Slitherine

Or is it Vessel?

Anyway, I'm chugging around, and there are definitely some issues here.

A single enemy army can go into a province and knock it down a point, causing thousands of gold in economic damage...years to recover from that. That's a bit much, eh? There are definitely a few issues here, I can counter-attack and kill that one unit, but years of recovery is a bit harsh. I'm sure the troops being slaughtered feel great about it, too.

I'm also not thrilled that Fortifications are such a penalty when I have them. If I don't keep an army there, again, a single unit can come in and instantly conquer the keep, meaning I have to send a huge army back just to stop it. Shouldn't fortifications have some sort of intrinsic garrison?

Anyway, as Vessel (or whatever it's called) I can't build siege engines, ever? I've tried attacking fortified provinces like Dragonhold...that's pretty hopeless.

I captured a harbor...but still can't build ships. Am I truly never going to learn how to build ships? I built up the province, but no dice.

I called the Horde, but still no siege engines or ships. I'm currently attacking that forested kingdom in the middle of my country, but it's hopeless. Even hitting it from 3 sides with maximum armies just causes my armies to be slaughtered, to minimal effect...even werewolves and elephants do nothing to treants and all the stuff in there. If I don't take it out, then they can attack, put a hostile 8 year old girl in every adjacent country, and devastate my country for decades...so I pretty much have to secure that border.

Is it really supposed to be all hopeless battles?

For sides who lack in siege (like the northern tribes, Jotland and Vessoi), options are currently a bit limited - we have possible ideas to make thier lives a bit easier in the future.

The best way is to make use of tactical battles, you can wear forts down over time - a unit standing next to a fort stops it from shooting, the adjacent unit will still take hits, but with less power. You can use cheap units to do this while using archers to hit the fort. If you run out of fodder, just retreat and come back next turn.

In some cases you can use mobility - take a cavalry heave army and simply avoid the forts as much as possible.

So this game is really still early in development, then. Off to a good sketch, at least, but an awful lot here is missing, and I'm not even talking about programming. Any hope the devs would take about 100 suggestions or so to make a game out of this?