Version 0.19 Observations

[azpops]

You've finally got the bugs worked out of the transporters. Thanks.

I've only played through one game so far with the latest version and so far I'm not finding it to be as fun as previous versions. Mainly, the cities simply don't grow outside a short radius from the headquarters city. I've got some cities out 20 hexes from the headquarters and they have been there for over 150 turns and they are still at 3 or 4 population. The same is true for the AI factions. Because of this they don't build many cities anymore. You have gone from city spamming to no cities. In my game I have found a couple of the AI factions on continents all by themselves. The game is out beyond 200 turns now and they still only have 5 or 6 cities built. The rest of the continent is empty. They don't build more cities and other AI factions don't build on the continent either. And again, the cities the AI factions have built are mostly all at level 5 or lower population.

I think you're getting close to a workable solution, but you have gone too far in the opposite direction now. As I stated earlier, you have gone from city spamming to no cities.

I have noticed, too, that with the new device that allows capture of aliens, the AI factions tend to overflow the game with captured aliens. Several of the factions had dozens and dozens of aliens running around. This may also be because of the ruins. I have entered several ruins and have received as many as 14 aliens. Whatever the cause, captured aliens are overrunning the game, now.

Speaking of ruins, the increased benefits are nice, but sometimes they tend to be unhelpful. A case in point. When entering a ruin, a unit receives a 14 level increase in rank. Since there are only 8 levels this is overkill.

Overall, the games plays better than the early versions. I really like where it's going. Just need to get the city building right. Keep up the good work.

[void]

Thanks for the feedback azpops!

The version from yesterday indeed had too low growth, one was starving for colonists. The latest version today has a growth curve that gives a faster start and then slowly declines (to make late game less annyoing to micro), but still stays faster than what you played last on. Please give the new version a try, finding the perfect growth curve is insanely important for the gameplay. In our multiplayer test sessions we mainly test the first era, and we optimize every single colonist each turn in duels with strict timing attacks, so our experience differs. However, we definitely want that the large scale playstyle we've seen in your saves plays great as well, so please keep up the feedback. We'll fine tune the growth curve over the next days.