Great game so far,enjoying both the plot and the lewd part of the game (thanks a lot,
SeventhVixen!).
However, in my opinion it is scenario and most importantly strategic part of the game that make this game unique.
So I’d like to discuss what choices provide a better army (of course there is a lot of missing information so far and unless
SeventhVixen would like to give us some spoilers, all this discussion may become obsolete after we see later versions). So far we have several choices that affect the composition of army:
1. Peaceful approach with Baralis v. s. killing him. Here it seems peaceful approach is more optimal: in both paths you can reach affinity 4, but with peaceful approach the deals seem better (technically, you can reach aff.5 with Baralis if you befriend him, fuch Robyn and then give him the paper, but you are still unable to pick the best option since when you try it, you get the info that it is a bug and you should not be able to reach this state;
SeventhVixen, you probably know about this for a long time, but I tag you just in case).
- If you choose to raise troops befriending Baralis allows you to recruit an additional unit of spearmen ( in total you get 3 units of spearmen and 2 of archers if you make peace with the mayor and 2 of each if you kill him).
- If you take resources the deals seem equivalent (300 additional units of food for aff. 3 of Baralis and 250 of food and 100 of money with Hall; second deal yields 50 more resources, but so far food is more valuable)
- Befriending mayor also allows you to spend wood on building your castle.
So all in all befriending seems optimal. However, it is not given that you absolutely should take aff. 4 deal v. s. aff. 3 (food version of it). While with aff. 4 deal you are able to raise a lot of troops, they are unexperienced and if you do so you experience an inevitable food shortage. In result your troops have bad upkeep for an extended period of time, of which we don’t know all consequences (my optimistic assumption is that upkeep matters only during battles; if it is so, taking troops looks preferable – presumably we will be able to get a food deal later in game; however, it may have some other unfortunate consequences i. e. optimally upkeeped troops train better and would have more experience in result).
If we somehow able to get affinity 5 with Baralis and would be allowed to renegotiate yet again in future updates, choosing between aff. 3 and 4 becomes irrelevant.
2. In case of defending Mina or letting it slide, I don’t really see much of a choice. Punishment for antagonizing Pierre is too severe. Loosing 2 units (one of spearmen and one mounted) and 3 leaders of 7 (including the only artillery specialist) seems detrimental to war effort. And I personally don’t think that Mina is a good bride for Patric
3.The last choice is raising footmen in Hartlepool during first conversation or making some other choices. So far it is difficult to say if raising troops immediately is necessary.
- If we decide to give arrows to Belinda, raising immediately can definitely be avoided without penalties (we get 3 units of archers in any way).
- However there are other possible choices to spend arrows (both purchasing powder and providing additional security to Kaelkirk can be extremely important for war effort)
- If we decide to spend arrows in another way, raising 2 units of spearmen immediately may be important. While logically we can expect that they will be raised no matter what when we negotiate a deal with Belinda, it looks suspicious that we are unable to raise them after the first talks (there is only an option of raising archers).
I also have several questions about the game mechanics (answers may be spoilers, so I realize I might not get definitive answers) and a couple of bugs to report:
1. Are we supposed to have any information about our current loyalty? When we take some actions that influence loyalty, we get notification, but there is no sign of even to which direction does loyalty change (it is of course clear in most cases). In the character menu we have a large picture signed loyalty, but I don’t see any indicators allowing you to understand if it is high or low.
Maybe in case we are not allowed to know anything about how high our current loyalty is, it would be a nice idea to add clarification about it somewhere, because I have spent a several minutes trying to do anything with the picture and comparing the size and color of picture given different choices (both doesn’t seem to change if you are interested)/
2. A clarification of what exactly depends on the level of upkeep would be really nice. At the very least, it would be good to know if upkeep has any influence over time or if it has effect only during battles (i. e. troops with better upkeep at the time of battle perform better, but the history of their upkeep is irrelevant).
3. 2 out of 3 unlocks in “Meanwhile in” are shown during the main quest. However, the one about Umkirkey (that contains an important info about the count of Puren) seems to only be available via the menu. Is it WAD?
4. All spearmen units from Leffrin barony have "L
affrin" allegiance. I am assuming it is a typo.