Dang I'm so on the fence... I really wanna try it out but I'm not sure if I'll like it. I hear the controls are good and that's a big part of it.
I guess my question isn't so much just the difficulty but whether it's easy for people with little RTS experience to play. Again, something like Ameobattle, I could handle. But Land Air Sea Warfare was too much for me to grasp. So the question is whether this leans more on the casual side or the hardcore side of the RTS spectrum.
This is playthru video of a blitz map in the fastest game speed. Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel
I think it's relatively straight forward on one level, but there is tons of depth to learn the intricacies of how each unit works and how best to use their abilities. None of it is necessary to enjoy the game against AI as you can always start on the novice level, but you can just get better at your own pace and learn more if you want to take it more seriously, progressing up to harder AI which will really test you. Each unit can build the same thing so that's simple. There are only 5 buildings to learn and their roles are distinct and obvious. Each unit has 3 abilities for very specific situations (you need to research them in the normal campaign and skirmish, but are all unlocked already in Blitz mode) but if used correctly they are very powerful (and kind of essential to use at higher levels, which can get pretty frantic when you have lots going on.). But you usually only have less than 10 units to manage. Unusual to have more than that as it would take too long to be able to afford to build them. It's quite a rushy game, as opposed to building a force in a leisurely timeframe (turtling) which keeps it focussed and relatively short games usually. Sometimes if very evenly balanced it turns into a drawn out face-off which are really fun (loads of units on the field!). Reminds me of Ruse on PC In terms of competitive play, it is pretty hardcore if you take it online against a skilled opponent but that's what gives it longevity and you can play in your own style, not a fixed way to victory, which makes the whole thing more satisfying when you succeed. Learn new strategies, adapt, experiment. It's one of my top 5 iOS games ever, just the user interface is worth playing it for. Beautiful to play and look at with some lovely details. Classy, elegant game all the way! EDIT: So in summary I say it is casual in the sense that it all makes sense immediately, but hardcore in that to do well you really need to master everything and think/act fast. Compared to Ameobattle, this is completely different approach. Ameobattle is just leading you all the way with no way of making your own way to play, there's just one thing that works generally. Land Air Sea, is more like this (traditional) but don't let that put you off because the UI on LASW makes that game a nightmare to navigate, and the building is not intuitive, and probably too many options. This is MUCH more streamlined and obviously designed with iPad in mind (and now phone of course )
Now thats a good question. I haven't played LASW myself (was late to iOS gaming), but I had played a lot of other RTS like Starcraft, and I realise that most PC RTS these days really requires the player to understand, remember and utilise a complex mix of stuff like tech trees, build orders. You don't have that requirement in AD, although you still need to prioritise research for your unit abilities in multiplayer. Being on a touchscreen device where you can just directly drag units to move them also helps a lot in Micro. It's great how you can do stuff like draw a curved path to have your army circle to the the back of the enemy forces, rather than needing to keep setting waypoints along the way with a mouse. You don't need a high APM to win in AD. And so, while this game is much easier to pick up than most RTS (I don't count tower defense), you still need to put in a lot of strategy and planning to win the AI (aptly named Brutal in the highest setting), and that's enough to put it on the hardcore side of the spectrum. Especially since it is an iOS game. Do check out the videos before you decide though, Amoebattle looks rather similar.
^^ Thanks for the answers guys! This especially puts my mind at ease. The UI was way too confusing and not intuitive in Land Air Sea Warfare and was a huge turn off as far as me lacking the desire to figure it all out. I know a lot of people think of that as one of the best RTS games on the iOS so that's why I got it -- only to be dumbfounded and just didn't want to put the time into learning it. I think I'm going to give this a try. The videos and artwork are very intriguing. It was nice just a few years ago when it seemed like most games had lite versions to give you a feel for a game.
Even I felt that the UI in LASW was downright awful. I only knew two exceptional RTS games on the AppStore with multiplayer previously: Red Conquest and Starfront. Autumn Dynasty makes three. Really liking it so far. You can tell it was made from the ground up for the iOS just like Red Conquest.
Hey devs, will it be possible to be able to choose who to play with later on in the MP? Currently I think it is random right? (haven't played MP but just assuming based on what I saw).
Yup we are definitely going to improve the multiplayer experience. We have recently moved out of our home office, and now we finally got our space and resource to get our own multiplayer server!
I will echo what was said before - AD leans hardcore, but it has a total of 5 units, and 5 buildings - pretty minimalist; this makes it quick to pick up but I'm still trying to figure out which units are better against which, how to use their abilities best, etc. BTW, each unit has only 2 special abilities - easy to learn but still plenty for making things interesting and ever-changing.
You got your Swordsmen, Pikemen, Archers, Horsemen and Catapults, and each of them have two different abilities. But don't think that this game would be simple though. I dare say you'll see people asking for more units, but none complaining about the number of units being too few. For Reydn, discounting the abilities, the basic triangle is Swordsmen > Pikemen > Horsemen > Swordsmen.
Yes, we're definitely moving things forward, and really glad to know you followed the plot! The Autumn Dynasty campaign is actually a prequel to the larger and more complex story we had in mind-- at the outset we realized that we didn't quite have the resources to pull that off, so we decided to reach back in time and tell a simpler story that preceded the fall of the Dynasty-- with fewer but more polished missions. With more support for the game, we're going to be able to do much more in terms of expanding the universe and the narrative style. (With the current format, we were limiting ourselves to three lines per character and ten exchanges per conversation-- after that players would just skip the story!) We're thinking of doing the Central Plains Campaign as our next release-- with a focus on combining the faster blitz action with some light empire management-- and province by province conquest! That would allow us to add new units and abilities before we return to the story, which covers the period when the Autumn Dynasty was overtaken by foreign powers during a bitter civil war. Two generals meet on the battlefield and each tells a wildly different story of the fall: who is right and who is wrong? We're planning a unique mirror campaign for this, with each playthrough revealing a different ideological interpretation of people and events. We've always wondered about the role of story in games-- as developers we feel for it, though sometimes we do realise that players often skip right past it!
All of this sounds amazing. I especially like the notion of a campaign with mirroring missions depicting two different versions of the fall. Lots of potential there. I did enjoy reading through the story. I think many players who skip the dialog go back to it after they played through the game and enjoyed the missions. I think my favorite missions in the campaign and skirmish maps thus far have been the larger ones that allow the player to build and fight against large armies, for example "Walls of the Mountain" and "All Under Heaven" (even though this one was notoriously difficult) in the campaign and "Edge of Hell" and "Twofold Reproach" in the skirmish mode. These are probably my post replayed maps. I hope to see more similar maps in the future. I hope that you guys make enough from your update to universal to make both campaigns a reality. You made something really amazing, and I do not throw those words around lightly. I will gladly pay for future campaigns, and I'm sure that everyone who doesn't limit their mobile games to uncomplicated flash-game shovelware would agree with me. It's pretty early, but do you have a timetable planned for the development of these new campaigns? Also, what sort of units do you plan to add in the future?
Well deserved! I did not name Autumn Dynasty one of the best rpgs of ANY platform for nothing Concerning the limited build sites, I actually didn't mind this mechanic before reading your reply. I figured I could see sense behind the design. After reading your reasons (and truly understanding the design choices ), I now see it as a feature. While I ill like for iOS to loose the kind of talent you fellas represent, it seems to me that there is enough that is unusual or unique about Autumn Dynasty that the game might warrant a desktop iteration...
There actually already is a desktop version of this game. It was a student project created some years ago. It's not as graphically polished (the units aren't little men, but abstract blocks similar to what you might see in maps of military movements). I think the touch screen is the perfect medium for this game. Part of it is an aesthetic/feeling sort of issue. The brush strokes felt a bit clunky with the mouse, while they feel intuitive and elegant on a touch screen. Another part is that many RTS games on PC have been pretty much additions and variations on the same old thing since C&C/Warcraft. I know that's not exactly accurate, but that's how I feel. I haven't been excited for a strategy game on PC forever now.
In 100% agreement on how the control scheme is what makes this ticks. And while it'd be nice to have an easy to pickup RTS for the PC, I don't think it'll fare well there. More than happy to be proven wrong, but unless it's groundbreaking, I'll stick to the iPad.
Ahh, I started with those blocks based on this image I remembered from myth actually The initial inspiration for the drawing/dragging thing came from Dark Reign, where you could lay out waypointed paths, then assign units to follow them. When I was implementing it halfway, I left the units attached to the paths and realised it was a lot more intuitive than having to select the unit again before assigning it to the path. Back in 2006, Autumn was a 3D tank game with glowing arrows for paths, but players could not draw behind mountains when viewing the scene from the side-- so we decided to go with a top down view.
Fantastic Do you plan to expand the campaign in an update our an entirely new game? This is officially in my top 5. Top 1 rts on ios and top 3 on all platforms cos of the control scheme
It seems that there are two separate things here, the "Central Plains Campaign" which they are working on now, and later the expansion to the campaign story. The "Central Plains Campaign" may fall either way, here's hoping it'll be free, but for the campaign story expansion, it sounds like there'll be enough content for an entire new game, so it's either that or the dreaded IAP. I doubt it'd be free this time round, but feel free to surprise me.
