After finishing a long game which is my first Twilight of the Arnor game since it's release there is a couple issues that bother me.
I'm dissappointed at this game being released and announced publicly as now having "general availability"... It was always gererally availabile during it's beta run, anyone could test it, and the announcement of TA coming "April 30" led me to believe it was actually finished. After spending quite a bit of time on it I found myself playing a beta release. I found Brad Wardell's "Please slam my game" while posting and read it. Keep in mind I'm not slamming the game, but just saying it still has issues.
My advice to ensure a better game would be to not include the Thalans or the Korath. The Thalan AI was corrupt in the game I played, and they did nothing militarily. The Korath Clan's AI is still missing a few coats of varnish and had them sending dozens of Spore Ships in to my blockade to get beaten. Spore ships are so incredibly broken and it's unreal. They affect their colonies oppositely to reach mid-thirties in planet quality and instantly tear you away from your planets and toxify them. Planet tile textures turned white on a 36-quality planet with twenty-so discovery spheres.
Later I experienced graphical errors, one had my entire screen black except for a peep-hole where my cursor was, I had to scan to find my way to the save button, alt-tabbing still worked. The texture of the asteroids caused by a terror star's attack were corrupted. Furthermore 23,000bc as a peace-treaty didn't interest many races, and alliances were out of the question once I figured that "-- I don't trust you" ruled them out automatically, no matter how beneficial it may be.
Ascension victory is a nice new addition to obtain victory, but the counter in the top-left having "Korath Clan -- 1000 Weeks until Victory" is a bit too conspicious, and made me alarmed at first and later was a constant reminder to intervene. It's not too enjoyable to sit back and watch it tick down unless you want to risk war by getting your own or attack the race that owns them.
Because we all want a slice of the cake I believe it would be more fun to change the number of ascension crystals to nearly the same number of the races. Perhaps exceeding by a certain amount occordingly. Obtaining one base shouldn't affect the countdown if someone has the same amount of ascension bases as you do. They should oppose each other. The countdown should only decrease by the difference of how many more crystals a race has obtained compared to the race with the second most. Eliminate the hate for having ascension-bases if the counter does not descend. And lastly, make the number of weeks depend on map size, and much less for smaller maps. Basically this causes only the race that is profiting from the ascension bases to be targeted and introduces some new strategy into the game. Right now it has a serious lack of polish, so whatever the case it should be improved.
To close, there are a lot of good additions to TA but most just aren't fleshed out yet. This game needs some serious polish, but good job so far dev team. Be sure to give it some justice with 2.0.
