I was having fun...

[eklos]

Just downloaded the demo. breezed through the story campaign tutorial. interesting mechanics and good time. then I get to the 4th mission the power one I think and 5 tries all defeated. I dont mind a challenge, but the player AI that wins isnt even close to me on the map and I cant think of any way to expand faster or power up faster.

Stupid if you ask me to land a stopper mission in teh tutorial, and if it is Representative of normal difficulty F that. not worth the aggravation. BUT maybe I am missing something? maybe the tutorial in the demo is SUPPOSED to be stupid hard?

Oh and having to click through the inane dialog is SOOO fun too.

[The Secret Games Company]

Sorry for the bad experience! The 4th (and final) chapter of the story campaign is the same difficulty as the main game, when you choose the easy difficulty (Novice).

When you lose this chapter of the story campaign, there is a bit of dialogue that suggests you may find it easier in singleplayer. This is what I recommend. The demo has one singleplayer map unlocked (Near East). Pick an Easy empire on there and see how that goes. You won't need to click through any dialogue that way either!

Ozy is quite hard because the AI is very smart. You will learn to beat it though, if you keep trying or you watch some YouTube vids to see how it's done e.g. https://youtu.be/lPSUwXVyxuQ

[archmag]

Originally posted by eklos:

Stupid if you ask me to land a stopper mission in teh tutorial, and if it is Representative of normal difficulty F that.

I think but not sure that it is actually a representative of Easy difficulty. You get bonuses to resource gains that AI doesn't get and play as an easy faction. Normal difficulty removes those bonuses and you can choose any faction which include some very hard ones.

BUT maybe I am missing something?

You must be missing some mechanics. If you can't find a way to expand or get power faster after just few tries on a map, you must be missing something. Especially because you mention both but may need just one of those. There is always some way to improve on your tactics early in the game which will snowball into later game while you are just learning how the game works.

Make sure you check win conditions and actually focus on just few of them instead of spreading thin and trying to progress a little in all of them at once. You don't have to complete all of them and you get enough place for city size and amount of tiles so may not even need to invest in power at all.

Now that you have some practical experience I recommend reading How to play section to see the rules that you breezed through in earlier campaign maps with a new eye. You may notice some details that you have missed.

Oh and having to click through the inane dialog is SOOO fun too.

You can click on that thing and close it to remove the dialogue.

Another advice would be to set your own win conditions before the play. You can do it by clicking on a Crown when you are choosing a faction to play. You can select amount of controlled tiles as the only win condition and this will simplify what you have to focus on during the game and remove the sudden enemy wins when you are just starting to dominate and some enemy fullfils random conditions and gets enough crowns for a win. Not sure if you can do this in demo though.

[KaeWhy]

Lemme guess, it's Greece? Might depend on the win conditions, but as Egypt you want to grab Crete and all the nearby sea tiles before they do, and research the wealth and food upgrades; don't bother expanding past the Sinai until later. Usually works like a charm.

[eklos]

Everytime I play a regular game (same map as the 4th tutorial) I can win. But in the 4th Tutorial RED always gets to 2 crowns first. I can win at normal with 2-7 crowns pretty easily. Not the power mission though.

Thanks for the video link, but I really dont like watching videos about games.... would rather be playing them. I have to ask though - why make the Tutorial *harder* than the main game?

Originally posted by The Secret Games Company:

Sorry for the bad experience! The 4th (and final) chapter of the story campaign is the same difficulty as the main game, when you choose the easy difficulty (Novice).

When you lose this chapter of the story campaign, there is a bit of dialogue that suggests you may find it easier in singleplayer. This is what I recommend. The demo has one singleplayer map unlocked (Near East). Pick an Easy empire on there and see how that goes. You won't need to click through any dialogue that way either!

Ozy is quite hard because the AI is very smart. You will learn to beat it though, if you keep trying or you watch some YouTube vids to see how it's done e.g. https://youtu.be/lPSUwXVyxuQ

[archmag]

Originally posted by eklos:

Everytime I play a regular game (same map as the 4th tutorial) I can win.

There is one extra faction in regular game which is blocking your way to the center maybe it is forcing you to expand into desert which you don't do in tutorial because no one is forcing you to go there. Other than that faction the maps are identical so it should be easier in tutorial if you do the same things because you have a little more area to expand before having to interact with enemies. If you find tutorial harder than you are doing something different which makes it harder for you.

I completed tutorial before understanding how power works on the first try so I didn't find it hard at all. But I guess it is possible that I got lucky and got to some victory conditions before someone else because I wasn't even checking them. I was just trying to expand where I saw an opportunity.

But in the 4th Tutorial RED always gets to 2 crowns first.

The winning condition is 3 crowns in tutorial and each task gives one. So even if he gets to 2 crowns first you still can win.

Just tried the tutorial with my slightly better experience (went through tutorial campaign once and two battles in China - 1 win/1 lose) and won it in 19 turns.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2875523957
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2875524176
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2875524387
Other than hiring 5 armies early red ai was nowhere close to completing any other objective. At the same time I have 4 armies and can hire another one next turn, I have 12 power, got enough city population, if I reduce spending cash on power for just one turn I will have 250 wealth, I am going to capture a city next turn and get two more tiles. So basically have 4 requirements out of needed 3 ready (1 more may remove another so I won't count it).

Thanks for the video link, but I really dont like watching videos about games.... would rather be playing them. I have to ask though - why make the Tutorial *harder* than the main game?

It's not harder if you understand game mechanics and how to use them better. To learn mechanics you either go through How to play section in a game or watch those videos which dev recommended. Some mechanics are not obvious and you are having trouble understanding something based on your experience. Even after you learn them by reading you still need to experiment a little to see which choice is better. Without you telling or showing what you did we can't say what went wrong. Care to post a screenshot similar to the ones I posted at the end of the tutorial mission right before you lose?

Some things about tutorial mission:
1. it is useful to expand to the desert or sea - many tiles of the same terrain are easy to improve even though the cost is high. Do not ignore that place.
2. it is useless to upgrade power tech in this scenario as you encounter enemies only in a small bottleneck so can just use armies to project enough power for defense. Same with towns. Only build towns to reduce the cost of expansion, not for protection or income (they overwrite the tile they were built on so instead of providing income they just switch it from food to science until you start leveling them up, but you barely have enough time to level them up to 2)
3. control your wealth slider. Initially it is good to focus most of your wealth on food and a little on science so that you can research something useful each turn and expand as fast as possible, but as soon as you get next to the enemy borders and hire an army you have to focus on increasing power. Food becomes mostly useless when you can't expand into neutral tiles anymore.
4. don't forget that owning a tile reduces the price to flag a tile next to it so instead of flagging a whole front of 1-5 at once try to flag 1st, 3rd, 5th instead. This way next turn you can flag 2nd and 4th for 4 food less. This can save you some food to flag more territories somewhere else.

[eklos]

OK - have tried this mission many more times. Also think I have duplicated it in the regular scenario. I win *easily* on a regular map - I cannot get to 2 crowns before RED in the tutorial. NO IDEA what I'm doing wrong but please. please. please. explain why the tutorial would be harder than the regular mission in the main game? I must be mission some mechanic somewhere, but I win every game I play on easy and 4 our of 5 on novice. makes no sense and really takes the fun out of it.

[archmag]

It's hard to say what you are doing wrong when you are telling or showing nothing about what you are actually doing. Post a screenshot 1 turn before the end or make a video to share.

Tutorial missions is not harder than the similar normal one because the only difference is one extra faction between you and a bunch of enemies. This extra faction changes dynamics of the battle but mostly it just limits the area you can expand to with food making it harder for you in normal mission compared to tutorial.

I posted a screenshot earlier in the thread that shows that red is nowhere close to winning by the time you can collect your three crowns. It wasn't a perfect play at my side but I still won, so if you can't do that then you are still missing some mechanics.

But actually, you keep talking about 2 crowns. Is it when he wins or is it 1 turn before the win? In tutorial that I played he requires 3 crowns to win and I don't think it is possible to customize conditions for tutorial campaign like you can do for other battles. Maybe conditions for winning are different between the base game and demo which may be the reason you have trouble. If you've posted your screenshot of victory conditions we may see the difference if it exists.

[The Secret Games Company]

Originally posted by eklos:

OK - have tried this mission many more times. Also think I have duplicated it in the regular scenario. I win *easily* on a regular map - I cannot get to 2 crowns before RED in the tutorial. NO IDEA what I'm doing wrong but please. please. please. explain why the tutorial would be harder than the regular mission in the main game? I must be mission some mechanic somewhere, but I win every game I play on easy and 4 our of 5 on novice. makes no sense and really takes the fun out of it.

Oh no sorry! Here is a video of someone winning that chapter: https://youtu.be/lPSUwXVyxuQ Let me know if I can help :)

[Avallach]

Originally posted by archmag:

I completed tutorial before understanding how power works on the first try so I didn't find it hard at all. But I guess it is possible that I got lucky and got to some victory conditions before someone else because I wasn't even checking them. I was just trying to expand where I saw an opportunity.

This is exactly me as well.

I got through it okay, probably just from handling the economy side decently, but it took a few full single player games to actually start to understand how power works, even after winning a few.

It wasn't until I went back and replayed the power tutorial (after a friend was struggling with it as well) that I realised how poor a job it does of actually introducing and explaining how to use power.

It's a pretty great system once you get used to it, but I think maybe the devs lost sight of how unintuitive it can be for new players. And also the fact that a lot of people will expect the tutorial to teach them everything, without carefully reading all the way through 'How to Play' (little of which will sink in at first).

So, I do think the tutorial could use a lot of work. They're a small team, and I guess that was a compromise they made in order to focus on polishing the game itself and getting it shipped. Maybe they don't have a way yet to start you off in a mid-game scenario, and hand-hold you through specific instructions regarding appropriate army creation and wealth/power allocation.

Maybe tweak the victory conditions for the mission as well, they should probably just be army/power/conquest related.

[Flap]

I feel the same. It is only after playing and seeing an enemy unit with a power of 7 that I wondered "But how he is doign that ? What I have been missing ?". And it took me while to understand where it came from.

[eklos]

Well - I can say if this made any difference. BUT I was playing the demo, today I purchased on the sale. Started the game after purchase, went right back the the POWER mission in the tutorial. Won it easily. almost too easy. dipped to 3rd place once, but otherwise was first the entire time. actually wound up with 3 crowns.... First try right after the purchase. could be a coincidence or a glitch? don't know but I did the same thing as the last 4 tries and won it easy.

[Veg]

I also needed a few tries, but in the third run I won. It is quite challenging, but not unfair or unbeatable :)