Story campaign

[Mossiveunit]

The way the game just keeps resetting my army is infuriating. Its genuinely griefing my run...

I just had an entire army like despawn or something after defind Serrot (sp?) I now have 3 turns to raise an army and recapture the southern yellow territory...

I think I am done with this game...

How the hell did this get through QA testing.. who thought it would be a good idea to wipe progress between objectives, psuedo resets..

[Rising Lords]

In 4x strategy games, or everything that requires base building and army creation, the next mission usually starts with nothing. Be it Starcraft or Heroes of Might and Magic, Age of Wonders or Anno, Command and Conquer ot whatever else comes to mind.

Due to the nature of such strategy games, your progress is reset at the next mission. I know no exception. What we did here was somewhat of a novelty, that you actually keep part of your progress. As I have mentioned a few times in other threads, this was not taken well though and will probably not be continues in the expansion.

How great would it be to play the games next mission once you already have a huge army, perfect regions etc. ?
It's easy to come up with lore wise explanations why the army is gone for you. Your brother takes it, it is needed to defend holm/hormund or help on other fronts.
We certainly missed the chance there to give a better explanation.

Nevertheless, the only alternative to taking the army away is actually resetting all progress to 0, which we didn't want to do. Or you keep everything and there is nothing to actually do in the missions because you already have everything. All we can do is try to throw even bigger armies at you.

If you don't like the way it is, you can always play sandbox mode or create your own scenarios!

[Mossiveunit]

I appreciate you taking the time to provide a response.

I think much of my own frustration arising from thinking the milestones in the story were a continuous scenario rather than set piece missions, with each acting as a soft reset.

The turn restrictions between objectives already act as a devise to move progression/story elements along. Maybe what happened in my run was an unfortunate interaction of primary and secondary objectives, it isn't possible to raise an army and move it across 4-5 territories in 3 turns.

The end result is a disappointing end to my experience/run, which felt beyond my ability to control. That's got to be an undesirable user experience.

[Rising Lords]

we would never expect to raise an army and capture something in 3 turns that is 5 turns away. If you are talking about the beginning of mission 3 where you are supposed to help the Lady Havenhand in the yellow territory, the troops you are provided with at the beginning are perfectly capable of reaching her territory in time.

[Nitroglycerine]

I support the devs in this.
I can't think of another 4x-style TBS mission-based campaign where you get to carry over your whole army from 1 mission to another. You might get to carry over the commander or hero, which is the case here (the MC levels up and continually gets more experience).

Not the HoMM series, or AoW series, or anything else.

This is because your army would be far too good otherwise.
Actually, the game currently lets you carry over the weapons you have manufactured (not the ones equipped in your army), and that is already ridiculously OP because you can easily blitz multiple provinces in the first 10 turns that way, before the defenders are fully recruited for provinces.

[TwinniePooh]

Originally posted by Rising Lords:

we would never expect to raise an army and capture something in 3 turns that is 5 turns away. If you are talking about the beginning of mission 3 where you are supposed to help the Lady Havenhand in the yellow territory, the troops you are provided with at the beginning are perfectly capable of reaching her territory in time.

I can understand the idea behind this, in theory it's fine. The problem though is that each mission is back to back instantly. There is no "1 week later" even, as you mentioned. If the map changed, there was a time jump, SOMETHING it would feel better.

As you said, keeping some of the progress, ie everything that isn't your army it seems, makes it feel like it's one continuous level instead of individual missions. It's incredibly frustrating design.

I went from a mission where I was free to build my own army and needed 400-500 troops to capture towns to a mission where I'm given 180 and immediately told I have to go two zones over, including through a still hostile region. Sure I CAN complete this mission with that many troops, but I don't know that. I JUST had a mission where I had complete freedom and needed over twice that number of troops.

You just taught the player to manage their own cities and build their own army only to then tell them no no, now you have to ignore the cities and army building aspects, just go do the thing I tell you to do.

The game swings wildly back and forth between presenting itself as a sandbox style campaign with player freedom and a campaign made up of carefully crafted scenarios. It gives a sense of whiplash between missions.

As a possible fix, take away the cities from the player for that mission. "Okay, I'll watch your cities for a bit. take this small force and rush over to save her." That alone would do wonders.

Originally posted by Nitroglycerine:

Actually, the game currently lets you carry over the weapons you have manufactured (not the ones equipped in your army), and that is already ridiculously OP because you can easily blitz multiple provinces in the first 10 turns that way, before the defenders are fully recruited for provinces.

This doesn't make sense either. It undercuts the developers entire point of "resetting" between missions. If the gear carries over, why delete the army at all? Either give a harder reset to everything, or nothing. The half measures are just confusing.




I like the core of the game, it just has a lot of little inconsistencies and oddities. ex: The Quest text says "the end of turn 6" but the text on screen says "Round" in the bottom right, not Turn, but the Button says "End Turn/Season". I also received the "mission failed" message when I started round 6, not at the "end" of round 6. It's just got some weird little things that are confusing on top of what is otherwise a pretty well designed game premise.

[Elizabeth]

TwinniePooh has a great explanation, but I'd like to expand a bit. The campaign does a poor job of telling players when they are into a new 'mission'. the narrative story does not separate phases well, and the in-game objectives change within missions as well as between.

What this means is the player does not have a good way to tell, having just pressed 'end turn', whether they are still on the same mission, or whether everything they've been working on has just been ♥♥♥♥♥♥ with. And that, to the player, feels bad. I could describe it in more detail, but that's the important thing - because its hard for the player to see and understand, because the campaign does not give much to tell the player about the forced changes, those changes make the campaign feel bad.

In a sense, the first story arc in southern Aubelin, is presented to the player as one nonstop mission, with fixed territory and assets, and evolving objectives over time. But the level design is actually a series of narrative missions, with separate starting conditions. It is the difference between the design, and what the player can see, which makes it feel bad.

Now, that is a fixable issue! Just looking at that first story arc - each of the hidden 'mission changes' do relate to narrative time skips. Just having a transition screen - a 'Chapter 2 - 8 weeks later' (as appropriate) gives a clear message to the player that things have changed, and now the player is being warned as and when significant changes have occurred.

I frankly hope you don't intend to abandon the semi-permanent progression in future expansion, as it is a great feature and bit of fun for the player. I would much rather see some refinement in how the game communicates with the player, and importantly sets expectations, so the player knows what is going on. I could make a list, but TwinniePooh already hit the high points.


Just as a final note - a stellar example of narrative 4X strategy campaigns, with permanent progression, is The Pegasus Expedition. Territory, fleets, tech, progression are never reset, throughout the entire campaign (at least from my memory). It is possible to have complete progression, some permanence, or none, in a strategy game campaign. It is very important for the game and the player to be on the same page about which one is happening, at all times.

[Cyrantel]

I appreciate the developer's approach to conserve as much progress between campaign scenarios as possible. And people really should acknowledge the fact that you don't carry over any progress in similar games.
On the other hand it can be difficult and tricky to know what *exactly* carries over to the next scenario and what doesn't.
A solution to this problem? You could inform the player in the scenario description if any and what progress will be preserved for the next scenario of the campaign.

[mirarkkthur]

Originally posted by Rising Lords:

In 4x strategy games, or everything that requires base building and army creation, the next mission usually starts with nothing. Be it Starcraft or Heroes of Might and Magic, Age of Wonders or Anno, Command and Conquer ot whatever else comes to mind.

Due to the nature of such strategy games, your progress is reset at the next mission. I know no exception. What we did here was somewhat of a novelty, that you actually keep part of your progress. As I have mentioned a few times in other threads, this was not taken well though and will probably not be continues in the expansion.

How great would it be to play the games next mission once you already have a huge army, perfect regions etc. ?
It's easy to come up with lore wise explanations why the army is gone for you. Your brother takes it, it is needed to defend holm/hormund or help on other fronts.
We certainly missed the chance there to give a better explanation.

I know 3 exceptions that only reset when the map changes.
But the ingame explanation is: They are levies and were sent home to tend to the fields. However I don't remember if I got the equipment back whenever that annoying mission change happened.
But for your sake, I hope that pathetic empire will not be overrun by me now.
It did manage to destroy a 12k army and a 14k city with a 4 layer wall and 3k garison in an overnight attack after all. It sure won't fall against 3 armies a 10k right? right? Muahahahaha bring it pathetic empire feel my wrath!!!
This was just a joke but I still hope it will not just be overrun by me now.

[Knatternick]

Originally posted by Rising Lords:

In 4x strategy games, or everything that requires base building and army creation, the next mission usually starts with nothing. Be it Starcraft or Heroes of Might and Magic, Age of Wonders or Anno, Command and Conquer ot whatever else comes to mind.

Due to the nature of such strategy games, your progress is reset at the next mission. I know no exception. What we did here was somewhat of a novelty, that you actually keep part of your progress. As I have mentioned a few times in other threads, this was not taken well though and will probably not be continues in the expansion.

How great would it be to play the games next mission once you already have a huge army, perfect regions etc. ?
It's easy to come up with lore wise explanations why the army is gone for you. Your brother takes it, it is needed to defend holm/hormund or help on other fronts.
We certainly missed the chance there to give a better explanation.

Nevertheless, the only alternative to taking the army away is actually resetting all progress to 0, which we didn't want to do. Or you keep everything and there is nothing to actually do in the missions because you already have everything. All we can do is try to throw even bigger armies at you.

If you don't like the way it is, you can always play sandbox mode or create your own scenarios!

Actually, it's not that difficult. Give us a reasonable explanation as to why the army disbanded and when. Give us another reward. Such as experience points, which are displayed as a reward in a separate window. Or the possibility of at least keeping a squad with more experience. Especially after the first big battle/conquest at the beginning of the campaign, it is very strange to suddenly find yourself without an army. It just doesn't make sense. Very important, install a sensible storage system so that you can create your own savegames. Then the strange campaign design can be tolerated more easily. All in all, it's fun, but the mission design is often poor and the objectives appear, but in the heat of province expansion I don't always look to the top left. An exclamation mark “Important Mission” would be very helpful.

[Knatternick]

Originally posted by Cyrantel:

I appreciate the developer's approach to conserve as much progress between campaign scenarios as possible. And people really should acknowledge the fact that you don't carry over any progress in similar games.
On the other hand it can be difficult and tricky to know what *exactly* carries over to the next scenario and what doesn't.
A solution to this problem? You could inform the player in the scenario description if any and what progress will be preserved for the next scenario of the campaign.

t would simply be enough to describe more what comes next. A. You keep conquered provinces or B. You keep your army, which, however, only has 25 men per squad due to various losses. The rest of the army is no longer fit for service. This could be packaged nicely, but you just have to put in a little more effort. On the one hand I get xxx experience for some "missions" like getting 90 lances, on the other hand I get experience from the endless battle without any indication that my experience points have exceeded certain thresholds for new cards.

[Rising Lords]

thank you for your input!

you can create your own savegames. or what am I missing here?

well you do get infos about exp after battles, there can be no threshold infos as every card has a different cost.

[Knatternick]

Originally posted by Rising Lords:

In 4x strategy games, or everything that requires base building and army creation, the next mission usually starts with nothing. Be it Starcraft or Heroes of Might and Magic, Age of Wonders or Anno, Command and Conquer ot whatever else comes to mind.

Due to the nature of such strategy games, your progress is reset at the next mission. I know no exception. What we did here was somewhat of a novelty, that you actually keep part of your progress. As I have mentioned a few times in other threads, this was not taken well though and will probably not be continues in the expansion.

How great would it be to play the games next mission once you already have a huge army, perfect regions etc. ?
It's easy to come up with lore wise explanations why the army is gone for you. Your brother takes it, it is needed to defend holm/hormund or help on other fronts.
We certainly missed the chance there to give a better explanation.

Nevertheless, the only alternative to taking the army away is actually resetting all progress to 0, which we didn't want to do. Or you keep everything and there is nothing to actually do in the missions because you already have everything. All we can do is try to throw even bigger armies at you.

If you don't like the way it is, you can always play sandbox mode or create your own scenarios!

Dear developers, thank you very much for this “old school” turn-based strategy game. It's very reminiscent of Lords of the Realms 2, although the battles aren't in real time. But I didn't miss a second. The turn-based battles are also a lot of fun! At the beginning I stumbled around a lot, had a few tantrums due to my lack of experience and in the end everything went smoothly and easily. Even the mission after the mine ;-) The clever use of the cards makes it almost a game within a game. Reminded me a lot of Gwent. What I was actually missing was the following: An overview map of where which raw materials can be found in which province. Or at least in the provincial display. Existing armies are also welcome. It was often an arduous search if you wanted to push a particular raw material. Just on the last big map or mission. I look forward to new stories in the book of stories and hope for new experiences from the well-known warriors.

[Rising Lords]

thank you Knatterknick!

[udo.sarnow]

Hi, I only bought the full game this week and although the game is quite fun, it's also pretty frustrating sometimes.
I get that the army went with Ricard after the battle at the bridge, but why are all my buildings gone as well, leaving me with heaps of beggars?

[Rising Lords]

Buildings gone? That's the first time I read this. added you for troubleshooting :)