RTS They Are Billions - steampunk/zombie RTS from Lords of Xulima dev

[anvi]

Yeppers! They changed their policy or something like every other cuck company today. So if you get banned from 3 or more sub-forums on Steam, the Valve moderators take action against you. For me it was a week long ban of using any discussions or typing any reviews or doing anything than playing games. I was worried I would lose all my games but apparently they can't do that unless you threaten to kill Gabe or something. Still, I think they are all pricks because the 3 sub-forum bans I got were from super autie devs of tiny games that banned anyone who said anything remotely non-positive.

 

[Agame]

Interested to see if they do a full "Paradox" and remake the campaign, it really feels like a last minute rush job, which given the development I think thats what happened and they kinda tacked it on at the end.

The Hero missions are just dreadful, incredibly tedious as most of the time is spent just watching your guy/gal slowly chip through hordes of zombies or kiting the fast ones. Run back, shoot, run back, shoot, etc etc. Really compelling gameplay. And watch out if you happen to lob a grenade to close as its a restart of the mission and possible rage-quit moment. Oh and yeah and dont forget the pixel hunting gameplay... in 2019...

'Infected swarm' missions just seem fucking broken... 1000 fast zombies vs 50 soldiers? WTF is this shit? Another early one has 10000 slow zombies! Yes, ten thousand vs your 50 odd soldiers, its fun at first until you realize its actually impossible. So the 'choice' of missions is a trap, there is no choice, you just farm military points from missions until you have no option but to get through a swarm mission.

And yes obviously the 'normal' base missions should not have a timelimit, if someone really, really loves the Hunter's Meadow, and they just wanna keep building for 100 days or a 1000 days why not let them? Who the hell thought this was a fun idea to create arbitrary end state in a pseudo city building game? You know what could be a way to solve it, keep sending bigger hordes of zombies every X days, so if you must keep playing your gonna have to focus on defense. Funny that because it sounds like a tower defense game mechanic, surely it wouldnt be to hard to program that in right, spawn bigger and bigger hordes to enter the map? Oh wait, this game is literally designed as a tower defense game... Seems they forgot that.

 

[Yosharian]

Interesting. I wondered when I saw that they were adding a campaign to this game, it seemed rather different to the game's main focus.

 

[anvi]

So the abomination I played was not even the final form?

 

[Parabalus]

Another early one has 10000 slow zombies! Yes, ten thousand vs your 50 odd soldiers, its fun at first until you realize its actually impossible. So the 'choice' of missions is a trap, there is no choice, you just farm military points from missions until you have no option but to get through a swarm mission.

 

[you know what time it is]

Dat level design tho.

 

[Infinitron]

And they are now censoring criticism on the Steam forum:

Spoiler

EDIT: Criticism towards their game is now also being censored as well. Their forum moderator is calling people impatient and new to RTS games, insulting them if they've only tried their game for 2 hours telling them to put more in (past the refund process) if they criticise it. What a mess.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/518880635545190452/590975894483632128/unknown.png

After watching their forum moderator get into arguments and now starting to remove and ban users who are critiquing their game, I sincerely regret supporting this developer in any way and heavily encourage people to avoid them.

Sad!

If only more devs were like Cleve, dont run away, fight your critics head on!

lmao holy fuck. It's a lot easier to be the good guy indie developer when people aren't attacking your game, isn't it?

They should have stayed in Early Access and released the campaign there.

 

[Alienman]

From what I have noticed, people are salty because of one guy, Gomez. Not even sure he is a dev, might only be a community manager?

 

[Agame]

From what I have noticed, people are salty because of one guy, Gomez. Not even sure he is a dev, might only be a community manager?

I think you are correct, a white knight moderator goin' all Deus Vult on those heretic unbelievers, maybe the devs dont know about it?

 

[Agame]

Dat level design tho.

I actually really like the concept, it gives me some Crimson Land feels! Its just that the swarm missions so far are so bare bones, no interesting maps or terrain for tactics, its like they came up with the idea the day before release and just threw something together. I think there is so much more you could do with it.

 

[Parabalus]

From what I have noticed, people are salty because of one guy, Gomez. Not even sure he is a dev, might only be a community manager?

I think you are correct, a white knight moderator goin' all Deus Vult on those heretic unbelievers, maybe the devs dont know about it?

Guys seems to be telling 'git gud' to everyone complaining .

 

[commie]

Ok so it's shit...good, now they can go and make LoX 2.

 

[you know what time it is]

I actually really like the concept, it gives me some Crimson Land feels! Its just that the swarm missions so far are so bare bones, no interesting maps or terrain for tactics, its like they came up with the idea the day before release and just threw something together. I think there is so much more you could do with it.

I played the campaign a little bit and honestly I got no idea how could it turn out so bad. I think I might use it as an example of what NOT to do in level design, some years down the line when I get the chance to work with interns again. I mean at least some effort would be nice, this is just so incredibly lazy.

 

[Parabalus]

Version 1.0.4
- FIXED: Second Survival Map (previously the first) was locked after the V.1.0 update. Now it is unlocked for all the current players, and locked for the new ones that have first to win the Deep Forest map type.
- Balancing: Removing Time Limit for first missions and set it higher for all the rest. This conditions should not be any problem anymore.

 

[thesheeep]

Wtf, you cannot even use heroes in the colony mission? Really? Read that in one review...
Guess I'll wait a little while longer to give this a proper try.

Removing the time limit is a good step forward, but it really looks like the design issues in the campaign go much deeper than that.

 

[Alienman]

Yeah, another weird design. Also I think the colonist requirement is worse than the time limit, since you can be done killing zombies long before you have plopped down the required farms and houses. But if they remove that, 80% of all missions objectives would be removed. The game is fundamentally fucked design-wise.

 

[Parabalus]

The other issue is, that like in survival, if you clean the map you could have to wait a long time for the final wave to show up, having nothing to do.

The colonist numbers are psmall though, 800 is just one market bloc. Reminds me of Caesar, pop requirements are standard in city-sims.

 

[Dickie]

The whole hero thing is bizarre. They're just used in the tactic missions, and the upgrades for the dude are mostly just +20% attack speed or +20% damage and stuff like that. It's nothing super interesting. I'm not sure what the girl gets, but they acted like the heroes were gonna be a big deal and make it worth playing twice just to see both of them.

I expected them to at least have some effect on the normal missions. I think it might be neat if they were the mayors on the normal missions and they had unique upgrades for the whole colony, instead of being used as units that would trivialize the missions but be game over if they died.

 

[thesheeep]

 

[Alienman]

The colonist numbers are psmall though, 800 is just one market bloc. Reminds me of Caesar, pop requirements are standard in city-sims.

It increases though:

And I only got wooden cottages, argh...

 

[Parabalus]

The colonist numbers are psmall though, 800 is just one market bloc. Reminds me of Caesar, pop requirements are standard in city-sims.

It increases though:

And I only got wooden cottages, argh...

That's just 2 blocs of wooden cottages, it's really not extreme.

I'm on the same mission tier as you are, but I'm guessing the missions at the end have 4k or 6k requirments.

 

[Alienman]

It's popcorn time.

 

[Alienman]

That's just 2 blocs of wooden cottages, it's really not extreme.

Not extreme, but feels a bit off spending 20 minutes building a colony after you just defeated a huge horde

 

[Agame]

Advice for anyone starting campaign, the tech tree is a TRAP! Ignore all the early buffs as they are complete garbage, rush farm tech, it will make the first missions far more enjoyable not having to do hunter fucking cabin spam. And also rushing mil units, basically flame thrower dudes will make all the swarm missions trivial if you need to.

Tbf some of the 'proper' missions in the campaign are quite fun, the Cape defense was probably the highlight so far. Finally felt like a true tower defense game, you know exactly where the horde is coming from ( a single bridge) and you can go nuts building an epic layered defense, that will still probably be inadequate the first time you do the mission.

I do enjoy unlocking the techs while working through the missions and getting that old school RTS 'progression' feels.

 

[Parabalus]

That's just 2 blocs of wooden cottages, it's really not extreme.

Not extreme, but feels a bit off spending 20 minutes building a colony after you just defeated a huge horde

Having a huge colony and spending 20 minutes waiting for the last horde is just as bad .