I'm about to enter Act 3 on my first game, playing on Grand Duke. I'm definitely going to win, but only in the last 30 turns or so have I started pulling away from the AI - it was a proper challenge to survive the Act 1 culling, and the AI is still a major threat militarily, having already forced me to spend 20+ turns recently just spamming units from all cities to defend myself from armies ten times my size.
The game is good in broad strokes, and I don't even mind the micro since the city count is low. It's nothing compared to a game of Stellaris with 60 planets to manage.
The main issues are
1: A total lack of balance and polish in every aspect of the economy, with MOST buildings and bonuses having something blatantly wrong with them as a result of the game releasing without basically any QA - the whole economic system was simply in the middle of development still when it was feature-locked. Buildings upgrade to worse versions of themselves, some buildings are 1-per-nation by mistake, various effects don't work, the food output formula for farms is totally busted etc.
2: Broken warfare mechanics that are rife with exploits, like being able to kick invaders out of cities by rebuilding the walls, or cripple opponents simply by placing scouts that cannot be attacked on their cities.
These aren't impossible problems to fix though.
The game is good in broad strokes, and I don't even mind the micro since the city count is low. It's nothing compared to a game of Stellaris with 60 planets to manage.
The main issues are
1: A total lack of balance and polish in every aspect of the economy, with MOST buildings and bonuses having something blatantly wrong with them as a result of the game releasing without basically any QA - the whole economic system was simply in the middle of development still when it was feature-locked. Buildings upgrade to worse versions of themselves, some buildings are 1-per-nation by mistake, various effects don't work, the food output formula for farms is totally busted etc.
2: Broken warfare mechanics that are rife with exploits, like being able to kick invaders out of cities by rebuilding the walls, or cripple opponents simply by placing scouts that cannot be attacked on their cities.
These aren't impossible problems to fix though.
