Let me react to this post
Okay I completed the Spire for the first time and here are some feedback:
Background:
I started level one of the Spire on Monday morning and ended it on Thursday evening, with 12 h to spare. In that same time, I have also completed my weekly tournament involvement (I did 180 rounds spread over 45 provinces this week).
1. Gameplay
Overall: Gameplay is straightforward but not easy. I've had to somewhat scale back my tournament involvement this week so as not to decimate my resources, from 198 rounds to 180 rounds - a roughly 10% decrease - which I find to be a reasonable compromise. The most difficult part was having enough troops for the "Fight" option. Detailed feedback on each option:
First of all, what are 198 rounds, or the 180 rounds? I seriously doubt you do 180 provinces, so my guess is you mean about 30 provinces for 6 rounds, which you describe as a cutback of about 10%.
That means you are doing so far over what the average player does it's not in the same ballpark, not even on the same planet. A lot of the newer players can't even do 10 provinces. From what I know with my testcities, I can see than someone in chapter 3 can relatively easily do 5 provinces for 5 rounds. In Chapter 4 that can maybe upped to 8 provinces 5 rounds, but not that much more unless one is completely devoted to fighting.
I do however agree with the amount of troops needed. The squadsizes in the Spire are ridiculous at almost 3x a regular squadsize for me in my main city. Though I had enough squads, I only noticed later on when I was starting to run low. Squadsizes need to be drastically cut to make the Spire playable.
1a) Convince option
- I used this option the most because the Fight option had too large squad sizes and I rarely had enough troops for it
- I like the puzzle aspect of the Convince option. It's a game of logic to me. It felt good when I guessed it correctly
- There is some risk involved. If I knew for certain I can't solve it after the 2nd attempt, I quit and restart.
- A slight reduction, say 10%, in goods required for the convince option would make it more comfortable. Particularly, the number of Orcs required should be substantially lowered, as Orcs are produced very slowly even at endgame.
I tried the convincing on several levels. At first it's not too bad, but at first the fights aren't either. Later on, where one has 6 items to choose from it becomes very, very hard to get it correct. And since one needs sentient goods as well, which aren't as common or easily gained, the amount is too high.
I like the concept, but when one has 5 or 6 options, one should get at least one more free attempt.
And I agree the cost should be cut, the 10% sounds about right. And definitely more for orcs since they are being produced so slowly.
1b) Fight option
- I like the idea of waves. It throws a challenge into how you pick your units - many times, you have to think it through, you can't get away with just choosing a single unit type and auto-fight it off.
- Manual fighting can be the key between a win/lose here, and lack of it is a big disadvantage to mobile players using the Fight option
- My biggest complaint is the Squad Size calculation. I don't mind the fights being more challenging and would have liked to choose this more, but as I rarely had enough units to fight with even though I trained units 24/7, I seldom was able to.
- Squad size should be reduced by at least 25% for this option to be more viable
I like the waves as well, it forces one to really think about the options for the units. However, to succeed, even with the correct troop-combination, I find one needs to manually fight. Autofight occurs too many losses, especially when some troops that are needed for the secondwave will be slaughtered in the first wave when doing an automatic battle. the AI isn't so great anyway, autofighting always has more casualties than manual battle, but the AI has no concept at all of keeping in thought having to fight a second or even third wave.
It means anyone playing on autobattle is at a serious disadvantage, meaning everyone on mobile.
Your assessment about the squadsizes is correct again, as it was mentioned earlier. Too many troops involved in each battle. In some of my testcities I did not even have enough to fill 2 full squads.
Also the amount of troops involved mean more losses, and thus more time needed to retrain. This is not so much a problem for advanced players with high levels of AWs that boost and/or generate troops, and increase trainingtime, but for low-level players it is a handicap that can't be overcome.
1c) Use of Diamonds
- I used diamonds occasionally, when I was very or almost certain I could guess the right combination in the Convince option if I bought another turn. I also earned some diamonds. I didn't keep track of how many diamonds I spent in total, minus those earned, but it wasn't a big amount. My estimate is somewhere around 150 diamonds, and I will try to keep a record next time
I refused to use diamonds period. If events such as this cannot be solved within a reasonable time/manner or with a reasonable amount of resources it should be promoted as a premium-feature only. In 1 test city I literally ran out of goods and thus just stopped.
Overall, the prizes were decent for me. I got a lot of Time Instants, Crafting Materials and fortunately, 4/5 of the Moonstone Library Set. I did not like that the mystery chest could appear in a place you could not reach until you cleared more of the gauntlet. This should be changed.
I only partially agree. The spellfragments and the crafting spells are nice prices. But the time instants are ridiculous. One single 1 hour or 5 hour timeinstant is not even close to enough to recuperate the losses from a single battle.
2a) Time Instants
- These were handy and essential. I use a majority of them to speed up my troop training. Most of the troops went to the Tournament though, so you could say this prized helped me more in the tournament than anything else. I was tempted to use some of them to open the doors early, but troop training was more essential.
See my remark above. The timeinstants were hopelessly inadequate to counter the losses.
A possible solution would be to tie squadsizes AND the timeinstant rewards to for instance the trainingtime of players.
2b) Crafting Materials
- I like these quite a lot. I craft a lot and have been running low on spells to disenchant, even though I get at least 70 a week via tournaments. Also, CC takes very long to produce even with a L5 Magic Academy. When I ended the Spire I had 11.5k fragments and 23 CC (I produced and used some during the period, so I think it's more or less balanced out), so I won't have to worry about crafting materials for a while
Agreed, these were nice prizes and should be kept. Actually I found that, together with the idea of the multiple waves the best part of the Spire.
2c) Moonstone Library Set
- combined with 1 building I won by playing Level 1 last week, I now have the full set. I don't know how good it is yet, we shall see.
Sorry, but these buildings to me are not nearly enough to warrant so much of an effort in troops and goods. Though I really like the concept of having special awards for the Spire, these aren't that great, take way too much effort and aren't even guaranteed. One could end up with a really lousy reward for reaching the end of the Spire and that is just not right.
Overall, a good addition to the game, as it adds a whole new arena of play without detracting from the main progress of the game. The prizes are decent, since they can't be gotten regularly in other parts of the game (e.g. one goes to tournaments for KP, relics,runes and spells). The puzzles are a good challenge but can be improved in the area of resources needed.
The idea is good. Too bad that the Dev-team obviously ignored all the feedback from Beta, where most of these problems were already mentioned
I disagree with your assessment of most of the prizes. The fact there are some that can't be gotten anywhere else is very good. The spellfragments and crafting spells are a very nice addition. The time-reducing instants WOULD be nice, except that the amount of reductions is so far below what is needed to actually get them it's a very bad investment. The buildings are only so-so at best considering the effort that is needed to get them.