So Ive only been playing this game for a few days and I already love it. Im coming from triton, and Ive noticed some problems with this game that I didnt have in triton
Namely, Im talking about sleep. In Triton, there were no special abilities to activate, so if you could easily give a last set of orders before going to bed with reasonable certainty that what needed to be done overnight would be done.
But in Blight, I keep running into a problem where a new a unit is being trained, or is moving into position to use an ability, and will be ready in like 4 hours. But after 5 hours it will be too late. And this of course happens at midnight, local time.
I would like to see some future order mechanic to avoid this problem. For example, in Triton you could set a fleet to a different order eat each waypoint in its path, such as āpick up all shipsā or āleave x ships behindā. This way, you didnt need to be online at the exact hour your carrier jumped into a given system to make sure it dropped off the right amount of fighters. If imported to blight, it would allow the archers Im training to shoot a given zombie mob as soon as Itās trained, or allow my Dragonhelm Knight to call a mob as soon as it reaches a certain waypoint. Right now, my only way to handle it seems to be by giving an ally in another timezone my password and having them do it for me.
TL;DR give us an āif:thenā mechanic so I dont have to stay awake 24/7
Hey @EminentDomain thanks for the feedback. This is a popular request and It something I think we will have to do something about soon!
I think it was a much bigger problem in Neptuneās Pride though where the enemies were real players.
In Blight the enemies are these mindless zombies and they are fairly predictable. There are always coming, they are not going to backstab you, and they always try and move to the nearest settlement.
What I find myself doing is pulling back back at night time, bunkering down, I donāt put my heroes out there at night when I might need to micro manage their movement.
I thought it was kind of cool when I noticed myself doing it because thats what you would really do in a war with zombies!
The zombies should always try and move to the nearest settlement. If there are two the same distance away, one will be chosen randomly.
Sometimes zombies stand around, confused at having been woken from the dead, waiting for other zombied to catch up and urge them on.
There are some small issues when a zombie wants to get to a river that is on the far side of a river or lake but most of the time they should move mostly predictably.
If there are not settlements left you lose the game. The zombies only need to eat all the civs, they donāt need to chase down every soldier. (because flying)
The donāt die, if they seem to disappear then its a bug and I should fix it!
Problem Iām running into is small windows of opportunity to get a vital power activated, or just confusion where the zombies are ultimately heading. Case in point:
Saturday night Iām playtesting Watering Hole with BlightedPea. We got a bad RNG and had a Necromancer assault 2 Giant Mounds and raise a 20-40k Giant horde. Iām rushing a Hound Master up there because we are utterly hosed if that horde reaches any other settlements. The horde is equidistant from 3 other settlements. Theyāre all 2 hexes away in the same general direction. The horde movement prediction is only up to one hex ahead. My strategy changes drastically depending on which settlement they target.
I did the math and the Most Optimized play involved logging in at the exact moment they reached the next point and either 1)see where theyāre heading next or 2)being able to use the Hound Masterās 1-league range power on them for the split-second they were in rangeā¦ which was 4:30 AM on Easter Sunday.
I was not happy.
Then there was a mistake where I thought they took the quickest path as a tiebreaker with equidistant settlementsā¦ only to wake up the next morning and realize they were heading for the hardest-to-reach settlement, which completely FUBARed my plans. And I couldnāt Hound Master them for the split second they were within range because I didnāt wake up at 4:30. I had to salvage that by blowing most of my Valor & several Coins to draw a Wizard for extra crowd-control. I wasnāt happy.
And then apparently the horde split up in different directions after getting "You Shall Not Passāed due to Bugs, at which point I threw up my hands and admitted I had no idea HTF the zombie AI in this game was supposed to work.
The whole ānot knowing when/where the zombies are moving until they actually start movingā RNG is extremely aggravating because it often limits how far you can plan ahead to 6-8 hours, and because the optimal way of gathering intel is brute force ārefresh the game every 10 minutes until they begin movingā.
A good Order Queue system for BotI would require at least 5 things:
Certain knowledge of a zombie hordeās next target and when theyāll
start moving towards it. Their exact force when they move out is
optional & less important. If players donāt have that, Optimized
Play will always involve brute force ārefresh game every 10 minutes
for best intelā.
Queuing up Claiming settlements. You flag a
settlement to be claimed, the Valor for it is set aside into a
Reserve Pool, and your first unit that crosses it auto-Claims it.
Queuing up training. Set aside the Gold required into a Reserve
Pool. (Shouldnāt be necessary for deployments.)
Setting up a waypoint for newly-trained units from Settlement X to automatically
head to. (Once again, shouldnāt be necessary for deployments.)
Queuing up ability use the moment the targeted horde gets into
range. Set aside the Mana required into a Reserve Pool.
My goal is letting someone play optimally 95% of the time just by checking in once every 12 hours.