"The status for the following app has changed to In Review.", as of 3 hrs ago. Be still my beating heart. Yeah, we could (and probably should) make an automatic account. It's partially a representation of Adrian (lead programer)'s background in PC MMOs; to him this was a natural step As monika says, we'd need a 'real' account by the time you reach multiplayer anyways, since the community there is big on knowing WHO they're playing. With Asynch Multiplayer I'm assuming what we used to call 'play by mail' (as opposed to the more recent 'clash of clans' style asynch multiplayer). It's doable inside the architecture, and we have talked about it, but there's no plans at present. The key problem isn't really the networking part (even when you play single-play you're effectively playing against a server located on your phone; the game was built from ground up for multiplayer), but all the UI and support around it; how do you notify people, how do you set it up, what happens if someone takes too long to respond, etc. Instead we put the efforts into the simultaneous turn feature (so much like Diplomacy everyone takes action at the same time, minimizing downtime), and in making games that are designed to play 'during lunch hour' (so <1 hr playtime for most maps). Will it support iPhone? Depends on the uptake in the iOS community, honestly. We'd need to redo quite a lot of UI, and we'd need to deal with making multiplayer games between iOS and PC (for example) fair. Right now we support phablets (so iPhone 6+ sizes) on Android, and that works fine; there isn't an easy way for us to make that kind of differentiation on iOS. Having said that, if there's an audience and a demand we could certainly look into it. The difficulty curve can be a little punishing You should check out streams from some of the really good players, like Krysbur (lead designer, live right now), The1Silent1 and Renegade_pige also stream regularly (and are honestly better than Chris.
This game is interesting, but the combat confuses me. I understand what the units do and the higher number likely beats a lower but the combat screen moves fast and I am not understanding why some units are attacked. It almost looks like a card Battler done automatically.
Hi khann! We've been receiving requests to slow down, speed up, or skip the combat screen. Currently you can speed up by clicking, or skip it through the settings menu. But right now it's not possible to slow it down. Why are some units attacked, and some are not? Each unit deals damage to one random target at a time, unless they have a specific trait, or a card has been played, which lets them do otherwise. Each unit has an attack type. There are two: missile (or ranged, which goes first) and melee. Missile units attack first, and if they kill off the melee units at the first phase, then the melee units won't be able to attack during the melee phase. They also have unique unit traits such as: "Barrage" deals damage to multiple targets, "Rearguard" gets attacked last, "Frontline" absorbs all the damage first, except when fighting against units with Barrage, etc. Since the battles autoresolve, the strategy lies in choosing the hero and unit combinations. Example: It's best to pair up Ballista, which has low defense but high attack, with the Guard, which has Frontline. Some heroes also have traits/abilities which give attack or defense bonuses. I'm not sure if I answered your question, but hope this helps!
The reason it moves fast is 1) you'll see it hundreds of times if you play regularly. 2) While you're watching battles the game is not progressing; to keep the multiplayer simultaneous turns flowing smoothly we spent a lot of time streamlining everything else so people wouldn't have any downtime waiting for combat to resolve before they could move to the next turn. There's still a lot of strategy, but it tends to be in terms of where do you fight, what cards do you play and what units and combinations of units are in your army, rather than the tactical details of the actual combat. As someone who gets brutalized by better players I can assure you that the strategic choices matter The flipside of that is that it CAN be opaque initially, and the balancing is very much knife-edge on higher levels. I was watching the tournament players online, and between two good players one mistake can easily be your undoing. If you're only playing Single Player campaign some of that is less relevant, since the balancing is much more forgiving.
@odin: That first Fae mission feels like an outlier, as the other two are pretty easy - including optional objectives. While I'm not the best player out there, I have a few... ah well, quite a lot actually, yes I'm getting old ... years of experience under my belt. So I don't totally bumble things usually. One thing I noticed yesterday on that stage: If the Orc decides to attack you early on, you are pretty much screwed. It seems you have a 50/50 chance if he goes to conquer the territory southeast of your Capital (Whitebone Shore) and then attack you right away; or if he goes for the one in his area's northeast (Painred Hills) and leaves you alone. Thematically I think it makes more sense if he conquers his province first, and then turns his attention to the Kingdoms in the south. And it'll bring down the difficulty curve a good notch or two. Plus, in the current situation, it requires the knowledge that this can happen, so you keep a large enough army near your capital. As he always attacked me with his main army of 50+ units, anything short of my own main army just doesn't cut it. Question about Heroes and combat: Do their abilities stack / affect all your armies in a fight? E.g. when I have Caelee who gives a missile attack bonus, does the bonus extend to a second hero's army in the same battle as well? Question about card effects: While some are very well explained (e.g. Charge), others like Flaming Missiles ("All friendly troops on target territory gain +50% attack...") leave me unsure if the effect is tied to the area my army is in, or if the effect then gets tied to the army and stays active when they move to another area in the same turn I play the card. Suggestion: Could you make the province borders more prominent? As long as the area is neutral, they are easy enough to see. But when a border territory is conquered, the border is very hard to distinguish against the faction color. No idea which color to use for them, though. My usual suspects like red or black won't stand out against red and blue faction background. White might be an option, but I expect it to look ugly
It does and I feel stupid. I just noticed the number over the hero is the number of units. I thought it was some kind of number of strength. Is there any way to see the total enemies attack and defense? The only way (I know of) to see my troops total strength is under organize troops. I want to compare to my enemy,but don't know how.
I'll let Monika answer the actual gameplay questions, she's much better than me at the game. I just write code Regarding the borders, as you mentioned trying to find a border colour that always works is a pain. The territory outlines aren't dynamic (we tried that, the artists were never happy with the look), so we can't change them to add rules like 'use white between two dark coloured territories. Originally the game was supposed to be max 6 player; we got a lot of requests for 8 player maps, so we added that, which further complicates the palette. At this stage of the game I don't think we'll be able to change it, there's just too many maps created with the current method. We've been talking about how to simplify map-making, ideally so we could support modding, but it won't happen for this game. Sorry.
The answer to your first question is "it depends" and for good reason: keeping your knowledge of the enemy limited. It actually works quite neatly, you need to scout them out; very well thought-out and implemented. When you tap on an enemy hero/army, you see in the bottom middle which units they have, but not how many of each. This applies to territory garrisons as well. Only when you have an army in an adjacent territory, you get to see how many of each unit the enemy has. Same goes for your own troops: tap a hero, and it shows how many of each unit you have at the bottom. Lastly, when your own army is next to an enemy hero army or garrison, and you set them to attack, you can tap on the eye icon under your army: You will then see Attack and Defense totals for your and the enemy army, and an estimate on how the battle will go (e.g. "Epic Victory"). @odin: No worries, stuff like the borders can be a huge pain to get right, and sometimes - like here - it's simply not possible. Half-expected that changing colors isn't an option. Would this work: Make the borders a little bit broader, and change them from a continuous line to a dashed one, like this - - - - -? And while modding would be nice (not that I have time for that, but others might), I know that it's far from easy to implement, and I didn't expect it to be available in the first place.
If a side has lost all heroes and their only city being claimed, is that side still able to recruit a hero? If not, shouldnt this circumstance result in elimination just as it does once the capital is fully claimed? I guess there could be circumstances where the capturing side might abandon the liberation of said captital for tactical reasons, but if it's just two sides remaining, I'm not sure what that reason might be. Also, are the only hero bonuses the ones listed on their card? For example, do ranged-troops perform better with a range-focused hero? edit: sorry for dup, I see Nullzone already asked this question Does a heroes bonus/ability only to its troops, or also to allies stacked in the same territory?
I did mean being in the adjacent territory. Scouting is a nice touch. Seem odd that I have to iniate a battle (and cancel if I want)to see the actual power numbers. I could do the math, but I just want to play a fun game.
Agree on that Having to first set the move to see the numbers is an unneeded step. @Boomzap: Any chance to simplify that, so that we can see unit numbers of adjacent armies directly?
On the capturing thing - there are some cards you might play, such as Misdirection, which would clear an enemy off of your castle - so we want to give the player the turns it takes to cap the castle to "save himself" if possible. On the hero abilities: They only apply to the hero that has the troops assigned to them. So if you have a Siege Master hero and a Missile Attacker hero on a castle, only the troops assigned to the Siege master would get the Siege Master benefits. As such, organising your troops into the right stacks is critical. (Note:I'm Chris, another dev on the game)
On this, Monika is discussing the "Battle Preview" - and for us to do a computation to see how the battle might turn out, we'd need to actually know who is fighting - since there may be multiple heroes entering the same territory, and thats not a linear calculation - having multiple stacks/heroes makes a difference. So we need you to indicate what you would like the battle to be before we can give you a prediction of the results. As for just knowing their strengths - you can click on any hero adjacent to you to see the numbers of troops they have (or any hero in the map to see the TYPES of troop) - as a sort of "scouting".
Hello Nine, welcome to TA! And thanks for hopping in as well and answering questions. Re: Battle Review: Ah, misunderstanding. That for getting a battle result prediction you need to say which armies fight makes sense, no problem with that What I referred to yesterday was that when I tried it, I could not see enemy unit numbers when standing in an adjacent area and tapping on the enemy army. Tried again this morning, and now it works perfectly fine, no idea what that was yesterday. Problem solved, you can take it off your list And update is live ... great news! Downloading and buying later, for sure.
Since Chris and Allan already answered most of the questions, I just wanted to add that you can also tap and hold the kingdom emblems/labels to see which lands are part of that kingdom, if the borders are unclear.
Nice, I hadn't found that one yet Seems some more explanation is in order why I want well-visible borders: First, if I got it right, you get a Gold income bonus when you own all territories of a province. Is that correct? So, if yes, I want to see which territories belong to which province, so I can plan my conquest better - with the goal to maximise gold influx. And a small nitpick: When you save a game, the onscreen keyboard doesn't disappear automatically afterwards, I have to manually dismiss it. Could you check if it's possible to do that?
Yes, owning all the territories in a province/kingdom will give you bonus in terms of gold and victory points (VP), which is an equivalent value per land or structure. (VP is disabled in Campaign mode, since the goal is to complete the objectives, not earn more VP against the AI.) Exactly why we want the kingdom borders to be clear. Right now we think the borders are already thick enough, and unfortunately it's not an automatic process to change them to --- or ... Hope the 'tap and hold kingdom emblem to highlight included lands' will suffice for now Just noticed too with the keyboard after saving. Thanks for pointing that out!
@Monika: No worries, the "tap & hold kingdom" is good enough If it's difficult and/or time-consuming to change the borders to e.g. a dashed line, leave them be. Out of personal curiosity: Are those maps including the borders hand-drawn? I'd guess that if the borders were an object (in the programming sense), you could just change the parent object's attributes and inherit them downwards to the individual borders' objects?
