Silva
Arcane
Ok, after playing more of Ascension I think I've found it's cracks too.
1) As RK47 said, bows and muskets don't matter much. And worse, it seems their stats are indeed swaped around. I did a series of tests yesterday and my bow units did more damage than my muskets units. Also, the muskets are supposed to inflict confusion on the enemy occasionally but it never happened to me. So, if you use muskets in this game you're handicapping yourself (and it's bizarrely unhistorical too).
2) The problem with CPU never getting resources is true too. I thought the problem was with the daimyo, but in truth the problem is with the CPU Lords. As they now must ask the daimyo for resources (instead of getting it themselves or having the players simply send it to them). The result is that the daimyo fiefs develop normally but the Lord's houses stay pretty inane through all the game. I think this is by design and not a bug per se, but it's a design that can make some CPU clans weaker in the long run, and thus handicap the AI/make the game easier.
3) Back to muskets, it's also weird how it's handled in Ascension. While in SOI its a valuable and finite resource that you must strategically buy and distribute to your trooos/lords, and which makes the player anxious to receive a visit of European traders (as they bring the biggest amount of muskets), in Ascension it's something you "research" and then produce yourself with the condition of having a rare and random resource (Iron sand). Again the consequences for this sound bad to me. First that it can make clans that traditional used muskets earlier (like Oda) never having thenopportunity to get them. Second that it makes the different types of merchants useless. And third that it nullifies an apparent interesting mechanic from SOI that is the spread of Christianity and muskets (it seems if you take bases that had Christianity in them, you would get access to muskets too).
4) Same for horses. As they depend upon rare resources on the map, you may have a campaign where Takeda never get it.
5) The AI criteria for assigning Lords is solely honor in Ascension, while in SOI it also counted the officer main stats. The result is that in Ascension there are more weaker stats lords taking care of fiefs and leading armies for the CPU, and sometimes even famous leaders (like Shibata Katsuye or Toshiie Maeda) end up without their own castles or armies. This makes the game easier, again.
That seems to be it. I've not played original SOI (yet, I'll get i too) but just by playing Ascension more it's clear that some of it's design decisions (and bugs) could have benefited from a couple more updates/rebalancing. It's not enough to make the game bad, but once you play enough and see those cracks, yes, it leaves a sour taste on your mouth. Original SOI benefited from more updates and a whole PUK (Power Up Kit, how the Japanese called it, basically expansion) and it shows. If Ascension had it's own PUK I believe it would end up even better.
1) As RK47 said, bows and muskets don't matter much. And worse, it seems their stats are indeed swaped around. I did a series of tests yesterday and my bow units did more damage than my muskets units. Also, the muskets are supposed to inflict confusion on the enemy occasionally but it never happened to me. So, if you use muskets in this game you're handicapping yourself (and it's bizarrely unhistorical too).
2) The problem with CPU never getting resources is true too. I thought the problem was with the daimyo, but in truth the problem is with the CPU Lords. As they now must ask the daimyo for resources (instead of getting it themselves or having the players simply send it to them). The result is that the daimyo fiefs develop normally but the Lord's houses stay pretty inane through all the game. I think this is by design and not a bug per se, but it's a design that can make some CPU clans weaker in the long run, and thus handicap the AI/make the game easier.
3) Back to muskets, it's also weird how it's handled in Ascension. While in SOI its a valuable and finite resource that you must strategically buy and distribute to your trooos/lords, and which makes the player anxious to receive a visit of European traders (as they bring the biggest amount of muskets), in Ascension it's something you "research" and then produce yourself with the condition of having a rare and random resource (Iron sand). Again the consequences for this sound bad to me. First that it can make clans that traditional used muskets earlier (like Oda) never having thenopportunity to get them. Second that it makes the different types of merchants useless. And third that it nullifies an apparent interesting mechanic from SOI that is the spread of Christianity and muskets (it seems if you take bases that had Christianity in them, you would get access to muskets too).
4) Same for horses. As they depend upon rare resources on the map, you may have a campaign where Takeda never get it.
5) The AI criteria for assigning Lords is solely honor in Ascension, while in SOI it also counted the officer main stats. The result is that in Ascension there are more weaker stats lords taking care of fiefs and leading armies for the CPU, and sometimes even famous leaders (like Shibata Katsuye or Toshiie Maeda) end up without their own castles or armies. This makes the game easier, again.
That seems to be it. I've not played original SOI (yet, I'll get i too) but just by playing Ascension more it's clear that some of it's design decisions (and bugs) could have benefited from a couple more updates/rebalancing. It's not enough to make the game bad, but once you play enough and see those cracks, yes, it leaves a sour taste on your mouth. Original SOI benefited from more updates and a whole PUK (Power Up Kit, how the Japanese called it, basically expansion) and it shows. If Ascension had it's own PUK I believe it would end up even better.