Gameplay Observations vEA1.8

[solops]

In my third game of Sovereignty I have played 325 turns as Cor Vilaad. There have been NO crashes or stutters of any kind. I have thirty provinces under my control.

I will not be able to expand much further. The cost of developing new provinces, the diminishing returns from them and the necessity of garrisons places an economic limit on expansion. This is not a bad thing. However, I feel that there should be some rebalancing or buildable structure or reduceable maintenance costs or something that would allow more money and therefore expansion at some point in the game, without making the “Reverse economics of scale” mechanism currently in place go away completely. I am currently using spells to enhance three of my provinces’ economies as fast as I can, but three is the limit dues to spell regeneration time. This causes me to be unable to use magic for any other purposes. The spell that makes some elite units maintenance free is useless for this nation. It only works on one of the elite units. And that one already has my lowest maintenance cost.

The game processes very quickly.

I tend to use the auto resolve for combat.

As stated elsewhere, I have no idea of what resources I have in stock as there is no inventory page. As a result, I do not know when I will run out of resources to build a vital unit. Nor can I trade intelligently since I don’t know what stocks I am depleting or what I may need. We need a resource stock screen that can be seen while trading and building. I understand that there is a multi-turn trade function. Where it is and how to use it is invisible to me.

There seems to be no function for transferring heroes from one army to another. Hero management does not seem to be implemented.

Killing off an opponent causes a severe reaction, as the game warns. If you plan to do so, get your neighbor relations in good order ahead of time and your military ready. Sometimes you can just gut their economy to neuter them , but killing a rival is going to be essential from time to time due to geography, so be prepared.

There are no “wandering armies” or killer stacks. Attrition is too high.

There is no such thing as rushing in this game.

Magic is, as the devs have noted, underpowered and only partially implemented at this time. I look forward to seeing it be more of a factor. I think I will like magic to be low key as the game is really fun as it is right now.

It is not economically possible to maintain more than one or 1.5 “real” armies and still have any kind of border security. As the empire gets larger this is an issue, since armies are slow. If you attack in the East and get attacked in the West side then you are in big trouble. Even if you can disengage in the East you will lose a lot in the West before you can get your army back there. The only defense is to build up the provinces so that they cannot be assimilated by the enemy too rapidly and to try leaving strong garrisons in key places. Garrisoning can become a trap because the maintenance cost of the garrison troops reduces the funds for supporting a field army. I have probably overdone the garrisons, but as you get larger, it becomes almost impossible to resist doing so, especially due to the high cost and time involved in improving border provinces to make then less “assimilateable”. The fact that the nearest army may be five to ten turns away adds to the pressure. This is a neat mechanic and the core of the game. It will, I am sure, change as the game evolves. It is not balanced correctly right now, but it is not too far off, either.

These comments are made with the understanding that the game is in early beta and that many features are either unimplemented or are still in their early iterations.