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[Sonlirain]

This is my first thought as well.

Watching Total Biscuit's review... <paraphrased> "They have a very novel solution to the problem with transports. When you move your unit over an ocean tile, they turn into transports!" That comment caused me literal pain for so many reasons. It also guaranteed that I wouldn't buy this when combined with how poorly I felt the studio handled Majesty 2. Disregard for the most important obstacle terrain in the name of convenience is the #1 reason I despise Civ 5, next to ridiculous AI/Diplomacy.

I don't really understand the thinking here. When a land unit embarks as a transport it:

1. Loses any ability to defend itself.
2. Loses all remaining movement for that turn.
3. Goes incredibly slow.

All three of those would be true if I had to manually make a transport and move the unit about, it just saves a bit of time. What's the problem? Your units-as-transports are still easy pickings for any naval unit and must spend a full turn just sitting there since they lose all movement.

Hmm... Rise of Nations had a similar mechanic (in a RTS).
At a certain (low) tech level units entering water would just turn into landing ships... while not very realistic it made island invasions far easier but didn't make regular navy useless since the transports were pretty much defenseless.
Also your units simply building makeshift transports from nearby resources are a likely scenario... honestly i don't know why TB was annoyed by it... oh well we all have our likes and dislikes i guess.

[Nelia Hawk]

i think the main reason these "landunits change to transports" is because the AI cant coordinate the building/moveing of extra ship units and coordinate that with landunits and where to attack and all that...

so for the AI a moveorder over sea to another island is far less complex than all the extra unit coordination.

[Glowcat]

I don't really understand the thinking here. When a land unit embarks as a transport it:

1. Loses any ability to defend itself.
2. Loses all remaining movement for that turn.
3. Goes incredibly slow.

All three of those would be true if I had to manually make a transport and move the unit about, it just saves a bit of time. What's the problem? Your units-as-transports are still easy pickings for any naval unit and must spend a full turn just sitting there since they lose all movement.

My problem is that providing fluid access to water tiles transforms an obstacle terrain into a penalty terrain, and the inherent changes that come with it.

Losing the ability to defend is irrelevant. What changes with this method is access of mobility. Do you also feel passwall or dimension door powers do not alter travel of units if compared to walking they were overall slower, or do you rightly recognize that despite limitations they still provide access to mobility which was previously unavailable? The issue with granting land units the ability to traverse any terrain with no real preparation. The strain of additional preparation is shifted strongly to the disfavor of whoever seeks to prevent a target from accessing sea travel while no real preparation is really needed by the one moving units across land. It's possible to crush the vulnerable units, yes, but given the ability to launch from anywhere that sort of defense can be costly. I am also of the opinion that the one who wishes to launch naval invasions should be the one to pay extra for that benefit instead of being able to invest solely in a land army with relative confidence that his or her forces will not be destroyed unless the target has both built ships and keeps them around. This is usually easy to check beforehand with some scouting.

There are also other issues which arise, such as (in Civ5 at least) heavily damaged units being able to move onto a lake tile and become immune to non-ranged damage, the disintegration of many natural bottlenecks, and slight changes to how expansion plays out. I personally do not like any of the changes brought about with this type of terrain modification. I see it as trading much, all in the name of simplifying gameplay and being convenient for AI design.

[IronyOwl]

Oh yes, a few other things:

Having donkeys as a resource made me giggle. Dunno why, they're a perfectly valid thing to have and I don't giggle at horses or pigs, but somehow having your resources include gold and donkeys just tickled me.

I've seen no reason not to found as many cities as physically possible, which is an issue previous Civ games have had. Maybe your total pop growth is split between all available cities, so having a ton of cities means your growth rate just sucks across all of them?

I still have no idea what affects population growth, other than lack of food supposedly hampering it.

I have successfully invaded another world! My four veterans and I don't know how many summoned serpents made quick work of the earth elementals and were only slightly perturbed by the nearby demons. They stayed the fuck away from the also nearby greater fire elemental standing right next to a demonwood, and managed to aggro a red dragon exploring a bit past the demons. Combined with my new quest to destroy infidel death paladins which then decided to attack one of my cities, I decided that'd be a good time for them to retreat, were my turns not up anyway.

Waterwalking affects swamp. This was incredibly valuable to my slow-ass veterans.

[Tnx]

I wish you can divert food towards certain cities to help it grow faster.  Maybe they should add in something to deter rampant city building... Maybe large interconnected cities have a chance to spawn indestructible special tiles that spawn monsters (like in Majesty)?  For example having two large cities near each other can spawn a sewer tile that spawns rats and an occasional strong rat raiding force that the player/AI will have to deal with?  Other special tiles can be graveyards (if you've had lots of units die), a magical forest (higher chance of spawning based on how many magical sites are in your cities).

[Dariush]

My problem is that providing fluid access to water tiles transforms an obstacle terrain into a penalty terrain, and the inherent changes that come with it.

Why should water be an obstacle terrain? If a unit of soldiers has to get across a body of water in RL, they make rafts, hire some boats from a nearby settlement or whatever. It's not lava, dammit. Both this game's and Civ 5's approaches seem the best to me.

[LoSboccacc]

Depends on the settings. Romanii where an exception and on the spot bridge/raft building wasn't rediscovered until the mobility doctrine (yes I've learnt history on civ)

Note how most poems regarding naval invasions state that the invading party had this or that huge fleet prepared, not makeshif boats.

You passed rivers where they were low and you used real ship in the mediterranean sea.

[Dariush]

Note how most poems regarding naval invasions state that the invading party had this or that huge fleet prepared, not makeshif boats.

Of course. Because making an invasion without large ships covering the troops would be stupid. Getting across small lakes or rivers, however, is perfectly valid.

[Sonlirain]

Note how most poems regarding naval invasions state that the invading party had this or that huge fleet prepared, not makeshif boats.

Of course. Because making an invasion without large ships covering the troops would be stupid. Getting across small lakes or rivers, however, is perfectly valid.

Moreso if you attemp a invasion with rafts against a enemy who stationed actual battleships along the coastline of his kingdom... well i hope you didn't like your units anyway.
The ease at whitch enemies can cross bodies of water makes having a navy more usefull than usually.

[LoSboccacc]

history is full of weird things happening however... carthage had this huge fleet and which romanii hadn't at that time, so romanii said screw that and made stupid cheap triremes copying the old greek design, but instead of gearing them for sea battle they filled them with regulars and brough a land battle on the bridge of each of the enemy ship

[askovdk]

I played through the demo a couple of times and I quite like what I see.
It seems to have a very good pacing, i.e. there are always a few nontrivial decisions to be made, - not to many and not to few.
The 'magic' wasn't that interesting, but that may be due to the player race in the demo (humans) and my playstyle (heal normal units).

[Bremen]

I played through the demo a couple of times and I quite like what I see.
It seems to have a very good pacing, i.e. there are always a few nontrivial decisions to be made, - not to many and not to few.
The 'magic' wasn't that interesting, but that may be due to the player race in the demo (humans) and my playstyle (heal normal units).

I did a lot of healing, as it seems quite useful and efficient. There's also the direct damage spells, of course, and given how battle lines tend to form the AoE versions will probably be useful.

I didn't get far into it in the demo, but there were also enchants for units and cities which will probably play a huge role in longer games. I got a spell that increased the speed cities grow at, which suddenly made me care a lot more about mana income

[EuchreJack]

Overall, I found the humans to be lackluster.  The monster and undead races seemed interesting, however.

What does everyone think of the AI?

[Bremen]

Overall, I found the humans to be lackluster.  The monster and undead races seemed interesting, however.

What does everyone think of the AI?

For a strategy game, it seems pretty good. I ended up at war against both the AIs in the demo, and our forces eventually settled into a rough north-south battleline, my units on one side and both of theirs forming the other. They'd retreat damaged units back to heal and where possible concentrate their attacks on my weakened units; they weren't at the same level as a good human but I did take some losses; they seemed far better tactically than I remember the Civ5 AI being. One of them was also using firestorm with frustrating effectiveness on grouped units.

Notably, they didn't try to kamikaze into small gaps that were obviously traps. Again, I'm not sure if that's because the AI was good enough to recognize a charge of the light brigade when it saw one, or if it just generally tries to keep its units concentrated.

Can't really speak to how effective they are economy wise.

[fenrif]

Had a go of this last night, and definatly seconding that the magic was probobly the least interesting part of the game for me. Especially the research system which, as far as I could tell, was rather random. It'd be nice if you could choose to focus on enchantments, for example. The way it is now just seems like its possible to get into a situation where you're researchign spell after spell that you don't want on the offchance that it'll randomly decide to give you something usefull once you're done.

As for the AI I thought it was decent. Twice in my game the AI snuck a unit in to last hit a city and steal it from me without actually causing war, which I thought was pretty smart. I only wish there was a way to propose city trades in the diplomacy screen, it seems like you don't have much options there as it is.

Definatly gonna get this though. It's nailed the "one more turn" feeling.