Feedback from a veteran player

[Mojko]

I'm one of the players that played Fantasy General 1 and here is my feedback (playing on second hardest difficulty on Windows 7 PC):

Quick summary

Is Fantasy general 2 a great game and is fun to play? Yes!
Can I recommend buying this game? Yes, absolutely.
Is the game perfect and flawless? No, and that's what we're going to discuss here.

Game-play suggestions / improvements

Swap units

This feature requires the player to press a button (like movement skill) and it will change cursor to swap mode. In this mode two friendly adjacent units that have a movement action available can swap positions. This will use movement action of both units.

Game intro movie

Add an option to skip this movie.

Advanced combat stats

Add an option to show advanced combat stats at all times, not only on hover.

Game render pause

When game menu is displayed there is no need to keep rendering the game loop. I noticed that when the game menu is up the unit / world animations keep playing, also the game reacts to mouse events. This is inefficient use of computer resources. I use ALT+TAB to switch to a different app on my computer and it's quite slow to do that. Also, when I come back to game screen the screen position is in a different place now because it reacted to my mouse move events while doing to ALT+TAB.

Unit portraits / lore

There was a section in the old Fantasy general where you could go and lookup every unit in the game and see a nice had drawing of the unit with some lore text. It would be awesome if could include that again.

Black sash + Armored slingers

This combination is quite busted as the harassed status is applied to every unit which gets hit by retaliation strike during enemy turn. The harassed status is retained for your turn as well.

Suggested change: harassed status is applied only on normal attacks not support fire attacks

Unit supply (food)

It's great to see that units can have different supply requirement but I feel this system is currently greatly underused. Most units require 1 supply and there are units which need 2 supply. I feel like increasing these numbers could get a better strategic decision ability to the player. Of course total available supply would need to be increased as well. For example:

- regular unit could cost 5
- recon unit could cost 3 or 4

Selection of enemy unit

For some reason the UI allows the selection of enemy units which will render the full unit control UI for the enemy unit. This is a bit confusing especially when you select an enemy unit by mistake. I wonder if this feature is intentional.

Carry over rewards should get more transparent

While I really enjoy the story and the dialog decisions, it's often unclear on what the consequence of that decision will be. It would be great to include a game-play explanation in the dialog for that. For example:

lore text: Raid their homes!
game-play text: get 5 gold per unit at the end of each scenario until clan revenge scenario group is finished

I would also include a representation of these decisions on the campaign map. These can be represented as flags which would be located at the place where the decisions was made. Hovering over these flags would display the lore and gameplay texts. When the decision no longer has impact on the game, the flag would be removed.

Secondary objectives

While there are some side quests here and there, I would like to see more secondary objectives in every scenario.

Random rewards

I enjoy random rewards, but sometimes it feels way too random. Maybe we could add a choice of 3 random rewards instead. This is still random, but it feels a bit more balanced. Different play styles have different resource needs.

Valuable resources

I like that we have common resource (gold) and valuable resources (weapons, armour, liquid mana), however the income of these valuable resources feels really unreliable. As a consequence it's not up to the player to choose the units, but instead you have to build what you can afford. I understand the need to keep the valuable resource as a balance limitation, however I propose to limit the types of valuable resources to either 1 or 2. It seems that weapons are less important later on as higher tear units can get purchased without weapons in later parts of the game. This would give players more options to choose what units to use.

Exploit attack option

I would like to see an option to NOT occupy enemy hex after the enemy unit retreats or gets destroyed. This gives the player more options to make good decisions.

Performance issues

I play on lowest graphical settings and the game runs pretty smooth, load times are quite low. This is true, however only at the start of the game. After roughly 30 minutes of playing, multiple save-game loads and ALT+TAB actions the game becomes much slower overall and after about 60 minutes I need to simply quit the game and restart the computer as everything is super slow. I wonder if these are some memory issues where old data is retained even if it shouldn't be.

Kidnappers quest bug

There is a quest where two witches kidnapped a woman and they ask you to bring her back. The quest has multiple possible sequences of events and I found one which is probably not working as intended. Find the woman in the marshes first (can use reveal spell to find her), then go talk to witches and tell them that you want to keep the woman for yourself. This will NOT put curse on all your units. Additionally you can charm the transformed which and make her fight for you.

Artefact merchant

It would be awesome to buy / sell / exchange artefacts for other artefacts or resources. We could even add an option to combine / upgrade artefacts, for example two lower tier artefacts could be transformed into one higher tier artefact. I have a bunch of unused lower tier artefacts which are just sitting around and doing nothing.

Artefact swapping

This is quite a handy mechanic but I feel it can be exploited way too much. There is an artefact which lets you charm animals. The charm spell will get broken if the caster of the spell dies, however it doesn't break when the artefact is passed to another unit. This lets you move one or two such artefacts around the map between your battle groups.

Suggested change:

Make the charm spell break when caster of the spell dies or the artefact which provided the spell was swapped to another unit

Artefact description

Some artefacts are not immediately understood on what they are supposed to do. For example some artefact gives you speed + 1, others will give you movement speed + 1. I'm guessing movement speed is an attribute derived from speed, but I'm not sure.

Slow units

I found units with slower speed than 3 difficult to use as this is an offensive campaign. For example Heavy axeman. It's possible to equip these units with artefacts to mitigate this, but I'm still not sure that if these units are worth it.

Looking forward to your feedback.

Thank you for a great game and keep up the good work

[OBG_primetide]

Hey, thanks for your feedback on this and there are some wlel made points and suggestions in there.

Supply and resources - there will be units with a higher supply requirement down the line, but right now we did not want to make army composition harder. We did include buying into "higher" tier units with or without resources, but essentially you may often need weapons to upgrade units quickly to higher tier. The resource drop is sligthly reactive to what you lack and since the last patch also based on types of locations you plunder, so there is a little more control and relaibility there.

Decisions - we did not want to give immediate "technical effects/stat changes" for decisions because that makes people approach the story decision from a mechanical standpoint rather than from a personal one. But I see how this is not always the best way to play.

The suggested options are quality of life improvements we will add to our to do lists. Good ideas!

Item/Unit combos: There are several that can be quite dramatic, but on the other hand we want you to have "special" importnat units that really make a difference. I think we want to keep those "opportunities" in the game for people to discoverways of employing those tactics.

Mem Issues - I think Alt-Tabbing kills Unity clean-up and often leads to issues on other Unity games as well, but we have not been able to detect memory leaks or missing clean-ups in the game that would massively impact performance. We will keep looking
cheers
primetide

[Arent]

Game render pause

When game menu is displayed there is no need to keep rendering the game loop. I noticed that when the game menu is up the unit / world animations keep playing, also the game reacts to mouse events. This is inefficient use of computer resources. I use ALT+TAB to switch to a different app on my computer and it's quite slow to do that. Also, when I come back to game screen the screen position is in a different place now because it reacted to my mouse move events while doing to ALT+TAB.

Yes. Some people, me included, like to switch off animations since they are distracting. Therefore, I would like an option to do that. Apart from that, it could save a lot of resources to switch them off.

Unit portraits / lore

There was a section in the old Fantasy general where you could go and lookup every unit in the game and see a nice had drawing of the unit with some lore text. It would be awesome if could include that again.

In fact it is extremely important to give somewhere a quick description what a unit is actually supposed to be. For example, if you hover over/click on own or enemy units to write a small blurb where it says: "Spearmen, good for front line defense" or "Troll chargers, can break through enemy lines".

Unit supply (food)

It's great to see that units can have different supply requirement but I feel this system is currently greatly underused. Most units require 1 supply and there are units which need 2 supply. I feel like increasing these numbers could get a better strategic decision ability to the player. Of course total available supply would need to be increased as well. For example:

- regular unit could cost 5
- recon unit could cost 3 or 4

In fact, I would suggest that upgraded units, similar to upgraded flying units, should cost much more support than 'rookies'. In this way, it would make sense to retain some rookie troops as bulk of your army and several advanced upgraded units for precision strikes.

Secondary objectives

While there are some side quests here and there, I would like to see more secondary objectives in every scenario.

Well there are, but it would be more interesting if you would actually be told about it. For example, you could have the ability to spend gold to gather intel about an upcoming scenario. This might give you some text about the presence of bandits in the region, a spider infested forest one might to investigate, the potential to befriend centaurs or other secrets.

Artefact merchant

It would be awesome to buy / sell / exchange artefacts for other artefacts or resources. We could even add an option to combine / upgrade artefacts, for example two lower tier artefacts could be transformed into one higher tier artefact. I have a bunch of unused lower tier artefacts which are just sitting around and doing nothing.

Well, yes, having some kind of war camp similar to the thronebreaker game, where you can upgrade & organize your whole army would be nice.

Slow units

I found units with slower speed than 3 difficult to use as this is an offensive campaign. For example Heavy axeman. It's possible to equip these units with artefacts to mitigate this, but I'm still not sure that if these units are worth it.

2 sped up spearmen work well for defense. But apart from that I prefer the more supply intensive Troll chargers & the heroes are tanks anyway.

[ErissN6]

I was not very convinced by base game, but with expansion and patch I retried.
I took new campaign, for we can choose our general.
I couldn't put any unit on the map (how to do?), then was even prevented from quitting, I killed the game and uninstalled.

[Arent]

I was not very convinced by base game, but with expansion and patch I retried.
I took new campaign, for we can choose our general.
I couldn't put any unit on the map (how to do?), then was even prevented from quitting, I killed the game and uninstalled.

That's a known glitch, you need to reset your input and/or graphics under options & then it should work.

Something like that should of course not happen in a release. I had hoped that they would have fixed the issue by now.

[Molve]

Swap units

This feature requires the player to press a button (like movement skill) and it will change cursor to swap mode. In this mode two friendly adjacent units that have a movement action available can swap positions. This will use movement action of both units.

In every Panzer General/Corps game, you need three squares for this and it takes two turns. Move aside unit A, move B to A's empty hex, then next turn move A to B's empty hex.

This is not something we should dismiss as a bug. Logicistics is a big part of moving an army around.

[Molve]

It seems that weapons are less important later on as higher tear units can get purchased without weapons in later parts of the game.

Agreed. Once your army has passed by the initial upgrade step, your weapons just stockpile while you await armor and liquid mana to upgrade further.

[Molve]

Exploit attack option

I would like to see an option to NOT occupy enemy hex after the enemy unit retreats or gets destroyed. This gives the player more options to make good decisions.

Hmm.

I think we need to take a step back and think about the time period depicted.

Is this a reasonable request for a highly disciplined army with access to modern communications like radio - such as your Panzerarmeen in that other game? Yes, absolutely.

But is this appropriate for a (fantasy) ancient time period? I'm not sure.

At the very least, make it a percentage chance the order is obeyed modified by current morale.

100% base compliance: "vulnerable" units (such as most artillery units)
80% base compliance: disciplined empire units, undead
60% base compliance: primitive barbarian units, ogres
0% base compliance: monstrous units like wolves or spiders

Low morale halves this percentage.

[Molve]

Unit supply (food)

It's great to see that units can have different supply requirement but I feel this system is currently greatly underused. Most units require 1 supply and there are units which need 2 supply. I feel like increasing these numbers could get a better strategic decision ability to the player. Of course total available supply would need to be increased as well. For example:

- regular unit could cost 5
- recon unit could cost 3 or 4

In fact, I would suggest that upgraded units, similar to upgraded flying units, should cost much more support than 'rookies'. In this way, it would make sense to retain some rookie troops as bulk of your army and several advanced upgraded units for precision strikes.

Panzer General and Corps had this issue too. That is, cost (gold/prestige) is the only distinguishing factor - if you can afford a strong unit, there's no reason to purchase a weak one.

Panzer Corps II changed this for this reason.

While making the base cost 5 (multiplying available supply by 5) might not be necessary, I caution against just doubling it. A rookie or recon unit costing just half of a regular unit is probably too cheap. At least make the base cost 3 (multiplying available supply by 3) so that a rookie/recon unit can be 2.

If the decision is made to make the base cost 5 as in Mojko's suggestion, I caution you against having cost 4 units. The difference just isn't great enough to justify the added detail and complexity.

In summary:

DO have units cost 2, 3, and 4.
DO have units cost 3, 5, and 7.

DON'T have units cost 1, 2, and 3. (too much variance enabling cheesy spam tactics)
DON'T have units cost 4, 5, and 6. (too little variance to have a meaningful impact unless armies are huge)

[OBG_primetide]

Actually the supply cost would kind of force you into filling your army with "unwanted" units, as you work around your supply limits, but better units would still be more desirable. Instead, we are using gold and resource cost (and the need to be able to afford it) as differentiator, but we also try and make high-tier units interesting choices, so your upgrade path is not linear and lower tier units have a reason to exist - be that due to damage type or special abilities. I for example still keep scout units in my army. So while we encourage upgrading, we try to give you an incentive to stick with some lower tier units instead of simply making them take more room.

[Molve]

Actually the supply cost would kind of force you into filling your army with "unwanted" units, as you work around your supply limits, but better units would still be more desirable. Instead, we are using gold and resource cost (and the need to be able to afford it) as differentiator, but we also try and make high-tier units interesting choices, so your upgrade path is not linear and lower tier units have a reason to exist - be that due to damage type or special abilities. I for example still keep scout units in my army. So while we encourage upgrading, we try to give you an incentive to stick with some lower tier units instead of simply making them take more room.

I'm sorry but I actually don't understand what you're saying here.

The whole point of Mojko's suggestion actually CAN be phrased as "you're kind of forced filling your army with unwanted units". It's actually a desirable trait in a wargame. Yes, you want only the best units, but it's entirely unrealistic. Having to make do with cheap auxiliaries with weak stats is what makes the general.

That is, just having elite units isn't enough, you need quantity as well as quality. (For many reasons that I'm sure you're aware of: scouting purposes, defending the flank, for purposes of sending second-rate units against a second-rate target hex, and having fresh units being able to hold the front even for just a single turn while your heavy-hitters rest up)

Mojko's talking about the fantasy equivalent of playing a successful Panzer General campaign where you use only Tiger II tanks. Yes, one solution is to restrict prestige/gold, but only partially, since that leads to an outsized penalty for a less successful player (it's a negative feedback loop). Back to Fantasy General: if instead of having 20 wheat/supply and every unit except heroes costs 1, regardless of unit strength, you had 100 wheat/supply and a regular unit costs 5. Now beginning units, recon units and other auxiliaries could cost maybe 3 supply. The heaviest most hard-hitting units could cost 7 supply. (A hero would still cost 2x5=10 supply).

This adds strategic depth to your play experience. You could go for many weaker units (say 26 supply 3 units plus four heroes) or few stronger units (say 11 supply 7 units plus four heroes). In the first case you'd have problems with units melting away. In the second you would have problems reaching everywhere.

The very best regards,
Molve

[OBG_primetide]

I appreciate the suggestion - but it is not like the game simply hands you 20 high level units - you need to invest heavily in upgrading them and acquiring the resources for them. Also the enemy "set-up" changes as well, leaning towards more high tier units. Now if we would do as suggested, the weak units would be constantly destroyed by the enemy, in fact cycling through them and simply draining money for a temporal unit. This is what we have mercenary units for and having a "swarm" of low level units is not really a viable strategy when you have AoE damage and charge etc. You can try that theory in multiplayer by one side buying loads of low tier unit and another mainly high tier units.
There are a number of differences in our game that make the approach a little less useful, though by no means impossible. It just won't improve the game in our view as much as you expect and would actually lead to simply making your core army smaller. Actually, the Undead in Empire Aflame serve a similar purpose and are more cost-effective, so you can try that play style.