1.2.4

[mrowka]

Since my memory is crap i will just write problems from game here and some feedback
And the first one is that there is no spectator mode.

[Zak0r]

For me it works. Another thing that works is the AI using formers to gather resources and it even seems to do it on useful tiles.

However, it can gather resources with formers before even researching the required technology which is probably a bug.

[mrowka]

For me it works. Another thing that works is the AI using formers to gather resources and it even seems to do it on useful tiles.

However, it can gather resources with formers before even researching the required technology which is probably a bug.

Thats my bad actually did try to set Ai as spectator insted of myself

Seems that Cutting down fungus is instant insted of 4 turns like in tooltips, found it in the .xml:

Code: Select all

<order name="ClearFungus" duration="1" durationState="Work" additional="1">
			<actions>
				<hasAttribute attribute="FungusCultivation"/>
				<removeFeature feature="Fungus"/>
			</actions>
		</order>

[boulugre]

Ok I managed to install 1.2.4!

Really like all the changes, there is now a lot of different opening strategy possible, sweet!

As a first feedback I noticed that building a new advancement on forest will insta raze the forest on that tile. Don't think that works as intended?

[mrowka]

Forest are instant cleared to wit Clear Forest action

Code: Select all

<order name="ClearForest" duration="1" durationState="Work" additional="1">
			<actions>
				<removeFeature feature="Forest"/>
			</actions>
		</order>

Edit: Satus mid mechanization era.
This is just my opinion. Harvest food and minerals is not usefull atleast i didnt find any use, this provide only 1 mineral/food per turn per former, if its used on friendly territory this means city cant use that square so basicly it need to be used outside your territory and using it outside your territory means you need to have a defense units so in best case scenario you pay 3 gold(1.5 former, 1.5 trooper) per turn for 1 mineral/food per turn. Another painfull thing to that action is that formers cant be stacked on one square so its only 1 mineral/food per turn per square. I found minimum use of this action before i build my first mineral/food array.
New animations are awsome especialy levithan one.
New features hard to tell at this point, love the specialization that they provide then again they seem to be kinda OP due the fact that they allow vegetation bonuses to be harvested and can be build with special vegetation like gia forest, my academy city ( pure labs around) is top provider of food. Suburb feature dont provide any resonable bonuses to waste square on it, atlest i didnt find any use of them atm, they might be usefull if ther would be a ability to stop city growth, but other than that i dont really see the reason to build them.

[Zak0r]

For harvesting minerals best choose a mountain tile and build a mine first before you start harvesting. This way you will get 3 instead of 1 minerals per turn. Same thing with food and grassland tiles with farm. In the lategame you will end up on the fungus anyway.

I think the credit and habitat improvements could use a boost (4 instead of 2 credits, 2 habitat instead of 1) to be more useful. Reason: they don't as much boost from buildings (credits actually does) and moral as the other improvements.

[mrowka]

For harvesting minerals best choose a mountain tile and build a mine first before you start harvesting. This way you will get 3 instead of 1 minerals per turn. Same thing with food and grassland tiles with farm. In the lategame you will end up on the fungus anyway.

I think the credit and habitat improvements could use a boost (4 instead of 2 credits, 2 habitat instead of 1) to be more useful. Reason: they don't as much boost from buildings (credits actually does) and moral as the other improvements.

Thats wierd didnt work like that in colonization era, i did max out tech and now its doubles the output of the square at which point its still of no use atleast to me, but i gona test it in another game

Credits are flat bonus very usefull for early game, loose thier use around when you get 800-1k income. Keep in mind that this new improvments can be build everyware and you get ability to harvest vegetation under them, my landscape now looks like corsess of moutains with construction yards on them and fungus fields. But thers something that affect the bonus since now when im trashing everything to build fungus they do provide 3 insted of 2 gold, not sure what it is. Still this feature is perfect for me since i always start with taming 2 devoers and thier maintaining cost is 6.


Promotions 20 lvl are little to OP, you can hunt giants with basic flamethrower and 2nd lvl armor, its cool to have veteran units, but its not cool to have gods.
Which brings me again to our poor ecoregion improvment that is still not usefull at all unless you want to change the looks of ground under fungus
Research at mid mechanization should get a multiplayer starting with 2x or 4x up to 10x or even more since with one academy city i did fly thrugh it faster than usual and my 3rd era started with 3 turn cost research on epic pace, secound academy city speeded up my research to 1 turn at the half era even without the top lab.

Sadly ai starts good and all with new improvments but ends up with mines everyware, altrugh this time they build roads, which is good speeds up the conquest
Ai still think im poor and dont want my gifts, which is kinda odd to be told that by a guy that have only 21 cities less than you and prapobly that 16k gold per turn less to
There is also low number of apistohs and levithans in the waters, which makes them kinda empty and to easy to explore, i didnt actually lost any boat to them.

And i found a lovley new former cant wait to see what you guys gonna make him build

[Apheirox]

Very pleased with what I see and can't agree with the criticism listed in this thread. I've played only one 1.2.4 game and only halfway through but it was more than enough to convince me sticking with Pandora has been worthwhile (even if I was beginning to lose patience). Massive applause, Slitherine, it is nothing short of impressive how you have continued to grow the game with more and more new features and refinements and with 1.2.4 yet again!

What strikes me as the game's main weak points now are two things: That the AI still is too poor to provide a decent challenge and that there still isn't enough incentive to expand beyond just a few cities (and arguably even less so now that Formers can extract resources from faraway territories).

I think the credit and habitat improvements could use a boost (4 instead of 2 credits, 2 habitat instead of 1) to be more useful. Reason: they don't as much boost from buildings (credits actually does) and moral as the other improvements.

The energy plant doesn't require population to be worked, hence +2 credits is rather powerful.

[mrowka]

Construction yard provide incentive to build more cities since its 3 production eats 3 minerals, so for city that specialize in production, you need more mineral gain to sustain it.

Edit: Did some more games
Harvest food/mineral usefull but need a serious boost, since at the moment its mainly situational and its lose its usfullnes preety fast, bad part is that its mainly usefull on normal pace.
My tests with this action was mainly aimed for fast first city expansion and fast resource aquisition, didnt test it in mid and late game on this tests since the output is just to low compare to improvments + buildings.
Fast first city expansion was to build 2 formers at the start and rotated them with one harvesting and one building improvments, dependable on city needs.
Fast resource aquisition was for expanding with new city in early game 2nd to 4th city, put it near special resource and put a former on it, this allows city to work on diffrent square while still providing special resource bonus + harvest bonus.
Both of this strategies did work but comparable to other games it did heavily sit on my money income even with panel park feature, compare to just spamming farms and mines, thats the main reason why i think it would need a big boost in its effectives.
Having less features means you have less places to defend at the start which is a good part, but the ammount of formers you need to actually compare resource gain to features is quite imbalanced, like i said in the earlier post each former need his own defence especialy in early game, and this still sit on money income and ability to build more formers/units/buildings.
This is all done and compared with normal pace, as for epic and marathon i still need some more tests but the game is very diffrent with diffrent pace, found out that normal pace is much more easier than the epic one.
Long range harvesting ( out of faction borders) was a disaster for me in early game, it require to many units to defend the harvester and the gain from even special feature with normal feature to boost it was just to small to justify it .


Thoughs, Theories, Suggestions:
Harvesting action is one of most valiable features if boosted, it can be used to stop mineral crisis in late mid/late game since by that time player have both ability to defend and pay for formers without it heavily effect his money income. Long rage harvesting is valiable to but it would need some more boost prefebly from some feature, something like agressive evolution pathogen emmiter that would boost food prodution to be harvest but would have some bad effect like a chance for plats to get aggresive and eat the former , or heavily overclocked nuclear generetor for mining that can blow up,generaly something you cant or would not want build within city borders. High risk, high reward.
Also another boosts for this via research would be nice to or only from research althrugh then it wouldnt be to usefull at early game.

New Features:
In general i think they got decent synergy between them which is balanced preety nice on the thin line, exept the habitat one.
I had some more tests with habitats (normal pace), and compare to what i writed erlier i was wrong alot
It is the one and most OP feature and im not sure if this should be deleted or more heavily penetialized, only thing that make it not to much Op is the time for it to be effective.
Not only you can speed up your city growth and steer the tide of new colonists where you want them, it makes cities not to loose to much morale from overpopulation and genearaly makes them jack of all trades in long run. Im still not sure if i should build construction yards or just spam habitats.
The pentaly of -2 gold its only painful in early early game after the feature was build, but some turns later you get that more than that 2 gold back, you also get a additional worker, extra border and so one.
I did some math and in general habitat cities are only a bit worst than purly specializaded in that barnch.

All this above is only my opinions and experiances, which may or may not be wrong and all that other stuff

[void]

Thanks for the feedback!