Some tips for players and author
Firstly, a few tips for players:
* Don't risk your hero in early game, get a few levels first.
* Yes, the win condition is taking over the world, not your country.
* Take delivery quests before clearing rouges quests
* FIghting the village champion (warning, can be hard) gets you above average quality weapons as random loot. Mild help, as you still need the stats to wield them.
* Straying outside your country to other countries with better bows, or horse, different troops, etc, can be a help towards counquering your countries seven and eight star cities.
For the desert, which can seem hard (due to the what-the-hell glowing sword guys who have a very high dodge that often decimates your army):
* You can probably always, as a generalized tactic here, just stock up on hundreds of healing potions and park your hero in a corner of the room, (or not move said hero from starting position). Attackable from one side, clicking frequently on healing you can singlehandedly carry the day with a hundred or whatnot potions. (I recommend ranged here, it helps pick off the healers rather than whomever is in front of you, first. Though melee will also work.)
For the far east and those spirit ninja guillontines, (which are just silly / broken):
* Take off your armor - they don't instakill you if your defense is low. No, the game didn't give you any clue or hint that would be the case, but there it is. You can singleton style carry the day unamored with healing potions. Easies probably not to move from starting back-to-the-wall position.
* Alternately, low armor troops, such as the desert troops, including the double-sword guys another poster noted, work well. Note that ninja ghosts have a silly high dodge of 170, so you might end up singleton anyway, depending who you bring.
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For the author:
Excellent improvement from the first game. I applaud, also, getting 2 out now. I hope you continue for more improvements in 3. The game has great potential.
A few small tweak suggestions:
Consider adding a little 5.4.3.2.1 style timer to the hero's attack. It took me awhile at first to figure out if I was attacking and what was going on. Even in the midgame I went back to the tutorial of a new game to experiment for clarity. (Btw, great animation, the tiny heads being decapitated sometimes. Nice touch.)
Clue the player into things like guillotine going by defense, or fighting the town champion yielding quality loot. Just a small tip would aid frustration a lot.
Having the troops as disposable is fine. I did find, A) that I eventually had hordes of unused money, and B) I tried hard to preserve my troops in early game before realizing they were completely expendable. Perhaps tie the cost of recruiting troops to how well you keep your troops alive. If you routinely get them slaughtered, those kind of troops cost more money. Would seem a good dynamic to introduce, for pacing / realism / balance.
Full world pacing is a little loose, in my subjective opinion, because play often gears toward taking your own country / it's 6-7-8 star towns. By the time you can take a 7 or 8, however, conquering the rest of the world is probably at the repitious stage, as your army is beefy and just slaughtering the small towns, or going back and forth vs attrition getting to and fro the large ones, the desert and far east 8-stars noteable exceptions.
* To aid this, have weak towns propose surrender when you invade with what will clearly be a slaughtering force. Would make things brisker. At the end, I often cleaned up multiple 3-4-5 towns without loosing any troops.
* Once you've got lots of money and beefy level 7-8 town troops, go easy on the bandit raids. They're one-sided fights that take time / repeition. Real bandits would not be so unwise as to attack so superior a force, imho. Again, helps briskness / freshness. Player doesn't need the money by then.
* Consider smaller loot drops, of loot scoped to the player's hero type. Helps the money escalation.
Overall, very fun. I had hours of enjoyment.
Thanks for making it!
-evoke
