Unit Upgrades - Research vs. Scarce Resources
Posted: Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:53 pm
As a veteran FG-1 player and having gotten thru a little over half the FG-2 campaign...
I find myself really missing the old research mechanic in FG-1... It forced you into some hard choices over having gold to buy new units, upgrade existing units, and open up the upgrade options.
The core mechanic was substantially different, in that in FG-1 your ability to upgrade was dependent on how YOU the player decides to spend gold - and you had 2 levels of choice a) ABILITY to upgrade (how much to devote to research b) CHOICE of what to upgrade. In FG-2, your ABILITY to upgrade is defined by how the DEVELOPERS chose to allocate the scarce resources (note the complaints about how liquid mana is non-existent for the first 1/3 of the campaign).
The original game also had more unit types and each unit type had (IIRC) 6 levels - base + 5 upgrades.
To compare cavalry for instance:
FG-1: Light (skirmish) cavalry + Heavy (shock) cavalry [6 levels for each]
FG-2: Light cavalry (3 types) + Heavy (1 type)
It would have been nice if the upgrade tree had been deeper and (if using the scarce resource model), there had been several levels of upgrade that didn't require scarce resources.
So while I'm still enjoying the game, I definitely find that I miss several of the old FG-1 mechanics (research and customized starting general).
I find myself really missing the old research mechanic in FG-1... It forced you into some hard choices over having gold to buy new units, upgrade existing units, and open up the upgrade options.
The core mechanic was substantially different, in that in FG-1 your ability to upgrade was dependent on how YOU the player decides to spend gold - and you had 2 levels of choice a) ABILITY to upgrade (how much to devote to research b) CHOICE of what to upgrade. In FG-2, your ABILITY to upgrade is defined by how the DEVELOPERS chose to allocate the scarce resources (note the complaints about how liquid mana is non-existent for the first 1/3 of the campaign).
The original game also had more unit types and each unit type had (IIRC) 6 levels - base + 5 upgrades.
To compare cavalry for instance:
FG-1: Light (skirmish) cavalry + Heavy (shock) cavalry [6 levels for each]
FG-2: Light cavalry (3 types) + Heavy (1 type)
It would have been nice if the upgrade tree had been deeper and (if using the scarce resource model), there had been several levels of upgrade that didn't require scarce resources.
So while I'm still enjoying the game, I definitely find that I miss several of the old FG-1 mechanics (research and customized starting general).
