Initial observations and suggestions for devs

[ChuckBerger]

Having played around with Sovereignty for a little bit now, I thought I’d offer the designers a few first impressions. This is based on a couple of false starts, then a full game playing Dragonhold through about 70-80 turns, plus a bit of looking around and experimenting. In the game I played, I took on Iron Barony, eventually taking a good chunk of its territory before seizing the capital and really annoying everybody else around me. I stopped short of getting to my objective (eliminating Maledor), but I think I wasn’t too far off.

The good
- Smoothest integration between strategic level and tactical battles I have ever seen! The nice zoom into the tactical map is wonderfully immersive, it really feels like a continuous flow. And from a gameplay perspective, there’s a really nice balance, with about half of game play on battle and half on the grand strategy.
- The tactical battles are fun, and with a little more depth and AI cunning probably wouldn’t get old.
- Real differences between 35 factions, fantastic!
- The fundamentals are all there for a truly exceptional game. It seems like the game has borrowed some of the best features from multiple games in the genre (agent system from EU4, resources from Civ, map look and feel from Dominions...) With further work, the player will have a host of interesting and meaningful decisions to make, in conditions of scarcity of resources

Some areas for improvement/refinement

- Resources - currently, they don’t feel like they are all that scarce. I had them just piling up, and my requirements for building units never even got close to using them up. And when I needed a resource that I didn’t have, it was always easily available. There should be far more call on resources – for instance, for casting powerful spells, or perhaps even bribing foreign officials! I wonder whether the system of each resource feature generating one resource per turn is the best model. Another way would be for each feature to generate two resources units at any given time, each representing an ongoing flow of that resource. The units could be used to maintain special units, or maintain special spells, etc. So they would really be limited, like agents, and not able to be stockpiled.
- Markets – a related point, it was too easy to trade resources on the “open market” or to other AI players. I’m not even sure what the open market represents, if not other players... but in any case, perhaps there should be only one market mechanism, not two. If there is an “open market”, it should be more dynamic.
- Diplomacy – I realise some more work is intended to deepen the system here. I would love to see the ability to cobble together coalitions, not just bilateral alliances. Like EU4. And some other peace options, like demanding a longer mandated peace period, demanding tribute, ending the use of certain spells, etc. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could use your agents to intervene in peace negotiations of other players? After all, in many medieval and renaissance wars, peace was a complex affair, with not only the combatants having something at stake. Often other great powers, or the Pope, or HRE, or whatever would broker peace and enforce terms...
- Magic – feels way too weak for the resources invested. Granted I haven’t gotten to higher level spells yet, but reading their description it seems to me investment in units is a better bet. For the amount of resources invested in a fuzzy little spark of a spell that does a tiny amount of damage to one unit (that I can’t even cast on the tactical screen), I could have recruited a blue dragon that can single-handedly wipe out medium-sized armies of normal units. Magic needs a serious upgrade.
- Tactical AI. Does some things well, like rotate attacks against weakened units, and assemble coherent lines of attack and defence. But it doesn’t seem to make any effort to capture objectives, and sometimes it didn’t even move to attack at all on the offense. And the AI doesn’t use missile troops well, which is critical! Finally, it doesn’t know when discretion is the better part of valour, and it should pull back or not attack in the first place.
- Strategic AI. Surprisingly good!
- Movement and province capture mechanics. I found that the requirement to utterly destroy the economy of a province to capture it let to some odd results. After a while, there were large areas of totally destroyed territories, which nobody had enough gold to rebuild, so to some degree stagnation appeared to be setting in. A sort of vicious spiral. Perhaps that’s intended, but if so it make the game less epic as it goes... Another consequence is that, when province economies across a large area are 0 or 1, you get armies circling around each other tromping aimlessly through a salad of different territories, and the result is like a political quilt, rather than a more orderly pattern of conquest. Perhaps a different mechanic is needed – maybe a province gets captured when fortifications are reduce to zero, and the economy of the province just takes a 1-point hit. Or maybe province economies need to rebound automatically over time to their default level. The ability to construct fortifications would help, especially if the first few levels are cheap.
- Upgrading economies. Feels too generic, with no meaningful choices. Would be better if higher province economy levels grant special benefits, like maybe a small % bonus to magic research, or a small % bonus to morale, % bonus to trade, etc - but of course it would be more expensive to upgrade to those higher levels.
- Interface – generally good, but I would really like some way of seeing nations on the big map more clearly. Currently it becomes quite difficult to discern who owns what as the game progresses, especially where borders run along rivers, and especially as nations start to fragmented into more than one piece. (Which really should be avoided somehow!) And please add some “history” charts, stats, etc. Would be great to see stats on individual units – damage inflicted, damage taken, etc. a la Panzer Corps.
All for now... I’ll keep playing around and will post some more considered and detailed feedback, if it’s helpful.

[Breca]

Lots of great comments here. Without ignoring the validity of the rest, I will highlight the comment on magic.

Currently the investment-->power increase on magic is pretty steep. Owning Landmarks will help offset that, but it would be good for magic to feel more "epic," and that will take a balancing pass on how spells are cast/recharge, and their overall effects. Simultaneously, we need to walk a narrow line on magic so that it does not become the trump card that throws out the battle system (or other systems). "Who cares about fighting battles when you can fireball the enemy to ashes?"

That said, Magic will get some love a bit further into EA.

Good Hunting and great comments!

Breca

[ChuckBerger]

Cool, thanks for the quick reply. A few other reflections, then I'll let it be for a while!

Alignment - does it serve any function? Personally, I think the whole good/neutral/evil thing is a bit boring and unsubtle. I'd prefer a world where there are complex interactions among nations, each pursuing their individual (and mostly self-interested) goals. As in real life & history, and as in Westeros or similar fantasy worlds.

Race - again, any real function, aside from the occasional spell or effect that only effects certain races? If it's in, make it be meaningful. Perhaps shield wall only works for adjacent units of the same race, or perhaps different races get bonuses in combat versus other races. And if provinces had races, that would open up a whole rich set of possibilities around revolt risk, easier economic development in areas with your home race, etc.

Diplomacy - I think the game should decide whether it is mostly a war/battle game, or whether it really wants to be more like a "great powers" game, like EU4, where there are lots of checks and balances among the great powers as they struggle to achieve their ambitious, but ultimately limited, goals. If it's aiming for richness of diplomatic options, you need things like casus belli, core provinces, guarantees for minors, etc. And especially, a "peace negotiation" at the end of a war, rather than just whatever gets taken during the war. This mechanic would allow you to take an enemy capital, but not be forced to annex it - it becomes a bargaining chip.

Agents - I love the mechanic, in general. Would like to see more things for them to do, and perhaps the ability to give them gold and/or resource to increase their impact. For example, giving an agent 50 gold/turn might double his impact on improving relations with a neighboring power.

Prisoners - what are they good for? Couldn't work it out. But its a nice and novel touch. Perhaps they increase your leverage in peace negotiations, or maybe you can sell them into slavery, or extract knowledge from them - or even flip them to your own side!

Heroes - there's mention of the possibility of sending heroes on quests, is this a mechanic that has been implemented? I haven't run into it yet. The Heroes currently feel a bit generic, would be nice for them to be given a bit more individuality. (Also, would be nice to have a way of switching heroes in adjacent provinces on the strategic map)

Overall game pacing - do you have an idea of how long an average game should run, and how many hours it should take? Currently, it feels like the pacing is uneven: some periods of excitement and action, but considerable periods of just waiting around for resources to accumulate or diplomatic efforts to proceed. Maybe I'm just lazy, but I find it's not uncommon to just hit "next turn" for 8-10 turns in a row while waiting to recruit that unique unit and build up enough gold to build up an invasion army. There doesn't feel like there's enough to do in the meantime.

[v.Manstein]

Good suggestions, Chuck.

We will consider every person's opinion.

Regarding prisoners:

At the moment, you still have to pay upkeep for them. And if it is a rare/unique unit, you won't be able to produce it as long as it is in captivity.
We will think what we could further do with the prisoner system and if we want to do anything further with it.

Cheers.

[morelyn]

The UI is pretty clunky at this point, I don't know if you plan to improve it. Diplomacy is the most awkward. How about making it so I can right click on a country and bring up its diplomacy window? The way it is now, you have to remember the name of the country you want to deal with before you open the window. And as someone else said, trades should persist from turn to turn.

{Edit] also, I may have missed this, but where do I see how much gold I'm going to earn next turn? Nevermind, found it.

Perhaps I should mention, the game has great potential. Just needs some polishing to be ready for prime time, IMO.