Against the Storm - Fantasy roguelite city builder

[Kruyurk]

I actually like it when people leave during low resolve, it filters the ungrateful ones out of my utopia.

 

[jackofshadows]

I almost never build roads, sometimes I will if I get the +10% speed road perks. Dirt roads aren't worth it and stone roads require you to have stone but I get clay so often and I use stone for glade events a lot.

Aren't woirth what? A random builder which don't have any other tasks at the moment anyway? Logistics is very important. Even 5% w/o road perks is nice to have.

The thing about the Kiln for me is that it takes up one of your limited building slots. If I get it for free from Orders or Glade Events or Traders I'll happily use it.

Same, except I don't even like Klin in general. Would use only if got from trader and have no other fuel sources. It takes up workers too after all, better send them to actually get new resources instead of increasing the value of something you're already have.

I almost always play with 2 woodcutter camps, usually enough for me.

Almost never loot caches w/o silent looting or that +resolve cornerstone.

And yeah, with time I appreciate rain engines more, their bonuses are very useful and flexible. Sometimes you just need to use buildings as resthouses as Dr Skeleton said.

 

[Axioms]

I almost never build roads, sometimes I will if I get the +10% speed road perks. Dirt roads aren't worth it and stone roads require you to have stone but I get clay so often and I use stone for glade events a lot.

Aren't woirth what? A random builder which don't have any other tasks at the moment anyway? Logistics is very important. Even 5% w/o road perks is nice to have.

The thing about the Kiln for me is that it takes up one of your limited building slots. If I get it for free from Orders or Glade Events or Traders I'll happily use it.

Same, except I don't even like Klin in general. Would use only if got from trader and have no other fuel sources. It takes up workers too after all, better send them to actually get new resources instead of increasing the value of something you're already have.

I almost always play with 2 woodcutter camps, usually enough for me.

Almost never loot caches w/o silent looting or that +resolve cornerstone.

And yeah, with time I appreciate rain engines more, their bonuses are very useful and flexible. Sometimes you just need to use buildings as resthouses as Dr Skeleton said.

I prefer not to fiddle with stuff. Roads can block building placements I want, you have to shift them around all the time as you open up more cleared land, and there's other issues. I don't build unbuffed basic roads for the same reason I only play Speed 3 with Pause and never use the other speeds. Fiddling around for a 5% bonus is a waste of real life time. Also roads can be a hassle when you have to build important stuff. No chance I'm screwing with the build priority buttons.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

I usually sell lots of parts, tools, wildfire, and 100 or so food to traders. Then I buy planks first, then cloth/bricks depending on buildings/races, and then I buy as many relevant perks/buildings/cornerstones as possible. My traders usually have 5-6 because I have completed the meta progression tree.

This seems very inefficient to me, why not just make your own planks, cloth and bricks? Parts, tools and wildfire are all expensive as hell and hard to get, basic building materials aren't. Parts especially are very precious and hard to replace, I never sell them unless the game is already close to won. You should get the buildings for making 1-2 if not all of planks/bricks/cloth from the first 3 blueprints you get at the start of the game, and even using a crude workstation for some time is more efficient than buying them, eventually with more blueprints and discovered ruins I like to have at least a two star recipe for all basic materials, then I set the production limit at ~40-100 (depending on what else is going on) for each, it's enough to build everything and I can sell the surplus. I understand buying them sometimes when you get a bad blueprint set or can't find resource nodes to make them or just need a quick plank boost for 6 beaver houses or something, but I'd trade surplus resources or amber for them, never something valuable.

 

[cvv]

I prefer not to fiddle with stuff. Roads can block building placements I want, you have to shift them around all the time as you open up more cleared land, and there's other issues. I don't build unbuffed basic roads for the same reason I only play Speed 3 with Pause and never use the other speeds. Fiddling around for a 5% bonus is a waste of real life time. Also roads can be a hassle when you have to build important stuff. No chance I'm screwing with the build priority buttons.

Playing exclusively with speed 3/pause too, don't see any good reason for anything else.

And agree about the roads, basic ones are a complete waste of time, plus I don't typically have any free builders with nothing to do, trying to be as pop efficient as possible. And when I do have slackers it's usually the late game and I've won anyway. And other types of roads are too expensive.

Btw it's just my feeling but from the few initial maps I did build roads I had the feeling pops prioritized roads even if it'd be actually faster to take a shortcut through the buildings. Just my feeling tho.

 

[J1M]

Ultimately, I didn't like this game. It is constantly raining and the random draw of both your tools and objectives is annoying. Game desperately needed some hand crafted scenarios. I also don't like how many different variations there are for each recipe. Mushroom flour? Really?

The main flaw though in my opinion is that the primary skill of the game seems to be waiting for time to pass so that objectives unlock, workers arrive, etc.

I had a lot more enjoyable lite city builder experience playing 1849.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

I like the game well enough, but so far the thing I like the least is that as far as I can tell the game has no ending or not even a specific goal. I get that it's a "rougelike" (sort of), but would it really be so hard to have some sort of a super difficult final seal map after which the blight cycle stops or something? You can always have an option to play after the game's ending, the other way around not so much, because there is no ending. Or have the city expand to reclaim nearby lands as the technology improves and cycles last longer and the world changes? Any sort of progression outside of unlocking the perk tree? Anything at all? I haven't done all seals yet, haven't done the final prestige levels, haven't done the queen's hand challenge, but as far as I can tell none of these things actually progress the game in any way, anything more than viceroy difficulty and unlocking further seals is a self-imposed challenge. This is fine for a while, but the game is getting samey, I feel like I've seen all the dangerous/forbidden glade events multiple times and even with random draws of blueprints and cornerstones the general way I play is similar.

 

[cvv]

I like the game well enough, but so far the thing I like the least is that as far as I can tell the game has no ending or not even a specific goal. I get that it's a "rougelike" (sort of), but would it really be so hard to have some sort of a super difficult final seal map after which the blight cycle stops or something?

Wait, there is no "end the blighstorm" scenario here? So you get to P20 and that's it? The storm still rages on and all you can do is play on P20 forever?

 

[Dr Skeleton]

As far as I can tell that's the case, though I'm not there yet, I restarted my progress for the 1.00 version, and the queen's hand challenge is also a new thing, so maybe there's something? Or maybe they're planning to add something in a later patch? I played the game months ago in the early access and it had no ending then, and I haven't seen anything in the patch notes that would indicate they added one.

edit: also in the some of the earlier versions other factions used to make their own towns and you could trade with them and compete for map modifiers on the world map, at the end of the cycle you'd get extra resources from the queen depending on how successful your towns were compared to other factions, instead of expanding on this they removed it, so now it looks like the player is the only viceroy that does anything anymore.

 

[jackofshadows]

The final thing is the queen's challenge. In order to do it, first you must close the last seal (adamantine) while playing with the default profile. Then you go to the main menu and choose a new profile which obviously restart your tree progress but also instead of a tree you'll see this:

I.e. same upgrades but pretty cheap and again, in a rogue-like manner.

So then you must close the last seal again and you have only 1 try. From the looks of it, that's a really hardcore challenge. Because you need to clear settlements on high prestige levels w/o any/little upgrades and that's brutal, I've tried only once so far and failed.

Then you have "deeds" - basically achievements some of them will force to play in specific way. Other than that yeah, this game isn't about scenarious but that's the point. And it works for me: I like city builders but usually I play them for a few days or so, maybe a week while this shit has drowned me into 400h minus alt-tab etc.

 

[cvv]

So then you must close the last seal again and you have only 1 try. From the looks of it, that's a really hardcore challenge. Because you need to clear settlements on high prestige levels w/o any/little upgrades and that's brutal, I've tried only once so far and failed.

Damn, I usually don't shirk from challenge but this sounds too daunting. Well I'll definitely go as far as the last seal, at the least.

 

[Gerrard]

I gave up on this game after they added the turbo autist mode with the 1.0 update. If that's the audience they want (and apparently the devs only listen to the giga autists on the discord as well) then good luck to them.

 

[cvv]

So I wrapped the game up on lvl 12. It's been a blast and it ate all my game time in the past 2 weeks but ultimately it's just waaaay too time hungry. Took me 50 hours to get to lvl 12, didn't even unlock the lead seal. It's a fun game but I couldn't go on for hundreds of hours more or whatever to get to the final challenge (and most likely fail at it). Plus I've already started feeling the low prestige levels are about as much challenge as I still find fun without stressing too much, especially over the Christmas.

Plus to be honest, I'll probably always prefer more "permanent" city builders like Anno to the roguelike randomness.

Plus my gaming backlog is a mile long and I really wanna play some other games these holidays.

Definitely one of the runners-up for my GOTY tho.

 

[Nirvash]

Man, the grind is getting heavy here and some progression goals are pretty stupid.

I'm gonna fail the gold seal cuz... i lack the stupid 35 fragments to start it, got zero events/landmark for extra, made 5 towns for nothing.
Fragments are a bad mechanic.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i reached max level, gold seal and dropped it. the game past this point is going to stay the same, only harder, its difficulty stemming not from your skill but just and only from the first 3 random buildings. if you don't get the workshop and a farm as soon as possible you're going to lose.
but the ride has been good.

 

[jackofshadows]

i reached max level, gold seal and dropped it. the game past this point is going to stay the same, only harder, its difficulty stemming not from your skill but just and only from the first 3 random buildings. if you don't get the workshop and a farm as soon as possible you're going to lose.
but the ride has been good.

That're big fat fake news. Won many games w/o some *** for basic materials like planks for the entire run on prestige 11-20. And farms. Obvious example any marshlands run but there was also an achievement for playing w/o fertile soil and I did it also on prestige 15 or something. Wasn't hard since I got 1-2 decent - hostility cornerstones therefore could open more glades than usual for resources. Moreover, for some (long) time I've had a habit not to open the first 3 blueprints until opening of the first 2 dangerous glades in case of finding there some ruins. Worked just fine however decided against that tactic after all.

Anyway, I've also dropped it on the final challenge, seems too hard for me, didn't try more than 1 settlement though. Maybe they've tuned it since then.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

That're big fat fake news

proceeds to explain how you don't have to be lucky on one aspect, all it takes is being extremely lucky in everything else.

 

[Nirvash]

Failed platinum 2 times.
First time i was just not ready and got bad luxury rng.
But second time the damn "+cist every x season and +3 cist when someone leave" fucked my ass sideways, almost did it but damn that "use 50000 water in engines".

 

[jackofshadows]

That're big fat fake news

proceeds to explain how you don't have to be lucky on one aspect, all it takes is being extremely lucky in everything else.

Look, the first 3 (2 iirc on higher diff) blueprints aren't that important, I assure you. All I can at this point is to ask you what struggles you at your games when you fail in order to help. You don't have to be lucky with the tree even at 20 prestige. The new non-tree runs is a whole other matter though but that's not your case as I've got.

"use 50000 water in engines".

Never did that. Did you try to buy luxury and forbid it until the start of the season in order to hit the rep thresholds?

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

game is boring and repetitive, surprised at the super high review score, only reason I really even tried it out...is it because people really like little beavers or furry's or something? Game was not all that special, and getting tired of the entire 'rouge like and rougelite' genera in general. Boring computer generated repetitiveness is a terrible replacement for actual intentional well designed game play and story. Autism is a terrible disease, and AI is not close to being a substitute for even mediocre human intentional design.

 

[0wca]

I like how the game constantly challenges you by mixing up different bonuses and effects for each region. I play on Veteran difficulty and it feels just right, not too easy not to hard. Only made like 6 settlements so far so I don't know how it's gonna be further on but so far it's been a challenging and fun strategy.

 

[jackofshadows]

In other news, this cornerstone was always very strong in general but fucking op coupled with the (it was reworked once by the way) Temple. You just turning sacrifice on and pretty much never turn off since some point. As a result, -shitillion hostility, easy-peasy. In this one I got to it pretty late, more specifically, actually pretty early but didn't realize instantly how op it is and did the cleansing (I've got Holy Temple, which leads to even more -hostility bonus since I had 2 education need races).

By the way, in some patch they've buffed mines big time. I mean, some of you guys kinda had a point about them being too weak but now in other game I've upgraded it once for +speed just because I had recourses and I saw like 300+ coal, which enough for a whole game. That's too much I'd say.

 

[Dickie]

I was curious about the game mode you can unlock, but I don't think I'm gonna make it. I'm not great at the game, so I just find it stressful to play the higher prestige levels, roughly around the ones that cut your cornerstone and building choices down to two and reduce the impatience reduction by half. I can't even imagine trying to beat a seal map on prestige 20.

Only 1.5% of people have the achievement for winning a game on Prestige 20, so I figure slightly less than 1.5% of players have unlocked this game mode. Seems kinda crazy to hide it so thoroughly.

 

[jackofshadows]

The really annoying level is 19 where you have to pay amber for opening glades. Other than that, nothing really changes after yeah you enter 'real' random (choose from two) territory.

I imagine if to do run just for the achievement one could refresh cycles in order to get 1-2 major positive modes right from the start so it's not hard at all, the stats are like that because subj is a major hit and most people don't even bother trying higher difficulties.

And like I said earlier, in order to do the last seal you aren't even bound to do runs strictly on 20 lvl, even 11 will do if you do them most near negative modes. The seal run itself is pretty rough thought I'd say, yeah. But the new mode is downright insane, I wonder how many testers even done it. Maybe I'll give it a real go later.

 

[0wca]

I actually don't even know how to make a seal. I've done several cycles now and only got fragments. How many fragments do I even need to craft one and where do I do it?