Feedback after 50 hours of play.

[Wade D]

Ok, so I finally got to finish a game all the way through with only 1 drop out and some serious back and forth between players, private messages, upsets, etc... (I figured this was 'the' experience the devs were going for, so now that I've had this experienced I may be able to give some informed feedback).


Negatives:
1) Andromalius sitting back and just doing duals is boring to fight against. They drain you of resources (as they only risk a cheap lv1 character and drain your prestige) and are not contributing to the ebb-and-flow of the games map or economy. They will then drop out once they are countered (usually by someone finally geting a Vendetta off on them).
2) Duals are boring. Not enough counter-play, no idea what bribes really do (do they only add damage?), and buying scrolls to gain abilities is not worth it (as you spend multiple actions to purchase and then attach the ability, and then you risk it all with one fight).
3) There is not enough counter-play to Rituals, it is annoying that the counter to a Ritual is the same type of Ritual (making games all samey), and you often end up with games that are all about Deceit, stealing from each other (as Deceit is so much more powerful than any other Ritual due to 1 Ritual creating a large swing of not only taking away something from a foe, but also giving it to yourself).
5) Manuscripts are less powerful and interesting than Tribute - mostly because they are filled with Dual manuscripts that are of little/less use.
6) Weak Reliquaries: Ring of Command (Command rating is less usual than all other options (mostly because swarms of foes are weaker than 1 big Legion, and they feed combat victories to enemies)), Crown of Administrator.
7) Selecting Tribute tokens is of little interest. Maybe make it just automated.
8) Some bugs (too many to list here) and lack of clarity with rules (again, too many to list here).

Positives:
1) The game does a good job of creating a story with lots of back-and-forth.
2) I like that placing all your eggs in one basket always ends up falling (hopefully after they achieving its goal) - lots of highs and lows to the game, and worth sticking it out to the end.
3) The balance between Range, Melee and Infernal feels good (making all legions feel good). Legion fights, the map, etc... all feel good.

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Suggestions/Ideas:

Nerf the hell out of Deceit
> Strategic Confusion: Reduces movement to 1 (if they have already moved, it will affect their next Turn).
> Loot the Vaults: Have it never return Darkness tokens (this way it can never return enough to trigger its use again).
> Pilfer Artifact: Random artifact from a specific location (so people can pad out more artefacts in a spot to protect an important artifact).
> Convert Legion: Discard all attachments to that Legion if successful... OR, gives a Legion an upkeep cost (if upkeep is not paid they will swap sides, and Praetors and Artifacts may not be removed from them).

Boost counter-play options for Duals
> Higher level Praetors are only wounded (returned to your Vault) when defeated by lower level Praetors.
> Manuscripts that grant Dual actions also grant a minor (+1) Range, Melee or Infernal boost.
> Create a 'bomb' Wrath Ritual that results in both you and your foes Praetor dying at the end of the Dual (there is still Prestige for the winner).
> Create a 'bomb' Charisma Ritual that allows you to bet on the winner of a Dual (so you can bet against yourself): granting you Tribute and Prestige if you guess correct. Maybe you can even bet on duals between 2 other Archfiends.

Rituals
> Have Deceit passive defend vs Prophecy (and not Deceit), Prophecy passive defend vs Destruction (and not Prophecy), and Destruction passive defend vs Deceit (and not Destruction).

Edit:
> The success and failure of rituals 'feels' unsatisfactory and ambiguous - in a way that runs counter to the style of the rest of the game (ie: you clearly know why you won/lost a battle, but you don't know your chances of success with Rituals or clearly why you won/lost).
I think a simple way to address this would be to show why you won/lost. Maybe take a page out of BG3 and show a "Power + Die Roll vs Defence" screen (and show where the Power/Defence is coming from).

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All of this is just to give the Devs some food for thought, and given with good intentions. I'm a tabletop game designer IRL (also from Aus!), so I know that making game changes can have ripple-on effects that take time to work out.

[Strill]

1. Andromalius doesn't drain your presrige. You gain 8 prestige from refusing his demand, and lose 10 from forfeiting the duel. Net loss: 2 prestige. You can forfeit duels all day at basically no cost to yourself.

2. Winning the bribe adds your charisma to the damage.

3. To defend against rituals, you really need to be on the lookout for resistance artifacts. Also, try the prophecy ritual defense rituals. Raising your rank also increases resistance. I'm also pretty sure that the first three levels of each power are purposefully cheap in order to make it easier to raise your resistance.

5. Agreed on the dueling manuscripts

You can already wager extra prestige in duels, so no need for a ritual that does the same.

Ritual power and resistance is displayed in the ritual screen, at the bottom. I don't believe the resistance is correct though. I know for sure that it's not correct for your legions.

For the ring of command, you're missing that pure quantity of legions is one of the most important thing for winning the game, and that even the weakest legion can one-shot almost anything with max wrath. A single maxed-out stratagem can add +18 ranged. Would I take it myself? Absolutely not, but that's not because it's weak. That's only because maxing out your economy is first priority, and having more legions doesn't do anything to help you snowball your economy. I'd love to have that ring right as I'm about to go for an usurper win so I can flood my stronghold with every legion I can get my hands on.

Maybe if vendettas were more important, I'd go for the ring of command.

[thefool]

> Selecting Tribute tokens is of little interest. Maybe make it just automated.
I definitely agree that it's not very appealing part of the game, but the problem with automated solution is that the tokens would be uniformly distributed and it might not ideal since for different things you need different tokens.

Maybe just preselecting tokens to maximize tokens income but you can always revise and change the selection if you want should be enough.

[Tr00he]

I think that selecting tokens is only annoying when you are playing in single player. In multiplayer, as the turn frequency is lower, stuff like upkeed, token selection etc. doesn't annoy me.

[KotoMaxibon]

1 is a player issue. In my playgroup andromaluses are engaging in gameplay aspects other than duels.

2 Disagree. A friend in my group is really skilled at guessing what to pick and how much to bribe, he is hard to beat even when our praetors are of equal power. Also another player in my game did full manuscript build and his praetor was literally unbeatable doing up to 15 damage without bribing. Encyclopaedia entry for duels explains what bribing does.

3 Disagree. There are plenty of ways to counter rituals and you dont need to counter all of them since not every ritual counters your exact playstyle.

5 Disagree. Full manuscript is much more powerful that appears at first. Its the only playstyle that cant be countered directly. You cant pilfer or destroy them. A player in my game won by stockpiling them then gigabuffing his legion and reducing everyone else's stats by 4-6 in a couple of turns.

6 Agreed, order crown is banned in our games and there should be a way (high wrath?) to order multiple legions at once.

7 Disagree. Its interesting to plan ahead whet kind of resources you will use and sometimes choosing small tokens is useful for giving to demands.

[Lemurian1972]

I'd also like the potential to fuel rituals for multiple turns through overpayment. Since costs remain flat but currency tends to grow as the game progresses, you end up more and more often burning currency even though you're generally speaking more skilled as you advance your Powers. It would be a nice perk to Consolidation, cut down turn by turn micromanagement, and not make you feel like a heel for overpaying or deliberately cranking out late turn tributes to get some small denominations.

[Drakken]

Originally posted by Strill:

1. Andromalius doesn't drain your presrige. You gain 8 prestige from refusing his demand, and lose 10 from forfeiting the duel. Net loss: 2 prestige. You can forfeit duels all day at basically no cost to yourself.

Uh, no. You lose the Prestige being waged in the duel PLUS 10 Prestige for forfeting.

[Indestructibirb]

I feel like deceit may be countered OK with prophecy skills and is perhaps not all that bad.
One thing I do agree with strongly though is the whole "everyone trains the same things" setup being a problem. For example, in one of my games right now, I'm Astaroth and I'm training deceit way up so that no one can steal my units, yet Astaroth isn't even meant to be a deceit guy. It's kind of silly.

Instead of getting resistance for having the same ability, what if it worked as a wheel? So you get deceit resistance by training prophecy, prophecy resistance by training destruction, charisma resistance by training wrath (does charisma even target people though?) etc. This would make each skill counter each other skill, instead of forcing you to train in the same thing that your opponent is training in.

[Beowulf]

Lowering tribute quality for subsequent seek tribute orders would do wonders for the game.
It would slow down the power creep, as right now it's just too easy in general to level up your attributes (unless you have a really bad stroke of luck or are ganked up by other players at the start), so the players would have to make tougher choices about what attributes and when to level up.
It would also make purchasing Titans and paying the upkeep for them a little less of a no-brainer.

[Wade D]

Thanks for the thoughtful replies.

I've just added a small edit with a suggestion on how to improve Rituals.

[VDmitry]

I'm not sure why you listed Andromalius as a negative. If you don't like him, kill him. Disagree on many other points as well. Inititally I thought tribute tokens as something strange at least, but they are good in fact. The duels are great, beside how much turns it takes to finish one.