TLDR major gripe is bold.
I played the Demo today until the time ran out. Indeed felt like DF lite to me. And more alarming it felt much less fun.
I think it felt less fun mainly due to the Hero mechanic and don't really having anything meaningful to do after a certain point/the game not requiring any player input whatsoever. I mean taking some "burden" from the player by automating tedious processes is fine, but I think Towns is taking it a bit too far. Beginning with the mid-game it feels like watching a Screensaver instead of playing a game. But let me rewind:
Basically what you do in the beginning is set up production lines for materials and food. You can also easily and very quickly automate these processes.
For example you can designate an area to plant new trees. Once the offspring is planted, every time the tree in that spot is chopped down, a new one will grow in the same spot automatically over (a very short period of) time. Then you tell the game "we need X wood in the stockpile at all time". Once this is done, you will never have to worry about gathering wood anymore.
You can also do this with the food production lines. If you play it smart and with a little bit of foresight (more people will eventually require more food, so build the automatic food production lines bigger than needed in the beginning. This doesn't take much time nor resources), you also won't really have to worry about food any longer. Except once you have more people you just tell the game "we need Y food instead of X food in the stockpile at all time", thanks to the bigger potential capacity/infrastructure you built in the beginning, this can be done literally in a matter of 5 seconds.
A handful of production lines are not available from the start (for example some new resources like iron are found within the first levels of the dungeon), but getting a new production line running is like I mentioned neither hard nor time consuming. A single workshop with a couple of workbenches for each resource/from each building type is enough for eternity.
Then you build houses (a couple more than you have population to attract new Townsfolk). And produce weapons/armor and outfit your townsfolk. You can also designate townsfolk to become soldiers. Like in DF you can assign soldiers to groups and set patrol routes. But now comes the Towns twist:
You also have to build a Tavern, which attracts heroes to your settlement. The difference between soldiers and heroes? Unlike soldiers, whose stats are solely defined by their equipment, heroes also level up and gain enhanced attributes and even new skills while doing so. Your soldiers - who you can control via waypoints - might be able to clear the first couple of levels from the dungeon, but deeper down they don't stand a chance and you have to rely on your heroes to kill the monsters there.
BUT here is the thing: you as player have zero control over heroes. They randomly either decide to venture into the underground dungeon, idle in the town or grab something to eat. You can't order the heroes to go somewhere specific via waypoints or some other mechanic (for example would have been neat to set rewards for slaying a specific monster or venture to level X of the dungeon - you know, the player having the role of a questgiver. Or open a shop where you sell produced goods/weapons/armor to them. At least that would have been kinda gamey). At this point in the game, the only thing left to do for you as player is to watch the game play itself until your heroes decide to go into the next level of the dungeon. You just watch the heroes do their thing and from time to time you dig one space into the next level of the dungeon and set up a 5-second build order for the new resource that is encountered on that level.
If the heroes encounter a new type of enemy they might drop some unique material from which you can craft better weapons/armor (once again, requiring 5 seconds of input to order something to be stockpiled/produced).
And then you get bored playing a screensaver. Judging from the LP there are occasional "invasions" but in my two games I played it never happened to me even though I my heroes went relatively deep into the dungeon. But I was prepared anyways: My settlement had only one entrance with traps and a garrison of soldiers standing idly by.
What you can do of course is build some more living space/houses to attract even more townsfolk/heroes or just mock about building some useless stuff like green stone walls instead of grey stone walls. But even that felt more fun in DF. Perhaps because DF gives you more decoration, building, and resources types to play with. And of course those memorable, occasional OMG/DRAMA/WTF moments. I didn't have a single one of those in Towns at all.
Even simple things like digging down and finding a cave in DF is exciting, as you wonder what might happen / what you stumble upon next. Not so much in Towns for me personally. Or building a golden tomb in honor of your heroic dwarven brother that fell in combat against a multiheaded dick. Once again I don't feel that urge in Towns.
Honestly, I really just sat there idly waiting for the heroes to go deeper without doing anything for about 15 minutes. Then they found Hobgoblinite (resource dropped from new monsters encountered), I set up production for new armor and Khopeshs with a couple mouse clicks, then sat idle for another 5 minutes or so. After production finished - getting kind of excited - I sent my soldiers equipped with those shiny new toys into the dungeon. Thinking the past dungeon levels might have been unbalanced/I was unlucky with resources. But nope, once again the soldiers didn't stand a chance and got slaughtered by a room full of enemies. I guess what you could actively do is look on previous dungeon levels for unexplored space and send your soldiers there, hoping they can deal with those lower level monsters thanks to new gear. What totally "clearing" those previous dungeon floors would do is ensure heroes going to the deepest available level (if they decide to enter the dungeon. not idling in town forever).
But yeah overall I have to say I'm not really blown away by Towns. I think I'll stick with DF for the time being.
