : Less guns, more variety. Right now it seem a solid half of the tech tree is armor/weapon upgrade, many being slight variations of each others and I usually end up streamlining an advanced tech to avoid researching the lesser powerful one. The city buildings upgrade are being repeated era after era, just doubling the power each time which makes it a little dull.

Spy / commando : a special ops unit able to investigate ennemy cities, destroy buildings, steal tech etc etc is really missing and would be a welcome addition to the gameplay

That's it for now, I really hope you guys are going to keep working on this game as the foundations is really solid and enjoyable in current state. adding content and polishing existing features could raise this game to a pure marvel!