Game Play / Fun City Builders

[mjdflying]

I love City Builder/Strategy/Management style games, I am very excited to be a backer of Ancient Cities which is combing the best game play into one, Strategy, Survival and City Builder!

That being said, I have been very disappointed by some games that have beautiful polished visuals but sorely lack immersion or the immersion is so in-depth you need a weeks vacation to understand how to play the game.
I am hoping Ancient Cities combines the stunning graphics it is currently showcasing with some fun and long term rewarding game play.

Things I like that help make City Builder games fun: (in no particular order)

• For starters, I love the fact that Ancient Cities will allow each citizen to have their own aspirations and decide how to live, where they work and if they come or leave the city. But then give me the ability to rule over them with love or an iron fist. I want to create a society of my own devising and decide the fate of all those around me. I would like to be able to discipline or remove a bad citizen and reward a good one.

• Hot keys are great but too many key/mouse combinations can be overwhelming.
  Combining W-A-S-D keys with a mouse to look around isn’t fun.
  Easy viewing, rotating and zooming with a mouse along with Edge scrolling makes for a fun game.

• I like when I can easily “hover over” menu items to get more detailed descriptions, including in-game items/resources

• I like when I can easily save/delete games and be able to custom title those game saves. I played a couple of new games that do not allow custom titles when saving, rather they just attribute time, date, map data. Works for the short term but not good for numerous game saves.

• I like the freedom of placing items anywhere on the map and designing my own custom layouts. Including landscaping, flowers, trees, rocks.

• I love in-game campaigns that also include various side missions.

• I love building, weapon and tool upgrades. Even individual citizen skill upgrades are fun and challenging.

• Music and sound tracks are important but so is variety. The same tune gets to be a bit much after awhile.

• Game speed control is great feature to include. Nothing worse than feeling like you’re watching paint dry.

• I like having the ability to turn off weather cycles and day/night features. It’s frustrating when you start laying out your city and the game cycles into night or endless fog/rain weather patterns.

• I also like when I receive warnings before running out of food or other necessities. Flashing red around menu icons is the best, constant pop up messages get really annoying.

• Achievements are a must!

Well this is my short list, agree, disagree or add to it.

[Uncasual]

@mjdflying

Hot keys are great but too many key/mouse combinations can be overwhelming.
Combining W-A-S-D keys with a mouse to look around isn’t fun.
Easy viewing, rotating and zooming with a mouse along with Edge scrolling makes for a fun game.

Both, WASD and edge movement, are already implemented for the camera movement.

@mjdflying

I like when I can easily “hover over” menu items to get more detailed descriptions, including in-game items/resources

We implement tool tips over icons and buttons as a contextual help.

@mjdflying

I like the freedom of placing items anywhere on the map and designing my own custom layouts. Including landscaping, flowers, trees, rocks.

For some of these you will have to wait for the terrain editor.

@mjdflying

I like having the ability to turn off weather cycles and day/night features. It’s frustrating when you start laying out your city and the game cycles into night or endless fog/rain weather patterns.

In AC weather and night are not mere visuals, so it cant be disabled. But if you build at real time stating in the morning you have 2 full real time hours until night, and you can skip nights very fast.

@mjdflying

I also like when I receive warnings before running out of food or other necessities. Flashing red around menu icons is the best, constant pop up messages get really annoying.

The game will inform you of each important thing you need to know.

@mjdflying

Game speed control is great feature to include. Nothing worse than feeling like you’re watching paint dry.

Already implemented.

@mjdflying

I love in-game campaigns that also include various side missions.

At this moment AC is being developed as a sandbox.
Campaign is not planed for the first release. For later: we don’t know.

@mjdflying

Achievements are a must!

Not a priority right now.

[mjdflying]

Sounds great, thank you for the reply!

[mjdflying]

I have been watching the [youtube videos] (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZJT9aoKkR0EII6FgCmC6Ig) from your channel, awesome and very informative!

In the video [Ancient Cities : Basic building] (Ancient Cities : Basic building - YouTube) at 0.52 a basic fence is selected and placed around the camp. Later in the game will this fence be upgradable?

Also, when upgrading will the existing resources be applied?

I ask this question because while playing games like Banished, it is always annoying and time consuming when all of the resources from demolished structures have to be fully returned to the stockpile areas before a new structure is built. Or when you place a new structure on top of existing resources, most of which will be needed for the new structure, you have to wait for the resources to be harvested and brought to stockpiles only to be brought back to the build site.

[briana.perrie]

All the letters from the readers are " fair comment", but I feel that even if only half were implemented that the game would be bogged down with minutiae to the extent that the game would become unplayable. But, when will we see the game released.