PC game - Battles of Norghan

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by aran

I downloaded the demo and played it for a little bit. This game is definitely not good enough to spend $20 on from my 45 minute gameplay experience. It appears to have potential, though.

I kind of agree - the UI gets in the way of a potentially very good game imho ... that being said I've purchased a copy as I want to encourage its future improvement, without investment games don't evolve - simple as that.

[Bee]

The interface is clunky, but I've found the game to be quite a bit of fun. Hopefully the interface will improve and other shortcomings will be addressed in the gold version. Overall I found the game better than a lot of commercial products I've tried that are released for $49.99. To me this was easily worth $25.

[Peregrine]

I still haven't won the Small Clans cup, each time I seemed to run into some team that was the exact recipe needed to defeat mine. I just got promoted to the 5th division. My original giant retired but I saved my cash all year and was able to sign a new giant, for 9000 or so gold.

One thing I noticed is that the AI teams have the same problems we do. Sometimes they will run out cash and be unable to field a team, I think this results in them getting dropped from the game the next season.

[Peregrine]

Originally Posted by aran

I downloaded the demo and played it for a little bit. This game is definitely not good enough to spend $20 on from my 45 minute gameplay experience. It appears to have potential, though.

A few observations:
1.) The negotiating/signing period is ENTIRELY TOO FREAKIN' LONG!

2.) There's no way to "target" someone who you want to keep track of throughout the negotiation period. I found that i had to sort by offering clans in order to see who i was going after. This made it annoying to bid on other guys, because i'd have to resort things, and if i bid the game would advance a turn and i might completely lose track of one of the guys i was bidding on earlier.

3.) The in-battle interface is SO unintuitive and poorly designed. There are barely any mouse-over tooltips or ANYTHING besides the sparse tutorial to help you out.

4.) THe game doesn't display what equipment characters are wearing in an effective manner.

I agree the battle part needs some help. The dev has said he is going to put in a centering option or some way to move between characters easier.

The equipment thing I don't have a problem with, just make sure to use the W and E hotkeys when you're fighting, that will display the character sheet of anyone you click on, with their gear, and also provide the log.

[Glengoyne]

Still playing. Got through two more seasons last night and today. Won the Small cup twice during my two seasons in the 7th division. That provided the funds required to build a pretty solid team. A knight, a barbarian fighter, a goblin archer, and now an elf ranger/mage. I've invested a lot in training those guys. Equipment is the key it seems. If you have better stuff, you generally win with little trouble.

I'm interested to see how the Upper divisions treat my team. I'm hoping as the clan moves up, I'll see fewer opponents fielding teams without equipment. I understand how a clan can get there. I've come pretty close myself. That is the biggest issue I've seen, and GB or someone else alluded to it earlier. If you win, you make money and improve. If you lose..you have to ressurect your clan, and get no proceeds from the match. That makes for haves and have nots in a big way. I'm hoping it irons itself out over time. I have no clue how anyone will be able to challenge the top dogs in my "league". Deflection is regularly fielding a team of 14, and sometimes 19. Only a couple of other teams field as many as nine. They continue to win the Glory cup, and reinvest the funds. It looks like they are close to invincible.

[Peregrine]

I've noticed the same thing, that the top teams seem untouchable. I got a random matchup in Cup draw against the top team in the 2nd division, and it was crazy, only 5 guys but each with top of the line equipment I had barely heard of, much less afford. One shot kills all around, one of their minotaurs hit one of my guys for 101 damage!

[Izulde]

I'm definitely going to have to try this.

[Bee]

I'm currently in Division 4 and won the cup last season after facing off against the #1 and #2 teams in Division 1 during the tourney. I have a pretty good team with 2 archers both with the best longbows for long distance, a priest to heal, a wizard to take care of anything that gets to medium distance and then two minotaurs (one with maxed out equipment) to take care of anything that gets closer than that. A couple good archers can pretty much take out any team I've faced. The only time I've run into any trouble was when the other team also had archers, but they generally go for the minotaurs and I've taken them out before they've taken out my archers. IMO ranged weapons are way too powerful. During my battles with the top 2 teams in Division 1, the only thing that survived to get close to hand to hand combat was a Mountain Troll (?) with maxed equipment. He got within 4 moves of my Minotaurs before I dropped him. This was on normal, I'm going to restart and try the hardest difficulty level and see if that makes a difference.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Originally Posted by Bee

IMO ranged weapons are way too powerful.

I'm holding off until I see more of the upper level combat, but I tend to agree with this so far.

I bought my rogue a mid-level crossbow the other day and immediately he started kicking butt. Ranged weapons are deadly from any distance, and magic doesn't seem to be able to counter this that well, at least in the games I've seen so far. I've since started to train up all my fighters in archery. Good archers, armed with the best bows, might be nearly invincible. They can get in four or five good hits before the enemy can do anything, and with good bows, even heavily armored fighters can be taken down, especially with headshots. I struggle to see how any setup can beat such a team, and it sure seems as if the AI doesn't build teams this way.

[Peregrine]

Yeah archers are pretty ridiculous, especially with a priest along to Bless them and keep their damage bumped up 50%.

[aran]

There has GOT to be a spell to knock arrows/bolts down. It'd be game breaking if there wasn't.

[Bee]

He might be planning on implementing cover for trees and stuff. If he were to do that, it would balance it quite a bit. Archers would still rule in low sparse settings, but dense areas they'd be nearly useless (which sounds like it would make it more strategic).

[thesloppy]

'Haste' has become my most used spell because of ranged attacks. I've got a mountain troll and a barbarian who both have speeds of 4-7 which ups to 6-10.5 with haste, and with a couple lucky rolls you can close th distance pretty quickly. I've also seen a character dodge an arrow here and there, so I wonder if putting all a caracter's training into dodging might be an antidote to the overpowered ranged attack?

[Godzilla Blitz]

After playing a bit more, I'd have to agree: ranged weapons are much too powerful...

I started a new game on "difficult" setting and have won my first 37 matches without a loss. I started by hiring a minotaur for a year, then added an archer midway through the first season. I made the minotaur a member at the beginning of the second year, and have since added two more archers who are gradually getting their top notch bows.

Although the minotaur made all our 24 kills in the first season (I set him up to do this by holding our archer back to let the minotaur get the kill), he's only made a half dozen since then because no one can get through our archers. When they do, they're usually pretty beat up; our minotaur then destroys them with one hit of his uber axe. In all 37 matches, I'd say there was only one match that could have gone either way, and that was the third match in the first season: the black knight my minotaur faced was pretty much our equal, but we got two hits in to his one hit and won. Other than that, no team has come close to giving us a good match. 10 of the 14 matches last year were "perfect" wins, and it could have been 12 of 14 had I not held back to let my inexperienced bowmen get some practice.

Bottom line: bows rule.

We should lose our next match, though, as it is a Glory Cup match against the #3 team in division 1, and we are still way down in Division 6. So all good things should end.

I'm going to keep chugging away with this "career" just to see how things turn out, but next career I'll either wait for the upcoming patch (which will make adjustments to ranged weapons) or try a game with a "no bows" house rule.

Still quite a fun game, though.

[aran]

Let me know about that next patch, because i think this game would be very much worth $25 with some UI adjustments and a ranged weapon fix.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Well, the win streak ended at 38 (I miscounted by one in my original post up above). I did manage to beat the #3 team in Division One, but it was a close fight. They had a lot of good archers. Won my next division match easily, then the #1 team in Division 1 (who also has never lost a match) stomped all over us. They had 16 guys to our 5. They must have had five archers with the best bows in the game. Numerous spell casters to buff them up. Six or so melee fighters with brutal armor and weapons. We had no chance.

This one team domination happened in my last game as well. With the 40000 gold the Glory Cup winners get each year, I'm not sure how any other AI team can compete with them. Seems like the same thing has happened in Glengoyne's game as well, and I would think it must happen in a lot of games. Be interesting to see if I can take them down at some point, but it would seem to me that we'll keep falling behind them each year as we close in on division one.

[aran]

Well, after figuring the demo out further, i've bought the game. It seems like a hell of a lot of fun, and it has a responsible dev team (or guy?).

Thanks for the updates and whatnot, they were really instrumental in me buying this game.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Sounds like the developer has a range of fixes in store to give magic a bit of a boost and weaken bows. Be interesting to see how it turns out. Sounds like it's coming pretty soon, too.

[Peregrine]

Yeah one nice thing about dealing with small developers is that they are generally a lot more responsive to user input.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Yes, the developer is doing all the right things, as far as I'm concerned. He is actively seeking feedback, and then using his best judgement to fix things. I'm happy to support his work.

There's a post on the game board over that that the 1.01 patch looks to be up before September.

There's also going to be an adjustment to the difficulty ratings you can select at the beginning of a game. "Difficult" will boost all the AI teams to the highest level of AI, rather than just level 1 of 4. That sounds like a good move as well. Right now it seems that there are quite a few disfunctional teams, and the only way to get the highest level of AI is to reduce your reward money substantially.

I've got another match coming up against the uber team in Division 1. Bee's post above gave me an idea that I might try to beat them. Rent lots of cheap goblins for the one fight and have them all charge to keep the enemy archers busy. I'm hoping the archers will shoot them instead of my archers (maybe they always shoot the nearest enemy unit?). While they're busy with my goblins, maybe my archers can take some of them down. I don't think my three archers, one minotaur, and one priest have a chance to win yet, but maybe I can take a few of them with me.

[Eaglesfan27]

You've convinced me. I'm going to buy this soon, if for no other reason than to support the continued development. However, I expect I'll find it quite fun despite the interface issues.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Am now up to Division Two in my current game. After four defeats, I finally beat the #1 team in Division 1. Just took a couple more archers to get the job done.

After playing the game more, I have to say that I think it needs a bit more work. Gameplay breaks down after a while. Basically, the league degenerates into:

One great AI team, one human team, and 58 also rans
The number one team in the league went 97-0 before I beat them. They never lost in six and a half seasons. This greatly weakens the sports atmosphere of the game, IMHO. The reason one team gets so good is simple: once a team wins the Glory Cup they get a ton of gold, and once they do that they can add a fighter or two to their roster. In the early going, a one- or two-fighter advantage is huge and so they subsequently win Division One, which get them even more money, which gives them even a greater edge in the second season. The whole thing steamrolls until you get one uber team that so distances itself from the rest of the league that the entire point of 60 teams vying for a league championship is trivialized.

Thinking about roster strength, it's like having one team at 100, and the next closest team at about 50. The problem with this is when the human player gets to the level where they can beat all the other AI teams except one, each season turns into 10+ games of tedious slaughter and then one challenging game against the best team in the league. In my current game, I've won every game except for the four cup matches I've had against the #1 team in Division One. I'm something like 90-4 over six and a half seasons. This is probably exceptional because I quickly went to the overpowered archery model, but even if I had not done that, in any game the human player will eventually get to the point where he can beat the mass of AI teams handily and is playing entire seasons just for those 1-3 matches against the uber team.

In short, the game needs to address the huge gap in AI team quality that lies between the number one team in the land and the "rest", and make it so there is some turnover at the #1 spot in Division One. These are distinctly different things. I don't have any problem with how hard it is to beat the best team in the league; I just wish there were another 10-15 teams that were close to their level as well, and that it was possible for other AI teams to beat the best AI team.

The upcoming patch will address the archery issue and address the team AI issue, which should help somewhat. However, I think they should look at the structure of league prize money and cup money to both close the gap between the uber team and the rest of the teams and to make it possible that the number one team in the land will not keep mauling everyone else in the league year after year.

[aran]

Here's a potential fix: Perhaps you only get gold for your first Glory Cup win, and subsequent seasons you get free resurrections for any fighters lost during the title match if you win?

It's kinda hard to put some type of "salary cap" into this game to prevent runaway winners.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Originally Posted by aran

Here's a potential fix: Perhaps you only get gold for your first Glory Cup win, and subsequent seasons you get free resurrections for any fighters lost during the title match if you win?

It's kinda hard to put some type of "salary cap" into this game to prevent runaway winners.

That would be one way to do it, yes. Anything to bring the second tier of teams closer to the first one would be good. However, I think it would be better to raise the ability of the second tier of teams. If we lower the Glory Cup money, the best team will simply get worse, which makes it more likely that the human player will beat them earlier in the game.

I would probably look to raising the prize money substantially for the Glory Cup runner up (to say 30,000 gp) and give 15,000 to losers in the semi-finals.

I would also give excellent season-ending money to the top four teams in Division One, the top three teams in Division Two, and the top two teams in Division Three.

Something like this:
Division One
1st Place: 40,000 gold
2nd Place: 30,000 gold
3rd Place: 20,000 gold
4th Place: 10,000 gold

Division Two
1st Place: 30,000 gold
2nd Place: 20,000 gold
3rd Place: 10,000 gold

Division Three
1st Place: 20,000 gold
2nd Place: 10,000 gold

This would get a ton more money into the hands of the next best 6-8 teams, and make it much more likely that the top team could get overthrown. Also, the top ten teams or so iin the league would have a huge talent advantage over the human team by the time it gets to division three that the game would be much more challenging against all AI teams.

[Yellow5]

The 1.01 patch was released on the 28th. Here's the readme:

* IMPORTANT: If you're updating your 1.0 version to this version, make sure to disable the tutorial and have the game auto-saved with the tutorial disabled (by going through one round or by quitting the game when in clan menu) or the 1.0 version's save won't work with the 1.01 version because of the changed tutorials.

Bug fixes:

* Visual: Some text aligning problems (text going out of a notification box) are appearing on some computers because Windows can't find the Century Gothic font which should be installed by default and decides to use Arial instead. The 1.01 and future versions will now install the proper Century Gothic font if it doesn't exist.

* If you casted Enchanted strength or Giant's strength on a unit, sometimes the strength of the unit wouldn't go back to normal after the spell's effect ended and thus your unit ended up gaining strength permanently.

* Fixed a few bugs which occured in more than one player games if one player's clan lost completely and was replaced by a new AI controlled clan.

* If you tried to train a mercenary's axe skills (using individual unit training) it trained its two-handed sword skills instead.

* If a human controlled unit died in battle because of poison or Tear from inside, it was still the killed unit's turn until you made a command.

* The tutorial boxes' two buttons (the X mark and the check mark) did the other button's expected function when clicked.

* If a human controlled unit used a certain away to target and attack a creature, the unit could be commanded to attack a unit twice if you clicked the target after the first attack and before the next turn and before the game started to wait before actions.

* Some changes were made to the AI unit placing code which maybe might have caused a crash sometimes on some computers after you placed your units on the battlefield and when simulating battles. Now the AI unit placing code surely can't cause a crash directly.

* Minor: AI levels 3 and 4 which had more than 6 units and no units with a year's contract did not always battle-check units against a clan which's toughness was 0 (the clan had no units and was to be replaced by a new clan soon) and therefore both of those clans forfeited and the winner was chosen randomly.

* Minor: Fixed a Reflection bug which occured when both the attacker and target which was affected by Reflection died on single hit. If this occured, neither of the units died but only lost HP past or to zero.

Changes:

* The in-game tutorials of the game were improved.

* The manual was expanded with a few sections and will be expanded more.

* AI levels 3 and 4 clans will now put an even safer battle-checked clan toughness advantage against another clan if they can. So that you will for example see the top AI controlled clan put more units against you just to be sure you'll lose.

* Minor: The enemy condition text string "badly injured" was replaced by "critically injured" which is a worse condition than "seriously injured".

* Increased game mode B's clans' starting gold by 16.667%.

* The base hitting chance bonus of all melee attacks was decreased from 95% to 88%.

* The maximum unit placing Y position distance to range is now 34.

* Resurrection costs were reduced significantly which helps losing clans.

* The leagues and cups were balanced in a way that the top clans will now be better and much closer to be as tough as the best AI controlled clan. The relevant changes are listed below and end at 'Difficulty setting changes:'.

* The small clans' cup's runner-up's award money was increased by 33.33% to be half of the winner's award money.

* The Cup of Glory's runner-up's award money was increased by 66.66% to be half of the winner's award money.

* Now even the losers of Cup of Glory semi finals are awarded with a gold sum which equals 18.75% of the Cup of Glory grand prize
and the winners get only 70% of that because they'll get more on the next cup round.

* The clan which is ranked second in the first division at the end of the season now gets 75% of the gold the #1 clan gets.
Third in 1st. division gets 50% of the gold the #1 clan gets.
Fourth in 1st. division gets 30% of the gold the #1 clan gets.
The same formula applies to division 2 and division 3.

* The second division winner now gets 25% more gold.

* The third division winner now gets 29.63% more gold.

* The fourth division winner now gets 16.66% more gold.

* Difficulty setting changes: The 'Difficult' difficulty now sets all AI values to the maximum (4) instead of just increasing them by 1 as that didn't have a significant enough effect. The 'Quite easy' difficulty now makes human controlled clans get 118% of the normal winning money instead of 125%. The 'Easy' difficulty now makes human controlled clans get 130% of the normal winning money instead of 140%.

* Minor: Increased Fire bolt's, Poison bolt's, Ice bolt's, Lightning's, Chain lightning's and Holy bolt's range from 20 to 22. Also increased Tear from inside's range from 22 to 23 and Fire ball's range from 24 to 25.

* AI controlled clans are now replaced at the end of the season if they have no units with equipment, less than three alive units and less than 1500 gp. In the previous version it was enough for the AI clan to have an alive unit for it not to be replaced.

* Minor: Decreased Magical punch's range to 36 from 38 because the top bow's range was decreased to 30.

* Minor: Decreased the mana cost of Lightning, Chain lightning and Fire ball by one and Tear from inside by two.

* Cure's and Negate's ranges were increased from 28 to 32.

* Balanced ranged weapons: Now the best longbow's hitting chance bonus is 25 instead of 30 and range is 30 instead of 38 and the top bows' damage was slightly decreased. Many other bows' range was also decreased. The missile weapon cost formula was edited to still make the bows cost much even after these changes. The damage reducing (after the target's defence has reduced the damage) was increased to 30% from 25%. Chance of hitting a head with a ranged bow is now 43% instead of 50% of the torso hitting chance. Bless now increases ranged damage to 135% (Used to increase to 150%). Combat eye now increases shooting hitting chance to 135% (Used to increase to 150%). Training the archery skill in the Training camp also now costs more and the ranged weapon hitting skill trains slower in battles.

* The demo version now lasts for 160 minutes instead of 120 minutes.

* Minor: If you have 'Partially hide trees on mouse-over' enabled, the trees' opacity will now change to 34% instead of to 50%.

* Minor: Battle events bar and unit information bar are now enabled in battles by default.

* The red notification texts (for example the X clan's turn text) have been made white and clearer text.

* Players are now given a warning if they press the 'Start battle' button without any units battle-checked (when they are about to forfeit a battle).

New features:

* Tooltips on mouse-over when your mouse is over a top left bar icon in the battle or over a command text or over some mercenary camp buttons or over a shop category changing sample item.

* A new battle icon which, if clicked, will select an enemy unit and centre the map position on it. Clicking it again will select the next enemy unit and centre on it.

* You are now able to mark units in the Mercenary camp so that the quick info text in the mercenaries list will be displayed in a different colour. Those marks will stay on the mercenary until the bidding is ended. Every mercenary you bid on will be automatically marked and you can also unmark mercenaries.

[Peregrine]

definitely some nice changes, will be interesting to see what effect it has, think I'll start up a new game.

[Bee]

Yep, looks like quite a few of the problems I had were addressed. Will have to take a look at it and see if the adjustments were sufficient to balance things.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Originally Posted by Bee

Yep, looks like quite a few of the problems I had were addressed. Will have to take a look at it and see if the adjustments were sufficient to balance things.

I'm interested to see how the archery model works now. When I first saw the proposed changes, it seemed like the right direction but I'm wasn't sure if it went far enough. Bows were incredibly powerful.

Unfortunately, I won't have time to play for a while, though. Love to hear someone else's reactions to the patch.

[Yellow5]

Patch 1.022 released and 20% discount for month of December if you sign up for their newsletter before the 10th of December.

They also have a "Gold" version available that enables you to create mods for the game and includes a bunch of new features. If you have the original version you can pay 5 bucks and upgrade to the "Gold" version.

Anyone still play and care to comment on the new patch? I never purchased the game because I was waiting for them to fix things like the archery issues... and the offer a 20% discount makes it tempting.