Ah, now I agree with you here. As much as I admire Dale's accomplishment in recreating WW2, jumping right into the thick of things kind of makes me feel lost, too. Which is why I've yet to do much personally with the advanced start feature, for instance. (that and I get impatient with large-map lag. I'll have to try it again with my upgraded RAM, though.)the first time you play a scenario, it's very different from random map. it's very confusing to just jump into this whole world with sometimes hundreds of cities and units all over the place. then you look at the civilopedia and you get a headache. you basically have to learn everything on the fly. you have to evaluate all these cities and see what they are building, etc.
Ah, now I agree with you here. As much as I admire Dale's accomplishment in recreating WW2, jumping right into the thick of things kind of makes me feel lost, too. Which is why I've yet to do much personally with the advanced start feature, for instance. (that and I get impatient with large-map lag. I'll have to try it again with my upgraded RAM, though.)
However, in AoI you do start small, just the one city and a hero, and there is still the whole map to explore, etc. There aren't dozens of units right off the bat, just your hero and a couple extra warriors. So I think some of your concerns are accounted for in the type of scenario it is.
It seems more like a RPG than Civ,
I don't know about a readme, but in the BtS concepts section there are several entries on AoI specific things if you check in game.It is far less complicated than the actual mod, though there are a few things that could have been explained better (I haven't even though to see if there's a readme on it, before now).
We're definatly interested in people's opinions--not least because we have several more scenarios planned, albeit ones using the full FfH 2 rules.
We tried to be upfront about what we were making, although that wasn't easy between some misleading previews and NDA.
The goals here were fun, accessiblity, and polish. A direct port of FfH 1 or 2 wasn't feasible , and some depth and certainly replayability was sacrificed.
However, we (designers & testers) all enjoyed it. I think many players will as well, at least once or twice, though not as much as the full FfH 2 mod.
I would be interested in hearing opinions especially of people who never played FfH before. Did this make you more or less interested?