Empires and Allies

[luckton]

Zynga launches sneak attack against Firaxis' CivWorld! 

And it launches today!

[JWIV]

Oh god damn it.  Why does this tempt me?

[luckton]

Probably because Zynga's about as relevant to Facebook games as Blizzard is to PC games.  Hate 'em if you want, but you can't knock the out-of-the-box polish and gameplay mechanics that can hook a good chunk of people.

[luckton]

Game is now live.  Like most Zynga games, it seems to draw a little bit of 'what worked' from their previous games while trying to invent something new.

The battles between forces reminds me of Advance Wars.

Comparing what I've seen so far to the CivWorld trailer that came out a couple weeks ago, I don't think Sid has much to worry about.

[Paelos]

Can you lose your town and have to start over? Because if you can't actually conquer or destroy towns, it sort of loses the point.

[luckton]

Can you lose your town and have to start over? Because if you can't actually conquer or destroy towns, it sort of loses the point.

Nope...you can be taken over, but you never lose-lose.

[luckton]

Still test driving this.  It's plays similar to CityVille, sans having to whore yourself to your friends and establish a commercial empire of lies.  And no Zynga game would be complete without farming, which you can do, but it's purely for monies and goal-check offs only.

The actual resources you play with are coin, wood and oil.  Coin is made from

- CityVille style housing production (build houses, click houses whenever they're occupants are ready to pay)
- Farming (You just build farms that grow produce within the confines of the farm, not actually taking up tile space farming and shit)
- Goals
- Doing the campaign

Wood is obtained from cutting down trees on your land and building wood production sites that take orders to make more wood.

Oil is only obtained from building oil production sites that take orders to make more oil.

You need oil for mechanical military units, wood for buildings.  Coin for everything.

[Paelos]

What happens if you are taken over? How do you win? What's the main goal? Are there points?

[luckton]

What happens if you are taken over? How do you win? What's the main goal? Are there points?

Would love to find out more...unfortunately I have yet to do the standard "whore myself to the Zynga boards for the sake of being able to play the game" bit yet.

That said, the single-player 'campaign' is certainly a plus.  It's kept my interest so far...I'm sure I'm going to hit 'that wall' where I'll have to rely on friend requests in order to 'do something'.

[luckton]

What happens if you are taken over? How do you win? What's the main goal? Are there points?

Would love to find out more...unfortunately I have yet to do the standard "whore myself to the Zynga boards for the sake of being able to play the game" bit yet.

That said, the single-player 'campaign' is certainly a plus.  It's kept my interest so far...I'm sure I'm going to hit 'that wall' where I'll have to rely on friend requests in order to 'do something'.

Damn, spoke too soon...apparently certain fights in the campaign 'require' you to enlist an ally that can provide a random power-up during the fight.  You get one NPC ally when you start the game, but you can only use him every 4 hours, unless you've got friends.

Guess it's time to go put on my nice boots 

[Paelos]

I'm still not exactly sure what the point is. What's war if there are no losers?

[LK]

I recommend trying it out to see for yourself as it's a bit complicated to explain briefly. There is a single player story where you engage in repeated fights, constant hand-holding towards growth, and it has all the Zynga mechanics. It's a neat little diversion until I can get my Anno fix or give CivWorld a crack.

As far as encouraging people to RMT the game, it's all there and then some. Every available opportunity is given for you to spend money to get an advantage that translates to nothing in the real world.

[Paelos]

Alright I'll start it and take a look.

[luckton]

Good lord I feel dirty...but anyways, a dozen or so random Facebook whore invites later, I've finally been able to experience the rest of what this game offers; head to head combat.

E&A works like many FB social games...you can visit your neighbors and help them out by clicking their cows, farms and stables barracks, oil refineries and houses to either harvest or accelerate production.  You get rewarded by this by getting special 'red heart' XP that, everytime you level it, you get a random bonus item to use in combat.

E&A enhances the 'visit thy neighbor' experience by allowing you to launch attacks on your neighbor instead of helping them out.  When you invade instead of help, you're given an invasion area selection tool, where you pick anywhere on the other person's land where you want to invade.  After making your selection, you go into a battle with a couple units from the defending player's military, which are AI controlled.  Depending on what you encompass in this selection field, and if you're victorious, you get to harvest bonus materials (coin, oil, wood, minerals, etc.) along with 'black heart' XP.  Works just like red heart, but whichever is higher, black or red, will show up to your friend if you're really a friend or a bastard.  The materials you sack aren't actually taken from the person.

Additionally, a person can defend by deploying their military assets around their town.  Every military asset has a protection range, and if an invader selects a building that is 'protected', that unit offering the protection will also be on the defender's side in addition to the default units.  So the strategy here is to place your buildings around in a fashion that allows you to also place a couple military units around them too.

It's nice to have friends too...day long oil, wood and farm productions go by quick when you put hungry cow-clickers out to pasture ^_^.

[Azuredream]

I stopped playing after I couldn't expand my population due to not having neighbors to staff my government buildings 2 hours into the game.

[Rendakor]

Can't you buy those with the (free) Empire Points that you have?

[Azuredream]

It was an inaccurate statement, I played more than two hours, but fairly early on you run out of your freebies and you can't upgrade your population. (I was stuck at 350)

[Rendakor]

Ah, I thought you were stuck at your first population cap building.

[Paelos]

Why do I have to have allies to battle? That's ridiculous.

[luckton]

Why do I have to have allies to battle? That's ridiculous.

Indeed.  After playing this some more, I'm starting feel the usual letdown from Zynga games...

So, about that CivWorld thing...

[Paelos]

I've played it for 3 days. There's literally nothing I can do to progress the game beyond the first island because it won't let me fight 3 units. I have 20 units in my army, but I need an allies help to face the mean tanks!

My ass. Dropping this like a hot rock.

[Rendakor]

You can't use the NPC ally?

[luckton]

You can't use the NPC ally?

You only get one, and he's on a 4 hour cooldown.  Later, you'll get missions that req. you to employ multiple allies.

[Paelos]

Not even that much later. The second island.

You can beat one boss with an NPC ally. This will take you all of maybe a day with all the waiting. By the second boss, either have a friend or GTFO.

No dice, jack.

[Rendakor]

Looks like there was a stealth nerf yesterday: critical hits in combat no longer generate energy. That really sucks, since combat was already an energy sink since each ROUND consumed one energy; it often takes 3+ hits to kill one enemy, and crits used to help mitigate the massive energy cost of battle. It'd be nice if combat just took 1 (or 5, or some other static number) energy per battle, instead of consuming it on a round by round basis. Another solution would be 2 separate pools of energy, one for building and the other for combat.

[luckton]

Maybe they nerfed getting energy from crits when facing other players?  I've still been getting energy from crits in NPC fights.

[Rendakor]

No, NPC fights are what I was talking about. Maybe I'm just glitched or something, or it goes away at a certain level.

[schild]

This is the first facebook game where I will flat out tell you this:

It's interesting once you have friends playing. If you don't want to invite people/add neighbors, you simply won't derive anywhere near the same enjoyment as you would otherwise.

[JWIV]

This is the first facebook game where I will flat out tell you this:

It's interesting once you have friends playing. If you don't want to invite people/add neighbors, you simply won't derive anywhere near the same enjoyment as you would otherwise.

I'd agree with this.  It's a lot more fun with constantly invading and being invaded.

[Paelos]

This is the first facebook game where I will flat out tell you this:

It's interesting once you have friends playing. If you don't want to invite people/add neighbors, you simply won't derive anywhere near the same enjoyment as you would otherwise.

Yep, I gathered that. So, I quit.

I would have been more forgiving if the wall wasn't right off the first island. If I'd been 2 or 3 islands into the game, it would have been more sticky.

[luckton]

This is the first facebook game where I will flat out tell you this:

It's interesting once you have friends playing. If you don't want to invite people/add neighbors, you simply won't derive anywhere near the same enjoyment as you would otherwise.

Yup, having friends really does.  I'm starting to enjoy the game a little more as I progress.  The thing I hated about Frontierville was the constant "Oh, you need to build this building, but you can only build it via resources that only your friends can gift you once a day, or you pay up the monies."

E&A resolves this with the marketplace and allowing players to create those unique resources yourself.  So, really the only damning thing I hate at this point is the decorative BS that some of the goals have you do.  At least make the decorative shit FUNCTION in some way, like adding a bonus to housing coin harvested, or any military units on a tarmac or field gets bonuses when defending or something.

[luckton]

Immunity needs to have a (steep?) price tag.  So annoying to see 2 dozen neighbors that I can't attack because they think this is Farmville 5.0

Y U PLAY STRATEGY GAME IF U ALWAYS IMMUNE?!

[Azuredream]

This thread will really depress you then: http://forums.zynga.com/showthread.php?t=1051305

[luckton]

The idea is that as other players invade your territory, your other friends would be able to come help you out, or you can try handling the invader yourself.  Either way, I've had some lvl 50+ people invade, and yeah their 200HP shermans look rough, but nothing I couldn't handle, esp. with some powerups (EMP on a lone overpowered unit?  )

I can see the benefit of the immunity being easily accessible in case you get overrun, but the whole premise of the game is that you're consistently  churning out new units in order to win.  Plus, how the hell am I supposed to clear these objectives?

[luckton]

Another really annoying thing...when building Government buildings, could I please get a "Empires and Allies" players only filter when sending requests to fill my job spots?