Slitherine

Had some good runs through the game, and found many things to suggest along the way. I guess that's what I do. Here's a whole bunch of little suggestions, take them or leave them

• Combat responsiveness could be improved -- since it's clearly known which unit wins/loses immediately (Unit health goes up at the beginning of combat if they're ranking up from it) having defeated units immediately removed from the idle list would be good (And possibly an immediate indicator of who's going to survive, if anyone, for those times the winner doesn't rank up).
• A little more detail in the combat log to see who destroyed your unit -- what they were and what their strength was after. Even better if it could show a tally of all the units that had attacked your unit so far that round. (This could be made available even if the unit wasn't destroyed)
• Clearer notification when enemies come onto the map so that I don't have to pan around so much hunting just in case an enemy unit wandered up (There's lots else for me to be doing during my turn!). This would also help with identifying bugs, which can blend pretty well into their terrain.
• "Hold until healed" works great but could maybe use a different name that sounds a little more futuristic. Not sure exactly what, though. Having a little heart (The health heart) at the lower right corner of the icon would help visually differentiate it from normal hold position.
• Tips should save that they've been displayed so someone saving then resuming later can still get future tips without having to wade through the start ones. At least per new game.
• Troopers should prioritize movement through mountains and forests for pathing when they are assigned to move longer distances. Mechanicals would prioritize plains.
• More control over how units path longer distances would be nice. Such as: Click on the unit directly then start dragging to trace a specific path, and/or aim at an edge of the target square to bias the path towards that direction (So if the unit could go up then over or over then up, if I aim at the top of the square it goes up then over (Prioritizes the higher path) and if I aim at the bottom of the square it goes over then up (Prioritizes the lower path)
• A way to bundle units into a squad that then moves at the speed of the slowest unit, and is selectable as a single unit, would be nice (Bulk moving worked pretty well but I had to reselect each turn)
• Some notification of which researches are one-offs (Colony ship dismantling, race for colonization) versus unlocked buildings/parts (cultivation, refining, titanium armor) would be useful to help determine what to unlock.
• Hives having their area of influence displayed would be useful.
• The AI should be more aggressive about moving into a hive it just destroyed the last enemy in, often I'd see it destroy the last bug then move a unit alongside the hive rather than straight into it to claim it, leaving it open for me to claim that turn.
• I should be able to path things through unrevealed terrain, and they'll assume a straight line path that gets modified as terrain uncovers. Very tedious to have to walk a unit one tile at a time because it's revealing map, even though I've mapped the edges of the continent and am just cutting through the middle.
• The AI should be less of a total flake about alliances and pacts, where it offers then withdraws them constantly. Also would be nice if it had an actual reason before declaring war, rather than randomly doing so after seeing my units wandering enough times (I often would have war declared on me when I hadn't even spotted an enemy unit, let alone been near his cities or him near mine)
• Trade/research pacts should give the current known status of the offering city so I can judge whether it would be beneficial to me. This is too opaque at the moment, I can't tell what benefits I'm getting (Or would get)
• Need bribes for offering peace -- ceding cities, offering resources, credits, even units in exchange for peace. Otherwise I have no reason to not just finish off someone if I've gutted their main city as claiming the rest will more than make up for short term damages they may be able to inflict with their leftover units. The AI should offer scaling bribes as it gets more desperate for peace (Though stop offering once it hits its "That was my best deal that you just rejected) point.
• It's hard to keep track of who's who for my current alliance/war status. I had an enemy I was at war with and the only way I could figure it out from the field display (Without going to the diplomacy tab) was to try to move a unit into one of its city's areas of influence.
• I should be able to declare war on someone by trying to move into one of their city's area of influence. I had an enemy who I could see the borders of but no units for and they did not show up under Diplomacy, so I had no way to declare war on them and thus couldn't get through their area.
• Open border treaty would be nice to help deal with the preceding point, I didn't necessarily need war but their zones were blocking my movement. Possibly just "edge" treaties, allowing people to move through the outer edges of city influence?
• Guerilla warfare should additionally give troopers +50% healing rate while in mountains or forests to help make it a more appealing research line.
• When saving a game (Entering its filename), hitting enter should save the game rather than bringing up chat.
• An AI should (For high priority cities) buy units with credits to save the city if I destroy the only unit in it. Note: It may be doing so and I just didn't notice, in which case cool. (Since the AI can't effectively judge if I may or may not move in with an additional unit, I'd expect it to slip this "buy" order in immediately after I hit end turn, before the next turn starts.)
• The AI should be much more hesitant to attack from inside a fortified city, especially with its strongest unit. I had one bunkering against me with a plane, then it gained a trooper so it assaulted with its plane even though I had multiple units outside its city. This left the city weak enough for me to easily claim, since it had lost its fortified bonus on a 100% health plane.
• Planes should probably base their bonuses more on the enemy's tile than on their own, due to the nature of air combat. It doesn't make sense that a plane assaulting while flying over plains gets a bonus while one assaulting from over forest, or even over ocean, doesn't get a bonus at all.
• It shouldn't cost .5 movement to move into an enemy held city to claim it, that bonus should only apply to friendly cities.
• Formers shouldn't automatically move to new continents. Not sure how they can communicate that they would like to move over, but given the dangers of naval transportation this seems like a poor choice for automization to make for me.
• Troop transports given a destination should never path onto land until they can't go further on water.

Pre-game options:

• Allow random to be selected for shape and temperature of the map.
• List the bonuses each side gets at the selection screen, this shouldn't be something I have to memorize.

And a couple research suggestions, these may not fit into this game but getting them out there.

• Perimeter Awareness: All cities gain vision on tiles adjacent to their areas of control.
• Bomber: Deals splash damage, enemies can't retaliate unless they have anti-air, attacking does not stop a bomber's movement (But costs 1 movement)

Bugs that I found will be coming later tonight.

Thanks a bunch!

Suggested change: Make tooltips not draw over the combat preview (And combat preview not drawing over the squares being targeted? I guess give them the capability to draw towards the top of the screen?

Screenshot is of the tooltip drawing over the combat preview.

Some more ideas!

• Allow trades to be offered for entire cities. The units being offered would need to be adjacent to the person you're trading with's area of control, and the city would need to be an edge city. Could also throw credits/food/minerals into the trade. This would allow a non-violent takeover option for less valuable cities.
• Have there be some cost for taking control of a city since it should be a big deal. Currently you move into a city and it just switches sides with no additional cost at all. Same for destroying a hive, you're getting up to 400 credits of resources out of that hive, it shouldn't be "free" to claim (Same for exploring ruins?)
• Make observatories only trigger at the end of the turn when a unit was on it without moving (So it needs to be able to trigger healing to use the observatory). To help offset the inconvenience, leave the vision lingering until the next turn even after the unit moves off it.
• When assigning a unit pathing (By holding right mouse) panning the map with left mouse should not make the right mouse release.
• When assigning a unit pathing, a little indicator number should pop up at the destination square showing how many turns it will take the unit to get there.
• AIs should be unhappy if someone else claims a hive that they did most of the work for (Have hives track who killed bugs on/adjacent to the hive, then have AIs check that when someone claims the empty hive for credits.)
• AIs should not get stuck trying to move a unit through a "friendly" enemy unit that can't get past them, they should move their unit aside rather than sit there blocking.
• There should be a healing bonus (+25-50%) when healing within your own area of influence. This will help make perimeter defenses more practical.
• Credit earning rate could be lowered slightly, and then to make it interesting credit interest could be added -- each turn you gain a small % of the credits you have banked as interest. This will create a risk/reward between spending credits and saving them for more interest. Currently, aside from future emergency funds, there's no reason to stockpile credits.
• Long Toms should have penalties to attacking water and air based units (There's no ground to have splash damage from)
• Ground based units should have penalties to attacking units over water, but not to defending themselves from attacks by units over water (Idea being the water units have moved in closer when doing the attack, but are harder to reach when being attacked)
• When a city is assigned to produce credits, anything added to the list should bump credit production to the end (Since credits never ends, anything else you want built must be intended to be built before it goes back to producing credits)

Sometimes I take the unit I just assigned and want to move it again very quickly, so I go like this:

• Assign a unit to a square.
• While it's moving, decide I want it to move another square next turn.
• Try to quickly assign its new movement.
• Get the assignment a hair too slowly and accidentally move the next idle unit to a random location because my screen jumps to the new idle unit.

So the fix for this is fairly straightforward: When transfering to the next idle unit, have a brief window (The time it takes to fully pan to the new unit? Maybe a teensy bit past it) where right clicking to assign a unit is ignored. It's a pretty safe bet that any assignments happening then are accidents, because if it's a very fast click you won't know exactly which unit the game has selected or where your click will be sending it.

Suggestion related to the previous post:

• When deep in an enemy city area of influence (Not adjacent to any tiles outside it) units should heal at -25% (Or even -50%) due to difficulty getting supplies/hostile environment. This will help prevent deep dives into enemy territory without a strong supply line (Reinforcements) along the way. Note: A fort would be considered "friendly" even inside the enemy lines, though I'd say should take longer to construct than usual as well (Or just can't build a fort there).
• Make it so you can't deploy a new city in an enemy's field of control.