@doomtrader thanks for this information. In an ideal world it should be added to a player accessible database (FAQ) under the heading 'differences between Neutral and AI Sorcerers' so that Wastelands doesn't waste precious resources answering the question again. Oddly enough, Pocket Tactics yesterday published this article about such a system developed by the Crashlands devs. Interesting read. (BTW: the linked article was written by Zac Belado who I understand is currently working on a review of PC.)
Thoughts concerning difficulty settings There have been questions raised about the difficulty settings... personally I'd like to know what each setting explicitly entails. Perhaps this information could be included in a formulaic or 'math appendix' to the manual which would also include, for example, 'healing formulas' (still don't know if 'healing' is related to unused movement points), the details of spellcraft levels etc. Given there are 5 discrete levels of difficulty in total, the easiest or 'adept' level of difficulty, should, IMO, provide (almost?) NO CHALLENGE to the player but rather allow him/her to fully explore the system. In other words, to play not with an eye to 'winning the game' but rather to run tests within it. A sandbox mode if you like. I say this because at the moment I'm able to utilise the space provided by the broken trading mechanism, the skeleton exploit etc. in order to freely experiment... to ask questions such as "What happens if I maximise my access to Power and pump everything into research?" I hope that the chance for a beginning player to experiment and explore avenues of approach within the game is not forgotten in the quest to improve the AI and patch loopholes. Thanks for listening.
New Bug The new patch did indeed fix the problem that no sound effects could be heard. However, it also brought a new issue - "endless marching sounds". When I first started playing after applying the new patch sounds worked as expected - i.e. when something happened the approprite sound effect played and then stoped at the end of the action. After awhile, however, the marching sound started but did not stop at the end of troop movement but just kept playimg. That became irritating and so I turned off all sound effects. While this is not a major issue as I can still play the game, it would be nice if you would add it to your to be fixed list. Otherwise the game is playing well.
@4Xgames: I know it might be inconvenient (because you will loose all your save games) but you can always try deleting the app and reinstalling it fresh. (Also it could help to simply to restart your device.) FWIW I've been playing a lot since the update dropped and don't (yet?) have this problem. But then again, I also deleted and reinstalled the app because of the save-game bugs.
Thanks, We have found out this like an hour ago. The bug works this way: When you look at the unit it doesn't pick up chests, when you don't look, it does picking it up. Fixed for 1.2
Winning Conditions Question / Diplomacy: have not finished a game yet, but wanted to know if it is possible to win the game with a computer sorcerer as an ally? If all other sorcerers are eliminated, and you have an alliance with the AI, does that let you win the game, too? If not that would be a great feature! Great program!
I've been saying this for a minute. Very smart move Doom. This will bring more players into the fold, I feel. Not more or less seasoned players of the genre - but newcomers whom feel intimidated. Even pulling in XCOM players whom appreciate tactic battles but don't understand tile resources, city management and how it all ties in together. These videos should help greatly. For example, my weakness is still the understanding 20 sided dice thing. Lordgek explained it, but for some reason, I'm space cadet - goes right over my head. Perhaps his explanation was a little too technical for my mind. Like WTF is d86? and what does that have to do with my unit whom attack power is 7-11? Things like that need explanation I've been playing 4x since Civ Rev on Xbox 360, Starbase Orion, Ascendancy. However, most these games attack shows up in percentages (you had a 60% or 40% chance of successfully attacking) there was never upfront d20 understanding needed. (Hidden in the background probably). Here in PC though, one has to understand the d20 language - which I don't. Someone needs to break it down in terms of how it corresponds with a units base damage and why does it matter. SIDE NOTE: A bug I noticed, when in tactical battle, on the lower left of the screen, you tap the option which brings up the d20 roll realtime informative screen. It's semi blocked by the arrow icon. In other words you can't make out all of it.
The team is still working on 1.2. Previously we have planned to send it to review just after the release of 1.1, but we have decided to delay it for couple of days. We would like to spend couple following days on tweaking the AI, mostly in terms of Strategic Army management and Strategic spellcasting. I'm hoping this will increase the experience and make the AI more active against the player.
Wizard's Roulette Bug? I just paid 40 mana to cast Wizard's Roulette and ended up with the same set of spells to research. Namely: Recall Hero Bless Weakness Sprites Static Charge Unholy Weapon Hell Hounds Wrack I hesitate to try it again in order to see what happens. Has anyone here successfully cast Wizard's Roulette in one of their games? @Wastelands have you tested it?
Good to hear. But do you have any news concerning the loss of features and/or save-game bugs which some of us have been experiencing? In my game this afternoon I've again seen the same sort of flaky behaviour of a node count-down counter which previously preceded my losing half a continent of features (described above in posts #378 and #381. I captured a screenshot of it if needed. The node icon and countdown counter is fixed in place and floating above all the other windows (I captured a shot of it floating above an opened army drawer). Edit: Repaired post links
Even after you wrote it. I will ask Edwin to check it couple more times tomorrow and see is there some kind of repeatable pattern.
Node issue is fixed already for 1.2, we are not able to replicate losing of features, are you able to send us the save game maybe?
I'd love to but I have understood from @Sithrandil in in a post yesterday (in reply to Edwin) that while iExplorer DOES again work under iOS 9.x... you (Wastelands) have to have iTunes file sharing enabled in order to get at the save file. He very kindly suggested that you enable it in your next build.
Music to my ears. Definitely a good reason to hold up the 1.2 patch. As it is now, I see amazing potential, love the visuals and rules framework, but am holding on playing or picking up the expansion for when the AI gets the tweaks
Regarding the AI: I've played a few games on 2-plane 2nd to 3rd size worlds, on wizard & warlock difficulty (4-6 oppos) - and the AI seems to do OK early on, but surviving in the beginning seems to equal a very easy and tedious endgame. Neutral armies seem to scale better with time, and occasionally pose a threat late-game. A couple examples: Wizard difficulty: First opponent i ran into had three cities, and took some effort to take out. The rest had 1-3 cities each (much later in the game) and i couldnt even be bothered to run along the whole map to finish all 6 of them off. Warlock difficulty: I had just gotten my 2nd city when i ran into my first opponent. He had two cities, and his capital was very heavily defended with several lvl 6 druids (not sure how he got those) plus a mix of other grey elf troops.Took me a long time to build up an army that felt sufficient. Meanwhile i had settled one city and taken over a few neutrals and so had 8-9 cities after taking him out. Next opponent 1 city, the one after that 2 cities, then i moved to the 2nd plane to wrap up, conquered most of it, but gave up finding my last opponent and never finished the game. Basically if surviving early onslaught/neutrals the game seems to be over and it's just a chore to finish it? To ve fair Orion was very much like that too - but seems it should be possible to balance a bit more/better?
As I wrote before, we are delaying the release 1.2 by couple of days, as we would like to work little bit on AI. Players' feedback is the best thing in matter of game difficulty. We have found few bugs in AI but we have also find a some ways to tweak it a little bit. The 1.1 patch was prepared very fast due to the tutorial bug, this time we are planning to address the more gameplay and balance important issues. Generally we are aiming to make the AI more active and to boost it a little on higher difficulty levels. (memory usage and optimization is also upgraded).
Excellent news about improving the AI. Good reason to delay the next update a bit. If you want feedback on it before releasing the update, just holler And for the record, I noticed that as well, that the Neutral AI seems far more competent than the enemy Wizards. Just had another occurence like I reported earlier: Took an undefended (well, one Militia doesn't count) enemy town with a Magic Spirit and a few combat summons, right in front of the other Sorc's Capital. In his Capital, Lu Bei has a sizeable force. So he could take the town back right next turn. But all he does is sit there and let me build up defenses. If he keep's that up for 10-15 more turns, I'll have enough units to take his Capital too with some help from a summon or two. By the way, the Slime summons are great. Pretty cheap at 8 Mana; good as blockers, and pack a nasty punch too. @4XGames: no problem with the sound effects so far, didn't hear any looping yet. @Doomtrader: But I'd love to have volume sliders. Ideally separate ones for music, battle noises, UI sounds, and "atmospheric sounds". I find e.g. the buttonclick sound way too loud compared to other effects. It even drowns out the music. @funambulist: I do use Wizard Roulette sometimes, so far it always worked and gave me at least 2 new spells. Not sure how many it should give, as I don't know how the reshuffling mechanic works under the hood. Having that kind of info in the manual would be great, bring out the Mathhammer
Sounds great! An active dev is always appreciated! I'd like to suggest a victory condition too - change it to owning 70% of cities. By that point the game is already long won, and can keep as an option to keep playing untill the whole map is cleared.. Edit: And regarding AI, teach the non-neutrals (neutrals are fine as they are, should be more disorganized) that they should only ever venture into enemy territory with 1) Scouts, eg magic spirit, or 2) With a sizeable army. Much of the problems for the AI is that it divides its forces into far too many small groups that are easily beaten. This is however a very common feature if 4X games, so i guess maybe it is difficult to fix?
