The Developers are definitely on the good track!
Multiplayer will allow this game community to grow and will minimize the weaknesses of the AI, which would become pretty much just an obstacle to the "real" game: the challenge among players.
Lords and Artifacts are a must. Every other game of this kind has them. You cannot be competitive with Age of Wonders or Elemental without them... Even the very old Warlord series from the 1990's had them!!!
Also one thing that this game is lacking is immersion: identification with the great wizard. Have you noticed that the game starts out being a lot of fun and then progressively as the empire expands it becomes a bit repetitive? '
That depends on the weak AI of course but also that we tend to lose focus. At first you have one village and a few archers and that is challenging and competitive, and most of all PERSONAL: that is your village and you try to develop it. Later on it's a routine and there is nothing to focus on anymore, but having lords each with his specific items and maybe with his quest to follow would help keeping that identification alive.
With the Lords I would maybe even consider adding a unit representing the wizard himself, like in Age of Wonders. I believe that would help the game... assuming the goal of the game won't become to just kill that unit (AOW1 was like that and they had to make it optional, since every game became just a hunt for the enemy leader, which would lead to exploiting the AI). One of the possible victory objective could be to conquer the enemy capitals AND kill all enemy wizards. (wizards, maybe, could also be resurrected like all other unit and be unable to cast spells while dead). It sounds like Age of Wonders I know but here they would have to be away from their capital (in order to limit the risk of losing both together and lose the game). Wizards like that would maybe encouraged to travel a lot, and maybe be summoned by the god, so that they would have to do specific quests themselves. Notice that in AOW wizards are more powerful when they stay in their tower and are encouraged not to leave it, thus the two games would be radically different in terms of strategy.
You can also have city leaders like in Master of Orion II, where you would occasionally hire governors to strategically place in specific planets in order to improve certain aspects of it. (Total War does the same quite successfully: you can park heroes in cities in order to improve them)
Also PBEM!!! I love that!!!
On the same line of thought I would also suggest to restrict the use of certain units to whatever the starting race is. I feel weird using elves when if fact I started the game with goblins! That shouldn't be considered limiting what the player can do. Focusing on one race would improve the immersion and identification of players with that specific universe and make every game different depending on the starting race.
Multiplayer will allow this game community to grow and will minimize the weaknesses of the AI, which would become pretty much just an obstacle to the "real" game: the challenge among players.
Lords and Artifacts are a must. Every other game of this kind has them. You cannot be competitive with Age of Wonders or Elemental without them... Even the very old Warlord series from the 1990's had them!!!
Also one thing that this game is lacking is immersion: identification with the great wizard. Have you noticed that the game starts out being a lot of fun and then progressively as the empire expands it becomes a bit repetitive? '
That depends on the weak AI of course but also that we tend to lose focus. At first you have one village and a few archers and that is challenging and competitive, and most of all PERSONAL: that is your village and you try to develop it. Later on it's a routine and there is nothing to focus on anymore, but having lords each with his specific items and maybe with his quest to follow would help keeping that identification alive.
With the Lords I would maybe even consider adding a unit representing the wizard himself, like in Age of Wonders. I believe that would help the game... assuming the goal of the game won't become to just kill that unit (AOW1 was like that and they had to make it optional, since every game became just a hunt for the enemy leader, which would lead to exploiting the AI). One of the possible victory objective could be to conquer the enemy capitals AND kill all enemy wizards. (wizards, maybe, could also be resurrected like all other unit and be unable to cast spells while dead). It sounds like Age of Wonders I know but here they would have to be away from their capital (in order to limit the risk of losing both together and lose the game). Wizards like that would maybe encouraged to travel a lot, and maybe be summoned by the god, so that they would have to do specific quests themselves. Notice that in AOW wizards are more powerful when they stay in their tower and are encouraged not to leave it, thus the two games would be radically different in terms of strategy.
You can also have city leaders like in Master of Orion II, where you would occasionally hire governors to strategically place in specific planets in order to improve certain aspects of it. (Total War does the same quite successfully: you can park heroes in cities in order to improve them)
Also PBEM!!! I love that!!!
On the same line of thought I would also suggest to restrict the use of certain units to whatever the starting race is. I feel weird using elves when if fact I started the game with goblins! That shouldn't be considered limiting what the player can do. Focusing on one race would improve the immersion and identification of players with that specific universe and make every game different depending on the starting race.
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