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(part 1/3)
A few consideration of how to play this game for a magic win.
1) To get the best score, you need a good enough map. That means sufficient amount (5+) of squares to put a magic village, a blocky piece of wood for a rapid development in the early game (note that a square with wood gives 25% boost to wood production in a nearby square), and a good combination of stone to get a rapid development of stone, which means there should be a 2x2 square with stone squares on one diagonal and empty squares on the other diagonal (which would give you mining villages). In my experience, about 10% of maps are good to get a good score for the magic win. The rest is your ability to play the game.
2) You start with wood production, after you get about 40 wood/minute you focus on developing mana (while keeping to develop wood as a low-priority task).
3) After you get 10+ mana/minute, you need to place a tower of light, and you leave it at the level 1 (don't upgrade).
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(part 2/3)
4) Boost your wood production and mana production. Start developing stone (just one or two stone lvl 2 at this point). You should get your wood production at about 60 wood / minute. With mana production, you should get every mushroom forest to be level 2, and build all magic villages level 1 you can. After you get 2 rock, you upgrade any magic village to level 2. At that point you'd have 10-20 of mana and your mana production should be at 30-32 mana/minute.
5) At that point you have 2-3 minutes until you get 100 mana, and your stone industry is in infancy. Hopefully, it doesn't take a lot of time to develop it. You should start with that 2x2 square with two stones and two empty spots on a diagonal. Upgrade the stones to the level 3, and mining villages to the last level when they remain villages. That's the start. Develop some more stone. Build some villages, too. It's a rush, but with the right timing, you should get 100 mana and 100 stone in about the same time.
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(part 3/3)
6) If you do it right, you should get the score of about 80. With luck, I could get as much as 85.
For a tech win the strategy should be different. In particular, you would need the tower of light level 2, and you would need wood production of about 100/minute. You won't need a lot of magic villages -- even 3 or so would be fine. But you should get enough free space to build villages and cities. The first priority is to get the tower of light level 2 to slow the time, the second priority is to develop stone/technology. To get the best score, the idea is that you should get a couple of cities of each possible origin, so that you don't overspend the stone -- get a couple of mining cities, a couple of cities and a couple of port cities -- do whatever gets you the best technology output per stone spent at the moment. With luck, I could get the score of 73 for a tech win.
Hope that helps you to get the best score in the game!
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This game is fantastic.
Its so simple and straightforward, and the pixel towns are adorable.
The ever encroaching darkness adds the perfect tension, as you nervously watch your resources count up to the next thing you need to build.
Absolute 5/5, I loved this game.
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It would be nice if magic was more useful late game, after defeating the darkness, I was just using it to build things that gave more magic
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The real darkness becomes the overpopulation of humans in a once pristine land. Cities upon cities are belching forth their dark smoke and warped magical energies into their surroundings, corrupting what little non-human life is left. (5 Stars! - Would love to see more 'waves' of darkness in a future version of this game.)
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Is it me or is it a lot easier to just activate the stone circle, rather than trying to scrape together enough research? Both need lots of stone and gathering magic is a lot easier since the buildings that make it are a lot cheaper.
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Very nice rouge like game. My only complaints are the uselessness of water/dock tiles, that village/cities don't make elixir at level 1 so I know they can make it, the uselessness of magic post game, that cities continue to upgrade more than any other structure, the level limit on cities because of surrounding builds that may cap at level 1, and the lack of availability to get stones. If the game was longer, I would suggest adding multiple save files and, to make the game last longer, have the darkness return some time after defeating it x number of times.
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I originally gave this game a 3 star rating, due to it being so limited, or so I thought. I easily beat the game but...I decided to play into freeplay mode and there I saw the variety in upgrades, which made me move the game up to a 4 star rating. I think the problem is that, at face value the game seems to not have much and people may just click off, perhaps you can make it more apparent or "In your face" that there are many different upgrades and building types? Also I never knew that ports were possible to build until after I beat the game, maybe make that more obvious as well.
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The potential is mind-boggling. How about a campaign mode with hand crafted harder and harder maps? Adding new ways of winning (great forest fire of 666 wood?) Different sized maps (or even different shapes?)
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It would be nice if there is a endless mode with a bigger map, and maybe another way to get the ending that is not so stone heavy. I can tell if I will win by the amount & position of stone tiles... Besides that I love your game <3
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Thanks for this game,
I like that you get "ambushed" by the darkness!
makes the first time you play really exciting.
and it's usually still winnable
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I like this game but would like it more if the tutorial were a little bit longer and involved levels of difficulty so that if you have NO IDEA what to do, you learn it as you go.
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I noticed that I cannot build the tower of water until I build the tower of light. I've also noticed the game seem impossible if you do not build a tower of light.
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Forest lv.0 doesn't seem very useful. The water tower gives a lot of magic. I'm not sure if it repels the darkness or not like the tower of light.
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I found a second way to win, I did it without using much magic. Hint, involves a mining town. I wonder if there is a third way?
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First try, I lost I couldn't figure out how to slow the darkness until I had about 10 squares left. I kept running out of wood.
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Well, I maxed everything out and let it run for a few hours and my stone rolled over back to zero, so that answers the overflow question. (Filed under: Things to do after you beat the game)
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Now, the improvements I'd suggest. 1. Pastels are nice, but I think the grass and ocean tiles are too light, so it's difficult to tell them apart. I'd make them darker green and blue. 2. I don't think that structures should increase in cost. The first sawmill you build costs 2, the next 3, then 4, faster and faster. Each subsequent version or upgrade should cost the same as the last. Instead of automatically increasing the cost of everything, I think there are better ways to handle this. A simple solution might be to require three level 1 towns before you can build level 2 units, 3 level 2 towns before building level 3 units, etc. 3. I think victory comes too easily. Requiring only 100 stone and 100 magic means you can get victory pretty easily--you don't even need to start doing research. I'd make 100 stone/magic slow the darkness down a bunch more, and then have one more upgrade for the stone circle, requiring 300 stone, 100 magic, and 30 research to end the darkness.
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I have to say that I like this game a lot, but it's unpolished. Let's start with the stuff I like. I like that you have an economy of scale feature--it reminds me much of an older game called Lunar Colony, which I think was based on MULE--tiles help increase the productivity of those next to them, plus you also included cities. Several resources available, and including the darkness means there's an actual challenge and objective other than just building stuff and figuring out how much it's all worth. And then having the sandbox option at the end is nice, to let you make any other modifications you want. I've now played the game for several hours, and I think I'll playing it for a few more yet.
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You can't have a wooden port city. Now i'm Sad :(. BTW Upgrading everything after you stop the drakness is a basic must for a completionist like me.
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Fun little game! I enjoyed playing it though to get both victories and then complete everything on the map. My suggestions for more on this game: 1) Stone production is lacking, particularly after completing a win condition, not a big deal if there's no more game. 2) Magic and Science could be used for something else. Maybe global boost to a type of production, or converting resources. 3) At some point after you win, another problem could arise. If you won with magic there could be radiation leakage coming from one of the mining research places. If you won with Technology, the standing stone could start releasing corrupting magic. Either way it would lead to a new spreading problem that would start from somewhere in the middle, and spread in random directions. You also introduce alternate resources/mechanics to try and counter the new threat.
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An interesting idea for extending the game would be to have it so after you defeat the darkness a view for an extended map is unlocked. So you could see a 3x3 area with each segment being a map you can play on. These maps could either be levels with different requirements to win or you could use the central map as a base to push into the darkness to defeat/collect something and expand your base.
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It might be a fun development if after you achieve the endgame and click "continue", the darkness disappears for a moment, then starts to spread from the center outwards. That would undo player's success in developing the innermost squares and would force him to develop the peripheral squares hoping to get the right buildings in time to end the second wave of the darkness.
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How bout if you make it so that after you 'win' the darkness doesn't go away but just resets and starts again. Then you have to use the other win condition to defeat the darkness for good. If you used the 'magic method' then you need to do the 'tech/science method' and vice-versa.
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I've tried a lot, but there doesn't seem to be a way to win with the science victory without concurrently being able to win with the magic victory
No, nothing has been removed. :) In fact, it's now possible to build a Magical Port City too. Just upgrade a level 2 magical village that's next to a level 2 tower of light. It is an unique upgrade, so you can only have one Magical City.
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There is a tech method, but it's significantly harder - you can practically blunder into the magic method but to do tech you need to get some cities up near the centre of the map, and have a suitable array of village spaces. The "treetop village" and "wooden city" are also slightly hidden, and it's not clear to me what lets a port city become a "mainport". "Adjacent" is misspelled in at least once place.
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I'm sorry, but making your game "pixel" will not make it old-school, classic or nice. BUT it surely can make it hard to read.
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This game is really simple, I say that as a complement. I love that it's just clicking on land tiles and they upgrade, there's no menus to select anything from. Your interactions are very basic, yet still very fun and somewhat challenging. As you continue to work on the game and add more to it, I hope you don't lose that simplicity which is easily one of my favorite things about the game.