Another way to solve this problem, without taking out elements that other people do enjoy, is to give you a way to skip the mission if it's not fun for you.
I had to play this map a second time. The first play allowed me to figure out a strategy. First, I realized forts heal your units. This saves you money. So after battles, I would head back to a fort to heal and create new sets of units I lost. Also, notice how along the way there are places to build. So I would set up a new tower and a fort or a camp. You may need to destroy an enemy structure first to obtain the build slot for yourself. Before heading directly into enemy territory, set up a nice base at the bottom of the map. There are a lot of build slots there. I used this as a base to send out troops. This level still took a long time to finish. If you time things poorly (which I did a lot) the enemy fire will really do harm to your units, slowing you down even more.
This game is seriously beautiful# one of the best implementations in the RTS genre I've ever seen on iOS! A few things I _really_ like: The fluidity of the draw-to-move gesture The way the gameplay appears optimized for the screen size it's running on I don't feel overwhelmed with things to do as I often do with other iOS RTS games the visual design! amazing! The weakest point is the conversation/scene interaction and presentation the drawings are great, but the way the text and interaction occurs is awful. Paris
Thanks. It took me a long time to get down there... Later I tried skirmish mode. I never get more than 4 or 5 units until they destroy my buildings again attack me from all sides. Any suggestions?
Sad that there is no help or hints or strategy book. If you play this time since a long time, you won't have problems to get along I think. But if you are new to this kind of games it really sucks. Try once to fly in air supremacy or skies of glory without proper training. You will feel the same.
Hi Jeffrey, what about Co-op against AI skirmishes pleeeeaaase? With the voice chat, this would be AWESOME Ability to play against multiple AIs, or just AIs with configurable army size.. oh boy.. Tom
For some reasons, my longer posts are moderated @mosquito60 There are a few skirmish strategies in the official forum, which I am unable to copy over. Tamast, JBRUU - that's an awesome idea, I will definitely investigate it!
Andrew Wiles spent seven years working on Fermat's Last Theorem. I doubt he once complained, whoever designed this problem made it too hard, they are supposed to give me a hint if I fail a few times. I'm three times your age, I remember when games could be hard. Now people complain if they get stuck, it's the designer's job to make sure they *feel* challenged, but they should not actually *be* challenged. But no, not everyone likes the idea that there is the illusion of challenge but things are set up so they really can't fail.
I totally agree that a game should be challenging. Without that element, it very quickly becomes boring. However, what I do not like and I suspect most people dislike is frustrating [\b] games. Of course the correlation between frustrating vs challenging is very relative and difficult to get right, but that's why there are (hopefully) difficulty settings. Sometimes one wants a challenging, thought provoking, drawn-out war with the computer that will require skill and brain power. Other times, a dumb-as-a-rock AI will suffice simply because the player doesn't care for a challenge. The key here is difficulty levels. That said, I haven't come to the supposedly frustrating part in the game yet, but I hope that it will be reasonable and well-explained.
It seems that a lot of games in the recent years decided to go down the path of easier difficulties rather than risk leaving a frustrated audience. I can understand the decision, but as an old school gamer myself, I find myself really enjoying games that gives a good challenge. They just give you a greater sense of achievement when you complete the game. Diablo III's inferno mode is perhaps the most recent game like that (sad I can't even remember the second most recent game I found tough), but it's really more of a grind and gear check to progress.
Just to note this game was originally for PC, then for other mobile phones, and finally ported to iPad by Bulkypix. Looks epic and love the watercolor style, reminds me of Sangokushi 12.
That is actually not true. Demo versions were released for the PC (2009 -- intended for Touch tables) and Windows Phone (2010). But the iPad version is the first full version of the game, and the first one to have a campaign -- the demos were multiplayer only. Most important, the game was always intended for touch-based interfaces. Also, iPad development was done by Touch Dimensions (the original developer of the demo version). BulkyPix only published the game.
Thanks Jeffrey, Co-op skirmishes would be so fun, especially if we can ramp up the difficulty/odds as required! Further ideas to expand the Skirmish mode for infinite replayability: Random map generator, or map editor and easy download user maps with ratings Up to 4 players with teams e.g. 2v2 Game types - e.g. Domination, King of the hill New units, races The game is already fantastic, and the mind boggles at how great it can become with further development. Thanks for your hard work! Tom
Some bugs and strange actions: I had about five times the app was frozen since I'm playing it. Now I'm on the map I have to reach the fortress. Sometimes the drawn paths don't really work, they become more direct and don't lead around obstacles. So some time you walk through wood without wanting it even if your finger went around the wood. Sometimes the unit stops at the end of the path, but then it starts going again. In the map you have the enemy towers or archers on the elevated plains, something strange happened more than twice. I wanted to make two units horses ride around the bottom of such a elevated plain. But then one unit follows the path and the other unit goes the other way round the plateau. Strange. After creating a unit, it starts going in one direction without order to go there. But after all: You guys did a great job. It is really fun.
I realise in order for your path to take, you need to make sure you don't draw onto any impassible terrain. If you do so, the game would just draw a path based on the shortest possible distance to the end point after hitting an obstacle. Useful if you don't need real control and can just draw a straight line from A to B, but I guess you need to zoom-in the map for more precision if you need it. And just in case you didn't notice it yet (and it's not mentioned in-game), you can draw a path from the fort, and that would set a rally point for it. All units you then produce would follow that path. Hold a finger on the fort to cancel the rally point.
It's really interesting to watch their 2009 demo and see them playing on platforms such as a canvas, xbox 360, mobile phone, mobile tablet, tabletop tablet, PC and whiteboard. I'm happy they decided to choose the ipad as this is now one of my favorite RTS games. The video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdjLuysuG1M
