Songs of Conquest - HOMM2-inspired turn-based strategy adventure game

[covr]

So, fantadomat, now that you've almost completed the game, is it still as woke as your initial impressions?

I stopped playing,played a few mission of the frogs and decided that i had enough.

Fucking frogs, they offend me so much with their sjw wokeness! White powa!

 

[ArchAngel]

So, fantadomat, now that you've almost completed the game, is it still as woke as your initial impressions?

I stopped playing,played a few mission of the frogs and decided that i had enough.

Fucking frogs, they offend me so much with their sjw wokeness! White powa!

Frogs are cool, rage against everyone. Burning everything down!

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

forgot i had this on my wishlist, but seeing it has turned into stronk womynz of magic and magic, off it goes ;/

 

[Maculo]

They did nerf mission 4 with a patch that came out on Friday. They reduced strength of enemy armies but still that was smart playing making strongest enemy hero chase you around.

After I have done both campaigns, I played skimish 4 FFA on 4 player map and now I am ready to delete it and wait until release.

The AI seems to prioritize the easiest victory. I believe this explains why the AI attacks on turn 20 on mission 4 for some people, because they probably consolidated forces and sent a gathering hero too far north. Also, if you mouseover the enemy hero, it will show the intended target, whether that be a city or a hero. Once I got Cecilia within range, the AI would switch from a city to Cecilia and I would run her just out of range. Only problem is that the enemy AI has bonus movement, which was the source of quite a few reloads.

forgot i had this on my wishlist, but seeing it has turned into stronk womynz of magic and magic, off it goes ;/

I would be lying if I said it wasn't noticeable on the first mission, but it levels off when the plot actually moves forward. Without going into spoilers, the Fey heroes are a better counterpart to Cecilia than the human heroes. Other than Cecilia, I couldn't really tell you what the other two human heroes were meant to accomplish.

It would be nice to have the option to create/level your own dude from scratch. I am sure there are ways to do it without upsetting the story (i.e., nameless subcommander).

 

[muds_animal_friend]

Either the devs nerfed mission 4 since I last played, or I hit a weird bug. I used the caster hero to quickly captured the two north-eastern towns (chain lighting ftw), and I was at an impasse because enemy AI sent stack, after stack, after stack, and wore me down with magic casts..

Apart from the AI capital, the two NE towns are the only significant settlements on that map. You can quickly capture those towns by simply walking there with any hero. You capture any town in the campaign by simply walking there. After you capture a town the AI will instantly show up to attack. The half-wit hipster dipshits that infest this forum will hail this as tactical AI genius because muh pixels.

 

[Maculo]

Apart from the AI capital, the two NE towns are the only significant settlements on that map. You can quickly capture those towns by simply walking there with any hero. You capture any town in the campaign by simply walking there. After you capture a town the AI will instantly show up to attack. The half-wit hipster dipshits that infest this forum will hail this as tactical AI genius because muh pixels.

I am conflicted about mission 4. Mission 4 is a necessary step up in difficulty compared to the prior missions. The magic damage and aggressive AI give much needed urgency and escalation that was lacking in prior missions (fighting the bald mage lady was an oh-shit moment). What sours the design of this mission imo is that the enemy capital with Wiesh seems to have all the unit production the AI could ever need. Taking and defending the two northern towns did little to stem the tide of enemy reinforcements, because everything spawned at the capital. In fact, I would argue that the two northern towns can be a trap for the unwary, because then the AI simply has a shorter distance to spam and direct armies. In retrospect, I think the optimal strategy is to attack the north-eastern towns, avoid fighting the enemy heroes to lure them away from the capital, and then send an army from the other direction. Granted, you still need a decent army to engage Weiss.

 

[ArchAngel]

I just had one hero scour the map for all the goodies which speed up all my developments of troops and tech. I used starting town to get Academy to research max troops per stack which is biggest boost in power while recruiting fey units from neutral buildings in starting location. When I took two northern cities, I had a fairly powerful hero (used mage fey one) with lots of troops. Then after wave one I defended them with main one while mage scoured their part of the map and was taking all their towns except main one. It was noticeable that they were no longer capable of fielding big armies with each new spawn.

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/867210/view/3222900437319125769

One week into Early Access: Status update!
It’s time for a new blog post!

But this time it isn’t Magnus who is writing but me, Johannes. So first off, a small introduction to who I am. I’m originally one of the Coffee Stain founders. I had the pleasure of meeting the small team of Lavapotion back in 2017 when they pitched us the idea of making a modern take on old classics like HOMM. This is something we had considered ourselves for many years so we fell in love with the idea straight away. Since then I’ve been working closely with the peeps from Lavapotion to make sure we deliver a product you can enjoy and we can be proud of! Which we absolutely are!

Steam were kind enough to feature our game on release.

The reason why I’m writing this now is that Magnus is kind of swamped with work already and I thought it was important for us to deliver a message for you all. It’s been a week since launch after all!
First off, we are absolutely blown away with the amount of people that have bought the game so far. We always knew that we had a gem on our hands, but were afraid it might be too niche for a broader audience. The feedback has been overwhelming, but rest assured that we read every review, every reddit-thread, and all the suggestions and feedback on Discord, Steam, GOG and wherever. It has been a huge help laying the path for us ahead.

The newly launched Feature Upvote system[songsofconquest.featureupvote.com] helps us evaluate the community requests better!

We never thought Multiplayer was going to be so popular as it has been. We’ve always thought of it as a single-player first game. But we are painfully aware now of how many of you would have wanted a better MP-session. This is something we’re working on already to try to have a few quick fixes that will improve it. A bigger and more stable system will have to wait a bit, since it’s quite time consuming to change the whole system. And yes, I’m of course thinking about simultaneous turns for multiplayer games.

This map was created with the map editor by our Discord user called "Token".

And regarding random map generator, we opted to ship the game with a level editor and mod-support instead. We’ve understood now that this is still a feature that many of you want, and it’s definitely moved up on our todo-list

Speaking of todo-list, we’ve started to lay the groundwork for our roadmap as well. Since we wanted to wait and see what your feedback was before we started on it, we don’t have one finished yet. We still have some bugs to catch and a lot of ideas on small changes that will improve the overall experience. We’ve already sent out a few patches to address campaign difficulty and fixed a bunch of bugs you’ve helped us locate already!

We will however start working on it ASAP and come back to you as soon as we can with a proper one. We’ve always enjoyed an open communication with our players and we intend to keep that communication two-ways, honest and open.

We have big plans for Songs of Conquest ourselves, and we are really looking forward to share our thoughts as well.

 

[Dr1f7]

this game looks really nice. I tried hero's hour and was disappointed, so hope this one turns out

We never thought Multiplayer was going to be so popular as it has been.

lol

We’ve always thought of it as a single-player first game.

good

 

[muds_animal_friend]

this game looks really nice.

Ascetically? Or that's it looks fun? As it stands, it's a fun -- if inferior clone -- off HoMM 2/3. I'm sure there's great 2D art underneath all the 'let us make this look like a Nintendo Gameboy game' pixelization horseshit.

 

[Dr1f7]

'let us make this look like a Nintendo Gameboy game' pixelization horseshit.

gba pixels are way better than the cartoony-mobile aesthetic that every other game goes for

 

[markec]

'let us make this look like a Nintendo Gameboy game' pixelization horseshit.

gba pixels are way better than the cartoony-mobile aesthetic that every other game goes for

And it still looks worse then even the first HoMM.

 

[covr]

Looks like jrpg

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/867210/view/3299462255005122527

Two weeks into Early Access: Development update and a few tips!
We are back with another development update. Check out the video and leave a comment if there is anything you want to ask or suggest!

These are the links that I refer to in the video:

Feature upvote system[songsofconquest.featureupvote.com]

https://www.soc.gg/en/factions

Github repository [github.com]

Wiki[songsofconquest.fandom.com]

Reddit

Game assets for fan projects[drive.google.com]

Planning tool / Cost overview (fan created)[docs.google.com]

/Magnus

• Discord
  
• Twitter
  
• Youtube
  
• Facebook
  
• Instagram

 

[Dr1f7]

Reddit

oh good they made a reddit and a feature updoot system!

shit game dropped

Ascetically? Or that's it looks fun? As it stands, it's a fun -- if inferior clone -- off HoMM 2/3. I'm sure there's great 2D art underneath all the 'let us make this look like a Nintendo Gameboy game' pixelization horseshit.

sorry i take back what i said these devs are tard-nuggets

 

[visions]

And it still looks worse then even the first HoMM.

Most fantasy strategy games made in the last 20 or so years look worse than the first HoMM, so that's not really saying much.

 

[Thac0]

Sooo anyone here wanna talk about the gameplay? I played 15 hours of this, decent entertainment, but I don't feel like it can offer much more than that in its current state. The four current factions are very samey, so there is no real point in mastering one yet. Also there is only normal AI at the moment. I went into custom games, and beat the normal AI as every possible faction once, then I beat the AI 1vs2. As there is no real coalition system yet to make shenanigans like 1v7 for more challenge possible, there is no real point in playing on for me, as I don't like multiplayer. Still I am gonna revisit if they patch in new factions, more difficulty options, or an option to fight against more enemies. The core gameplay is not bad, not bad at all. Basically heroes on speed, you get maxed out armies way faster, the maps are smaller, and fights end in half the number of turns.

 

[Maculo]

Sooo anyone here wanna talk about the gameplay? I played 15 hours of this, decent entertainment, but I don't feel like it can offer much more than that in its current state. The four current factions are very samey, so there is no real point in mastering one yet. Also there is only normal AI at the moment. I went into custom games, and beat the normal AI as every possible faction once, then I beat the AI 1vs2. As there is no real coalition system yet to make shenanigans like 1v7 for more challenge possible, there is no real point in playing on for me, as I don't like multiplayer. Still I am gonna revisit if they patch in new factions, more difficulty options, or an option to fight against more enemies. The core gameplay is not bad, not bad at all. Basically heroes on speed, you get maxed out armies way faster, the maps are smaller, and fights end in half the number of turns.

I agree with your assessment. I would prefer that the dev make the factions more asymmetrical rather than just add more factions at this point. Even the units within the same roster feel too similar with defense stance copied and pasted everywhere.

 

[Thac0]

Sooo anyone here wanna talk about the gameplay? I played 15 hours of this, decent entertainment, but I don't feel like it can offer much more than that in its current state. The four current factions are very samey, so there is no real point in mastering one yet. Also there is only normal AI at the moment. I went into custom games, and beat the normal AI as every possible faction once, then I beat the AI 1vs2. As there is no real coalition system yet to make shenanigans like 1v7 for more challenge possible, there is no real point in playing on for me, as I don't like multiplayer. Still I am gonna revisit if they patch in new factions, more difficulty options, or an option to fight against more enemies. The core gameplay is not bad, not bad at all. Basically heroes on speed, you get maxed out armies way faster, the maps are smaller, and fights end in half the number of turns.

I agree with your assessment. I would prefer that the dev make the factions more asymmetrical rather than just add more factions at this point. Even the units within the same roster feel too similar with defense stance copied and pasted everywhere.

Yeah, it is especially bad inbetween the three human factions. Rats are the same as hyenas between desert and undead, all three of the factions have a musician who is literally the same unit, both humans and desert have an archer who can only shoot every second turn, both humans and deserts have an ogre-esque melee bruiser, there is just so much overlap. Add to that that the building trees are samey aswell, no faction has unique buildings of any sort which add some asymmetry. Sadly on the feature upvote system the dev already rejected one request to distinguish the factions more from each other outright. Sure he has greater problems and tasks right now, but to get even a glimpse of the actual long term staying power that HoMM 3 had the factions NEED extensive reworks.

 

[Thac0]

Also to bring some topics to the thread:
Approved features:

Considered Features:

Denied Features:

This being one of the only features ever to get a deny, next to the mostly pointless request for townscreens with this games building feature, means that a rework for the current 4 factions is effectively off the table.
That is not a death sentence for the game, as Rana and Undead have enough of an identity on their own, and hopefully the game will get 2-4 more factions with are closer to Rana and Undead in quality than to Humans and Desert.
Still it is not a good omen, that dev disagrees with the sentiment that the current factions are too samey. This may mean that future factions will be copy pasted aswell.

Also mildly nervous that more AI difficulties are neither flagged as considered or approved, in the video that he released he sounds like he is happy with the difficulty as he gets equal complaints that it is too hard or too easy.
If the difficulty stays this way it might be so low that even 1v7 is not long term satisfying, the AI does some stupid bullshit like splitting its army into 4 equal sized blocks your main hero can eat with low casualties, running away from your cities if you even remotely fortify them and take a random guarded treasure chest over your castle just because winning the castle would lead to more losses from the defenders.

 

[Endemic]

If the difficulty stays this way it might be so low that even 1v7 is not long term satisfying, the AI does some stupid bullshit like splitting its army into 4 equal sized blocks your main hero can eat with low casualties, running away from your cities if you even remotely fortify them and take a random guarded treasure chest over your castle just because winning the castle would lead to more losses from the defenders.

Sounds a lot like the HoMM2/3 AI to me.

 

[hello friend]

HOMM3 AI has been improved a fair bit with Horn of the Abyss, but the AI in the unmodded game is kind of bad. If someone wants to copy the HOMM formula and sell it for money actually improving the AI would be a good place to start. If your game compares unfavourably to a game that's 20 years old in any aspect you care to look at maybe you don't have a great product. It's strange that no one tries to copy HOMM4 instead; There's no competition, the game is flawed enough that improving on it should be pretty doable, and it introduced several gameplay innovations that were straight up improvements on the formula. Considering how many of these knockoff attempts try to use art as a crutch instead of setting yourself up against two gorgeous games like HOMM2 and HOMM3 why not have people compare you to a fuck ugly abomination like HOMM4? No business sense.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

You people never tire, do you

And homm ai (never mind the installment) is not particularly bad. Its biggest flaw is typical of games of this kind - the ai doesn't play to win, it plays to be as much of nuisance as possible. But it does the latter part ok.

 

[Thac0]

The problem is that the HoMM AI needs an egregious amounts of cheats and extra ressources to also fulfill this meddlesome role against a strong player. If it gets these ressources that is pretty fun, defeating droves of enemy heroes which all have an army as strong as yours or stronger is fun in a siege of minas tirith way.
Also the true challenge comes in the fact that your starting ressources are reduced on high difficulty, while the AIs are not, giving it a much faster start to counterbalance its inefficiency at creeping.

Songs of Conquest doesn't have this. Everything you change about map difficulty and ressources is symmetrical, I don't think the AI cheats at all. But if you want to go down the route of a "fair" AI (which is imo overhyped, fighting a cheating bad AI can be easily as fun as a fair AI without cheats and is way easier on the programmer) you need a good AI. I cranked the defenders to maximum on a map once and dueled the Songs of Conquest normal AI there, and it barely even managed to break out of it's starting cage until I was upon it.

 

[Boleskine]