Expeditions: Conquistador - Kickstarter

[Hassat Hunter]

So, yeah, was looking for a generic Kickstarter thread, but only found a new thread was made per project. Hence me making also a seperate thread, hope it's okay. It's not even my game, but it does pique my interest.

 

Game in question;

 

So why does it interest me (and would probably do many obsidianites)?

* RPG. Always good

* Tactical combat. I personally prefer that over a button mashing of a Witcher II. Resembles Jagged Alliance or a hex-based turn-based Baldur's Gate. Several movies are on that site to show off how the combat works to see for yourself if it's something you like.

* Stories, choice, consequence. Always good to have in a RPG.

* Randomness makes each playthrough slightly different. More replayability in my RPG? Sign me up.

* Several of the people of Off Topic Production (The Nameless Mod) work on it. Fortunately, this wont take 7 years. But it assures me that I most likely get quality.

After all TNM was the one of 2 games I actually found good enough to make a fixmod for (the other being TSLRCM obviously).

 

So yeah, I would suggest everyone to check it out and see if it's "their thing". It seems the goal hasn't been reached yet in the slightest, so every little bit helps. Hence this thread. In the hope to get a decent RPG again after being dissapointed so many times by the AAA developers these times.

[Labadal]

Already backed. Hope it delivers. The premise seems interesting.

[Hurlshort]

The graphics and gameplay remind me of Age of Decadence. I might back this. How are they handling the actual exploration? I imagine they aren't going to lock you on a hex grid the whole time when you aren't in combat.

[WorstUsernameEver]

I was, well, am thinking of backing it, but there's an element of trust that is lacking with this team in particular, so I'll have to think carefully about it. I *do* hope it succeeds though, because the project is interesting.

[Gorth]

Once upon a time when Electronic Arts made/published awesome games, there was this little gem called "Seven Cities of Gold". I always wondered why the Americas has been so underused as a setting. Looks more like a CRPG than an exploration game though. Still 25 days to go and follow it a bit closer.

[Cantousent]

I loved Seven Cities of Gold. Good Times. Really basic by today's standards, though, but great times!

[Hassat Hunter]

Well, for the ones not having joined the Kickstarter, the game's now available on pretty much all known digitial distributors;

 

http://store.steampowered.com/app/237430/

http://www.gog.com/news/release_expeditions_conquistador

[Hurlshort]

Nice thread find

 

I picked it up today.  I'm teaching the Age of Exploration in class right now, so I actually ran through the tutorial with students after they finished their projects.  Of course they chose a party full of racists.  

 

It's the last week of school, so I'll probably give them a little more time to move forward.  So far it looks plenty appropriate for their age group.

[Rosbjerg]

Gotta say, I think it's pretty awesome that you incorporate games into your teaching.

[Tigranes]

Started a party full of racists on Hard + Smartest AI, and even though I played the press build I eventually ended up decimated. Not enough hunters and doctors to keep wounds out, a few mistakes in battle and getting lost was all it took. Delightful difficulty.

[Hurlshort]

This game is pretty addicting.  I'm really enjoying it.

[Humanoid]

Played a bit more, with some positive and negatives:

 

+ Looks like party composition is pretty flexible, I haven't come across a situation yet where I'd tell myself "man, I really should have taken one more of this class instead of that one." Except maybe I should have taken a third hunter instead of a fourth soldier, especially as you get one extra NPC soldier right at the start of the game. I also observe that the player character counts as a doctor for the purposes of treating the injured, so there's less need to specifically recruit a backup doctor.

 

+ Combat with six actors on your side seems about the right size. Then again it's probably just habit from it being a de-facto standard for modern RPGs and tactical squad games.

 

+ I like the abstraction of equipment. There's no actual gear as such, just "equipment points" which you distribute individually amongst your crew. e.g. I have 10 EP - I give 3 points into 'ranged' for my hunter who I trust to remain safe at the back, 2 points of 'melee' and 2 points of 'armour' to my soldier who needs enough grunt to stay alive on the front, and 3 points of 'armour' to my doctor who needs to stay alive at all costs.

 

+ Experience behaves similarly, you gain a pool of experience for your party which isn't a static counter - it's a partywide resource you expend to level up your NPCs, and you can distribute the levels however you please. If you have 400xp for example, you could level up any four of your recruits to level 2 (100xp each), or level one recruit to level 3 (100 then 300xp) No having to make your doctor deliver killing blows or the like to farm XP for them, nor having to split your XP amongst a dozen people when you only ever really use half of them. It took me a while to catch on to the system however, I was walking around with a bunch of level ones for a good while, fighting level two opponents.

 

- Map navigation tends to be hindered by a lot of solid obstacles. There are a lot of jungle tiles for example, which just serve as solid walls forcing you to go around - cutting through them is certainly not an option. So there's a bit less freedom of movement than there might seem to be at first.

 

- The zoom level, fully zoomed out, is a bit closer than I'd like. I assume it's a conscious design decision to create a bit of a 'lost in the jungle' feel, but it still feels a bit uncomfortable.

 

- On multiple screens, the camera edge-scrolling doesn't work on the side with the extended desktop, your mouse scrolls out of the game instead of being bounded by the game window, making the scrolling impractical.

 

- The camp UI is annoyingly and unnecessarily compacted. It's a tiny window in the middle of the screen with four tabs to assign various things. Surely they could have just made a full-screen UI and displayed all useful information and controls at once? It's probably my biggest annoyance with the game currently given how often you have to use this panel.

[Humanoid]

My scouting skill for some reason has been set back to 5 from an initial value of 8. I'm sure it was correct at the start of the game since now I'm 3 points short of the 38-point total. Not sure if there's some sort of 'feature' that munched those points or if it's a straight bug.

[Tigranes]

It's a bug, will be fixed by next patch (next week?)

[Humanoid]

Guess I'll just keep fooling around with low-investment saves until then - just finally ended my first game when, after surviving for weeks with one single party member, he was kidnapped by a random event and that was that, game over cinematic. Just as well, I was determined to fight to the bitter end, and probably would have unwisely wasted hours on hours trying to rebuild if not for that. Resulted in a secondary bug - since no one healthy was left to talk to me, one of my dead party members started the conversation about the quest that just triggered. Alas, they stayed dead after that dialogue.

 

Bug with all stats or just scouting?

 

 

EDIT: Load times are pretty long for a game of this type, going to move it onto the SSD too.

Edited June 1, 2013 by Humanoid

[Humanoid]

Answering myself, yeah, it's just for scouting. Another bug I've hit - landed in Mexico and the world map isn't centred correctly, it's centred around the top-centre of the screen such that I can only see the lower half of it.

 

But yeah, hit Mexico and decided to call it a night. Or a morning - it was 8am and I'd been playing since 10pm.

 

 

What's working for me at the moment is a party of 2 doctors, 3 hunters, 1 scholar (can't see there ever being a need for a second one), 2 scouts and 2 soldiers (plus the freebie one). My combat team however is just doctor, hunter, and two each of scout and soldier - had a real hard time getting even one hunter to pull their weight, ranged combat in general feels incredibly underpowered currently. Even the token hunter I take into combat is really just a mop-up guy - finish off low-hp enemies from range so that my melee troops can do some real damage on meaningful targets.

 

In hindsight I might have swapped a hunter for a backup scout in the larger party. The hunters are there to hunt (surprise), but are otherwise kind of dead weight. It'd be a bit of a point sink that way however - I only truly felt self-sufficient once I had four guys with 8+ hunting (the three hunters plus one of the doctors at the moment). Oh, took the freebie shaman purely to process the massive backlog of herbs.

[Hurlshort]

The scholar can be pretty useful in battle, he's like a bard.  I've got two and they also kick but tinkering.

[Tigranes]

Scholar is good when you're in controll of the battlefield and/or you are facing even numbers - scholar + 2 scouts can take down pretty much any enemy in 1 turn, for example. Doctor is good if you're getting hit and poisoned a lot.

 

The most difficult battle so far for me was the end of Hispaniola, first time I reloaded after screwing up, but mainly I'm just living with my decisions and failures. Roaming around Mexico and it feels like after a while the resources / hunting / etc mechanic doesn't really trouble you at all unless you lose a battle and get a lot of injuries. Not quite on hardest difficulty though, might ramp it up.

[Humanoid]

Hardest for me was a random encounter with some rebels on a camp event, which like the penultimate battle on the island was one of those "hold out for 10 turns" fights - but which I didn't win. Mainly because one was fought with half recruits and the other with full veterans.... Had to spend all my resources on medicine after that one. Also still toughing it out with ironman, but I did savescum with alt-f4 once when I unintentionally started a fight via dialogue.

[melkathi]

I am quite happy with my 2 of each crew. With the two additional soldiers I got in the first campaign, that makes for a great group. Now if only hadn't wasted 100xp on that shaman who abandons you when you leave for Mexico

Two scholars mean that I always have barricades, oil lamps and traps to win my battles for me. Some smart 'cading and tossing of oil lamps made the last fights in Hispaniola rather easy.

[Humanoid]

Ah, I couldn't overcome my RPG hoarding instincts so I haven't used a single consumable throughout....

 

 

EDIT: Confirmed the world map position bug is global to anyone playing a 25x14/16 resolution. Either have to lower my res or wait for the patch to resolve it (if it does).

Edited June 2, 2013 by Humanoid

[melkathi]

Yes, I had to struggle with my hoarding impulse Then I realized that chests on the world map respawn. But the barricades let you create choke points and the oil sets hexes on fire and spreads as long as there are flamable things in adjacent squares. The defence of the palace I think I had around 10 hexes ablaze, causing fire dots on eeryone passing through (5-7 damage per round from what I noticed).

 

That said, even with 89% guarding, thieves just stole 2140 valuables from me...

 

Discovered a new personality trait: Lovesick - gain morale if lover is promoted, lose morale if lover dies.

 

The natives offered my character a husband.

 

And I just saw a guy's morale skyrocket through one sidequest: Montego is Adventurous, Cautious, Peacefull. Send him ahead to scout: yay for adventuring! When he reported back, proceeded cautiously and then let people live. He had been at morale 7, now he is 13.

 

 

edit: also playng at 1920x1080 without any map bug.

Edited June 2, 2013 by melkathi

[Humanoid]

Playing it in windowed mode to get rid of the map bug, but will now have to get used to arrow-key/WASD scrolling instead of edge scroll.

 

A question - the New Game dialogue implies that I can start a new game in Mexico, but the option is locked. My first game is already in Mexico, which I thought would be the trigger, but apparently not. Do I have to finish the whole game first?

 

 

Not a bug but an AI foible - it seems it's willing to run through any number of attacks of opportunity to get to your hunter. More than a few times I've gotten kills on full HP enemies this way.

[Hassat Hunter]

Resulted in a secondary bug - since no one healthy was left to talk to me, one of my dead party members started the conversation about the quest that just triggered. Alas, they stayed dead after that dialogue.

I'll forward the bug to the devs

EDIT: Load times are pretty long for a game of this type, going to move it onto the SSD too.

The first battle takes longest to load, loading in all assets. All other battle loads in the same game should load a *lot* faster.

A question - the New Game dialogue implies that I can start a new game in Mexico, but the option is locked. My first game is already in Mexico, which I thought would be the trigger, but apparently not. Do I have to finish the whole game first?

It's bugged.

But you can get around it using the .ini to set MexicoUnlocked to 1. 

Not a bug but an AI foible - it seems it's willing to run through any number of attacks of opportunity to get to your hunter. More than a few times I've gotten kills on full HP enemies this way.

What AI level are you playing on. The lowest does tend to kill itself, on the highest it should never trigger an AoO.

[melkathi]

Even with two scholars, I can't seem to pass diplomacy checks. granted, they are hard checks, but it makes me wonder what my chances at easy and medium checks would have been without that second scholar.