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Hey all,
Finally all the dlc are out and I've got time to have a nice long play session. Coming back to my old save and continuing on, I would just like to say that this amazing game is like fine wine. It just keeps getting better with age.
Anyways, moving on to the main point;
Coming back to play with Crown falls/arctic and beginning to build my mega city, whilst I am enjoying myself, the three hard AI still being as annoying as ever (in a good challenging way), I'm beginning to feel that whilst they do provide a necessary spice to an amazing city builder/eco management game, super late game I find the combat to be quite bland and repetitive and thus the late-game itself doesn't really consist any more than just building a large, highly optimized, model and walking around said model in FPV. It's a shame to see so many interesting aspects of the game, namely combat, become pretty much irrelevant in the late-game. I'm sure many of you feel the same way,
Don't get me wrong, I know this game is focused towards city building and is great fun, but, I think that some form of optional challenge for the late game would make that mega-build all the more fulfilling and rewarding to pull off, then even maintain. There's a saying that "it's the journey, not the destination" that really matters and improving the late-game combat/challenges (Even non combat stuff but that's for another time) could possibly make that destination actually become another really fun, long lasting journey.
For instance, the current NPC combat style late-game ( if you even let them live till then, which I do for the added passive trade and general variety), consists of them sending 1-3 ships at a time to harass that one area of the map where there is no defenses to then only be curb-stomped by the fleet that rocks up. That and the albeit very persistent, almost cockroach like, futile attempt at turtling behind a blob of island defenses. Defenses that can be out ranged easily if I should ever want to get rid of them..
That's it.
Quite frankly, it's almost boring. Only their persistent annoyance and the constant back and forth creates some sort of engaging experience.
Even with incidents, late game they don't add any challenge (again not combat though). The only thing to watch there is destroyed buildings and that's more tedium than challenge.
Some Ideas
In no particular order, here's some thoughts on what might be able to be done to build upon and improve the late-game combat.
Of-course, needless to say, but as with most sandbox settings, these would still be completely optional.
I will add more if I think of them, but for now..
-Invasion from another "Faction"
La Corona anyone? Or perhaps even a new french inspired faction (they could not only be the publisher overlords but also overlords in game... and you fine chaps at bluebyte could perhaps have a little fun with that.... Or even just the anarchist faction from the campaign.
Not like another NPC player in terms of city building but more like a really big pirate faction.
I'm thinking this could be triggered by different events, such as a certain number of investors or navy size or a combination of things. Perhaps they could be even be present in the early game whilst building up intensity as the game goes on. (all depending on difficulty setting)
The faction could even come from another new continental region, or rather an oceanic region that has scattered fortresses to destroy or simply a large fleet. (could become another treasure diving zone).
Can be defeated by invading/destroying enemy fleet/regional fortress/islands/continents etc and even unlocking access to other areas such various eastern and far eastern regions.
-Boss fights and Sea creature events
Perhaps the Captains' musing when on expeditions could be more than just that.
I know that the game is obviously based on history and I'm not saying that there should be giant flying sharks that shoot lasers buuut...
Moby dick, the Kraken, Megalodon, some form of giant aquatic dinosaur.. The list could go on.
Each could have their own random appearances, item drops, strategies required to beat etc (maybe the monitor ship could be given some love here). They would only begin to appear when a certain number of ships have been sunk on the map, depending on the difficulty (less ships sunk for them to appear on harder).
Maybe even some sort of airship related flying boss? Or maybe even swarms of more normal, historically accurate animals. Or, random spawning privateer fleets that belong to no NPC or faction in particular, greedy for profits on the high seas through unscrupulous means.
There are so many things that could be done with this and easily too. Simply like as what happens when a destruction quest spawns a few enemies.
-Improve current NPC AI
As said before, even the hardest ones are only so-so when it comes to combat. More likely to build big fleets would be a good start, only the pirates ever seemed to be able to build up a large fleet but it was still not all that powerful. Make it so that if you don't at-least pay some attention to them you are punished by having a huge fleet rock-up and steal yo island. Imagine, no longer being able to be lazy and just leaving things unattended for too long then having 20 SoTL rocking up.
That's it for now but I am really looking forward to the upcoming content and really think that adding more depth/challenge to late-game combat would really build upon this amazing game.
I would also love to hear what you guys would like to see in the game in regards to combat!
Cheers!
forgot the obligatory plsplsplsplspls
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