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I agree with many of these other comments about critical hits. They're just too powerful. I had one battle where I had 2 equal ships to the enemy's one, and I had a fortress on top of that. The enemy won via crits.
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Sloop...? Sure go attack that fortress and die so i can get Frigates in your place... *crits fortress* HOLY SHEIT, THAT IS ONE STRONK SLOOP.
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Sorry, but critical hits taking down fortresses is just ridiculous. I just one-hit a fortress with a frigate... not even cool when it is on my behalf.
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Glitch in Mexico...at the onset I was able to "board" a fort from across the screen. When I won the battle, the game froze.
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Heh, love it what a Sloop critically hits a galleon and sinks it on the first shot... you might want to make criticals a lot less common or make then do 50% more damage instead of insta-kill.
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The treasure maps are waaaay to easy to solve. There is never a reason to choose any other starting bonus than the maps, cause you will get about 150-300 extra gold from it, which is worth much more than either other bonus.
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the AI is very very bad, even at hard mode. Sometimes they will leave an enemy ship with 10% HP and not destroy it the next turn, letting then have an extra attack. They don't have any focus fire, and also I never see then boarding other ships, even if it would be an easy kill (Gallon vs Frigate for example)
But, like already said, it is a pretty clever game and will be really great with some adjustments (imo, better AI and options to make battles faster)!
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I would absolutely love to see more to this game, and with enough work, I honestly think you could (At some point in the future) get this game on steam, with some added stuff to it (Larger maps, for example, or more nations, skill trees, etc.)
Please do this, as I am excited to see the growth of this game, and I would pay money for this if an updated version were to make it on steam.
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There's a lot of potential here, but it's not quite there yet.
1) Not being able to skip or surrender battles is incredibly annoying. What's the point of making the player sit through 15 minutes of battle as the enemy takes down your fortresses? when you know from the start it's an un-winnable battle?
2) Fortresses are useless, since they can't move, unlike ships (specially if upgraded with the extra move slot). I can destroy 3 enemy fortresses in one battle with one Sloop, just getting closer, shooting, then getting out of range again. It makes no sense to build fortresses when, for the same money, I could buy 3 brigantines and make use of their mobility, plus being able to attack thrice as much per turn.
3) Critical hits are ridiculous. A sloop can destroy a galleon or a fortress in one random hit? Seriously?
As it stands, this game looks pretty good, has good depth and sound effects, but the battle gameplay could use with some serious improvements.
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this game as to many flas like when you are borded if you win you shoud have the ship and when you take a city and it as a fort you shoud be chepper to fix. and the pirate attacks a bs becaus you shoud be able to see the battle and protect you ships and they happen to early in the game also each power shoud have a special
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battle starts. one frigate criticals one of my galleon. another sloop crticals another one of my galleon. My turn, my galleon only take out half of the hp of one sloop. wwwwwwhhhhaatttttt
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It's not necessary to research better ships. 6 Brigantines are enough, if you use a hit'n'run tactic. Two steps forward, fire, two steps backward and be again out of reach of every fortress. Against other ships: Sit in a corner and let the enemy come to you. It's most one at a time, so you can mass your fire on it.
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I like the concept, however I beat the game on first go after 15 turns on normal difficulty.
Currently the only strategy seems to be conquest blitz.
The tactical combats are not really tactical.
Perhaps you should do a sequel and borrow some ideas from games like Master of Orion 2 or Civilization 4.
What I would like to see:
- more race traits(possibly even negative ones like in MOO)
- custom ships or more ship types(e.g. focused on boarding, criticals, damaging ship systems/crew)
- make it possible to capture ships
- defenders advantage - e.g. fortress can shoot at whole map
- more possible tactics in combat like partial ship repair, capture enemy ships, damage penalties when shooting over land, possible to damage ship systems(cannons, navigation), maybe add aim possibility
- more tech
- more options do gain $$$ from
- more buildings
- ship experience(for example like in civ4)
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Good game but there are some things to improve to make it awesome. Critical hit should be a double damage, not an instant death, that is really annoying. I need a way to retreat when I know I can't win, and a way to destroy or upgrade a ship when I need a bigger one, 'cause size matters here ;)
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nice game, but critical hits are really frustrating:
_first, the AI does them at least 2 times ore often than you
_second, in 1 battle out of 2, one of my full health galleons is critical hitted by a sloop that destroys it -_-"
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Cool start, though I wish it was a bit more in depth. I was able to take a lot of territory at the start, making it a bit easy. I don't like that critical hits are instant kills though. I had an enemy sloop take out my galleon in one hit.
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Easiest way to win is to rush the enemies, build merchants, and keep your front lines stocked behind your losses (if that ever actually happens because the AI is dumb as hell). The losses you suffer at the end were off as well. I didn't lose any forts and only lost 2 ships and came up with 1 fort and 10 ships. You build up your ability tree way too slowly as well, and the Military side of the tree is way more powerful (almost essential) than the Civil side. I barely managed to unlock the Galleon the second time through (and didn't even come close the first time). Forts are under-powered, overpriced, and almost pointless. Critical hits are just an instant kill and completely random, which is silly and sort of annoying. The AI, even on hard, doesn't understand focus fire or ship placement in combat, and doesn't seem to have a real attack or defense strategy out of combat. I think this game needs some serious rethinking, but I can see it being really fun with a little bit of streamlining.
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Hmmm......the game needs some tweaks to the difficulty as well. I just did a Blitzkrieg run in 9 Turns. My starting choices were Holland, +2 Maps, and Hard difficulty. I focused my research on acquiring Galleons (although all of my territories adjacent to the last 2 enemy territories had 6 ships at the start of the final turn, so I didn't get to use them in the turn I got them) and only built war ships, specifically the biggest and baddest I had the gold for until every territory adjacent to the enemy had 6 war ships or I didn't have enough gold for even a Sloop. I did lose one battle, which might be the reason it took 9 Turns instead of 8, maybe. The higher difficulty needs tweaked more to better encourage building forts and merchant ships (yes, it takes 6 turns for them to pay themselves off, but if it's expected to take 20 or 30 turns on Hard difficulty they'd be a vital investment).
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A quick win here would be an exp system. For example units that survive a battle will gain a star up to five stars. Each star will increase the effectiveness of the unit.
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This is the beginning of a really great game- almost like a naval Risk, with more complexity- but it needs a lot of fine-tuning before it gets there. The random events, for example (storms/pirates) don't add much. They just happen and make you lose ships, which is more annoying than depth-adding. Likewise the treasure hunting; it's not much more than an occasional bit of extra gold, since they don't appear often and they're not very challenging to solve. The diplomacy is pretty simplistic; I had Spain make peace with and declare war on me in the span of one turn, for no apparent reason. The combat AI isn't great either, with AIs sending single-sloop 'fleets' against ports defended by five ships and a fortress. Aside from that, the game is pretty bare-bones, but I know it can be really awesome if there's more things to do and better mechanics.
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Tenth: To repeat what chunkymonkey99 said, there needs to be a means of getting rid of lesser tier ships (retire, sell off, 'give to [your nation]'s pirates', destroy) so they can be replaced with higher tier ships other than suiciding them against the enemy.
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Ninth (continued):...but 1 Frigate only needs to get a single attack in on one of those 6 Sloops to successfully board all 6 of them, even with the moral penalties, if both either do or do not have the extra crew tech (of course to attempt that boarding endeavor the Frigate needs the enhanced movement tech but the Sloops can't have it, otherwise it'll never get close enough with the difference in speed and the square attack ranges of the ships). Heck, it takes at least 3 Sloops, if not a full 4 or 5 if any of them have taken an attack, for Sloops to capture a Brigantine, and that ratio never really changes through the ship ranks.
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Ninth: The crew values between the different ships don't seem very well balanced. It is nearly impossible for a lower 'rank' ship to successfully board a higher 'rank' ship, unless there have already been a few failed boarding attempts, and the greater the difference in 'rank' the more pointless it is. Yes, a group of 6 Sloops can be a pain in the ass for a group of 6 Galleons to deal with, what with a difference of 3 in base speed (if the Sloops use good hit-and-run tactics they can actually take out a Galleon or two before they get eliminated, maybe even three if there is a sizable tech imbalance in their favor)...
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Eighth: Why is the Attack (or Cannon) stat displayed as 10/10? Unless you're planning an update where as a ship takes battle damage it looses cannons, and thus has its offense strength decreased, it doesn't need to be displayed in such a manner. This almost looks like you copied code from somewhere else and forgot to clean it up before using it first (which might explain the error mentioned in the Fifth improvement suggested as well). If you are planning on doing such an upgrade then I am greatly looking forward to it, as it'll greatly alter the way combat feels and works (it'll give players an incentive to focus on using their stronger ships to weaken enemy ships instead of focusing on eliminating enemy ships, not to mention it'll make it easier for the weaker ships to be of use in the late game).
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Seventh: You have a significant 'crew' stat for the Fortresses, but the player can't send in a landing party to assault the Fortresses. Again I label that a significant flaw, as I haven't seen a single attack in the game do more crew damage than 'structural integrity' damage. Yes, I can understand some crew, most likely because you have it coded so that all of the direct combat elements have to have some crew, but you could probably drop it to 75, or even 60, and not be in any danger of it running out of crew. Not to mention it could be highly beneficial to capture a fortress so you don't have to build a new one from scratch after the battle.
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Sixth: The critical hits need to be better balanced. Yes, if you hit the powder room in those old ships you have a good chance of blowing it sky high, but unless the wood was extremely weak no shot is going to make it that far through a Galleon that hasn't already taken battle damage, and Frigates aren't that much more vulnerable to it either. Not to mention, a properly designed fort typically had walls nearly as heavy as the outer seaward walls around the powder shed, and it was still standing off by itself, to make it as close to absolutely impossible for that to happen as possible.
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Fifth: Tweak the movement display in the ship info panel, because once you get the movement bonus tech it starts to read things like 6/51, instead of 6/6 or 6/5+1. Yeah, unless you focus on getting that tech as fast as possible it doesn't have a significant impact on the gameplay, but it does look rather messed up. Personally I'm more in favor of the second correction there, but again this isn't something that is necessary for the game to make 5 Stars.
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Fourth: If possible tweak the game code so instead of having a square range to target you cut out the corners. I don't know if that change is doable or not, and the game can still make 5 Stars without it.
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Third: Include an option to have ships retreat. It doesn't make any sense at all to sit there and just fight it out to the bitter end when you attack with 6 Brigantines and the enemy has 2 Galleons, 2 Frigates, 1 Brigantine, and 1 Sloop (not to mention 3 Merchants and 3 Fortresses that are actually well placed). Obviously your ships don't stand a realist chance (well, they might be able to play keep-away with the Galleons until the cows come home, and if the enemy doesn't have the mobility upgrade for their ships but you do possibly even take them down with hit-and-run tactics, but those Frigates have your number and then some, and all they have to do is pin you in a corner with the Galleons closing in and you're ass just got served up on a silver platter).
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Second: When pirates attack you in a region you should get a full battle sequence so you can attempt to defeat the pirates. Loosing 4 Brigantines to a single pirate attack, in a region with 5 Brigantines and a Sloop, on only the 5th or 6th turn is more than a little extreme. Unless those pirates had a pair of Galleons, about 4 Frigates, or some combination thereof they shouldn't be able to pull that off unless you're making the claim that the ships were ambushed on patrol, and what commander worth they're salt would send out single ships to patrol when they're region is at max capacity?
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Okay, there are a few things I've noticed that could really be improved upon in the game. As it is I give it a 4 Star rating, but with these improvements it's easily a 5 Star game.
First: A successful boarding action should allow you to capture the ship, instead of just destroying it, and at the end of the battle you get to choose which ships to keep and which ships to sell/release to pirates (do remember, the start of the Age of Piracy was governments giving Letters of Marque to ship captains, essentially giving them free reign to attack ships of foreign nations on behalf of their nations navy, and to keep most of the spoils for themselves).
(Rest to follow, the comment was to big.)
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@Desideri0: The biggest benefit of the higher speed on the smaller ships is that it allows them to perform hit and run attacks against fortresses. The fortresses have a base range of 4, while all ships have a range of 3, so if used right a single Sloop can actually defeat three fortresses. It'll be a really long battle without some of those astronomically high crits, but anything with a speed of 4 or more can use the tactic (of course a Frigate is essentially a floating fortress to start with, so against a single fortress it can actually just go for a straight up slug match and expect to win if it gets the first hit). One thing to remember is that the dev used square ranges, so it's 4 vert and horz, not 4 vert plus horz.
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This would be a great game with some modifications and upgraded graphics. Such as : Insta-kill system deleted, selling ships, bigger map, 40 moves per game/duel, retreating from a game/duel.