Hi, I love this game so far, I thought I would post some feedback. Maybe most or all of this has been mentioned before but I'll post it anyway incase its of some value. I don't know the history of this game, but I am a huge fan of HOMM5 and the Age of Wonders series. I bought this game based on my love of those basically. Anyway, here are my thoughts in no particular order.
1) First impression is that the game is brilliant, with masses of depth, way more than the two other previously mentioned games. There are more buildings to build, and more of everything. I was excited to see weapons for sale, but then really impressed when I saw just how many weapons you could get. I was a little disappointed that most of the weapons were the same though, just seemed to require different materials. It might be nice have some more variety, ones that trigger various effects randomly, like a flame sword, and an ice sword, and a sword that has a brief stun etc.
2) Overall the graphics are pretty good, it has some better detail and animations than AOW/AOW2. I loved zooming out through the clouds, and I love how it becomes a map when you zoom all the way out. Although some things I don't think look as good as those other games. Some of the 'places' of interest in the other games are generally nicer looking than in this. The little temples and gold mines looked ok, but some stuff just looked like a basic icon, compared to the other games where they have nice detailed little pictures.
3) Travelling around the map is a little less interesting than the other games. It gets better later in to the game when I start coming across the enemy players, and creatures eventually start spawning too. But in general it wasn't quite as fun. In the other games there are little clusters of mobs blocking narrow valleys, and protecting key locations like gold mines and stuff. It gives some flavour to the maps, it provides some good early experience to kick start the levelling up process, and it also slows the game down a bit and saves it from just being a mad rush straight to your opponent. I think this game could certainly use more creatures early in the game, preferably hand placed by the map designer, and maybe a few wanderers too.
4) I don't get all the love for CIV5 and CIV4. I was a big fan of the series as a kid and I used to play CIV2 quite a lot. But I found it always got boring fast, after one weekend of playing it, I wouldn't go back for several months. A major issue I have with the CIV games is that there is nothing to the combat. It's a game focused entirely around the cities and the research etc. The actual combat is little more than selecting your unit, and clicking on the unit you want to attack. There is no actual thought involved at all. It also never changes... So you start a game and click on your stone age warrior, and then click on your enemy's town and it attacks without you doing anything. 25 hours later in to the game, you warrior is now a cool modern tank, but the combat is still EXACTLY the same. You still just click it, and click it on the target. That's why I always preferred AOW and HOMM games, because they still have the strategy of building and maintaining cities, but the combat has more going on. This game is likely to be my new home for this kind of gameplay, and I wish everyone else was rushing out to buy this instead of the CIV5.
5) The music was really good, but there needs to be a lot more songs/tunes. AOW2 did a great job at this, it had an entire play list of music and you could just pick the ones you liked the most or randomise it. The music was all quite evocative too and moody, and fit perfectly with the game.
6) My second game, the game crashed with an out of memory message. Kind of worrying considering I have 4 gig and the map was tiny.
7) I would like to see a little bit of improvement, flavour, and customisation for the heroes that you can invite. They come with an ability like adding some movement speed or whatever, which is nice. But in AOW they had a lot more personality. In this game they all seem to just be melee characters basically. In AOW, you got to choose their stats the same, but there were various other things you could give them, like first strike, healing, forest walking, archery, spell casting, etc. So the heroes were more like classes, so you had Rangers and Bards, Druids, Necromancers etc. The heroes in this game could be like that too, if you gave them some extra points when they level up, and then give several more options. Archery, magic use, etc..
8) Bugs are bad and no doubt it was a lot worse before I joined, but I am really disappointed to see it get such bad reviews. I think reviewers should go easy on smaller companies, especially when they make a game that is this ambitious. In time, this could grow to be the best game of it's kind. Already I find it comparable to HOMM5 and AoW2:SM, but it wouldn't take much for me to like this more.
9) If you like the game, consider posting about how you like it on some general gaming forum you read. I visit a couple of other forums and I am planning on posting about the game and hopefully more people will check it out.
Good luck Stardock.
