Post by Casteele in The Fertile Crescent comments

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Pretty good basic concept, but...

1) Going towards Steam only means I will not be able to play it much more: Steam breaks on my NON-WINDOWS PC.

2) Game balance is an issue. I have not won a single game--every time the enemy kills my farmers, which leads to my people starving, and revolting before I can get food production back up. If, instead, my people would slowly die, I might be able to rebuild before they die off over time. But the revolt thing simply ending the game harshly makes it far too difficult. I even tried to dedicate all but a couple villagers to food production, but I still could not produce enough. the enemy killing my farmers just made it more difficult.

My very first game was as close as I came to winning: I had built an army and destroyed everything except the enemy town hall. Then suddenly, my people revolted against me and ended my game. Apparently, two enemy troops went off to the side, avoiding my army, and proceeded to break through my walls and kill my farmers. I was focused on guiding my army against the enemy, so did not notice my food reserves rapidly depleting until it was too late to rebuild. Very frustrating.

LincRead2 years ago (2 edits)

Hello!

1) We're releasing to macOS and Linux as well, so I'm sad to read it won't be playable for you at all on Steam.

2) There are a few things you can try if you haven't already:

Make walls and watchtowers to defend your settlement so enemies can't get to your farmers; you can even put villagers in watchtowers if you need to so enemy axemen can't reach them (and they receive bonus armor against enemy ranged units)
Use your villagers as your last line of defense, as they are decent fighters against at least the first waves, and even more so with the Militia research; even use all your villagers to defend if you need to (don't let them just stand there and get killed)
Make sure you research Plough as soon as you have some farms to make sure food production is efficient
Research Code of Law after making Palace, which increases villager training speed, so you can replenish villagers you lose faster
Research Apothecary so villagers gain + health and heal faster
Always make sure you've stockpiled some food befor making additional military units to make sure you afford maintaining them

Apart from that, we thank you for your feedback ! We are working on making sure the game is accessible as possible, and one of the things we need to do is to make sure it's more clear when you're under attack.

Casteele2 years ago

Re: 1) It is Steam itself which is an issue on my machine. It requires some libraries that conflict with other (and more important than games) software on my machine. Note that I sometimes have the same issues with Itch and GOG apps/games as well, so that is, sadly, an issue related to my system and not your game. :(

Re: 2) I have done all of that. There are some issues I did not go in to detail...

A) Only idle villagers will defend themselves. They might survive better if they stopped what they are doing to defend themselves.

B) I try keeping my villagers as a "last line of defense", but the idle ones will be aggressive near enemies. I have to give extra time and attention to micro-managing them... which is the problem: I am not a computer that can micro-manage tens or hundreds of villagers per second, nor re-assign them fast enough to halt a starvation rebellion.

C) I am always _trying_ to stockpile food, produce more than I am using, and building granaries near food sources to speed them up. Every wave of enemies has the tendency to disrupt and deplete my food production and reserves. (Strategically, this is how reality works as well. But reality also has real people who can think for themselves and act upon needs and priorities.)

As a side note, it might also help if villagers standing around idle would (or in towers) would automatically go repair structure nearby which are damaged. Some of the AI logic, however, makes this problematic -- I tried to position some villagers near walls and towers so I could quickly assign them to repair, but when an enemy came within range, the villager would go chase them... Even if the villager had to walk across the map to pass through an opened gate to get to the enemy.

Another issue is with gates. It might be better if they could automatically open for my units and close (and/or stay closed) when an enemy unit is nearby.

Lastly, it might help if units could move atop walls, either to attack nearby enemies or perform regular patrol actions.

Anyhow, my point(s) are aimed at one basic issue that is constant in the game: Time (and rapid micro-management). Slow down the rate at which a revolt happens (or as I said, eliminate it, and instead let units slowly die off from starvation; or some combination of the two), giving the player a more balanced opportunity to both identify when there is a problem and execute corrective actions. The UI itself compounds this because there is no way to quickly move to a problem spot so I can correct it.

Without those complications, all the problems I mentioned would be relatively minor annoyances rather than fatal and frustrating flaws.

LincRead2 years ago

Thanks again for the feedback!

I wish I could see you play live. :)

A) We'll add this to the backlog.

I tend to select a bunch of villagers at once to help defend, and then use the "back to work" button after the battle.

We're taking note of everything you write, so thanks again.

Casteele2 years ago

I finally won a couple games, but I had to drastically change my strategies and tactics to less intuitive ones:

1) I noticed that the AI does not actually build anything beyond what it is given at the start (town hall, 2 houses, 4 towers, barracks, and archery range), harvest resources, research technologies, etc. Instead, the game just gives it/builds stronger combat units at regular intervals--without regard to housing or resources available. To me, this is "cheating" and makes it more of a "Tower Defense" type game.

2) As a result, I changed my strategy to a simpler one... Do the same as the AI is doing--quickly build an army and rush the enemy location to destroy it's archery range and then barracks. I lose a part of my army from the enemy towers, but since the AI is not rebuilding the range or barracks, it does not matter; Once both are destroyed, I can send in smaller groups to destroy the towers (and soldiers in them) at my own leisure.

The downside of all this is that:

A) It pretty much eliminates any real depth to strategy; As I stated, it is more of a "Tower Defense" type game.

B) It greatly eliminates the game's replayability. There is almost no reason now to vary my strateg(y/ies) according to the map/terrain. After a couple games, I have now lost interest in the game.

C) It limits the usefulness or need for much of the game infrastructure. Why waste time with all the research? You only need a minimum of research to be able to neutralize the AI. And there is little reason to even fight the AI over control of "limited resources".

D) The enemy grows unchecked. In one game, I destroyed the enemy archery range but not barracks. After awhile, there was a large swarm of dozens of enemy barracks units running around damaging or destroying my structures as fast as I could rebuild or repair them. While that was kind of fun, it sent my CPU usage to 100% and I had end the process.

My suggestions:

1) Make the AI follow the same rules as the player, so it has to produce villagers to gather resources to build structures and units. You can adjust AI difficulty by other means, possibly even under player control, such as "Villager Move Speed * 1.5", "Villager Gather Amount * 1.5", "Villager Carry Amount * 2.0", etc.

2) Create "infinite resource" items in some locations. Deep copper mines, trees and berry bushes that regrow, animal spawn points, etc. Give players and the AI something to fight for control over.

Those two suggestions would affect and improve most or all of the game downsides. Of course, you would have to implement a "real" AI instead of the simple one used now (no build/rebuild, unlimited housing and resources, etc).

Lastly, just to note, I did see one thing I liked: Villagers trying to slay and gather meat from Boars... Having the Boars gang up and try to fight back was a nice twist!

LincRead2 years ago

The AI you play against here is scripted and not very advanced, as you say. Currently, the best part of this version, is multiplayer.

It's a pity you can't access the Steam version, because we are currently making skirmish AI for it. It will play with the same rules as the player. We're also adding new game modes. I'm not sure when and I can't make any promises, but we'll look into releasing the game on other platforms as here on itch.io.

Things to fight over is also a good suggestion, and something we plan to add as a content update to the Early Access version.