On large scale battles: Wow, that's cluttered.

[Pilgrim]

quickly - siege damage definately causes AoE friendly fire (and as is RTS standard, arrows currently don't cause FF).

[Jonathan Werk]

Graphics - Pilgrim is bang on, that blurring comes from the fast camera scrolling. It looks sharper when the camera is still or moving at normal speeds. And I suppose it doesn't help that it's compressed for youtube, either.

Unit Control - most units are grouped into "battalions" of 5-20 units. when you select any unit in that battalion, the whole group is selected and the whole group acts upon your commands. You can select many battalions at once. So even if there are 400 units on the battlefield, you may only be controlling 40 groups of 10.
As Pilgrim said, this changes the face of unit micromanagement, but it does not eliminate it. There is still benefit to microing your battalions even if you can't micro its individual members.

Siege - I think you just need to give the devs some credit and trust that things will be balanced (and they can be further tweaked after feedback from the beta tests). Ranged siege weapons do area of effect damage to any player, and they do not have anywhere near the sniper-like accuracy featured in some other games. Additionally, the defender may have long range weapons as well.

Thanks for the comments; I think we have these issues under control, but it certainly doesn't hurt to keep them in mind.

[Alex Walz]

Hi, all. Thanks for your enthusiasm.
I'll do my best to address your concerns.

-Visual clutter makes it really hard to fully comprehend whats going on.
-Seige weapons look pretty over the top, and those defenses won't really do much-or will they?
-So many units, how do I control them ALL while still having control over my army?

a) Yes, it does look a bit cluttered in this video. Like others have said, the battlefield looks significantly simpler from the higher, default pitch that you're be playing with. Also, the battles you see were scripted. In an actual skirmish, these units will run to defend a breech and not just stand around making their alliance ambiguous, as with the scene you pointed out. Your infantry will typically attack in an organized line while your archers will often form an arch behind them. Of course, the organization factor depends on the races, to an extent - elven formations are very neat while many orc formations are seemingly random mobs, and you can choose which formation to use for your troops and each one offers different statistical benefits.

b) Siege weapons fall quickly to enemy fire. You can't bring any siege weapons near the enemy stronghold until you have a thick infantry fodder wave or have taken out the defenses. A lot of these videos and shots show a ram or siege tower at an enemy wall but what they don't show are the multiple treants you send crashing down before the enemy is able to scale your wall.

c) You won't be controlling each unit - you'll be working with battalions, or groups of units. So that makes it easier to attack with big numbers and you can mass-select a large group of assorted units and send them roughly to the point of attack and use a mix of micromanagement and macromanagement from that point on. We actually just discussed this mix of strategy in an interview, which I'll post in the Media Fair momentarily.

We've been told that the game will use a squad-based system, so units will be organized into small groups (between 5-20, the developers haven't confirmed the exact number yet) with heroes and large units (siege and monsters) being on their own.

Correct, although the number in a battalion isn't standardized with every unit. Most human and elven battalions start with 7-10 units and orc battalions with 15. But with every 1-2 levels, you will gain one unit for that battalion.

Unless there is something I don't know then I think this needs to be fixed and the teams need to wear very obviously different colours, as in other RTS games, even at the expense of some realism.

Each unit has a player mask. It's kind of dark lighting, but you can see it. It should be pretty clear in all the showcase shots.

Now, obviously 'weeks' is far too long, but reducing it to meer seconds doesn't provide any feeling of siege, so I don't think many RTS get the time compromise right for siege warfare.

Like I mentioned earlier, breaches take longer than hinted at. You have to have heavy infantry fodder and take out all the defenses, and even then you will have to have a dedicated siege ram attacking the gate for a fair while and most strongholds have multiple layers of walls for you to hammer through.

Also-yeah. We won't be controlling 1000 unit armies right off the bat-keep that in mind. It's likely we'll have at most a couple hundred by the time we finish the first combat quests, but that's still much easier to handle than those shots. I imagine mmorts will gradually step it up in the # of units needed to complete a quest, not all at once.

True. You start with just a couple of units and can win over some more through early quests and train the rest. If you're playing as men, which is the "average" of the Dawn of Fantasy races, it's recommended that you have 400-500 military units before building your second layer of walls and another 50-100 before the first large-scale enemy invasion.


And finally, all the graphics inquiries,
I know most of you guys have been able to get past the fact that our graphics can't compete with multimillion dollar titles, and for that, I thank you. The truth is, we started out as an indie team with essentially no funding and very little resources. So we just did what we were capable of. By the time we had accumulated a decent amount of funding, resources, and experience, it was too late to drastically change the graphics as it would require an engine overhaul. Most RTS titles with battles the scale of ours work off of engines that automatically add fog effects and restrict the level of detail as you zoom out. Unfortunately, we did not do this at the time and so, everything we've done to reduce lag with distance has been outside of the engine. If we simply went in and replaced our models with higher-poly models, our engine just wouldn't be able to handle it with 1,000+ units on the screen. But, now we know, and we'll be able to make this a priority right off the bat if we design a second title.

[Aametherar]

Wow, thanks for the in depth answers, it's a shame about the non optimized issue with the units, but that's how people learn. Also yes, youtube does leave a lot to be desired!

[otomotopia]

Thank you guys for all the responses, especially the clarification on how seige warfare usually works-That really addressed my concerns on balance more then anything.

I'd just like to clarify that my previous problem with unit selection was the fact that we will eventually have 40+ battalions under our control, not 1000 individual units. It seems, however, that the people who can actually 'play' the game (AKA rigorously test the same map over and over ^^) have no problems with the system.

Thanks again ^^

[Pilgrim]

Yes, Alex, Jonathan and man others in other threads. Very much appreciate how the Reverie. team address the concerns in the forums.

[Negthareas]

Reverie has been saying for a while now that the graphics are not final anyway - they still have to update them.

With wall-mounted siege engines having farther range [which makes sense] the besieger would have to bring in significant numbers of siegeweapons in order to take out the defender's. Also, one of the Reverie people commented on a post of mine saying that siege engines will be limited by their inaccuracy. They will not be able to pick off moving targets at will. Think of Trebuchets in AoE2 - very effective against castles, towers, walls, and buildings, but completely useless against units.

[malachan]

To me it's not really cluttered, but rather the battles are large and epic. This is one of the main reason why I'm so excited about this game over other RTS's. As a general rule of thumb with many RTS's, I think over time that the more one plays, the less chaotic/"cluttered" the game will appear since you'll have a deeper and better understanding of the game.

[Pilgrim]

Originally Posted by malachan

As a general rule of thumb with many RTS's, I think over time that the more one plays, the less chaotic/"cluttered" the game will appear since you'll have a deeper and better understanding of the game.

I very much agree with malachan. I have found that too.

[welshie]

Just to put out there, if your defending your stronghold, if a player manages to scale ur first wall would u not expect chaos and lots of mixes of both teams battilions? if im the attack i would sure like to cause it!