Twilight of the Arnor: BETA 4 and beyond

This is fantastic. There's so many new possibilities its a little overwhelming.

I'd say March also seems quite optimistic - but hey you know better than us.

Again you guy's rock.

Wow. I usually suffer from "careful what you wish for" problems. It's nice to see a wish granted with no obvious negative consequences.

I'm on record here griping about the initial beta schedule b/c I thought there'd be little chance for many of us to give feedback about the middle and late phases of Gigantic and Immense maps. Brad's schedule decision sounds like it should give the mighty-map crowd a chance to help do some serious polishing before the official RTM. I hope I can neglect my productive work enough to finish an Immense map as the new Thalans before the beta finally closes.

That is good news.
I have one small feature idea/request for a future patch after the TA gets finished, i don't know how hard it would be to implement and if anyone else likes it at all.

I always liked the after-game report in Civilization where it graphically shows you how the game developed, you know what i'm talking about, when the world map is shown how it looked like, changing through the years. I would like to see that here too if it's not a complete waste of time. It doesn't need to be anything special, civilization-like report would be more than good enough.

And maybe to go one step further, have you ever wondered how a game would unfold after you lost, who would win? Maybe there could be an option to let the computer simulate the game until some AI wins. It would also come handy in situations where you already know you've won but don't feel like spending the next couple of hours cleaning things up.

Does it make any sense to anyone else but me?

Only to learn that a few mega events occurred and someone else wins by another victory condition.

This expansion is looking really good, haven't tried the betas yet, because I want the full surprise when the game is released.

I just want to chime in with a sincere thank you for taking the time to polish this gem. The new schedule is great news .

Yup, happy to hear the schedule is longer. The thing some might not realize is that the longer the beta, the more time those of us who pre-ordered get to play a very evolving game. That's a huge plus to me. After this thing's released, SD will need to focus on the fantasy game, which means fewer updates.

i just threw that in, i'm really going after the end-game report, and maybe to see which AI won the game after I already lost it.

I sincerely am hoping that in the final release .you will have adressed the following minor problems that detract from my "fun factor"

#1 anomolies : by this i mean respawning anomolies are good. but at least make the A.I
want to build survey ships throught the game and not just in beginning
,,anomolies part 2 ..... the +25% to a tech bonus must be replaced by A pre set tech point bonus .. this prevents you from getting a huge tech advantage. because simply put 25% of universal translator is not equivilent to 25% of black hole guns
there have been games that i played where I build fast surveyors with like 20 speed and actually get the +25% bonus 2-3 times in same turn for a tech . I feel that it is cheesy to go all the way from beginning a long tech like a long time 70 turns to complete to being a few turns from finished in same turn just because i am only one surveying .

#2 race emergence .. races MUST spawn with planetary defenses and ships in orbit.
otherwise the simple tactics of having a few transports scattered about the galaxy is enough to wipe out any new race regardless of tech . the method i use now is pure cheese but is essential due to the way the game spawns races .. if a race appears with end game techs, then trade for it all . no matter what it takes , because it does not matter what he gets if he dies in the same turn . right now the game basically gives me about 12 end game techs .all the time for free due to this event .

#3 invasion tactics. right now there is an exploit where if you use mass drivers or some other detrimental attack but fail in the invasion .then planet quality does not drop and improvments are not destroyed. this should happen regardless of success or failure. and here is why.knowing that i can attack a planet with 16,000 troops ,and use only a invasion fleet of 1000 but use mass drivers ,i gain all the benefits of this tactic and cause massive enemy casualties yet I dont intend on succeding ,because the success means that this planets quality and improvments will lower,no... what i want is to weaken the defending army to a low number like 3000 troops ,then just send in another ship with a less destructive invasion tactic like mini soldiers(my Favorite).it seems to me a bit unrealistic. at least make a invasion tactic ,s detriment always happen regardless of sucess or failure.

#4 i beleive that space miners colony ships,and survey ships should have to be researched before recieving one . i think games would evolve in different directions if you only started with 3 colony ships and had to research to build anything else.then you would see almost instantly each races different approach to winning (I.E korath,drengin might go straight for military/invading and not go a mad colonizing from the start)trading,mining,colonizing,military,construction/resource gatherer,could all be a start strategy It does not have to be expensive to research any of these start techs

number 4 sounds a bit radical but please consider this kind of startup as maybe a option that i could enable at game setup(I.E i could check and uncheck "enable colony,miner,survey ship{s} at startup" )
well i hope these dont sound too difficult to change.thanks for reading .

#1 anomolies : agreed
#2 race emergence: agreed

#3 invasion tactics: not so much agreed. Imagine getting your planet being invaded often by the AI, it would not be fun seeing it reduced to an useless piece of rock, or half of the planetary improvements destroyed after each invasion attempt. You could use that to intentionally destroy AI planet infrastructure.

#4 not sure about this one, the beginning of the game is usually all about colonizing, what other tactics could be successful if you never colonized enough compared to others.

That would be a setup for even cheesier tactics. What your suggesting would mean that I could send a send in a bunch of cheap invasion ships with 1 soldier each on them and constantly lower my opponents world quality without actually having to fight him. Better yet, I could do this for free if I choose evil as my alignment and built a 'No Mercy Center'. Besides which, information warfare is usually the best tactic when attacking such large population centers due to morale penalties, albeit it is more expensive.

Talk about good timing. By March end, as usual, i get the Income taxes refund checks from both Federal & Provincial govs overhere. Meaning, i will be able to buy the new Video-card (possibly a nVidia/GeForce 7600GT or GS (AGP8X & 512mb... old mobo compatible, don't ask!) or somethin') along WITH the finalized TA expansion, solid and hard-tested.
Great news for beta-testers also since the extra time would be used quite efficiently while providing superb stability to the overall package.

I'll certainly wait. Those new editors & tools are key elements for me.

- Zyxpsilon.

Seriously, I wouldn't mind if you added a LOT more time to the development as long as it comes out polished. I'm really loving the beta. It breathes a lot of new life into an already amazing product.


Thanks!

This is pretty great news. Far too often game developers release games too early with tragic results... but i do have one tiny request. (and it's totally not selfish or anything!)

Any chance the Metaverse could be enabled for TA? It's my understanding that the metaverse is down to encourge people to experiment with each race as they get released for beta. It seems to me now that the focus is shifting to balance, it would be beneficial to encourge people to play games to the end.

Oh, and this has nothing to do with me wishing I could play Metaverse games, and enjoy the new awesomeness that is TA, at the same time.

I only ask for the betterment of TA!

This is an important point you're at.

One one hand, you could have put out the expansion and called it a day, with there being lots of new features.

But on the other hand, you could go a lot further and do what you say you are planning to do now, which is making the different races actually *be* unique. Which would be awesome, considering the last (and actually only) strategy game I felt something like this was Alpha Cantauri with all its unique personalities and behaviors. And it was awesome.

So I am very glad that you saw that potential and are going to try to realize it. To be honest, I have my doubts. Considering how every TBS 4x game since AC (including yours) all featured the same, bland AI civs that all behaved more or less the same (yes, I know you had different AIs but that didn't amount to much), I don't think you can actually pull it off and breathe some real life into GalCiv. But hey, I may be wrong and I'm more than willing to give you the chance in the form of these extra months. So go and give them some real personality!

Hint: An expanded United Planets feature would make this even better. Again, see Alpha Centauri. I never understood how the TBS devs seemed to have learned nothing at all from this game. Not that it didn't have its flaws but some of its features were extraordinary. I can understand, to a point, that they couldn't implement such a Planetary Council in Civ due to the timeline involved but you shouldn't have any problems in this regard. So stop treating the UP like some tacked-on afterthought, it deserves way more than that.

I humbly repeat my suggestion that the final version include a "Go To Colony" command for moving ships around the map. This command was so helpful in Civ and Alpha Centaurus in accumulating fleets for invasions, accumulating ships to defend a coming strike by the AI, getting freighters on tracks across your own territory and so forth. When moving ships within your own territory this command is much handier than setting rally points. The bonus is that all ships that arrive at the end point colony go into orbit and add to the defense of the colony, whereas chips accumulating at a rally poin do not defend any colony. Thanks for your consideration.

In DA, my best moment ever was beating the dread lords the same turn they emerged, I was thinking "OMG DA DREAD LORDZ IZ HERE" and then I noticed I had a troop t. or two on the way nearby. So I killed them all. LoL.

How much longer will the beta last for pre-ordered customers?

It will be open till the release I believe !!

IMHO you have already shipped Twilight since I'm playing it even if not with all expected features. I'm very happy with it.
Take your time and not rush out uncomplete or not as you'd like. I hope you got enough subscriptions so you can keep going in the development.

The beta for this new add-on has played better then most
game releases lately IMHO ...

Not many companies would delay a release, to improve it
for the customer base. I'm looking forward to the March
release.

Looking to future products Stardock ...

 (:( I ordered Twilight of the Arnor and it is supposed to be delivered by Janurary 30th but I guess I wasted money because this is the second time the release date is pushed back. When it does come out after march will there be a update for people like gherardo who already have the game but don't have all the new features?

How did you order it? An actual CD from some game shop? If you ordered it via Stardocks' site, then you could download it and start playing it now (in it's beta stage, but still). I've been playing TA ever since Beta1 came out a few months ago.

As for gherardo, the features he says he's missing are the ones that will be released around the 17th. It'll be yet another beta release that he, I, and plenty of others will download and then keep on trucking with the new features in place. Being a pre-order beta player, you get the game right away...albeit sometimes a bit buggier than the final release in March.

In March, the game will be in it's acceptable state when TA actually goes live, bug-free and worth far more than you paid for.

(Starting to have a heart attack) (breathing heavily)

OMG!!!! The new invasion screen has arrived!!!!! Hoooooo boy.

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, When the vote was for "January or December" i Voted February. (Well, i actually voted January, but I Replied saying February or Later, When its done)

This Time, I support March, and Vote for April!

LOL

Hey Stanley Tarrant Let us know if you like it !!!