Feedback on military controls and fighting

Farthest Frontier Ideas and Feedback
1

I’ve waited with providing feedback on this topic until I managed to play through a military monument taunt in a way I was happy with. While losing 63 villagers to defeat 290 invaders may technically not be a victory in the game, I’m still quite happy with it as it was on vanquisher mode without ‘tower defense’ style tactics. I used maneuver style warfare with cavalry, and companies backing up defenses at the city walls while fighting the army on multiple fronts.

Some of my feedback:

  • Soldiers are difficult to spot within the town. An optional highlight (as already exists for the raiders) would be beneficial
  • It should be possible to easily select troops without selecting regular villagers (they will happily fight the invader champion and die doing so. They are brave but simple folks)
  • Units types are difficult to distinguish visually. An overview of selected units would help a lot with that, especially if it allows deselection of units through ctrl+click. Less archers sent to the front.
  • The jump in difficulty from regular invading armies (that demand money) and the taunt army is quite insane. A regular invading army of 230 is destroyed easily with 24 light cav on vanquisher difficulty with nearly no losses, while the taunted army requires many, many more forces to defeat without losing hundreds of villagers

On banner control of companies

  • The place company banner control system is extremely useful
  • It should be possible to move the banner (and thus your army) by dragging it from location to location
  • It would be nice if the banner could be dragged from the bottom screen list straight onto both the minimap and the playarea to deploy your companies quickly
  • It is difficult to identify which unit type belongs to a company based on it’s banners. Pike, light or heavy infantry, it’s all the same icon. Same with cavalry. Extra identifying icons would help
  • When you get too many banners the scroll feature is a bit tedious. Moving the banners closer together would be okay too
  • I’d appreciate if the double click of the banner would bring you to the barracks

Minimap

  • While the red flags indicate rather well where the enemy is, often small groups are wrecking havoc and do not show up. Having them visible as small red dots on the minimap would help
  • Being able to see selected units on the minimap would be helpful (like a small blue dot per unit)

Missile warfare

  • Archers, even with crossbows become quite lackluster in late game. Somehow this feels wrong although missile warfare was always an important aspect
  • Crossbows should be quite effective against armor (also champions) at close range
  • Arrows from towers could be less effective or accurate to compensate

Pathing issues:

  • Both armies stick to roads as magnets to iron. This creates situations where the enemy lines up on a road and trying to get my cavalry to flank them results on them joining the enemy on that same road and dying in the process. Frustrating!
  • My units will happily respect fences around fields, even if it causes them to march all around the field, right through the enemies forces. Many a soldier gave it’s life respecting the fence a bit too much.

Apologies for the long list.

5 Likes
2

I literally completed my Military Monument just minutes ago and I think it is completely useless. “Taunt the enemy?” Why should I? Veterancy increasing by 200%, unless you have soldiers permanently garrisoned you’ll need them for other tasks, so no point. Future games will not include this monument, can better use the resources elsewhere.

2 Likes
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Yeah, if you’re not interested in fighting raiders that monument doesn’t add much else than some nice architecture to your town.

I do like the taunt option to add some late game challenge, but I’d like it to start at the level of a strong invasion, and then ramp up from there. Right now it goes from girl scouts to special forces invading.

2 Likes
4

I agree with most (if not everything) of what Emvi wrote above.

Personally I love that the “Taunt enemy” button exists. For me it’s the true end-game: an endlessly scaling in difficulty challenge with a small cooldown so you can recover from losses, rebuild, and try again.
Without it the game just feels too easy as even on Vanquisher regular raids are trivial past the first couple of decades (excluding the Ark of the Vengeful Dead challenge ofc).

2 Likes
5

I’ve yet to confirm but does the monument confer longer intervals between raids? I don’t think I’ve ever had a raid interval of 9 years, and five seems to be common. My previous experience is the shortest interval was three years and an extended interval rarely went past six.

7

Agree with everything you said. My main complaint with military controls is they are all over the place. To deploy the troops you have to scroll to the fort and set the flag from there; you can’t place the troops using the bottom banner - which would be the most convenient way to do it since it’s always right there. The bottom banner only lets you set the stance or direct them to retreat but you can’t move the flag from there.

I would like all the military controls simplified and consolidated into a single command panel that contains all the commands for the troops, accessible with a right click from either the bottom banner or the combat flag that automatically pauses the game while it’s displayed. The combat flag can also able to be left-clicked and dragged to a new location as you suggested.

1 Like