Slitherine

As was asked for. Have been looking for one topic with lots of first impressions.
It seems fashionable to just post them in your own topic instead.
Would like to include a poll to see if anyone else recognizes my first thoughts/problems as well, but appear not to be allowed to do so.
Anyway:

first launch: did't happen. Downloaded again, worked like a charm. Don't know what happened there. Didn't read too much about Pandora yet, so at this point I'm mostly just curious...
Picked Solar Dynasty somehow, allthough absolute authority and suppresion don't sound like kind of thing. Maybe it will help on Pandora?
Was not too impressed by opening sequence.
after 5 minutes play: only just completed first turn. Interface makes sense and feels logical and recognizable. Shortlinks to database when you discover a new resource or object helps understanding the world quickly enough. Just noted first alienlooky purple stuff on the edge of my small known territory...
Small problem: somehow I can't get back into Pandora after I switch to an other program in an opened window. Work around (in windows 7) hit CTR ALT DEL. :/

30 mins: This planet is hostile. There are hives everywhere around me. Only met one other faction yet, who agreed to sign a research pact. At first I thought the music to be a bit simple. Now it adds to the tension. This game starts to scare me I think. Just spotted my first Galeth. How much good will a single squad of flamethrowers be against one of those? Bright side, I haven't been attacked by the local wildlife. Yet. Founded a second city. Not sure if that was worth the labour. It's too close to a hive so it has only three squares of territory around it and it won't produce anything for ages. I thought it a good idea to place it on top of bunch of Xenite Flowers for the added bonus. That can't be done though. I need to collect some forces to be able to root out one of those queens anytime soon now. I've got five squads of men, one former (on auto) and two cities now. Date: nov 2102. Not sure after how many turns that is.
Interface is still obvious enough, advisers in bottom screen helpfull enough, so I should know what I'm doing by now. Except that I just don't know what's coming for me... I fear I'm going to lose this first game. Without ever going to see another factions city.

an hour: Still scared. And a bit confused as well now. Just spotted a bunch of flying scites. Not sure if they will roam the land as peacefully as that Galeth who keeps patrolling between my two cities. Destroyed a single hive (so second city now has full range and is producing soldiers). Did found an enemy city (yes enemy, don't know what i did to deserve an all out war declaration from him). Tried to storm it. Unsuccesfully. Had better luck holding of the alien hords so far. Should there be a way to eliminate the spongy pink fungusfields?
Haven't got a clue on how me picking Solar Dynasty is affecting my play. I know, some pretty sweet looking bonuses. I don't feel that autoritive. Not sure if anyone fears me.
Messed up my flamethrower design when trying to equip my scouting wagons with flame throwers. Thought I was just messing around with designs, but apparently they're instantly saved. Trained some 'Flamers' afterwards who rolled and shooted and looked pretty much like those scouting wagons with armourpiercing weapons or something. But were still called 'Flamers'. Learned from that.
I keep losing units. I don't mind them not being strong enough or being attacked. I just can't keep an eye on them all and after hitting 'End Turn' it seems all of them are attacked at the same time. Which makes it kind of hard to tell who (or what) attacked who where and why. I know, there's messages appearing. But only afterwards. Maybe this is just something I need to get known to.
Still think I'm doing pretty shitty. But enjoying myself eitherway, figuring out the ways of this world. Visuals ok. Liking the music. Clear interface. Hope there's some endgame screen providing some information about how well I was doing at each time in the game. Because I don't really believe my advisors on this at the moment.
December 2104. Nice to be in this beta!
So far for first impressions. Off to my doom now then.

continuing first game:
did I allready mention the great starting screen? I would love ingame invents with that kind of artwork!!

I did some reading up on the beta forum. Avoided the manual.

My first game looks pretty much as I remembered it after loading. Apparently I started somewhere in tropical hills. All kinds of terrains are now being spotted, for which I didn't have attention first time around.

1,5 hours November 2107. The fear has gone. I feel I might be able to handle this.

Bit confused about diplomacy. Sometimes my neighbours pay tribute or offer deals. Sometimes they don't want to. No war with AI players allows me to deal with some nearby hyves though.

Even Galeths and Queens die.

Now feels like the time to start understanding more numbers. There's plenty of gold without much effort. So sometimes I just instantly buy new militairy units. I run out of minerals and food from time to time. No penalties have been applied for that tho. Moving some men around in city deployment seems to fix it most of the times. Have had one village on Growth for some time. Feels like a bit of a waste.

Not sure where my research is going. I've been looking for militairy upgrades until now. I don't get the logics of the connecting researches. As I can only see one researchfield ahead in the tech tree, I just take it step by step.

Feel the need for some industrial and farming improvements for the first time now.

Just settled third city, near gold mine and observatory. It starts out not producing anything. Might be the normal way for a city to start.

Let's see where this goes.

2 hours: november 2110. Things have changed.
The hives are all gone (well at least from my side).
I've founded six cities in total. Then I started feeling a bit chocked up, surrounded by AI borders.
So I have declared my first war. My tanks won me my first two enemy cities. And now my first Goliath entered the battle field.
I feel I can win this war. And the next. Couple of them. I could rule this continent.

So yes, I've gone from scared and curious to over(confident) the last (half) hour.
Got all the numbers in the green after some effort, building improvements and moving the little people around.
The amount of cities doesn't seem to upset my colonists that much. I have got some low morale here and there,
but that's more polution and overpopulation then having too largean empire (allthough I remember something about a penalty for being further from the capital).

Oh and I can grow fungus!

In game, that is. Not sure why I would want to do that...

Let's win this war (continent?)!

Lost count of playtime, sorries. The date is august 2116, still my first playthrough.

I'm bored.

I do not like the game as I'm playing it right now.

After the elemination of two AI players (just because I felt like it) my empire is made up of around 25 cities.
I couldn't care less for them. Because a city has no base defense value I've lost (and regained) plenty of them without any emotional response.

I can see a lot of effort was spent on the different landtypes, their upgrades and effects. My formers auto-terraformed this landscape.
But I don't think I needed it done. Or at least, I didn't feel any urge for it, nor satisfaction now it's done. Surely there's a clever system underneath.
My values for each of the four resources have been all over the place. Then again, because there appear to be no consequences at all, I stopped caring.
Whenever the game urges me to set a new production, I brainlessly build some more buildings.

I do mind. Don't get me wrong. I started out so enthousiastic. The game got it all right in the beginning. The tension, the darkness, the discoveries, the aliens.
The struggle to set up a second base. To clear the first hive. To defeat the first Galoth. Sure, it would be nice to have some more backgroundstory added later on, but this was plenty to create my own adventure. And I can still see the potential. The effort that went into all of it and no doubt the thinking before that. But it's gone astray, something has gone wrong.

Surely, this would be the place for some sublime suggestion that without too much recoding would fix it for me and other players alike (does anyone even recognizes the feelings towards the game I've been describing?).

I'll think on that one.

It's not a long list of small fixes. It has probably something to do with the difficulty of the game.

Not the difficultysetting, not adding more or more agressively aliens. But to somehow let me as a player continue to experience that feeling of a struggle. Maybe increasing research times (so slowing down technological advancement), longer alien presence (spreading of fungus, creation of new hives, adding more powerfull aliens later in the game), increasing town defenses (or seperate defensive structures) and heavier penalties for expansion, conquest and negative resourcevalues and morale/pollution.

Ok, that does make for quite a list. But I'm just saying, if you can, and want to, and recognise the need for it, let me experience the need for all the great stuff that's allready in this game. Let me please check each turn how long it takes for that new militairy unit/terrain improvement/city growth/new research is finished because I really need it and I might loose all my hard work if it doesn't arrive in time...

For me, the game lost all tension because it was trivial to win after the native life was under control.

Without a stronger AI, the only challenge in the game will be multiplayer with other humans.

Thanks for your writing down your thoughts.

Cheers,
Rok

I think the key thing here is that once the challenge has gone the fun has gone. We need to make sure the AI is expanding and presents a threat in the latter stages of the game. If there is no threat then there is no need for optimizing your performance and nothing to really think about. It is only when things are hard fought and close that it makes a difference if you defended the mountains correctly.

We need to make sure the AI is expanding as fast as the player and that they absorb smaller weaker empires and continue to grow so they can compete. Sometimes what happens is the AI gets stuck in an exchange where it captures a city, loses it to another AI, captures it back and so on. What we might want to do is make some AI's better than others rather than all equal. This way the stringer ones will destroy the weaker ones and present a larger more threatening empire in the late game. We can do this by having a hidden random roll at the start of the game to decide which nations are going to be the powerful AI's and which the weaker ones. One way to do this is to give the powerful AI a combat bonus against other AI units (not against the player). The aim is just to ensure the AI is growing at the same speed or faster than the player to present a constant challenge, not to defeat the player.

Thoughts on the AI issues - every game I've hit near end game I've taken over AI cities that have had tons of formers and colonizers in them. Might want to check the code on that to where if x number of total or 50% or something is inactive (not actively forming or moving to form) the AI will delete them and either use the resources a different way, or build other units. I know from letting the AI take a few cities to see what happens to the colonists that the AI changes the colonist movement towards production - to the detriment of everything else it seems (including food for their colonists).

I noticed this and pointed it out previously: the AI builds way too many formers, and to a lesser extent, colononizers.

Also, the AI builds NO artillery, which I think is one of the most important units.

The AI currently aims for 1 former per city, but since pollution no longer spawns wasteland, most of them sit idle in the later stages of the game. Maybe I'll add that it disbands too many idle formers, will see how it is after transportation tubes (= improved streets) are in.

Also, over the next one or two days I'll implement that the AI researches and builds for a more balanced troop composition (30% infantry, 15% artillery, etc.).

I think the three biggest issues with the AI currently are:

1. Never really researches armor techs.
2. Keeps building colonizers when there is nowhere to expand.
3. Builds too many formers.

SephiRok wrote:I think the three biggest issues with the AI currently are:

1. Never really researches armor techs.
2. Keeps building colonizers when there is nowhere to expand.
3. Builds too many formers.

I would add a fourth. The AI tends to build on the cheap. Most of the units the AI builds tend to have no armor. This makes them very easy to kill.

If the terraformers get some high tech abilities, like advanced roads, or building entrenchments or fortifications, or planetary boreholes, or raising land out of water, etc., then having extra formers would actually be useful. But as it is, they are just a drain on the AI.

One thing I noticed in my last playthrough was the tendency of the AI to spam cities, even when they could not defend them and had not dealt with the wildlife. It forced me to do the same to keep from being squeezed out.

I'd also like to see the native life remain a challenge as the game goes on. There are too many overpowered natives at game start (the 8 power walkers and a nasty flier) I like to see the natives get nastier, and hives respawn in uncontrolled / unobserved territories in the mid game.

I also saw a bunch of natives prowling around AI cities but doing no real damage to them.

My first impressions are it takes a bit to load the game, once in I did like the opening animation, very cool.

As far as the game it starts off like any other turn based game and I got the basic hang of it with the tips that come up. I did not read anything on the forums on purpose to see how hard it would be to pick up the game "cold".

I fumbled around for about an hour and manged two cites (the AI had several) and really could not figure out how to get more. I took out some hives and converted some fungus but that was about it for an hours worth of work.

I think it will be a fun game but I just picked some techs that sounded like they could be helpful but could not really get a "big picture" feel to go any one direction.

I will not read up on the forums to get some tips and try again armed with more knowledge.