First Impressions

[Nosforontu]

My early impressions of the game are overall positive though with some room for improvement. While my list of negatives will probably outnumber my positives it is not because my overall experience was negative in any way but in the hope that the negative feed back might point out areas for improvement in the game before it goes live.

The good
1: Fast turns in my games so far even when I turned off the background music and had Real Player running in background running my play list.

2: I love having a workshop again in the game something I have been sorely missing in a Civ style game since Alpha Centauri

3: Communal resources, something I really enjoy having and something that makes the game a bit more real overall

4: Rival Civilization military A.I. seems at least competent in my first Normal/Normal game I was defeated by Not Sparta who used amphibious landings, WMDs and unit swarms to overcome my cities defenses.

5: Ground units automatically create their own transport when traveling by sea. Its something I first saw in Civ 4 or 5 and I was very happy to see it here as it helps keep order ques a lot less cluttered.

The Bad
1: The Native Aliens A.I. seems very random to me in their movements, and seemed like they don't have much in the way of goals. Sometimes they will pop a former sometimes they will ignore it type of behaviour. A lot of times when moving units around early in the game the Aliens felt more like a stope light that you just need to wait for a turn before moving into the hex that they just vacated.

2: As others have mentioned on their own first impressions it seems that the Aliens do not last very long into the game I am not sure if this is intentional or not nor if they have some sort of ressurgence later in the game or not.

3: Planes at least in the first game that I was able to use them seemed to be able to fly forever without stopping somewhere to refuel, this makes them seem like just another piece on the board rather than an actual aviation unit.

4: Their did not seem to be much point beyond the movement bonus to connecting cities together by road which was a bit disappointing but it could also have been that I just did not notice the bonus.

5: Very limited value for navies you do not at least according to another post on this board not develope aquatic resources and I certainly did not notice any such resources while exploring making the naval game a bit lacking overall. This was especially true since the North/South maps wrap around to eachother instead of having an impassable edge to it. This made needing a Navy even less valuable as I could just walk to the other continent instead of sailing. Right now as the game sets and going just by my first impressions their does not seem to be much to push players into a navy first doctrine yet.

6: Could use a bit better feed back on my progress. My suggestion once you open up the Research/Military/Economic tabs on the far left I believe is some empty real estate (just under where the Advisor tells you how you are doing). If you filled up some of that empty space with a list of your overall rank in that field and also did the same for the other empires it would help a little bit with game immersion, and let you know with better precision on how you are doing in game.

[SephiRok]

Thanks for the input Nosforontu,

We'll take it into consideration!

Thanks,
Rok