Newbie feedback

[Jérôme]

Hi. I hope this is the right topic. (Megaglest topic seems more technical.)

I tried Megaglest just recently and I like it. Like other games of this kind, it quickly gets addictive.

The graphics are pretty good. (That can be a flaw with FOSS games.) They're event better than what they looked on the screenshots I had seen before trying. BTW, I heard of another game of the same kind, 0 A.D., for which the graphics look event more stunning. Yet, I'm no gamer at all, so I can't compare with recent commercial games. I just played a bit of Warcraft 2 and 3 and Starcraft a while ago.

I did the tutorials. They are just as they should be. Someone who already knows about this kind of games will go through them fast but without feeling he's treated like a child.

Now, I'm on the scenarios. I went through the easy ones easily. Now, I just finished the medium ones.

I must admit I had a hard times on the latter. Especially with "anarchy". I am fighting my natural tendency to wait until I grow the biggest I can before attacking. I was eradicated by the magicians before I could grow enough. Si I tried to attack asap. I could get rid of the techs, at last, but just to be erased by the magicians not long after.

For my last and victorious attempt, I went directly to the magicians up right and managed in a few strikes to kill them all with archers, avoiding the golem. At some point, the enemy didn't produce any initiate. Perhaps lack of supplies, as all of them were dead. The golem helped me with its dumbness : it just stopped moving and let my archers destroy everything. In fact it is so slow I would just have had to move the archers from time to time, but I didn't really have to. Overall, it was not that hard but just required a bit of subtlety, not just sending the troops and watching them fight.

I created a castle there to mine more gold, as shortages are an issue in this scenario. In the meantime, I went after the techs, who had grown a bit and they killed the troops that remained from my previous attack on the magicians but I produced new fighters and ultimately got rid of them (which is weird, as I almost created a new army from scratch). Again, the archers were of good use, using the "hold position" action to avoid the tower. I still had trouble managing the whole army. I don't use groups as I should, I suppose. I don't send the right fighters after the right targets. My horsemen are often stuck in thin passages when archers are in the way, and it is complicated to open the way : the masses of archers move in every way and in the meantime, they get shot.

At last, it was me and the magicians from the opposite side of the map. I begun building a few watch towers that proved useless as they did not come close enough. I ended up winning easily : I sent a huge army on them to realize they actually had not grown that much. They just had battlemages and very few summoners. I wonder what they had been doing. They had not even been fighting the other sides as I did. I expected much more of them.

And I felt like I didn't need as much development as I had. The 3 upgraded technicians (1 catapult and two war machines) were not that useful. The common fighters (incl. horsemen) would have done it.

To sum it up, I found it hard not to get killed quickly, and in the end, it felt as if the enemy was somehow "ceiled" at some level of development.

At least I experienced that there's some sort of equilibrium to respect. I can't just grow and create only horsemens, or only archers. It is not only about attacking either quickly or waiting. I know need to learn how to fight (I mean low level selection and target affectation, approach and retreat to get a few enemies to follow alone,...) and to find strategies. I don't know if I'll persevere enough to achieve this, though.

I haven't tried to find online partners, yet. And I haven't looked at the mods either. But the game seems to have a lot of interest and fun to offer.

Anyway, just wanted to stop by to say you guys did (or should I say "are doing") a great job.

Thanks for that.

[Coldfusionstorm]

Im sure the MG devs would apricate that, but try posting the correct section of the forum, this is the general forum of just "glest".

Megaglest is a subforum.

[Jérôme]

Allright. As I only tried MG, I don't know what is specific to it and what is inherited from Glest and shared with GAE. So I figured out a lot of what I said about the gameplay, as well as my thankfulness for the work, applied to Glest and was relevant here. Sorry about that.
Anyway, it's just a little piece of feedback. Feel free to move to MG forum or even close.

[Omega]

Hi, thanks for your comments. I moved this thread to the MegaGlest board, as that's the place for all things MegaGlest, whether they be nerdily technical or simple feedback.

Just to comment on a few things, the golem stopped moving because it requires energy to move. Basically, it has very limited movement. To get technical, it needs 10 seconds of "charging" to be able to take one step, and can hold enough "charges" to take up to ten steps (if we want to get even more technical, it has a maximum of 1000 EP - energy points - and uses 100 per step, regenerating 10 per second).

As for the enemy being "capped", that's most likely due to the fact the scenario uses a normal difficulty CPU. If you set up a custom game with a CPU Ultra or CPU Mega, expect a lot more of a challenge. Most of the scenarios defaultly bundled with MegaGlest at the moment are pretty much just a custom game with pre-set settings (eg, you cannot choose your faction). I believe only a single scenario, Storming, is scripted (meaning it can do things a custom game cannot). Several mods, however, come with scripted scenarios of various sorts.

And perhaps a few useful pages on the Glest Wiki:

Strategies	https://docs.megaglest.org/Strategies
Comparison of the engines	https://docs.megaglest.org/Engines
List of mods	https://docs.megaglest.org/Mods/List

[Jérôme]

Hi. Thanks for your answers.

I knew about the golem for having used it before, but I didn't remember it was that bad.

I just failed several times in a row on the Amazon scenario. Apparently, it is scripted as well. The enemy sends waves of valkiries and you must resist the assult. At some point, all the workers die without notice... Not really realistic and a bit frustrating (you have to try several times before knowing what to expect) but it is a good training at hiding archers... Perhaps should I try to grow fast to be able to build towers as well. And even bigger defenses for the final rush of flying creatures. I wonder how I can find the time and ressources for that, as my workers waste a lot of time repairing buildings...

I also learnt how pausing the gaime could help, though I doubt I'd use that in multiplayer game.

Thanks for the links. I had seen some of them but not the page about strategies.

[titi]

Thanks a lot for your feedback! It's always very good and encouraging that others like what you do!

 Just a warning ;-) :

 You can spend a LOT of time with MegaGlest  in the future :-D  . I am playing and modding, developing glest for round about 5 years now ! So have fun and i hope we see you in multiplayer soon too! ( We very often play coop games there vs CPU-players )

[Ishmaru]

Sounds like u play that senario like I do with heavy use of archers, though i never beat it yet. I think your workers dying could be u running out of food.

There is a lot with megaglest to keep you entertained. Be sure to try some of the good mods for it!

Welcome to the forums make urself at home.

[tomreyn]

About workers dying, MegaGlest 3.6.0.2 (the latest version, make sure you have this one) has visual out of food indications in terms of blinking yellow, then red text on the top of your screen, followed by workers sighing and loosing health. So there is plenty of indication now.

You can win this scenario with lots of archers. Keep in mind that the ladies have three major problems:

• They can only attack you (or your buildings) in melee. i.e. they do not have a ranged attack.
• They move very slowly.
• Their range of sight is quite limited.

Pausing the game to win should not be neccessary (but I guess it's okay to slow it down if that helps).

[Jérôme]

Thank you guys for the tips.

I knew about the food issue though I didn't understand how it worked. I had seen several times the food alert blinking in the past and as I checked the HP of my troops, I didn't see anything happening. Apparently it affects only workers and I only checked on fighters. So when the workers died, I didn't make the connection. Or perhaps my archers were affected as well but had more HP left and would have died later on.

I didn't find in the documentation the explanation of the figures x/y (z) relative to the food. What is a stock, and what is a flow ? An individual consumes a flow, generally 1unit [food/time]. An animal provides a flow (10, for a cow). Is it a atock as well (can it be sacrificed if necessary) ?

I'll probably wait a bit before MP net game, until I'm more familiarized. But thanks for the invitation. (Now, I need to spread the addiction among my friends...)

[titi]

Some facts for the food ( regarding tech faction )

1. In the farm you can store food
2. a cow/pig produces food ( Every food cycle )
3. Workers/Fighters consume food every food cycle.
4. if you are low on food ALL food consuming units are affected, including fighters. As you asumed the bigger HP is the reason why fighters die later.

Look at this too: http://megaglest.org/techtree/tech_overview.html

Hint: a -10 for food means it produces 10 food!
for example for the cow is given:    Gold  95; Food -10
this means every food cycle it produces 10 food!

I hope this helps

[Jérôme]

Indeed, this does help. Everything is clear, now.

x/y (z)

x : current stock
y : total storage capacity (castle + farms)
z : production balance (production - consumption)

The workers lose 200 of their 600 HP each food cycle.

Thanks.

I just edited the wiki to try to clarify this. Feel free to rephrase or undo.

[titi]

I always thought about showing a "hint of the day" while the game is loading for the next start. This would be something which would be shown there ....

[will]

Its not obvious to me that a negative attribute means produces.

Would it be cleaner ui to have sections like "consumes" and "produces" and such, and under each section have things like "4 food"?

[tomreyn]

I always found the current presentation a little irritating, too.

And yes, we lack a manual. Thanks for updating the wiki, Jérôme.