Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - General Requests / Bugs discussion

I just thought I'd throw up a few small things / bugs I've found. Other people can make suggestions as well.


Request: Generals/Princess decision on Empire Overview page. The decisions you make for your Queen and Generals do have effects on your faction standing, so I’d like to see the results of the decisions on the Empire Overview page as well. Granted, it does seem like getting the wording right is harder when it can’t be summed up with a thumbs up/thumbs down icon to the side.

I would also like the race relation results of Generals/Princess decisions to take effect on the next turn – after the event which affects them occurs – instead of immediately. It's just a display thing I suppose, not critical.


Minor Request: Empire Overview stats should include your “Armies lost” as well as the enemy “Armies Destroyed”, so you can see.


Minor Request: Maybe throw up some stats on the Victory/Defeat screen about what you and your enemy did in terms of Initial units, units created, units lost, structures built, structures destroyed, structures lost. Something to look at while the Raven loads.


Request: I’d like to be able to zoom out a bit on the strategy map. The current maximum zoom is good to see your moves well, but I’d like to get a bit wider perspective on the overall strategic picture sometimes.


Minor Request: A minor thing, not that important, but on the campaign map when you select a loaded transport, maybe show unit icons/numbers for what it’s carrying. If you put a number on top, you’d only need 4 icons at most for the 4 different infantry types).


Minor Request: I don't suppose it would be possible to have a "Stack of Newspapers" icon somwhere that shows all the copies of the Rivellon Times you've received over the course of the game. Not really important.


Nuisance: You've mentioned upcoming changes to the Strategy map AI, so I hope one of them can do something about this:

In Act 2 Karthan doesn’t seem to like to build Transports (Hard difficulty). That is seriously obnoxious, because he keeps building tons of crap on his home country each turn. You either have to take him out first, or wait until you have a zillion units, because he has too many to deal with. On the other hand, it would also be obnoxious if every turn you had to fight off an invasion from him. I’m not sure what the fix is. That’s the problem when you put one enemy capital 2 moves from the other.


Possible Bug: In battles between two enemy factions, where I can't participate, I still have a 2% chance to win. Oh... that's my luck bonus, isn't it. That's not really worth working on, I guess.


Possible Bug: Okay, here's one which I'm not sure is intentional or a bug. (In the story campaign, Act 2) I was on a territory that was encroached upon by two of my half-siblings, and I only had a few units there. I opted to retreat back to Starlington, and pulled all my units out, leaving the country undefended.

As expected, the country was invaded the next turn - by all three enemy factions, in fact. The odd thing was that even though I had no units on the territory, the game let me enter into combat. I'm not sure if that was because it was my territory, but probably not - other times my empty territories have been invaded and conquered without a battle.

I in fact beat all the enemies there, despite starting with no units. The other guys took their sweet time building up, building a second battle forge before pretty much anything else. (This was a Hard AI, by the way). The victory screen was amusing as it was a battle with only casualties and no survivors.

The only things I really want for the game are:

1. More tooltips.
2. A way to somehow go-over what dragon skills are mid-battle, without having to memorize the icons.
3. An in-battle PAUSE button, so I can halt the game and still move the camera around. Preferably something I could link to the space button.

The late-game battles quickly become unmanageable for me simply due to how many different units are on the map, especially when I'm dealing with multiple enemy AIs simultaneously.

Some requests:

1) Savegame list by chronological order, every time I want to save/load I need to check every save to select the correct one, because they're always in random order
2) In open water battles (without land) what about only one possibility to be able to summon the dragon? When I started Chapter 2 I discovered 2 transports in water (which I don't put) only after the enemy moved armed ships in the same area, I entered the battle only to discover I was unable to do something while my transports were chased by 2 juggernauts and 4 ironclads and was forced to retreat. If we have the chance of only one tranformation, at least we can have a chance to help the transports (if the player is able enough to battle ironclads in dragon forma without being defeated)

Another Request: Adjustable zoom level for when the units turn to Icons.

I'd really like to try playing without the icons at all too. But currently the zoom level is too close to be playable and see the units.



Agreed

Request: A way to move your camera while in Dragon Mode, so you can see it from all sides.

I second wanting at least one spawn of the Dragon in ocean maps, although I can see why they might forbid it. It might be a too easy win if there were no anti-air units there.

I also second the one about an adjustable slider for unit icons.

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Problem: The Wizard Towers are not very useful. They give you cards slowly, and they can give you cards you already have. There's also no way to get rid of or trade cards if you already have the skill. The worst problem is that there's no way to reliably get a card you want, meaning that if you want a particular skill, you're most likely to just research it instead of rolling the dice.

Suggestion: Make the Wizard Towers some kind of shop, with a random selection of 8 Dragon Dragon skills, so you could buy skills you wanted. The price should be lower, though, since some skills are not worth up to 15 gold a turn. Maybe 2 Gold per Tier level (up to 8 gold per Tier 4 card). This will let players decide whether to spend research points on mastering a skill, or buy it with gold and save their research points for units.

Alternate Suggestion: Keep the existing functionality of the Wizard Tower as is, but add a "Transmute Cards" function to it, that lets you transmute 3-5 cards for a single other random card, which could be anything, even stuff from the Emporium. That would solve the useless card situation, and the useless Building situation, and add an element of addicting gambling to the Wizard Tower. Maybe a fee of 3 gold per transmutation?

On a recent turn, Yorick was in the bar, and he responded to the outcomes of TWO separate events in the same conversation smoothly (a Henry event and a Lohanna event). Well done!




A couple turns later, Karthan finally got off his butt and invaded my poorly defended capital. A coordinated invasion too, 7 Devastators, 1 Ironclad and 5 Troopers. It was intimidating enough that I had a 38% chance to win and so took charge of the battle myself. I won the battle, but lost substantial forces (I made the mistake of going for his base after defeating his starting force). I'm getting better at coordinating my Dragon powers and troops, although I still haven't quite got the hang of control groups.

I have to agree with the people wishing for some way to automatically add newly built units to control groups.

This game is criticized for being "blobby", and the reasons for that are in part because you have to be constantly producing units all the time and because you have so many, adding new units to control groups - along with all the other things you have to manage - is such a hassle that it's easier to move them in one big undistinguished group.


I liked the coordination

At first I thought Red in Act II was supposed to be a naval power, since he had a large navy and didn't seem particularly interested in expanding his territory. However, I think he just considers your capital to be his first priority, so he ends up wasting all of his transports and troops on trying to capture it. It's really annoying when you're fighting on the mainland and Khartan does nothing but periodically assault your capital. You know, as far as starting positions go, that island is a rather unforgiving one for the player.

Second, if it hasn't been mentioned before and if it doesn't exist already, I'd like it if there was an option to fix your camera angle. I'm usually disoriented once I exit my dragon form and it would be nice if the game automatically reverted to the north-south axis that I normally use.

Finally, the 'Cannot execute order/that's impossible, commander' bug needs to be fixed as soon as possible. Really annoying when it happens in the middle of a pitched battle and you basically lose all control since the framerate drops so much. I hear they're working on it, so that's good.

I just spotted a problem with the territory arrangement for Karthan: His island has only one neighbouring ocean tile. Even if he wanted to sail elsewhere, to wrap around the north->south or east->west, all that can be intercepted by placing an ironclad off of your coast, and he can't leave the island. I noticed this because I saw that Karthan was placing transports to the northeast of his island, as if he was planing to move around the edge.

I think that the far northeast ocean should be a separate tile, so you can't say, intercept transports on the opposite side of the Karthan's island from your ships. If he wants to attack you all the time, fine, but I'd at least prefer that he has the opportunity to move and attack elsewhere.


* * * * *

It seems that in single-player, the player always goes first, instead of the round-robin rules. I actually LIKED the round-robin, once I got used to it, and the annoyance of Sabotage cards not working if an enemy goes before you.

The problem is that because you always go first, there's less chance of the enemy surprising you, or invading you before you can invade them. I think that diminishes the single-player and makes it a bit too boring.

If I want to invade country C with forces from countries A and B, I know I'll always be able to do that. There isn't a time when the enemy invades Country A suddenly, and I have less forces than I was counting on to invade C.

It also means that I can't use the generals as much, because the engagements are more predictable and under my control.

Bring the round-robin back, please, at least for Normal and Hard difficulty.

Possible bug: Dragon skill "Friends with benefits".
It says in the item description that you can use that skill on the dragon of a teammember.
We noticed it while on v1.0.20.0 (1 gog and 1 larian version / 2 players vs 2 ai) and found out that you can not. You can use the skill itself but only on units, NOT the teammates dragon.

Bug?: In the single-player campaign of Act 2, I played a Genocide -50% card on a Dwarven country I was invading. It didn't affect my popularity with the Dwarves at all. I played a couple more turns just to check, nothing. Given that Swen specifically listed a bunch of the negative consequences that playing a genocide card should have, I'm pretty sure that those are not working at all.

[u]Bug:[/b] I got the "Major Buzzkill" achievement for shooting down an enemy bunker buster... when one of my OWN Bunker Busters was shot down.

People are exploiting Act 1 to farm 100+ mercenary cards, then claiming that the game is "too easy".

Maybe put a hard cap of 10-15 cards per type in Act 1 - especially for Mercenary cards. The rest can be the victim of "Some of our mercenaries (are about to/have quit), Commander!" or some such.


* * * * *

This is probably not going to happen, but one thing that might have been interesting for Act 2 would be for the different siblings to focus on different units. Farhan could focus motly on air units with some ground support, Sybille could focus on heavy ground units, and Karhan could focus on naval units.

At the moment, they all pretty much have the same stuff. It's only that Karhan starts with a large navy that makes much of a difference. That and he tends to pile units on his territory instead of shipping them elsewhere.

The other problem to that of course is how close Karhan starts to the player capital. It might have worked better for his capital to be in the southeast, so he could spread ships through the seas from there. His current location and the poor ocean tile configuration around his capital means he focuses the majority of his attention on the player.

Steam achievement bugs:

Expert Demon Hunter - awarded for speedily conquering enemy capital in Act 1 (should be Act 3 only). Good thing I got it, 15 turns in Act 3 is a mad rush.
Can't Touch This - I got this by beating Insane AI in skirmish instead of Anyday, Anytime


There is a button (Del or Ins) which returns camera to default position, but I think they should add a box in options to do this automatically after you despawn.

Also regarding camera, RTS battles start fully zoomed on your rec center. WHY? It's infuriating in MP skirmish to lose vital seconds because you need to swivel the camera so you can finally see your building site. Add an option START WITH DEFAULT TOP-DOWN ANGLE AND ZOOM.


Think of it not as a problem, but a solution. Devs meant for you to blockade him and deal with mainland first. Besides, splitting the tile in two won't really "solve" anything - it just means you need to split your fleet and blockade is still in effect. Single ironclad won't stop several transports anyway.

It's a really unsatisfying way to finish the map though, he's stuck on that tiny island with a huge army while you control 99% of the map. You've undoubtedly won at that point and just have to continually stockpile troops till you can overrun him.

Bug: The survival rate for winning an RTS battle in single player is always 100%. That should not be the case. I invaded an enemy capital with a fleet of basically entirely airships. It took 2 restarts before I could fend off the attack, and I lost a bunch more balloons in the attack. I should NOT have suffered no casualties, that much is certain.





Changing it to let the far side be on a separate tile wouldn't really change anything, except making it a player choice whether they just want to block the direct channel between the capitals or whether they want Karthan to be able to send troops elsewhere

You could still do a blockade if you wanted, but I'd rather encourage him to send his massive bulging horde of troops elsewhere instead of piling up to ludicrous proportions.

Bug: In single-player, on the Maxos Crossing map, the AI can make use of a shipyard buried in rock.

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/902129724471294480/DE3BFA80772370A473F270CA602712174901FDFA/

I checked this map out in Skirmish mode and couldn't see it, so I don't blame the level designer for missing it.


Request: The Strategy map AI doesn't really build air or naval units on the strategy map. It can use them, certainly, as Act 3 proves, but it doesn't really build anything but Transports or replace the things it loses. Karthan starts with a navy and could theoretically break out of a blocade by building Ironclads and Juggernauts, but he doesn't, the starting navies are all they have. I hope that's tweaked.

Oh please, his capital has 10 gold/turn or so. It's not like he can add 10 tanks every turn. By the time you finish taking other capitals you'll have at least 150 gold/turn. Just crank out 10 balloons or bring those mainland armies back and you have more than enough to take on him.



And that "elsewhere" would be?.. Well I guess if you want more obstacles in your way you should have a choice. It would only mean that you need more Ironclads to shield your northern islands and territories, simply extending your blockade a bit further.

I also have a lurking suspicion that Karthan is hardwired to send transports only at your capital. Before I blockaded his island I never saw him send transports anywhere else. So having only immediate route blocked could easily mean he'll just send his transports round that tile.

Yeah, I know. I don't have many good ideas for what to do about that.

I have seen Karthan launch attacks on the southern part of the mainland. There's not really a lot that can be done with Karthan though, the two islands I guess needed to be close together because Act 3 had to be on a scale larger than act 1 and smaller than act 2.

Right now, your choices are to use ships to either engage anything leaving Karthan's island in any direction in combat, or give Karthan a free path to land on your capital.

Exactly, victory is merely a formality once you have him at that state but it will take a few turns to call your army back or crank out a large enough new one to guarantee victory. If you try and fight him on even terms it still doesn't matter because the most he can possibly do is forestall the inevitable a little while longer.

Request - 1v1 RTS skirmish maps are all asymmetric favoring one starting position, whereas most 2v2 maps are symmetric. The only map approaching symmetry is Hundra's Heel, but it's horribly small.

Please, add more symmetric 1v1 RTS maps for MP skirmish.