On the contrary, we do want
and value your feedback very much indeed. We are continuously reading our forums and gathering feedback from everyone. We may not always respond to individual threads, but that doesn't mean the feedback is not read and collected.
Either way, we should really get this thread back on track and return to the subject at hand.
@ag123 started the thread by asking why the Orcs are needed after the 10th province. Please allow me to explain the reasoning behind those changes. We have to start with emphasizing the need to have perfect balancing in the game: a game that is not properly balanced is no fun to play, after all, and it is our goal to make our games fun to play. We also want to keep our game interesting in the long-term: variations in e.g. the scouting costs help with that (it would not be fun to pay the same resources over and over again until the end of times, after all). With these two problems in mind we decided that we needed to make some changes here: we want to add variety, and we want to make sure that progress on the world map is actually still fun and challenging for you when you progress further into the game.
We realize that implementing this change
now is not perfect. In a perfect world, it would have been done this way from the very start, so that we would not introduce it as a new "rule" or "blocker", but rather as something that would "guide" you through your game in the same way that good costs were introduced in the very early game (that is: as a new player, you cannot yet produce marble/planks/steel yet, but they do appear on the world map as negotiation costs). Still, we believe it is very important for the game as a whole to make sure that it's not possible for players to be
too far apart, so to say. It would be impossible to design a challenging experience for someone who has only scouted 10 provinces and someone who scouted 300, but who are at the exact same point in the research tree: think about things like the dificulty of battles which are based on the amount of provinces you have already discovered, but which are also greatly influenced by the technologies you have unlocked, such as squad size upgrades and better units.
We are interested in improving on this, as with everything, but we are looking for a way where we can both satisfy your needs, as well as the balancing needs of the game. For that,
we are looking for some very specific feedback on this: how is it that you are affected by this problem? What is the
source? We believe this could have several causes - we realize that it can be a mixture of multiple, or maybe we missed something entirely. Anyways, the options we thought of are:
- you have already scouted all 222 possible provinces for which you do not require Orcs (everything up to and including distance 9), because of various reasons, such as a way to use your resources or a need for further city expansions, and you ended up at distance 10 or further because you do not have distance 9 or lower provinces left to resolve;
- you have scouted in a specific direction because you are looking for specific provinces because you need those Relics to boost your production, and you ended up at distance 10 or higher that way, but you still have provinces of distance 9 or lower left;
- you have scouted in a specific direction because you were looking to discover certain players (e.g. to have them as trade partners and/or to give them neighborly help), and this took to you distance 10 provinces or further; or
- something else that we don't know.
It would help us a great deal in finding possible solutions and considering our options if you could let us know why you are stuck on the world map. Is it for one of the reasons above? Or is it something else? Please let us know why,
especially in the last case.
Thanks again so much for your feedback so far, and we hope to read a great deal more after this post as well! We are very much looking forward to your opinions.
