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I’ve been playing since April 2018, so I’ve seen a wide range of updates. As we all know, this has been easily the most drastic change in the game. After playing a couple dozen games against AI and humans, I have a few likes and dislikes:
Likes: 1. Rammers. They are just awesome units with amazing gameplay design. Easily the best addition to the update. 2. Bridges and rivers. Building up a strike force of knights, dropping a bridge, and then tearing across an enemies unprepared territory is incredibly satisfying. 3. Swordsman. In prior versions a swordsman in a walled city was an enormous pain to overcome. No longer and that is appreciated. Despite this nerf, I feel like swordsmen have never been more useful in the game, which is excellent design. 4. Scout boats. The increased vision is such an obvious thing this unit needed. 5. The attempt at balancing the economy. The commerce hut+ports based economy was kind of dumb, but it worked pretty well. Nonetheless, I like that they have a clear design vision to update the economy, each tribe specializing towards economies that match their terrain. More work can be done to improve this.
Dislikes: 1. The economy. On a large map, within 30 turns, you could generally max out the economy at about 220 stars. This was a lot of fun as it made games go faster and enabled huge endgame projects. This is just no longer reasonably possible. The economy is much slower and much more limited. This really drags the progress of the game, makes tech diversification prohibitive, and makes some units impractical. 2. Bombers. These units are too slow, too expensive, too restricted, and too fragile. Yes Giant Battleships needed replacement, but these are just awful. I don’t see how they can be tweaked to be honest. My only solace is that the AI loves them, which gives me a huge advantage. 3. Starfish. Does anyone harvest these? They don’t give more than whales did but require a lot more investment. Usually when I have a moment in a game to harvest them, the game is already effectively won. 4. Markets. Perhaps these are worthwhile on enormous maps and very long games, but they just require too much investment to be practical in the current updates. Too many top tier techs, ultra picky layout requirements. It really makes me miss commerce huts. 5. Road cost. This really needs to go back to 2. Poor yadakk is unfairly nerfed right now. I honestly don’t see the rationale for raising the cost. 6. Lumber hut cost. Further nerfs Bardur unnecessarily. At least if lumber huts cost 3, chopping the trees should yield 2*.
I could probably go on and on, but I’ll wrap up there. Overall, I see some very notable improvements to the game, but the overall experience is negative from the last version. By this, I mean that this is the first update to the game where if I was given a choice to go back and play the prior version, I would probably do so.
The game designers have clearly picked a direction for the game’s future, and I hope they continue to improve the gameplay on that path.
The last thing I have to say is to have some patience for those who are frustrated with this update. This is a pretty radical gameplay change for people who’ve been playing the previous style for years. When they come and vent their frustration, even if it isn’t quite particular, it’s valuable to hear because it is a genuine reaction. Further, the reasons for the frustration are generally revealed by patient inquiry in the comments.
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