Is the game hard or am I just bad?

[Brids17]

The game seems simple enough but I'm getting completely destroyed. I've failed 4 times now, three times due to crown losses and the most recent one by just being overpowered. I'm playing on Novice as easy nations but it seems like the AI is just ultra-aggressive. =\

[The Secret Games Company]

Sorry to hear that. Maybe you aren't buying enough power? That would be my guess from what you've said but happy to give you more tips if you let me know more about what you're doing.

[Brids17]

To give a general overview, I flag a bunch of land and research things as I go. Once I start bordering other nations I buy an army and start upgrading power while continuing to upgrade everything else\. So basically what the tutorial taught me. I don't know what specifically I'm doing wrong so it's difficult to ask for advice.

[The Secret Games Company]

What percentage of your wealth are you spending on power each turn (via the % settings on the wealth panel)?

[The Secret Games Company]

For a general overview, you might like this let's play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EfcT0pAmsY

[Brids17]

Anywhere between 70% and 100% once multiple armies come into play. I'll give the video a watch though.

[The Secret Games Company]

Ah ok well you are not making the mistake I feared you were making, which is good, but I don't think there is an easy answer - to answer your original question, the game is quite hard! I think you will crack it though, it just takes a few plays. There are some good tips in our Discord: https://discord.gg/PkmuSmudKG

[Brids17]

Perhaps an adjustment should be made if the game is hard even on the easiest settings but I understand if that's the kind of game you're making, it may just be too difficult for my taste. I will continue to try, as I do like the game but as I tend to be fairly bad at strategy game, the lack of a truly easy mode is a big turn off.

[omnius]

Basically the game is split into two phases, expansion and power. At first you want to expand into every hex you can to gain economic power for knowledge, wealth and food. Then the game shifts to powering up. I'm starting to see where I made errors early on in my play buying too many armies. When the price goes over 200 it's better to stop buying armies and just spend wealth on power. I'm now playing solely on the expert level after winning as the Babylonians, haven't played in a while as I've gotten into a few other games. I'm even thinking of playing without buying a single army to see how that affects power projection, just seems like buying armies is not a cost efficient way to project power as armies are rather powerless.

[The Secret Games Company]

Originally posted by Brids17:

Perhaps an adjustment should be made if the game is hard even on the easiest settings but I understand if that's the kind of game you're making, it may just be too difficult for my taste. I will continue to try, as I do like the game but as I tend to be fairly bad at strategy game, the lack of a truly easy mode is a big turn off.

I agree, we will adjust the difficulty in future to ensure there is a setting that will be easy for everyone. We certainly don't want the difficulty to put people off, it's just a case of calibrating the difficulty settings correctly, which takes a few iterations.

[omnius]

I hope that The Secret Games Company makes a good how-to video truly explaining the different elements of the game as well as strategy and tactics tips. It definitely takes time and practice to figure out how to be successful. Perhaps an instructive tutorial that shows players the tricks of winning strategy. It will be interesting to see how multiplayer will work and how there'll be some kind of way to ensure that a few very experienced players don't ruin the multiplayer experience for newbies. I still think that giving each empire the same starting resources will help give early balance.

[The Secret Games Company]

We are going to make a better tutorial and can definitely do new and better explainer videos, once the design is less likely to evolve.

We are also going to change how the starting resources work as part of a new system we're adding to make the empires more unique, more on that in the coming months!

[Brids17]

Does the AI cheat at all? I'm assuming not but I had my best game today, until about 30 turns in where the AI attack power skyrocketed and I lost most of my land in a little over 10 turns. I really focused hard on buying attack power but it seemed like the AI just started snowballing it and I couldn't keep up.

I do have an advice related question now though, once you're into the late game, is it suicidal to spend your money? Since you cap it out, it seems like buying armies or navies for the crowns results in a massive power drop, which results in you losing a lot of land. Once I got late into the game, I just stopped using the money tab altogether. Am I wrong here or is that intended?

[The Secret Games Company]

The AI doesn't cheat at all. They must have hit a tipping point in their economy, maybe they had lots of big cities bringing in wealth and knowledge. Upgrading the yield from cities (on the knowledge panel) can make a big difference in the late game.

The way the demo works (some of this has changed at our end - you will see in the new demo), most empires will just be buying 100% power every turn in the late game. We wanted to add more viable strategies at this stage, which is why we made some changes.