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One Joyful Day6 days ago

I liked this game. It was basically like Defender of the Crown, but only with the strategy part, and with more depth to it, yet still keeping the same simplicity that was essential to Defender of the Crown (I assume this was inspired by it, right?)

I beat the AIs on the Demo map, and unsatisfactory got no "You won!" displayed, but it just continued. But that is understandable, being early version.

I can see myself buying the full version of this game. If you would have a steam page, I would already wishlist it.

Basically only two things come to my mind to point you out, since rest of the stuff you are probably anyway going to be fixing without me saying them even.

First, when enemy attacks me, I had quite often confusion on which side was me. Couple of times it happened that I thought I was winning, was celebrating my win already, and then it says I lost... Not so bad when they were attacking defences, but bad when they attacked armies, as I could have used withdraw and save some of those men.

Another thing was about attacking those defensive buildings. It wasnt quite clear how Trebuchet worked and what the damage it did really meant. Like I saw there were 6 something, was it walls? and then it might have said it destroeyd 4 of them, or damaged some of them. I can understand that is a good thing, but how does it affect the battle, that I didnt quite get. Like did it make Ramming easier, or fighting more effective, and how much difference did it do?

Also, one thing that escaped me was if there was any point in having any of your units engaging when attacking, or if I should simply use all the points to x amount of Rams, and rest to Trebuchets? As seemed to me that engagement anyway happens when the Ram succeeds, and much more effectively than by using points to it.

Anyway, nice game, and almost ready to sell already, just little things like display when player won, and it can already be ready to sell.

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mzkrol5 days ago

Thank you for you comment.

Actually, it was inspired by a different game from Amiga/DOS - Vikings: Fields of Conquest. But indeed it has also some similarities with DotC. Demo does not have victory conditions implemented yet, though they are already included in the full version.

You can wishlist it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4380120/Horn_of_the_Warlord/

Yes, confusion around "which side am I" was also flagged to me a couple of times. Currently logic is very simple: attacker is always on the left. I could change the to "player always on the left", but I had some concerns that it would make player vs player more confusing, as you would never know on which side you would land, depending on who attacked who, etc. I will rethink it.

Trebuchets - their primary role is to decrease defense bonus, but they also have a chance to breach walls and increase engagement value. Decision what to construct depends on your army size, composition vs enemy's, and defense bonus. For stronghold I would highly recommend going for trebuchets first. 
In general, sieges are just about two values: engaged, and defense. Ladders increase first, trebuchets decrease second, and siege ram is a gamble to have a drastic increase of engage score.  Success of your siege rams depends on number of enemy archers. If enemy has a lot of archers/crossbowmen they destroy siege rams more easily. So it all depends if you want to attack enemy right away with ladders, or risk, wait some turns with a hope that siege rams will succeed and you will get more units into direct combat. 

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One Joyful Day3 days ago (1 edit)

Actually, decided to make another reply still. As in, what am I expecting from the full version. (I already wishlisted it on steam).

Normally it is very important to me that game has some sort of story, a campaign mode in this case for example. However, this is the kind of game that is exception. I dont care if this game has a story or not, since this is the kind of game where I just want to choose a map (with random choice as one option, or even random generated map) and play.

Since you are already planning on having map editor, this will probably solve pretty much all the problems, as in, giving me everything I want, as long as there are players.

For point is, there are certain kind of maps that I want. Naturally I want maps that I would call regular maps. Your demo map would be something I would describe as regular map.

But in addition to these, I also want some specific maps. Things like maps that represent real countries. For example, I could see that one fun option would be to have World War 2 map, which would start from certain year for example. Pick 1942 and germany has lots of area as example, instead of the regular, castle with surrounding areas. That would be great, as in, not just maps, but also scenarios.

I also want those special kind of maps, like one map that I want is such where each territory has one territory on left and right side of it, and they form a circle.

I also want one where they form a grid. As in, territory has one territory up, down, left, right, and then those territories are connection territories, which again connect to another territory which has one territory each up, down, left, right, forming a grid.

But those are kind of maps that might not be good at campaign, but they are those special maps that are fun to have there. But these kind of maps are lot of trouble starting to make yourself, but, with map/scenario editor, and lots of players who start making those maps themselves, and a way to make them available to other players easily, like clicking on menu "Custom Maps" -> "Other players maps", this problem will get solved itself, since community will start building all kinds of maps, like different countries maps.

Just make sure there is some sort of categorising system, mainly that there is at least Small, medium, big, very big map groups, so you can pick certain sized map for yourself, since that is the main thing I am looking at when playing a game like this. As in, most of time I want a quick game with small map, but sometimes I might want the largest possible, when I have time to play well.

And those scenarios. They open up all kinds of possibilites. Like there could be you vs just one AI, and the AI at beginning has whole loads of land, money, power, but maybe AI doesnt get any income, as in, he needs to survive with what he has, while you start from beginning, making it a game of starting against overpowering enemy, but one whos conquest you need to delay long enough to grow yourself strong.

All kinds of fun possibilities come up when having option to make a scenario, instead of always starting from beginning.

In what I am wanting, I would compare this game to a game called Slay: https://www.windowsgames.co.uk/slay.html

You can try it out for free. It is an old game, that I still keep playing every now and then. I can see similar charm and wanting similar gameplay from this game. Except, this one has an option for scenarios. Slay wouldnt work very well with scenarios, since the game play is too simple.

Anyway, check out Slay, and basically copy its game play options, which is practically just choose a map from multiple options, and play. That is what I want from the full version of this too. No need for story or campaign, since this the kind of game where I just want to quickly play one game separately from rest of the game, and come back to every now and then to play another.

Edit: Forgot to mention. I have completely Missed that Vigins: FIelds of Conquest game, which is a shame, since I would surely have enjoyed that one back then, especially since there was bit of a lack of strategy titles on Amiga at that point in time, and I was enjoying playing them.

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mzkrol3 days ago

Thanks for the reply.
That's the plan. I have already included in my full version different options for custom maps, as you can see on this screenshot. 

You will be able to choose from a wide range of maps, set players, difficulty, victory conditions. 
And I am also working on making sure that maps will be fun to play, and provide a lot of replayability. 
Same time, I also received a lot of feedback from people who would enjoy a game lore, campaign - that's also something that I am working on. Some of these maps could be considered as advanced tutorials to better understand different game mechanics and provide a gradual learning opportunity. 
And scenarios - specific challenges for players like: limited resources, disabled trading, no castles for player, defend island against vikings attacking your shores. 

For the map editor and sharing player maps - that's on my list, but it will depend on the user base. 
When it comes to maps like real world regions - probably it will not be possible, as you would have to draw regions manually, to match the real world ones. In Horn of the Warlord regions are randomly generated, an you can just decide what region type are these - water, grassland, hills, mountains, etc.
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One Joyful Day2 days ago

Yes indeed, that is all it needs and I will be satisfied customer already.

Now for the extra satisfactory by adding the scenario option, as in, you can choose what lands already belong to people and how many armies etc. and also possible other unusual conditions, like some kingdom cant recruit more units, or get more money or something like that.

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