FINALIS DIEBUS VECTIS
A strategy game about fighting over what little is left.
This was my entry to Narrat Jam 2! That's right, I made this in a visual novel engine as an enrichment activity!
A strategy game about fighting over what little is left.
This was my entry to Narrat Jam 2! That's right, I made this in a visual novel engine as an enrichment activity!
Comments
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Nice game.
I just want to say, this seems pretty good so far, but the main thing that I really recommend is adding little VN style "updates" depending on your progress along a victory path. Though It'd definitely be interesting if all the victory critera can interact, depending on the faction!
Basically, my first (only, so far) playthrough went like this. I restarted the game 5 times before even ending the first turn, in order to re-read the rules and mess around with making moves a few times. Then I started as the Empire, and ended up deciding to just play minimal defense on the east, while aggressivesy attacking the orange faction to the west right away. With the current AI, that worked out well, since the yellow and green factions attacked each other as often as they attacked me. Anyway, I basically managed to defeat the oranges, only to discover that both my other enemies were fielding armies of 900+, and I ended up just fighting a desperate, never-ending battle to hold the capital. Every time the plant-heads and barbarian maniacs pushed into my territory, I pushed them right back and held firm, trying to hold that purple border. And then, the tide started to turn. Holding Neo-Amsterdam turn after turn, and using the supplies wisely, meant my upgraded cities were turning out units fast enough to really hold the line! Hundreds of peasant militia were slaughtered every round, but we held the line, giving and taking the same villages turn after turn, while oh-so-slowly, the artillery rolled east...
And then I won! Just like that! A prestige victory! It was a complete surprise! I guess 5 restarts wasn't enough to understand the actual rules, because I had no idea I was about to win!
Anyway, it was actually a really unique experience compared to Civilization or whatever! Not actually understanding the victory conditions meant that I was just desperately fighting to do the best I could. Which definitely seems very thematic for the Empire!
I just hope you can come up with some kind of narrative system that can pick up on things like that, and feed the player appropriate story bits. Like, the overall gameplay balance is designed to provoke a certain playstyle with each faction. And I absolutely, 100% got the "desperate ancient empire struggling to hold onto their last vestiges of power" from my Empire playthrough!
Oh, one last thing, the "next turn" prompt kept coming up after the game was over. I never saw any kind of definite game over or anything, because I wanted to see what would happen if I clicked that instead. And all the enemy turns just kept going invisibly. Oops? I have no idea if there are actual endings yet!
The basics are pretty good, but the balancing really needs work.
The yellow faction is absolutely, ridiculously, overpowered. they have the best basic units, the best unique unit and on top of that they get a free bombardment. I can win with all the factions because the AI isn't the best, but with yellow I can do it in less than 10 turns. Oh yeah there's also something about extra prestige for some reason. Especially orange, you can make them fall completely flat on their faces by bombarding their unique unit turn 1 if you're willing to deal with the blue army on your doorstep the hard way.
Blue really has nothing going for it, their units are weak, their ability is more a downside than an upside and they are obviously badly positioned between the other factions. I'm honestly incapable of breaking yellow or green with them (okay I could probably beat green if I didn't have to constantly send troops to keep yellow back), all I can do is take out orange and then hold on to the borders for a prestige victory and that only because the AI keeps thousands of units sitting around.
Orange could have been good with the way their unique unit snowballs into creating more of itself, but the AI being very passive hampers it because everything quickly becomes defended by units sitting around. Maybe if it started with a few more of them?
Green feels like the most balanced faction, though any competence from yellow obviously destroys them, being the one faction that doesn't suffer from attrition. Whether to move or to seed is an interesting strategic decision.
Oh for sure yes! The orange AI actually doesn't know how to use its unique unit properly right now, but hopefully I'll fix that with an update! Blue only winning a defensive victory is kind of intentional, as they're meant to be the 'survive' decaying empire faction rather than the 'win' faction
The issue I see is that it is only possible to survive/win as the Empire because the AI is pretty bad. AI improvement is going to make it literally impossible to win with them.
For orange my issue is more that because the other AI factions leave units laying around everywhere it is really hard to find a target to raid.
Another more UX focused thing: for the green faction the unit spawning is really slow and feels unnecessary. It'd be nice if instead the infaction level was just shown on the map, but honestly I'd be perfectly fine if the units just appeared like normal reinforcements without any message.
Very fun! A handful of spaces need descriptions, and some spaces-- namely Godshill Border Fort and Northwood, as well as possibly Shorwell Pass and Colossal Squid Bay-- seem like they really should have a defense modifier but don't currently (I would think 50 for the Fort, 5-20 for the forest, 15 for the pass, and 5 for the barbed-wire fences). The game seems like it would be fun local multiplayer, if that's ever an option. In such a case, I would vote the Empire gets the first turn. Also I wanna play the nomads but oh well :(
thats a good suggestion actually, I might tweak those values when i update :). Maybe there'll be a nomad option one day too
Good game! Hope there’s more map and stuff in the future.