It was a bit of a disappointment, considering how much hype came before the release.
I posted this on the GalCiv board (while this board was down!).
Overall analysis: The current beta isn't playable. I'm going to wait a month or two and play it again. I'd give the game a "nice try". It looks like it'll be a decent game when it's done. Let us know when it's actually playable.
Clicking on "Options" ends my game. There's no way to get back!
The "news" and "charts" buttons don't do anything!
I am running Windows XP, but it still crashes too often.
The various things to do are unclear. You need a "get started" guide.
Where is "District of Columbia"?
Don't they get 3-4 electoral votes.
In my game with the default settings, "more jobs" seemed
to be the only thing anyone cared about.
When a question mark appears, is it merely a race to see
who can click on it first? That appears to be frustrating
feature rather than a neat feature.
Isn't this a turn-based game?
It appears to crash sometimes when the AI grabs a question mark.
The AI got stuck in a pattern where he stayed in one state
for most of the game. Did he run out of money?
Make it more clear what the AI is doing on his turn.
One state got stuck in a state where both candidates had 0%
awareness, even though I had maximum HQ and an ad campaign in the state.
Awareness is way too important. You would think that after 20 weeks, both candidates would have 100% awareness in all states.
The game should be a bit longer. Either make the "# weeks"
adjustable, or make "stamina per week" adjustable.
When you don't have enough stamina for a given action,
the screen should more clearly indicate that this is the case.
You need more description of:
- why "fund raising" gives less each time you do it in a state.
How long do you have to wait before going back?
- There appears to be some sort of "adjacency bonus" for
building an HQ. It helps in adjacent states also.
- It seems like it make sense to build HQ mostly in poor states,
and do your fundraising in only wealthy states.
- It seems that optimal strategy in the opening phases of the
game is to build an HQ in as many states as possible, while
fundraising in the wealthy states. You'll
get a huge chunk of the HQ cost back over the course of
the game in income.
- It seems that it doesn't make sense to "campaign" until the
end of the game, because the effect expires over time.
- What happens if you have unused stamina at the end of a turn?
I'm going to wait a month or two before playing it again.
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Well, I do think that it'll be a good game once it's done. The current version still needs a lot of work. I'm suspecting that it won't be in the same league as GalCiv unless substnatial improvements are made.
I'm surprised this thread didn't gather more comments?
Also, the "political capital" seems useless as currently written. It takes 2-3 full turns to get enough capital to do anything.
On "election night", I thought that there should be some randomness. That is, if I'm leading 40%-39% in a state, I shouldn't be a lock-winner on election night, maybe only a 52% chance of winning. Further, the states should be revealed in order of closeness of outcome, rather than the same order every time. If a state is close, the first reveal should say "NY is too close to call", then "NY is still too close to call", and finally "NY goes to x", giving the results for several other states in the meantime. Also, on election night, there should be some indication once a candidate clinches victory.
There also should be something useful to do if you have 1-2 stamina leftover at the end of the turn, and you want to stay in that state for next turn.
