Slitherine

So I had no idea what this game was to be honest. I didn't even remember even signing up for the beta. With that being said, I figured I'd give it a shot none the less.

First 5 minutes: This is when I realized it was a Civ style game, instead set in the future. Cool concept. The UI layout was somewhat familiar and I was starting build orders and moving my units in no time. Was looking for a scout unit or clickable feature for my marines to have them scout, couldn't find one so I went into manual mode and found 2 ruins. Walking over the ruins rewarded me with some resources it seemed, standard stuff, at which point I found what looked to be a Zerg lair a few tiles away. Curiosity getting the best of me, I decided to attack it with my lone squad, ending in their quick demise.

30 minutes: So at this point I've made myself familiar with the Workshop and had my workers (forget the name in the game, formers maybe?) terraforming and building the area around my city up. The tile squares were not purchasable around my city and instead were unlocked with influence, however I have no idea what would increase my influence rate because it said "tile acquired in 123178321 turns", something to that extent. At this point, I've build up a very large army consisting of tanks and marines, heading over to take on this big bio blob. While waiting for my army to amass a few creatures came and attacked some of my marines. It was at this point I realized that my recently upgraded weapons were actually less powerful vs these small bio units and I lost a few squads. Eventually a few minutes later I go to attack this initial big mass that I found, finding out that it went down very easily, I'm not sure it this was a military unit or someones base.

60 minutes: I've expanded a few times, sending my workers to improve other cities, and just mass clicking all the buildings and leaving them be. Research seems to be very linear. I just click one that sounds cool and hit accept, only deviating when I can acquire a new unit type. Not a big fan of having to create new unit types manually to add a new body type I've researched, but this just seems like a design decision. Combat feels very incomplete, sounds missing and or not very impacting. The actual combat doesn't display much information, and most ground troop battles end very quickly. Everyone wants to trade with me, but I have no idea how to setup a trade route. A lot of factions that I haven't discovered yet want to align with me, yet give me no vision when I agree. I had minerals around my cities but I'm still not sure how to mine them, or maybe they are being mined, I'm not very sure.


Overall the game looks promising, I lost many hours in Civ games and generally enjoy about 60-100 hours worth of this type of gameplay. The base of this game is very strong, all of the key elements are there and I instantly felt like I was in a Civ game when I started. If that is what you are going for a few things that felt missing that were of key importance:

Exploring/Scouts
Visual Workers for the areas like mining or farming, whatever is terraformed
Factions should not be negotiating with me when I haven't even found them yet
If you align with a faction, you should be granted vision of them
Research needs a little work. It had no purpose and just felt like something I had to do every few turns, had no real impact on my gameplay
Sounds need to feel good during combat
Combat needs to have more information about what's going on, this includes through visuals

Thank you for reading my thoughts.

I have answered some of your questions below, as for the general changes to gameplay you suggested we will of course take those into consideration.

Exploring/Scouts: The ATV unit is good for exploring as it can move further and can be equipped with weapons as well so it can defend itself
Visual Workers for the areas like mining or farming, whatever is terraformed: You can drag and drop the population from the city view to have them focus on mining or farming and so on, you should build mines on hills and mountains with your former to gain extra minerals. You can select the territory your city takes over when it grows, your growth rate determines when you gain the desired territory, if none is selected then the ai will select one for you.
Factions should not be negotiating with me when I haven't even found them yet: As soon as a faction has you within sight of one of its units it can begin talks with you, the diplomacy options will be expanded in later versions.
If you align with a faction, you should be granted vision of them: Shared vision will be added as a seperate negotioation point
Sounds need to feel good during combat: The sound effects volume can me manually changed, but maybe we will put it at a higher setting as default based on feedback

Thanx for the great feedback and keep it coming as you play on!