This beta is making a good impression. Still I'd like to add some thoughts concerning game play and feeling of the game. With the feeling of the game I refer to coherence of the game with the main background story and of course what I expect of this game.

I only added ideas that I think are easy to program with features already in the game. However I could be wrong.

#1 - Availability of heroes

First of all for a game that starts centuries after a magical apocalypse the starting screen feels very crowded with all sorts of heroes wandering around. I usually have between two or three hardly ever on one my starting screen. Heroes should what they are - very rare and exceptional people. Heroes surviving in such a desolate and post apocalyptic land shouldn't be wandering around and say hello to each other every other turn.

Shouldn't they live in (magically) protected habitats and maybe taking care of other survivors. Thus being heroes. Such habitats could be:

- swamps (an old witch or her daughter),

- wizard towers (old wizards resp. their apprentices),

- caves with veteran survivors (warrior heroes),

- oases with arabian style heroes,

- old workshops with a weird inventor (surviving by using strange devices)

- etc.

Each hero could or better should have a related quest or a certain requirement like influence of a city, certain spell or technology, army size, moral alignment, etc. Only a small part of heroes should be nomads, with the ability to survive in the desolates of the land. Therefore it is your (more difficult) task to find and convince competent leaders to work for you.

 #2 - Availability of resources

Many of the resources on the map are very easy to access. Just build a city nearby and research the necessary technology. That is good but maybe resources could have different tiers? Some could be resources which pioneers need to work on for a number of turns in order for them to be used. But not in a way of immediately enabling harvesting but in a way of uncovering (e.g. dig up an old well giving more food), restoring (e.g. an old statue/relic granting additional prestige) or discovering (e.g. an old fortress that reduces training time or increases defence) it. A third tier which might be too complicated to be integrated is to need "nomad heroes" (see my point #1) to find those resources first.

 #3 - Traits for units

Currently it is possible to research technologies that increase for example movement range (advanced tracking) of units. Why not add technologies that make it possible to train units a certain way thus increasing their production time and adding certain traits. Those traits could be similar to traits heroes have.

Some ideas:

- Scouting gives additional movement range and sight but restricts armour to light leather or cloth

- Garrison units have decreased movement range but increased defence.

- Police units increase tax but have decreased defence and attack.

- Honour guard increased defence when in an army with a hero

- Head hunter’s bonus when fighting against certain npc’s

- etc.

That’s it for my first post. If anything is not understandable please ask, my mother tongue is not English.

Via