Development update #2
13 aprile 2020
Hey everyone!
First of all - we hope you guys are all safe and healthy in those hard times. Covid-19 pandemic surprised us all and caused global disruption. About 3 weeks ago we have switched to work from home and excluding few inconvenience it is business as usually for us and we are working extremely hard to create a great game for you guys!
Gameplay development
Today, we will have quite a large update summing up changes we made to the gameplay core since the campaign as we are committed to deliver to you a best version of this game that we can. Before we will proceed, few important points, especially for the people new to the way we operate
1) Why are you changing the game after campaign?
This is something we always do - we show you guys prototype during the campaign. It is important milestone, where we can hear your concerns, ideas, feedback as well as to listen to reviewers opinion. We usually at least double the time spend on gamedesign and development after KS campaign.
Also - during the campaign the game have to look good for few games that you will see. On your tables, it needs to play very well through hundreds of games and our developers and testers are preparing them for exactly that!
2) Does this mean, that previous version of those mechanics were bad?
Well, not necessarily but it varies a lot. Sometimes we find our much better solution for some things, sometimes we improve general game flow through those changes, sometimes we get rid of some mechanics that makes the game too complicated with no big fun improvement.
3) Are the changes in this update final?
Nope, nothing is final until we will share with you final files for print. We are using every possible hours to try to make the best out of the game we are working at. Having this in mind, make sure to voice your feedback if you disagree with something, we might take it into serious consideration!
Having said that, lets see what our game authors were working on!
Minor changes:
* Overseers upgrade costs - simplified to easy traceable and memorable form of just one resource in ascending order on all tracks (previously it was for example 2 stone, 1 wood. Now its just one resource. Different resources for different overseers)
* Horseman cost now includes only gold with no spearman (we found out, too many players felt bad having to sacrifice a spearman to get a horse. This fixed it quite nicely, even with bigger gold cost.)
* Action cards lifting - few cards reworked, including an option to play with soldiers only and not sending any workers (this was need to reflect big combat change made).
* At the start of the game - double production from general card instead of fixed resource amount (makes asymmetry aspect better and is easy to implement)
Major changes:
* Tactic cards - reworked to reflect new combat system (more on that later)
* Advisors tweaks/rework - reflecting new changes
* New advisors no longer comes into play mid-season (once player pick a advisory, you do not put a new one. Advisory pool refresh at the end of the season. Previously there was too many options available and constantly introduced new ones leading to analysis paralysis)
* More advisors for higher player counts (6 per 2-3 and 8 per 4-5)
* Points for archer recruitment (you automatically get a point for recruiting archer to offset changes)
* Archer no longer participate in a horde card kill
* Horde system tweaks/rework
* You suffer no additional penalty during breach if you are present on Wall Section it occurred (this motivates players to participate in wall defense as well as mitigate some of the frustration that could happen in some situations).
* Horde cards appears at random Wall Section - fixed ammount of new cards at the beginning of each season (2p -> 3h, 3p -> 4h, 4p -> 6h, 5p -> 7h)
* When there is no free spot for a new horde card - first in row raids killing soldiers and punishing players
* Military upgrades - instead of traditional supervisor track, decreasing the cost of recruitment, you now can upgrade EACH of the unit type (only once). If you want all 3 upgrades, you need to use 3 models as supervisors (decreasing your army). Here are the upgrades:
Spear men - you can save them from death cheaper
Archers - you earn points by shooing with them
Horsemen - move them freely to other Wall sections
Biggest change - combat
As you can see from the changes above there is one big change - it is done to the combat system. As a quick reminder, in previous version when recruiting the soldiers we would put them near the walls and use them only at Wall defense.
This created a few problems:
Problem 1: Too much time spend on deciding where to place soldiers (when it did not had that much impact, but it seemed too). All of this was happening at once, sometimes creating quite huge downtime.
Problem 2: Division of the game into 2 smaller "games" - economic and combat. They seemed to separated apart.
Problem 3: Analysis paralysis - before entering combat phase you had to have in mind all the armies of other players, all their special abilities, number of tactic cards and meditation. All of this culminated in one phase of the game.
Problem 4: Tactic cards were not always that useful or important
Having this in mind, here are the changes we made in the current version:
* now there is no separate phase when all soldiers attack at once
* Soldier attacks (is placed on the horde card) immediately when it is recruited and takes its reward from the horde card spot
* Horde cards are killed immediately after filling its vital spots - then soldiers return behind the Wall and can attack again, thanks to using tactic cards or advisers special abilities.
* Horde cards penetrates wall at the end of the season, as it did before
Generally, it creates much better flow of the game, it feels faster and our decision have direct consequences. It is easier to adjust your strategies and decisions mid-season as well! Here is also how does it adres previously mentioned problems:
Problem 1 and 3: Much more transparent decision making - you move only 1 (or few) soldiers
Problem 2: Combat and economy parts of the game feels much more connected with each other, you can see direct impacts right away! It also lead to some cool combo-interaction (for example you are missing gold, so you are building solder, send him away on a card with gold as reward and with next move you can get extra advisor)
Problem 3: Tactic cards are much more important if you want to get a full use of your army. You can deploy them more then once!
All in all, after those changes we feel the game is much better then it previously was! Please keep in mind, that it is still work in progress and there is tons of play-testing, balancing and polishing ahead of us. But we wanted to share with you those changes directions at this stage - we are really excited how the game core mechanism is shaping up into better and better version!
This is it for this update and next month we will bring you even more news from the development process! Stay safe!
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