Conquest Forums – Simultaneous Turn-Based Strategy Game

[dpc]

Few suggestions:

Chat beeps.
Any sound when someone joins/talks would do as I'm keeping the Conquer in background when waiting for players to join.

More distinguishable territory graphics.
Arctics is OK, but on other themes it is not that easy to recognize terrain with just a glance. Maybe even some coloring would be good idea...

Predicted battle outcome.
As battles are predictable - why not to show the expected result of the battle when pointing to the enemy area. It would show the result if our actions are complete and enemy will not move at all, but still it would be a great helper - especially for starter.

Time to arrive counters.
After pointing into operation it could show in how many turns we will receive next one.

Units not moving switching.
To easily manage units I'd like to so "next unit without order" button. Basically - it would switch between units that don't have a destination point yet and that are not in the "fortify state". That "fortify state" would be mode that unit goes to that changes nothing but marks it as the unit that "has an order" as it is desired to stay in place until we decide to move it somewhere. This would let quickly grasp all the unit commands and speed up the game (so more dense fun would be possible!). I hope I explained it clearly and you get the point. :)

Edit:
Oh - and the fortify should have two modes - persistent and one-turn only.

Fixed-player-count public servers.
I want to play 4 players game and I just can't because each time I await 4 players some newcomer joins and starts the game. Please make "4 player FFA server" with minplayers set to 4.

[void]

Chat beeps.
Any sound when someone joins/talks would do as I'm keeping the Conquer in background when waiting for players to join.

Yeah, we already changed that for the upcoming version.

More distinguishable territory graphics.
Arctics is OK, but on other themes it is not that easy to recognize terrain with just a glance. Maybe even some coloring would be good idea...

We replaced terrain graphics that aren't distinguishable enough, will also be in the next version. Maybe I'll also experiment around with colors, but we're afraid the world doesn't look streamlined/natural anymore in that case.

Predicted battle outcome.
As battles are predictable - why not to show the expected result of the battle when pointing to the enemy area. It would show the result if our actions are complete and enemy will not move at all, but still it would be a great helper - especially for starter.

You'll notice that at a higher level armies almost always move / the gameplay gets very dynamic, so this would only be good against absolute beginners (and isn't worth the effort to implement).

Time to arrive counters.
After pointing into operation it could show in how many turns we will receive next one.

We're discussing that atm. So far our ingame help is very general and not that detailed, so that interested players (who want to get good) are encouraged to check the wiki.

Units not moving switching.
To easily manage units I'd like to so "next unit without order" button. Basically - it would switch between units that don't have a destination point yet and that are not in the "fortify state". That "fortify state" would be mode that unit goes to that changes nothing but marks it as the unit that "has an order" as it is desired to stay in place until we decide to move it somewhere. This would let quickly grasp all the unit commands and speed up the game (so more dense fun would be possible!). I hope I explained it clearly and you get the point. :)

Edit:
Oh - and the fortify should have two modes - persistent and one-turn only.

Already thought about that, but dropped it again. The reason is, that you can get units a lot faster to the front by moving out of a city when another unit will arrive from behind in the next turn (we should really update the expert's guide in the wiki with a few good strategies).

Fixed-player-count public servers.
I want to play 4 players game and I just can't because each time I await 4 players some newcomer joins and starts the game. Please make "4 player FFA server" with minplayers set to 4.

Atm it's a bit tricky because of the small playerbase, and also it's the only easy way people can have a look at the game environment. However, when we'll add spectator mode (probably in 0.10.0, should be around 2 weeks), this will get changed.

Thanks for the feedback!

[dpc]

Great.

I must agree with the some of your points and I'm happy to hear some of the features are going to be implemented.

However I didn't got the point with the switching between units.

I understand the tactic that you've described and I try to use it already (although adding it to the wiki is a good idea). However it only stimulates me to ask again for such feature.

I'm not sure if you've played in FreeCiv. The feature is more or less about making game UI to have a possibility to behave in similar way.

You see - when playing and in the later turns when whole map is covered by me or my enemy it takes me a lot of time to "wonder around and look for units that I should give a job to do". In the FreeCiv I've usually cycle through all my units and give them orders - one by one, making sure there is "no unit left behind".

At the beginning when I've just cycled through events and was giving units order to move to the frontlines - it eased the pain a bit. But now - I'd like to make unit next to the next city, and in the turn it arrived - give it the order to move to the city, while giving the unit from the city the order to move to next city. And so on.

With proposed feature I can manage my units making sure each turn each of them is doing desired action with just simple combo:
- next unit shortcut
- quick drug&drop order + possible orders for nearby units
- repeat from the beginning until all units have something to do

[SephiRok]

Is it really faster though than just scrolling around and checking which units don't have orders yet? It's extremely visible and you'll also want to keep an overview of everything (even where there are no idle units) in every turn because the game is so dynamic (e.g. drop pods). On higher level I also don't think you can make an order whenever you stumble upon an idle unit, you have to see the overall field, make a strategy and give orders accordingly. Void and me, for example, don't even press on unit recieved events, but just scroll all the time.

My experience so far is that new players tend to suggest this feature, but after they've played a few matches they see it's not really needed. I even wanted to have it myself in the beginning.

We also thought of things like scrolling through events and rally points, but in Conquest it's not really needed / useful, because the game is so dynamic and meant to be played on small-scale.

[dpc]

OK then. Maybe I'll play a bit more and share my view afterwards. Thanks. :)

[Bianary]

I had three ideas that I hope have merit, and this seems to be the features request thread :)

First is a new event -- Drop Pod Landed. As all other unit acquisition/destruction events go in the event log, this would help remind people that they had a new batch of units on the map. Otherwise it's quite possible to forget you just made a drop off in some obscure corner.

Second is a new map mode -- endless world. At the corners of the map, wrap to the far side. Show those tiles as darkened versions of the ones actually there, for assignment of units to move onto it. This would eliminate corners and drastically change strategies. Not important yet while everyone is still learning and improving, but it could add valuable variety to games after people start feeling they've gotten the standard mode worked out (Hopefully without breaking any of the basic mechanics). Spawn locations would probably have to be adjusted to take the world wrapping into account, if this is implemented. I would consider this an advanced play mode.

The last is a display request -- fixed display color, or icons indicating relationship to you. I would greatly appreciate the option to toggle my display color between my true color and one that isn't a legal player color but always shown to the local player. Having my name be one color is fine, and would help show what I was when people referred to a certain color. However, having the display of my units and radar change each match can be very confusing, and I lose time at the start of each round trying to get it settled in my head which color I am that time (And occasionally tried to plan assaults against my own cities). This doesn't even need to be an option necessarily, I certainly wouldn't object if it just always defaulted to showing your units in whatever color is selected as "local". Related, a way to toggle ally/enemy colors to fixed colors would likely be very useful to help keep the current state of the field understandable when alliances are added. A final alternative to colors could be icons in the held territories/destroyed units in the event log (One unique one for you, one that's shown by any ally, one that's shown by any enemy) and then colors can just be left alone.

[void]

First is a new event -- Drop Pod Landed. As all other unit acquisition/destruction events go in the event log, this would help remind people that they had a new batch of units on the map. Otherwise it's quite possible to forget you just made a drop off in some obscure corner.

Yeah true, I mailed Soheil if he got time for "Drop Pod landed" and "Satellite used" event icons.

Second is a new map mode -- endless world. At the corners of the map, wrap to the far side. Show those tiles as darkened versions of the ones actually there, for assignment of units to move onto it. This would eliminate corners and drastically change strategies. Not important yet while everyone is still learning and improving, but it could add valuable variety to games after people start feeling they've gotten the standard mode worked out (Hopefully without breaking any of the basic mechanics). Spawn locations would probably have to be adjusted to take the world wrapping into account, if this is implemented. I would consider this an advanced play mode.

Interesting concept, but at least for now the bigger planned features are alliances, replays and a ranking system.

The last is a display request -- fixed display color, or icons indicating relationship to you. I would greatly appreciate the option to toggle my display color between my true color and one that isn't a legal player color but always shown to the local player. Having my name be one color is fine, and would help show what I was when people referred to a certain color. However, having the display of my units and radar change each match can be very confusing, and I lose time at the start of each round trying to get it settled in my head which color I am that time (And occasionally tried to plan assaults against my own cities). This doesn't even need to be an option necessarily, I certainly wouldn't object if it just always defaulted to showing your units in whatever color is selected as "local". Related, a way to toggle ally/enemy colors to fixed colors would likely be very useful to help keep the current state of the field understandable when alliances are added. A final alternative to colors could be icons in the held territories/destroyed units in the event log (One unique one for you, one that's shown by any ally, one that's shown by any enemy) and then colors can just be left alone.

We plan on adding a bunch of additional colors so that the chance someone took your color gets reduced. Apart from that, making an option to toggle team color display like in WC3 (so you're always blue, allies turquoise, and enemies red) is no big deal; I'll implement that in the near future.