Aylan
Chieftain
- Joined
- Dec 29, 2023
- Messages
- 9
This one will be a bit shorter compared to my Egypt post. I had a bit of time to kill, so I thought I'd give England a try (difficulty 5).
All in all, very solid design through and through. The early game is fun, and not overly safe because the Vikings can destabilise your country or set you behind. I had to restart only once, on my first attempt (out of two) because I had made a mistake and got myself into a civil war really early on and couldn't be arsed to fight it. I decided to restart and adapt my strategy a little - I went for an early Notre Dame rush to just get that extra oomph of happiness which proved enough.
On that second attempt, everything went just as planned: kicked the vikings out, developed a bit, then set on to colonise the New World. Without rushing too much, I got there at a time you'd normally expect (somewhere in the early 1500's, I didn't note the exact date/turn). I will point out something that is, in my opinion, a bit unnecessary regarding conquistadors: you get one for the Aztecs, one for the Mayans, and one for the Incas. I don't mind the concept, but having one for the Aztecs and for the Mayans feels a bit like too much of a handout. I already was going to snowball out of control thanks to all those juicy luxury goods I was gonna get from the New World, I feel like getting 2 cannons and 4 muskets for free during my invasion of Mexico isn't necessary (1 and 2 would have been enough to conquer everything).
Also, since we're on the topic of Mexico, I'm kinda surprised by the lack of gold near the Aztec heartlands. The closest gold is a bit further north in the desert. If it's because of balacing reasons, fair enough, though I would argue that it wouldn't make Aztecs unncessarily OP to have one additional gold next to Mexico city given the task they'll have to face later on of resisting a European invasion.
Anyway, I got the roleplay victory, which I wanted to test. I do have a few questions, suggestions, and things to bring up.
Clarity:
-The objectives state that you "gain 50 points for controlling 2 cities in each continent." It is worth asking (because I don't think there is an easy way to see this in-game): what are the continents?
1) Is Australia/Oceania a continent (which I realise I neglected, but might not have had I known)?
2) Are North and South America considered two separate continents, or are they just considered one big "America"? If they're considered separate, wouldn't it be weird to ask England to colonise South America when they hardly had a significant presence there historically?
-Do you gradually get more points for each continent? I felt like I was gaining points even though I didn't have a presence in Asia yet, so do you get a small amount of points per continent, up to 50 when you have two cities on each, or is it "all or nothing"? If it's "all or nothing," why did I gain points?
-> I feel players could use a bit of extra clarity here, but otherwise this objective was fun.
Balance:
-My game was a little skewed due to fortunate circumstances: France lost Brest, their only coastal city, so they were not a contender in the colonisation game, Spain collapsed very early on (off-screen for me, no idea what happened), and Portugal got into a war with France before it could become a colonial power and also collapsed. All that was left to "contest" me anywhere was the Dutch, whom I mostly blocked off from the Atlantic.
-The reason I'm saying this is because my perspective might be biased - I don't know how much the AI would normally colonise and contest an English player - but it led to me being very, very comfortable. I wasn't contested anywhere when I took over all of North America, the Incas, and moved on to Africa and India.
-But it felt like as a result, the game was over very early on, but it "dragged on" until 1875 (it wasn't really painful, but I knew I had won a long time before I actually did). I feel like it's one of the biggest upsides of the roleplay victory: you get to conclude a game that feels "over" through an additional, fun win condition.
-For extra reference, I did have the largest navy in 1800, and I did discover industrialisation first. Maybe that last objective could be buffed to 200 points? Or maybe 150?
Last few thoughts:
-At times, it felt like my stability was horrendous for no reason. My armies had not lost a battle in ages, I had 40-50 happiness and 250GPT, and I was "unstable" if I wasn't in a golden age (thankfully I had a bunch of artists lined up, whom I all used to make golden ages). In particular, civilian loyalty felt weirdly low (is it because my religion wasn't properly spread everywhere?) Territorial loyalty being low kinda makes sense when you have such a huge empire. Anyway, I'm leaving this here in case it's a recurring issue brought up frequently, maybe I just need to get good.
-Completely unrelated, but I have no idea how to access commerce and rationalism. It says "locked government1" when I hover over them, and I would have appreciated commerce in this game (aesthetics felt a little wasted because I really didn't do a lot of art).
Anyway, this was a lot of fun. Is there anything else that would need some testing?
All in all, very solid design through and through. The early game is fun, and not overly safe because the Vikings can destabilise your country or set you behind. I had to restart only once, on my first attempt (out of two) because I had made a mistake and got myself into a civil war really early on and couldn't be arsed to fight it. I decided to restart and adapt my strategy a little - I went for an early Notre Dame rush to just get that extra oomph of happiness which proved enough.
On that second attempt, everything went just as planned: kicked the vikings out, developed a bit, then set on to colonise the New World. Without rushing too much, I got there at a time you'd normally expect (somewhere in the early 1500's, I didn't note the exact date/turn). I will point out something that is, in my opinion, a bit unnecessary regarding conquistadors: you get one for the Aztecs, one for the Mayans, and one for the Incas. I don't mind the concept, but having one for the Aztecs and for the Mayans feels a bit like too much of a handout. I already was going to snowball out of control thanks to all those juicy luxury goods I was gonna get from the New World, I feel like getting 2 cannons and 4 muskets for free during my invasion of Mexico isn't necessary (1 and 2 would have been enough to conquer everything).
Also, since we're on the topic of Mexico, I'm kinda surprised by the lack of gold near the Aztec heartlands. The closest gold is a bit further north in the desert. If it's because of balacing reasons, fair enough, though I would argue that it wouldn't make Aztecs unncessarily OP to have one additional gold next to Mexico city given the task they'll have to face later on of resisting a European invasion.
Anyway, I got the roleplay victory, which I wanted to test. I do have a few questions, suggestions, and things to bring up.
Clarity:
-The objectives state that you "gain 50 points for controlling 2 cities in each continent." It is worth asking (because I don't think there is an easy way to see this in-game): what are the continents?
1) Is Australia/Oceania a continent (which I realise I neglected, but might not have had I known)?
2) Are North and South America considered two separate continents, or are they just considered one big "America"? If they're considered separate, wouldn't it be weird to ask England to colonise South America when they hardly had a significant presence there historically?
-Do you gradually get more points for each continent? I felt like I was gaining points even though I didn't have a presence in Asia yet, so do you get a small amount of points per continent, up to 50 when you have two cities on each, or is it "all or nothing"? If it's "all or nothing," why did I gain points?
-> I feel players could use a bit of extra clarity here, but otherwise this objective was fun.
Balance:
-My game was a little skewed due to fortunate circumstances: France lost Brest, their only coastal city, so they were not a contender in the colonisation game, Spain collapsed very early on (off-screen for me, no idea what happened), and Portugal got into a war with France before it could become a colonial power and also collapsed. All that was left to "contest" me anywhere was the Dutch, whom I mostly blocked off from the Atlantic.
-The reason I'm saying this is because my perspective might be biased - I don't know how much the AI would normally colonise and contest an English player - but it led to me being very, very comfortable. I wasn't contested anywhere when I took over all of North America, the Incas, and moved on to Africa and India.
-But it felt like as a result, the game was over very early on, but it "dragged on" until 1875 (it wasn't really painful, but I knew I had won a long time before I actually did). I feel like it's one of the biggest upsides of the roleplay victory: you get to conclude a game that feels "over" through an additional, fun win condition.
-For extra reference, I did have the largest navy in 1800, and I did discover industrialisation first. Maybe that last objective could be buffed to 200 points? Or maybe 150?
Last few thoughts:
-At times, it felt like my stability was horrendous for no reason. My armies had not lost a battle in ages, I had 40-50 happiness and 250GPT, and I was "unstable" if I wasn't in a golden age (thankfully I had a bunch of artists lined up, whom I all used to make golden ages). In particular, civilian loyalty felt weirdly low (is it because my religion wasn't properly spread everywhere?) Territorial loyalty being low kinda makes sense when you have such a huge empire. Anyway, I'm leaving this here in case it's a recurring issue brought up frequently, maybe I just need to get good.
-Completely unrelated, but I have no idea how to access commerce and rationalism. It says "locked government1" when I hover over them, and I would have appreciated commerce in this game (aesthetics felt a little wasted because I really didn't do a lot of art).
Anyway, this was a lot of fun. Is there anything else that would need some testing?