Hey Ed, thanks for that new version. I have played some maps in campaign mode. Some first remarks on the tactical gameplay (as the strategic map has remained unchanged):
AIs skill has been improved very much. Opponents won't line up anymore and they don't escape to line up at the edge of the map. When they retreat they usually search cover and group up with other soldiers. I also like how they defend buldings and don't start to rush uncovered as they did before. They look for interrupts which makes it a tough mission to assualt a building. It all feels much more realistic now. Great advance.
Some minor bugs / suggestions:
- something is screwed up with the AP calculation: I can get negative APs, For example when my soldier already has used all his APs and then gets hit by an interrupt. Or if I shoot twice and immediatly crouch, the crouch can result in negative APs
- when opening or closing a door and then selecting another player quickly (when the open / close door animation is still in progress), the soldier will warp to the position of the player that I just selected
- when switching to nades the throw-icon only shows up when i move to another tile. Shouldn't it show up immediately?
- opening a door can result in locking down a teammate if he stands next to a door and the neighbouring tiles are occupied by furniture etc (see image below). Maybe extending the open/close door feature to neighbouring tiles could help to fix the problem. Or you could tell te building-creation-algorithm not to place furniture next to doors
- defending buildings was a hard task in previous versions because the enemies would rush through the doors. Now that I can block the doors by putting a soldier in front of them, defending a building is easy, in my opinion too easy on the hard and very hard level: AI will keep trying to open the doors but won't realize that they are always blocked. So I do the same thing on every turn: Open the door, shoot the enemies that are right in front of my sodliers, close the door again. Maybe a solution could be to make the AI attack through the windows, if it realizes that doors are blocked several times. AI could try to throw nades through the windows. And it should wait for interrupts when facing a closed door.
- AIs nading skills should be improved a little (I know, before I complained that it was too perfect :-)) Especially when enemy soldiers are hiding in a building or behind a fence, nading from distance is pretty useless.
- The door feature is somehow in conflict with the fog of war. Similar to the remote nade explosion problem (that has been solved), open remote doors show you where the enemy is moving. Especially when joining a fight with allied Ben Dabi forces, a quick glance on the buildings' doors shows you where the fighting is probably taking place, although allied soldiers are out of view.
Possible solutions: You could leave some doors open by default at the beginning of each map, so an open door would not anymore be a sure sign of hostile activity,
Or you could display always closed doors as long as they are out of view. Only when they get into effective viewing range, a player can see if the door has already been opened. i.e. the door image would change from closed to open only when getting into the field of view.
- I don't see a real skill difference when playing the same map on normal difficulty and then on very hard. The AI did pretty much the same on both levels. I was camping inside a building, the majority of the enemies tried to shoot from distance and take cover, some enemies tried to rush. You could make the enemies stick closer to their teams tactic on very hard level. Because the rushing attackers are always an easy target.
Concerning the strategy map:
Skills increase faster now, I appreciate that.
I share the opinion that players should be able to start with more soldiers. As of now almost half of the gameplay in a campaign consists in gathering the team. When Leonidas finally joins the team the game changes: you have 5 soldiers, better weapons and stronger opponents. So I think you could (later on, I know that right now you are developing the tactical gameplay) add another campaign mode that allows you to start with 4 or 5 soldiers with better weapons and better skills.