Epic Board Game
This is really good. Gonna play some more when I finish my homework.
Reviews for "The humans are dead"
GREAT GAME!
I absolutely adored reading the text messages in the upgrade system, and the actual gameplay was great too. My only complaint is that winning by war seemed like a very easy task, where as winning by peace would take a very long time of fully upgrading etc (I was using the sci-bots).
Suggestions to make it better:
1. Either decrease the cost of activators, or increase the cost of bots. This is to even out the terrible tipping towards all out war.
2. Remove some of the internet biased or pointless messages in the upgrade system. I found one of the most fun parts of the game just to be reading the messages about the post-apocalypse and how robots are adapting to it. For this reason, add a lot more different types of upgrade cards, and please, keep them serious. :0
3. Change the combat system up by possibly add different classes. For example: Siege Bots (+3 in combat w/ defensive bots, -2 speed [than normal bots]), Raider Bots (-1 in combat with all, +3 speed [than normal bots], Defensive Bots (you already have them, but +2 in combat w/ normal bots).
4. consider the possibility of each class having access to 'powers' which would be activated at a cost to the individual (only activated once), and the effect dependent on the class. For example, if you had three powers per class, the first for the war class could be: cost: 10 ooze, 10 research, 10 electricity, 10 chernobylite, effect: air drop 5 bots of your choice randomly scattered throughout the map. Then the second could be something like: 30 ooze, 30 research, 30 electricity, 30 chernobylite, effect: decimate a 3x3 square (9 tiles) and completely destroy any walls, activators, and even resource sources in the vicinity; blast radius may not include enemy home base. Third effect could be like: 80 ooze, 80 research, 80 electricity, 80 chernobylite, effect: Declare nuclear war on all other robot civilizations. Decimate their entire playing field (destroy everything). For the other classes, the first two skills can be class dependent, but the third should always either be total decimation of the enemy's stuff, or complete take over of all resource hubs [you could name that one global economy :)]
Anyways, I hope you like these ideas as I really enjoyed your game and I hope that you consider them.
r-macdonald responds:
The response to Humans are dead has been great, seems like making a new version in the future is a good idea, and I`ll take all suggestion in account. Please keep posting them!
I specially like the idea of having different kinds of robots to buy with different stats, because currently electricity is only used to buy robots and nothing else, so there is not much of a choice to make regarding how to spend electricity.
fun...
You have to balance things out. Warrior race crushes. It sucks when you run out of cards. Try to fix this.
Is it just me?
Or am I having a bad luck day?
I lose more than 75% of dice combats...
Nice music, it doesn't get annoying even after a while.
Nice gameplay, although very simple can get catchy
r-macdonald responds:
I assure you that dice rolls are completely random and unbiased : )
Try to upgrade your combat so you are stronger than your enemies and don`t have to rely so much on luck!
Great game, but not challenging enough.
I love the concept of the game. A territorial game where you can choose to win based on your style. It just seems terribly impractical to win through activator expansions. More often than not, my enemy would die from the neutral robots before I could activate all of my expansions. It may have been due to luck, but winning through activators was often the slow and impractical way to win. Could it be an analogy for how difficult real peace is to obtain?
Things I'd like to happen in the next installment:
- More aggressive and intelligent AI. It seemed like the AI didn't understand the importance of the upgrade system.. occasionally it'd push out it's robots - but only when I was overwhelmingly upgraded. The AI also never took advantage of my weakpoints. I figured if I played to win through mass activators, the AI would be an aggressive, sieging monster. But it wasn't.. I never felt under pressure from the AI, and that ruined the intensity of the game for me.
- That all pathways to victory are equally obtainable. It's way too much effort (in terms of time) to try and obtain peace, compared to the effort needed for the pathway of destruction. It should be an equal race between the two. I could win in mere minutes using the path of war, but it'd take around 15 or so to win through peace. I don't know if this was deliberate or not though.
- No neutral robots. Not only were they random and unexpected.. but they weakened the strategy elements of the game. They made winning through peace a longer and more tedious process than it already was.
Despite all the criticism, I have to thank you for the great game, it kept me busy for hours! I voted 5 of course. Quality game, the AI and balance just needs some tweaking in my opinion.