Ok, just spent an enjoyable four or so hours in a coop game with two to four
other people. I have some observations, some of which are new stuff, some
just old stuff I've forgotten to post about.
The co-op play is a nice concept, allowing multiple parallel games with a
bit of cross-over. I don't think it's fully fleshed out yet, as will be
seen below.
Jobs: At the beginning everybody seems to come in as a builder since this
is the default. I actually broke that as I had chosen the defender perk, so
I came in as a knight, something that was appreciated by my fellow players.
There is a problem. I had two or three builders from my co-op partners, but
they never actually built anything for me. They were always either filling
in as peasants, or standing around as builders. I'm guessing that there is
some interaction between games, and when Gryffindor's builder was acting as
a peasant in his game, he would do the same in mine, even if I had an open
building project I would have liked his help with. I never had any other
jobs, so I can't tell if this phenomenon is typical. I'm also guessing that
when Gryffindor was building in his world he was a builder in mine, but for
some reason he never built even then.
Extra co-op people count against your housing allowance. I know this
because I had sixteen people and four houses, two of whom were co-op
players. When one disappeared, one of my folk got pregnant right away.
This actually makes sense from a game balance perspective, though it's a
little bizarre in the role-playing sense. I think I'd leave it as is, but I
wanted others to know.
I'm still getting weird materials bugs. Every one of my building sites took
fewer materials than the building description suggested. Most of the time
it was bricks that I needed fewer of. I know no one else has reported this,
but please check a few ticks after you have started a new building project.
When I first set up the building project, the numbers match. A few ticks
later, it's gotten cheaper almost every time. I think I had a house or two
that required the full 3 bricks, 3 lumber. I've never played on the easy
level, does it change the building requirements?
When someone becomes pregnant, I'd like to see their former occupation for
the mothers' list, just as we now do for the ailing list. I almost lost a
couple of people because my cook got pregnant in the thick of things and I
wasn't paying attention.
I'd like to see a message explicitly telling me that a building has been
destroyed and which one. I lost a guard tower and hadn't realized it right
away, and was wondering why I was taking too long to kill goblins.
It would be nice to have a key to review currently engoblinated squares.
Towards the midgame, it becomes a bit tedious tracking them by hand. This
becomes important for guard tower placement.
Finally, I'm heartbroken; I was in the midst of a very promising game, that
I hadn't saved recently at all, and it crashed with no error, the game
simply stopped responding at all and I had to kill the task. I wish I could
provide you with more definite feedback than that, but let it be a warning
to all, save frequently.
Co-op enhancements: the ability to trade resources maybe, although again
that distorts the role-playing aspect.
Questions: is there any benefit to multiple storehouses, or any other
building projects other than farms and vineyards? How do the troops figure
out how to use multiple guard towers? What about being able to dismantle a
building and take it to a new location? When the trees and stones give out
near the storehouse, it might be useful to put a sawmill and quarry in
undeveloped land.
How is the food for each individual calculated? It's not an average of the
four food types, nor did it look like an RMS value. I had a character with
something like 80% meat, 0% bread, 85%vegetables and 35%wine who showed a
49% overall energy level.
Well, that's enough for tonight, and my apologies to my co-op partners who
were counting on my good right arm to help protect them.
Chris Bartlett
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