It has more to do with the readers of TA than TA themselves. Look at the review of C: DDA - that's a full port of the Desktop version. Everything available to the PC is available to the iOS port (I've played the desktop version to death). 4.5 stars, great review. It was a bang up job on a monster of a game. Read the first comment. Just the first comment. In the C: DDA thread, I commented about it and got the reply from Eli: Source. It's not TA dictating the trends in mobile. Unfortunately, we are the 1% of gamers that want games like this on iOS/Android, and TA - being a business - needs to make money. Pocket Tactics used to be the place to go for games of this style (Full, premium games on iOS) but sadly, they've fallen hard.
That is an odd view to be take by a game site. Most of the audience are more into gaming than the average iOS user. I believe 4X games are not too niche for a gamer. I have seen many people online ask about 4X games on iOS and the reply is just Starbase Orion. Not many people know of Planar Conquest.
When you have a limited staff who can devote time to reviews, and you're not getting enough ad revenue so you have to run a Patreon to keep the site up, what do you do to keep the lights on? Review a game where the most likely comments are going to be the one in the C: DDA, get fewer views, or run the articles that get views and comments like Hearthstone, Clash Royale, or Clash of Clans? Personally, I'm glad that Eli and crew can keep the lights on. The forums are pretty good, and I don't mind most of the articles. It does make me sad, knowing the premium games on iOS are an endangered species because the majority of people basically refuse to pay anything more than $4.99 for an app, but spend $10-$1000 in F2P games. Others buy $40 to $60 games in PC and/or consoles but say "Mobile games are dumbed down and suck" even about games that are the exact same version wise (Most recent source, point #2). As a game developer who really enjoys playing games on my iPad, it's extremely frustrating to see those kinds of comments, and to watch the market. So, does it suck about TA not really prioritizing a review for Planar Conquest? Absolutely. But the mobile market at this stage are games that you and I might not care for, which means that Eli and crew, in order to keep doing what they like to do, have to write about those kinds of games because that's where the readership is.
I can't deny that. I can't blame them too much, but this game's forum thread is big and maybe should get some moreattention. I can't blame developers too. I heard gameloft going F2P, and I can't blame a company following the money. I am guilty of this if I know the app goes on sale. If it doesn't go on sale or I'm really excited, I just buy. I am so into Planar Conquest that I'll probably put new things on my watch list and look for sales.
Dark Elves / Fire Run I played through Dark Elves with a Fire Master this game. Basic Setup: Fire: Level 9, Mastery Fire, Archmage, Alchemist, Summoner Augmentation 1, Mentalism 1 (To get Fertile Soil, Tranquility) Negatives: Ascetic, Tyrant, Butcher Key Spells: Fire Elemental, Wall of Fire, Fire Weakness, Flaming Arrow Adept Difficulty, Normal World, Fast Movement, 4x game Speed, Freq Resources, Freq Features, Common Neutrals Water Pangea 50%, Earth Pangea 50% 2 Sorcerers (Grey Elves, Unhallowed) 3 Neutrals encountered (2 on water, 1 on Earth) Basic Strategy: Build up armies and infrastructure while 2 Magic Spirits investigated my home world of Water, captured a gateway to Earth fairly early (turn 10?), and then sent 1 Magic Spirit to Earth. Turns out both Sorcerers were on the Water Planet with me, but I couldn't find the Unhallowed until end of game. Discovered the Grey Elves first, about 5 turns march from my capitol, and was able to defeat them before they could expand. I had good production, so expanded to 3 cities by turn 50 to solve my food needs with growing armies and buildings. Used Wall of Fire on my first 3 cities, can confirm it works correctly (yes, I'm playing on Android right now). Cleared out the Neutrals on the Water Plane, then moved my army to Earth. Created a city on Earth, then cleared out the Neutral. By then, I'd discovered that Earth did not have any Sorcerer cities on the plane, so returned the army to Water. My Magical Spirit on Water had died, so created another to find the Unhallowed. Meanwhile the Unhallowed started marching towards my cities (I had 4 on Water), and invade 2 of them. So I had to invade them back. Once defeated, the city disappears (you don't get possession back), because the land is all corrupted. I pulled the best 16 units into one new army, and once my Magic spirit discovered their main city, then siege was on! Key Armies: Enforcers (crossbows), Zealots (absorbers, also able to climb over walls!), Arachnomancers (Fire and Poison throwing spears), Shooting Fireballs, Fire Elementals were my typical go-to spells. Got more creative towards end of game with strong enemies, using the fire weakness spell first, then blasting them with fire arrows, fire elemental, etc... Key Learnings: Unhallowed are immune to poisons, alot of spells. Wall of Fire doesn't have an affect on them. Fireball, Fire Elemental is pretty effective tho. They are tough little suckers. Until you have a city on a plane, spells are really expensive (not sure what the multiplier is, but the first battle on Earth surprised me with the Mana needed for offensive attacks. So I built a city first before clearing out the Neutral cities. Didn't play with any heroes this game. Didn't have gold early on, then didn't see any until late in the game. Archmage is nice to get the additional 10 spellcraft points from the start. I also used alchemist to make sure I was stocked with Mana when near enemies. I adjusted the the power distribution to Spellcraft (18+9), Mana (20-30), Research (0+11) by end of game with Power around 50 per turn. Game Length 104 turns, score 1480 (#5 on the leaderboard on Android) The only hiccup I had was an attack on a Magic Spirit (from a Sprite) around turn 99. I mis-hit where I wanted to send the spirit to, and the gameplay froze. I was able to select Auto-Resolve, the spirit died. No big deal, but probably just a memory glitch that will improve with future releases. I suppose I could have just bailed and restarted the game, but this battle wasn't important, and I was just clicking on things to try and unfreeze it.
The great news is that the game is progressing nicely. Soon to be on Steam, soon to have multi-player, bugs keep getting ID'd and fixed, manual keeps getting better, Strategy Guide (thx @nullzone) is getting thicker! When TA does have time to finally review it, it's going to be a really, really good game.
Since apple takes forever reviewing updates, have you tried the power saving toggle? I'm just wondering what it might sacrifice to save battery.
My assumption was that the toggle would allow the system to sleep when playing... I'll play around with it tonight to see if I can provide insight... UPDATE: The Power Saving Toggle reverts to OFF after closing the options screen. Submitted report on their forum. It's probably just my device, so .... sorry I can't provide anymore insight on it.
I've been talking with TA staff about the review, but they indeed confirmed that this kind of title is just too much for their staff. What I was proposed that maybe they could ask one of the players to write a review, but seems no luck so far. So you know, I feel a little bit like falling into an infinite loop: 1. People doesn't know about the 4X on mobile so they are not looking for them -> 2. Not many people looking for 4X, so not to many reviews -> 1.
@doomtrader: I am pretty sure that if we give them an already written community review, they'll publish it. Not much effort on the staff side, after all. I have a pretty busy schedule for at least another week, and in all honesty I don't think I am good at writing full reviews. Maybe someone else can start one, and then we'll improve it together? I'll see if I can free up some time today or tomorrow to at least make a list of things that should be in there.
I'd suggest maybe 3-4 small reviews for them to make a article that way. They can admit that they can't review such a big game. PC gets attention, and they can ask for help on Patreon in hope to review bigger games. Win for both parties.
I would like to see this too. My 4X experience is limited and almost exclusive to gaming on my PC, that said, I have ready at least half of all the comments here in this thread and am inching up on buying this just to see what all the passion is about. This is a HUGE thread, so while I see the reasoning behind TA's reluctance to review games of this scale and niche audience, I still come here exactly for this type of stuff. I want to learn what are the best games available on iOS in any genre and TA forums are my goto destination to find out. I have seen Shaun Musgrave give detailed, highly enthusiastic, and exhaustive reviews of games with up to 4-5 times the span of gameplay (Dragon Quest series comes to mind) and I was thrilled to be exposed to a series that always seemed too daunting and large in scale for me to pick up. Now I LOVE playing Dragon Quest on mobile thanks to his passionate reviews. I know it may be niche at the moment, but oftentimes the effect of reviewing big, quality and content heavy games on iOS is that many TA readers may be turned on to something they may greately enjoy, that they otherwise likely would not have ventured to try. I have been an avid TA reader since early 2010 and I have made almost all of my purchase decisions based on the forums and reviews on this site. It has been central to my transition to becoming a 'mobile gamer' and I still to this day put almost all of my money into Premium titles with only about $15 spent in total on non essential IAP in all that time vs over a $1,000 in quality premium titles and only a few misadventures.
Good news, that one. I hope the discussion moves over here mainly. Following two threads I find rather tedious
I wouldn't mind seeing a review, still up in the air on it... Not many YouTube videos either to gauge gameplay...
Will this game ever have a sale? I am expecting to buy for at least at $9.99, would rather pay for $30 than $33 xD
