Universal Pre-Civilization: Marble Age

Am I too late to join?

Ipad 4 (ios 8)

[email protected]

 

Beta - First Impressions

OK, these are my very first impressions. I have played several games and haven’t gotten very far yet (around turn 70 I think). So far I definitely like it, but I also feel a bit lost sometimes, not sure about why I’m doing things.

First of all I’d like to thank you very much for giving me the chance to beta-test this game. I haven’t played any of your two previous games and I decided not to purchase them before this beta-test, in order to get a totally fresh perspective.

I have found some orthographical errors:

- At the city selection screen: “twice more oftenly” should be “twice as often”
- “Teches” should be “Techs”?
- In-game, under the top button “Culture” it says “Philosophers’ Stone”. Should be: “Philosopher’s Stone”
- On the Minoan eruption screen, where it says: “Population growth +20% by 10 turns” you might consider changing it to “…for 10 turns”
- With the invasion event, it says “In case of defeat we will loose…”. Should be “lose”.
- On the Persian invasion screen it reads: “In case of success, The Persians our entire region will become a province of Persia…”. This is grammatically incorrect.

There will probably be more, but there are the ones I have found so far.

I like the artwork, and music (although the loop is quite short and gets a bit repetitive) and with the inclusion of an expanding world map and Diplomacy, the game feels quite “meaty”. I haven’t gotten to the bottom of these options yet, but there are too few games on iOS where Diplomacy is a viable option or strategy. I’ll come back to this however.

There are some things I’d like to mention or suggest.

- A more in-depth tutorial. Right now the tutorial doesn’t explain anything, it just tells you where to click (which I did, and I promptly lost as soon as the Dorians announced their invasion which was 10 turns before they were actually going to invade!). The first times I had no idea what I was doing, or what I should be paying attention to.
- I like the inclusion of historical events, like the Minoan eruption or the Dorian invasion. However, these events will always occur in the same order, and on the same turns. In my opinion, this takes away from the replayability of the game since you know exactly what and when it’s coming. How about randomizing these events, even though it would mean compromising on historical accuracy?
- About the invasion events, and especially the Dorian invasion: as soon as the event is announced, it appears on the left side of the screen (I like this by the way, presenting your assignments and tasks and coming events in this fashion). You can already click on the event box and make your choice. If you choose to “flee”, the game ends immediately. Without warning. Boom. Game over. Maybe you should include some kind of warning or confirmation for this? Basically now it is a “I give up, quit game” button.
- Also, sometimes, even though my troops are heavily outnumbered against the invaders, if I choose to “engage in battle” I will survive and can continue playing, but sometimes with roughly the same numbers, I am instantly defeated. I haven’t been to able to figure out why yet.
- Sometimes people are attracted by my fields and want to join me, but because of their different culture they have to “assimilate” first. I can either accept this or not. I always do, but what’s the downside (if any) to this?
- As I said before, I love the inclusion of a Diplomacy option. However, and again this might be me, I haven’t found a way to use this to my advantage or to even consider this a viable strategy. This is partly because of the early invasions you have to deal with and partly because of the way the tech tree works. Very early in the game you have to deal with invasions and after the Dorian invasion other are soon to follow. I haven’t been able to muster a force large enough to deal with these effectively, or to have an opportunity to try out some of the Diplomacy options (for lack of resources). I have tried to focus on military techs in order to expand my troops and then I managed to make it to turn 70. But if I don’t do it this way I might not even survive the first invasion. And I’m playing as Athens, supposedly the more peaceful and strategic of the two… I wonder how different Sparta will play, but now to me it feels the Diplomacy option doesn’t do much. Again, it might be me, and I imagine this will play a greater part later in the game.
- Finally, I’d like to have a bit more (historical) context to the game, for example about the differences between the two city states. And a bit more sense of direction: what is my overall goal? Are there more ways than one to achieve that? Maybe the game should give you a bit more info. I’m playing Athens. Cool! Why am I playing Athens? What’s the purpose of doing this? I mean Sparta is obvious right? Just to conquer the whole world, no explanation needed.

Oh and there is also a bug. After you have been defeated and start a new game, a screen with two text options appears, sometimes with foreign text. This also happens when you start a new profile.

As I mentioned before, I like the fact that you have “missions”, or goals to reach, presented on the left side of the screen.

The tech tree seems interesting but so far I have had to choose pretty much the same technologies in all my games(although in slightly different order). It feels a bit too linear at the moment. A bit more flexibility could offer more and different strategies. And by the time I get to physical training, the invasions are already upon me (or have already defeated me).

These are just first impressions, and please forgive me if I have made any comments in haste or prematurely. I will continue playing and trying different things and strategies.

 

The best features are in my opinion the global events and the diplomacy option. Until now, i have played two games and lost both at the moment where the huns attacked, i have found only one or two bugs:
- I can't play as sparta. Do i have to win a game for it or is that a bug?
- when i was attacked by the hostile alliance i called the roman legions for support and so i had about 40k more troops than the enemy. Despite that i lost.

About randomness of the global events: for me the non randomness isn't a big deal, i some situations it can really help when you know when a event is happening, e.g. To prepare for battle,...you could make a few events random but the rest nonrandom.
What i not understand is the change from athens to the united greece. Why did i become the leader of it? I haven't explored the whole greece, I haven't had the best alliance, I haven't had the best stats at all. Also the change comes too suddenly in my opinion. It's a pretty cool idea to win the leadership of one part of the roman empire but somehow you should earn it.
The next point is that the number of the enemy troops is just overwhelming. Against the barbarian tribes and against the huns i had, with an alliance of corinth and sparta, not even a small chance to win. For example against the huns i had in the best case 500k troops vs 21 mil.
At the moment the tech tree looks a bit disorganized. After playing a while i can see the structure, but maybe you restructure it.
All in all the game is pretty awesome and in my opinion ways better than the civilization games which were ported to ios

 

The last game i've played i could win against the most enemies so they are good balanced
Yeah i liked the game!
With the reorganization of the tech tree i meant to straighten it that it is more like a tree. I mean to give the arms of the tree more place that you can see the structure/tree more clearly.

 

Really enjoy the cartoon style to this. I like that you can get the Civ style of game with this really uncommon and cool visual. Looks really good.

 

I have not played any other of your games so this was a new experience for me. I have also found some typos but they were all covered by kuluman. I feel that the main issue is with the lack of a tutorial. Whilst reading endless instructions is tedious and usually ignored, there needs to be a more detailed guide in the tutorial. This could simply just be a bit of text explaining what each section is and functions. There should not be top much text as if there is I tend to just skim read or skip it. A good tutorial is vital, especially as my first few games resulted in me getting obliterated by 20k troops when I had 100.

Regarding the predictably of the events, you could have an option to randomise the events or have different game modes such as a campaign with fixed events and then another with randomised events.

 

Well, I think 2 different options should be provided: an easy one to allow players to enjoy the game experience without worrying too much about the more complicated game mechanics, and a difficult one for players who want to go deeper into the complex parts of the title.

In case 2 different options can't be offered, I think a balanced one is the way to go - which would correspond to your number 1 option.

 

I think option 1.

 

Great idea