So I got the update and the new DLC (even got the Magna Graecia at 50% off-nice), and played for one evening. Unfortunately, I couldn't use my new computer and had to make do with my old toaster laptop, which somewhat diminished the experience. Even despite this, I had a great time figuring out the new mechanics and with the Thracian missions. I also tried playing Cantiacia, my favorite nation, and found that the new levy system completely obliterates the old power balance on Britania, with Cantiacia probably the weakest nation from those that start in today's England, which I found really fascinating. This is because while before the patch, Cantiacia was well positioned with plenty of expansion routes and a somewhat safe start with only its western and nothern borders to worry about (south and east is all ocean), they now start with the fewest pops, meaning they start with the weakest military.
So anyway, here are my comments and what struck me the most while playing:
So anyway, here are my comments and what struck me the most while playing:
- UI:
- UI is overall wonderfall, though, as others on the forums noted, it is a bit too bright and sometimes difficult to read due to the color palette, with green numbers sometimes presented on cyan backgrounds. I felt mentally tired after playing the game, and often had to squint to see some features, which is never a good sign.
- It is more difficult now than before to tell whether a character is from a major family and from which, since the tiny colored stripe in the top-right corner of the character portrait sometimes matches too well with the background art.
- Arabic numerals in e.g. government office skills have been replaced with roman numerals, which may be historical and flavorful, but in my opinion presents an additional mental step in decision-making, where I have to first translate the number in my head to arabic. I think this should be reversed, in my opinion it is pointless and tiresome.
- The new diamond-shaped progress bars on the map in e.g. sieges and building construction are excellent, though making the actual progress bar bigger would be really nice.
- There are still no hotkeys for e.g. army reorganizations, allow attachment, choose tactic etc. I am very dissapointed, I think that hotkeys are one of the most basic things for quality of life. I mean, this is a PC game, so your players are guaranteed to have an entire keyboard of buttons to use, why not give them the option?
- Why does the post-battle screen look the same as before? I don't understand and am very dissapointed. Not to mention it still only shows results for the first contact armies, not for any reinforcing armies that come in later, or for armies that are not in the same stack. So it is entirely possible to have one part of the screen tell you that 600 men died, and another to tell you that 5000 men died. It is very unintuitive and I honestly thought it's a bug, but I guess not since the UI overhaul hasn't touched it.
- Levies:
- Pops do indeed die when levies are stackwiped. I brought Siluria down from 28 pops to 6 this way, without even touching their territory. This is cool.
- There is something weird going on with the number of levies available - as I reduced Siluria down to 6 pops, they were still able to field (and did) 2k men - that's 4 cohorts. I have 3 theories as to why this may have happened:
- 1. Number of available levies is saved at the start of a war and does not change until the war ends, regardless of pop numbers.
- 2. There is a minimum number of levies (4) available to any country, regardless of pop numbers. Theory 1 and 2 make sense as gameplay mechanics, you don't want small countries to be completely incapable of combat, that's not fun.
- 3. It's a bug. I am not sure which of these theories is correct, and some clarification from the devs or even better in the game UI would be really nice.
- Legions:
- Excellent feature, however, I struggled with changing the legion composition - I can add subunits just fine (I added 2 heavy infantry to my legion as thrace), but I can't find a way to subtract subunits (could't remove light infantry from the legion). A clarification in the UI as to how to do this would be really nice.
- Money:
- Money seemed a lot less tight than before - you don't use it for army upkeep until you get legions, and you don't spend it on inventions anymore, so I felt a lot less stressed out about my money situation.
- Money is now used to improve relations, which I find quite interesting. However, I think it would be nice if it somehow scaled with either your income or the income of the receiving nation - 25 gold is a lot for cantiacia, and almost nothing for Egypt. Not to mention, there already is the option to send a gift, which does amost the same thing, except the relations/money ration is worse for the gift but you get the relations immediately.
- Nested tooltips:
- Had a lot of fun with recurrent nested tooltips - you hover over a character tooltip, then you hover over their age, then you hover over the character's name in the age tooltip, which brings out the character tooltip, where you hover over their age - you get an endless loop of tooltips. Very cool.
- Some tooltips appear too far away from the cursor to hover into the tooltip fast enough, making it impossible to make use of the nested tooltip feature.
- Sometimes the tooltip covers important info - specifically in my case, I was looking for the button to change diplo stance. I found the button, tried clicking it, and thought that nothing happened, because the small screen where you choose your stance was completely obscured by the tooltip that explains diplomatic stances. Seems like a bit of an oversight.
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