Others Hilichurl's Ambition [v1.0.2] [Theofrad]

[zzgg]

I dunno what you refer exactly too, but yeah, there is a lot of ways you can softlock yourself now by not being prepared enough to deal with the timely threat or build the wrong thing and just skyrocket the threat level out of control. No matter how you look at them, if continuing your playtrough becomes impossible and you have to restart, it is a softlock.

The consideration is what the creator wants. Maybe he wants something where you have to fail and restart until you have optimized your strategy perfectly, which is a genre, but then any pretense of "take your time" should be casted aside and might as well wait for a guide. Being in alpha also means there is no point in learning since things can change next update and completely invalidate your experience, which has already happened frankly.

I think the developer should read every comment as a friendly suggestion and keep on working on his own ideas. The fact it is alpha gives us the opportunity to tell him of our experience and what we liked/disliked.

So guessing his intention isn't really useful; I think if he wants to clarify something, he should do it in the next update by making one of the aspects more important and others less.

Anyway, i think all in all, he has done a fantastic job in making the management side more interesting. The polish comes later, the concept is already there.

 

[Loveyoumuch]

can someone make a mod to win easily, i have been playing for almost a week but i cant take west wind castle, not only that klee form 2 is too strong, she easily beat me in just one round

It's no mod, but you can use cheat (not recommend) :v

 

[Gekonius1]

Any idea when 1.0.3 comes out?

 

[Loveyoumuch]

I will try to play to clear the game to update the guide to v1.1.1 completely, maybe tomorrow, as I have no time to play it much in the past few days.

Or you have the thing that I have not update or I get wrong, feel free to add in the guide, I will check it.

Here is the link:
Hilichurl's Ambition v1.1.1

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[MadKitten]

Any idea when 1.0.3 comes out?

v.1.1.1 Alpha is already out, its linked by dev in comments instead of mainthread for testing, everyting seems to work fine, expect some minor unfinished contents and imbalanced new enemy scaling, but guess im just noob or unwiling to bulletsponge enemies, so i play on easymode ^^ although i did game on normal pretty easily last time, now i find it troubling

 

[NamedUser1111]

And I'm curious as to what you're using to survive, and how much damage she takes from Nycto Archers with that level of scaling?

Barbara with a full stack of hilichurl Geo for turn 80.

Finally beat her on turn 100 !
It took : Barbara + 41 Geo hilichurl, 1 nicto archer +58 hilichurl, 1 Mitachurl dendro + 40 nycto archers, Rosaria + 38 hilichurl geo, 1 unusual hilichurl + 48 unusial hilichurl (and they just... died), 1 samachurl dendro + 16 flower nycto, 1 samachurl + 41 nycto archer, 1 cryo smamchrl with 53 hilichurl dendro.

I honestly don't feel like she is at the "normal" difficulty. She remains beatable, but I took 20 turn of farming ressources and units juste for this fight....
I support the idea of lowering her strength/apparition rate/scaling a little bit, at least for normal difficulty.

I rushed for my life mostly with Rosaria and the stacks of nycto archer support and a good timing with the burst of the dendro samachurl, as for the archer as leader.... he basically applied nycto to take down her shield and nothing else (35 damages before losing Pamon, less than 10 after...)

 

[Daronar]

I haven't finished my current run yet, but I gotta say the threat based stat scaling just kinda feels... awful. It puts you in a position where the difference between your stack being able to handle a single Elite Millelith/Knight, or getting wiped by the same unit is whether you destroyed a statue last turn and buffed its stats too high to out-damage its healing. It incentivizes you to sort of turtle and farm units because without creating threat because you know if you raise the threat level too high boss fights that would have been doable (especially the ones that directly target your base) suddenly become insurmountable issues that don't care about your tactics because their stats are massively inflated.

I understand that it might be desirable to prevent players from rolling the game if they turtle in Mondstadt too long, but this seems like a bit of an overcorrection. If the goal is to slow players down a bit then why not make it common for roaming enemies to spawn on poorly occupied territories, and make them actively seek to join in battles that happen nearby? Or cause more powerful guard units/roamers to spawn in response to increased threat, which would make it more difficult to proceed due to enemy numbers?

Maybe I'm alone on this, I don't know. I'm still gonna figure out a way to slog through the hardest difficulty one way or another.

 

[BabyDragonV2]

I haven't finished my current run yet, but I gotta say the threat based stat scaling just kinda feels... awful. It puts you in a position where the difference between your stack being able to handle a single Elite Millelith/Knight, or getting wiped by the same unit is whether you destroyed a statue last turn and buffed its stats too high to out-damage its healing. It incentivizes you to sort of turtle and farm units because without creating threat because you know if you raise the threat level too high boss fights that would have been doable (especially the ones that directly target your base) suddenly become insurmountable issues that don't care about your tactics because their stats are massively inflated.

I understand that it might be desirable to prevent players from rolling the game if they turtle in Mondstadt too long, but this seems like a bit of an overcorrection. If the goal is to slow players down a bit then why not make it common for roaming enemies to spawn on poorly occupied territories, and make them actively seek to join in battles that happen nearby? Or cause more powerful guard units/roamers to spawn in response to increased threat, which would make it more difficult to proceed due to enemy numbers?

Maybe I'm alone on this, I don't know. I'm still gonna figure out a way to slog through the hardest difficulty one way or another.

turtling is a great strategy

 

[flannan]

turtling is a great strategy

Effective? Yes.
Fun? Not really.
Fits hilichurls? Certainly not.

 

[dekeche]

The new difficulty system is a bit hard to judge fully at the moment, since your training bonuses also apply to the enemies, which makes their stat lines even higher than they should be. Having said that - I agree with Daronaj. It's more annoying to try the same strategies against the same enemies, but fail just because your threat is higher than it was previously. Plus, it's double dipping in the threat mechanic - threat already resulted in stranger revenge armies spawning. And it makes more sense for a stronger adventurer to be an elite adventurer. It's a visual representation of your threat level increasing. And visually tells you what strategies and units you need to be using.

I'm going to speculate here, but is the idea behind the new mechanic to make the world feel more responsive? So as you conquer countries the world reacts to your threat an increases in strength to deal with you? If that's the case, this probably isn't the way to do it. I've said this before - fighting the same units over and over again with the same holding units gets boring after a bit. And having your strategies be less effective and you take more attrition (forcing you to spend more time reinforcing units) is even less fun. If you want the world to feel more responsive to your threat, increasing the variety of units spawned and increasing the number of roaming armies would really help this. I first tried out the new alpha on hard mode, and there was a massive amount of wandering units getting spawned early on. Which meant my holding army was fighting an incredible variety of lineups, and the fights were a lot of fun to puzzle my way through. And when my holding army started failing, I could visually see that it was because I was getting overwhelmed by the number of units I was facing.

Which, is to say, that buffing a units stats isn't as visually impactful as fighting more units. I think the better approach to a "reactive difficulty" would be to increase the number of units spawning in, and increase the variety of units available to the AI. Here's a basic idea - after Mondstadt falls, have a small chance of adding a knight or elite knight team when other nations are spawning in new units. That make later fights more interesting, increase the difficulty slightly by making players fight more units, and increase the fun by increasing the variety of units the player needs to react to. It'd also give players more sources of a nation's unique units. Right now you can get into a situation where you can't get enough knights to build the knight prodcution building in Mondstadt after colonizing it - simply because knights stop spawnging if you get high enough threat, and if you conquer all of Mondstadt before taking the city there's no where else on the map where knights can spawn.

I also want to point out - I also find that threat tends to be a bit "spiky" in regular gameplay. Elite knights and some really elite adventurers tend to, when spawned, reduce your threat by more than you generate from holding captured territory. Which means that you can have fully conquered Mondstadts outlying territories, but still be spawning regular knights and unshielded elite adventurers. In my first easy playthrough (after seeing the new Lumine difficulty) I almost reached a point where I could have conquered Mondstadt completely without actually triggering the final heroine spawning. Which means players can end up fighting a lot weaker units than they should be facing. Having the AI occosionally not spawn units at lower threat levels would give players a break, while also letting threat build up enough to spawn in the more difficult units for the player to deal with.

 

[Theofrad]

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[MineHard444]

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HOLY SHIT, AETHER AINT GONNA BE HAPPY ABOUT US DEFILING HIS SISTER!

 

[longvipro]

i need new map ^^

 

[SpaceshipPaladin]

doesn't appear to work in wine (on Linux mint).

 

[sact12]

So, anyone knows how to put the teapot in the base?
I beat Ping and the Teapot is on my bag, but I have found no way to use it.
Nevermind, I loaded my latest save and it was suddenly there

 

[NamedUser1111]

I have made some progress in my run, so it might be time for to write my wall of text on 1.1.0 (~turn 110, normal difficulty) :

Overall :
I think it's a clear improvement from 1.0.2, which I enjoyed a lot. I will be discussing a few things here, but I want to be clear on that : I enjoy the 1.1.0 a lot.

Lumine :
There have been a lot of discussion on her and I will agree on one thing : the new version of lumine is too strong for what she is presented to be.
Capturing her is MUCH harder than anything else I have encountered so far (but still doable turn 100). She has the level of difficulty I would have expected from either one of the final boss of normal difficulty, or from a boss in hard or even hellichrul difficulty.
Is that kind of difficulty bad ? I don't think so : it is VERY satisfying to finally beat her. But for an enemy that attacks every 20 turn from the beginning of the game, in normal difficulty, it may be a little too much.
How to fix that (it it needs to be) is a much harder problem : she can't become too weak (since she is the protagonist), and her being a recurring enemy is a good thing. Doing her appearance related to threat seems a good idea. Perhaps giving a way to avoid the fight, but at a cost ? (As a completely random idea, I could think of her attacking another of your base with lots of units at random, or a settlement instead of the main base if the cost is paid. it would be still a big problem, but it would be a fight you can afford to lose without instant game over).

My final thought : nice, satisfying to beat, but maybe a little too hard for an early/mid-game boss in normal difficulty. Beating her requires very specifically tailored solutions.

Units spawning and scaling :
First, the good :
More units spawning is a big plus for me : it really felle like fighting far from the bases if harder, and territory barely conquered is harder to fully stabilize. It makes colony very important to supply troupes and gives a real feeling of what is my territory, and what is contested territory. I love it !
Another really great point is the diversity of enemy units : even with the same base units, one feels a great difference with the presence/absence of support units, and which support units there are. It gives a greater precision in the scaling of ennemies, which is great !
On to the less good : it seems the enemies benefit from my training (at least for HP, I'm not sure for the other stats). I would prefer if they didn't (by they could have training of their own). As for the unit stats scaling with threat, I didn't really notice it, but I think the variation in units support and number of supporter is a much more interesting direction to scale the ennemy strength. If there are some stats modifier applied to enemies, I think it would be nice to have a way to see it (written on the treat gauge, or in the enemy stat.

My final thought : great improvement, great new diversity with the new options of supports for enemy units !

Abyss power and main base:
Overall, huge improvement ! !
The new system for abyss power is slower to increase, but I think that's a good thing : it makes breaking the statues of the seven a more important thing, and keeps the abyss power value relevant (in 1.0.2, by turn 80, it was so high that it didn't matter anymore). The two downside I feel are :
- planting the first abyss branch in the field is a little intimidation, because is says "Threat UP", and we don't know if it's going to jump and sen a boss your way, or just go a little every turn.
- The nycto elemental value tends to stay very low, because capturing new heroines lowers it quit a lot. I still can't breed anything bigger than nycto archers, and I have shamans for pretty much every other elements....
For the base, I love the fields system (lots of choice and control on what I get, and so many pore option), the cooking is nice but not game changing and the potion... I have mixed feeling with them : On one hand the effect are useful, on the other hand, I would like to know a little more about what it does (potions seems to have fixed duration, then 1 turn when you pay its cost for no benefit, but it doesn't say the duration. Also, having a number for the effect of a potion would help with the choice, especially with Lisa's potion, which after corruption have two potencies, and which is more efficient is heavily dependent on the actual value of the abyss consumption reduction it gives).
Finally, the base looks really nice. And that's... well... really nice.

My final thought : Huge improvement over the (already very good) 1.0.2 ! I love it !

New colony system:
To me an improvement on every front for this one. So much more that can be done. So much more control on what to get. It actually fells like building the colony. It's great.
Minore comments :
- It would be nice to be able to click on every building of the colony right from the beginning to have an idea of what later building will bring.
- It would also be nice to have a way to know what the colony produced, like for the field in the main base.

My final thought : Great !

Capturable heroines:
No noticeable change from 1.0.2.
I just wanted to mention some thoughts I had :
- I fell like most healer are kind of useless. For example, Barabara heals 25/attack and 125 on her burst, will usually do only 1 attack against an enemy that move a little bit... and rather quickly, every enemy deals at least 200-300 per attack. For that lever of healing, she is only useful in applying her element. Maybe having the heal scale with some stats (such as her HP) could keep the heal somewhat relevant ?
- Some heroine also very quickly become overshadowed by pretty much everything else (like Fischl or Mona). Since they are quite limited in what units they can bring, can't bring a significantly higher number of units than anyone else, cost a lot to deploy and keep on the field, if they can't do more than a regular unit, they are just not worth all that investment.
For that, maybe a way to train a heroine to make her better (take more units, take more types of units, of make their skill/burst/burst charge better) would be nice. I know I would enjoy it (but I know it could be hard to implement and balance, so it's just wishful thinking).
- Finally, regarding torture... the minigame is nice, but I don't really know what is gained from it : by the time you get the second torture device (which is required to trigger loops and corrupt a heroine), you generate enough abyss power to corrupt her normally almost as fast. And a lot of heroine can't trigger the infinite loop necessary to corrupt them with just theses two elements. Finally, it gives the exact same result than a normally corrupted heroine, as far as I can see. Did I miss something ?


My final thought : This was random thoughts anyway. It is the same that 1.0.2, and I love it.


And that's it for my wall of text.
Thank you for this really great game.
I hope I didn't go overboard with this comment...
And I'm really looking forward to the next update!

 

[sact12]

A trick I have found, thought only really usable with Nycto units, is to sacrifice a lot of girls to the Altar to super charge the Abyss Energy available as the game treats it as increasing your max Abyss Energy as long as you don't use it, this artificially increases your Nycto power, which can have effects like increasing the odds of spawning high tier Nycto units (seriously, I manage to get Fischl to produce a Mita Nycto from a basic Nycto) and increase the damage that Nycto units do. (yes, this means you can't produce wedges or branches or corrupt girls if you want to keep the buff up)
In theory, you could achieve something similar by increasing the Elemental Power at the Altar for any of the elements (this seems to be the main purpose of the Teapot, to harvest Elemental Power from a girl) but the gather rate means that you would have to pass many turns before the numbers get silly, while with the sacrifice girls trick you can gather a lot of Abyss power in a few turns at the cost of shooting your basic Hilichurl Production and stopping the production of Wedges and Branches, though this isn't much of a problem once you get at least one colony up and running as it produces basic churls for you already.
*I have no idea if Theofrad intended for this trick to exist as we are not supposed to be able to "store" Abyss Power so it may be fixed in the future

 

[NamedUser1111]

Oh !
Thank you ! I'll try it.

 

[Theofrad]

*I have no idea if Theofrad intended for this trick to exist as we are not supposed to be able to "store" Abyss Power so it may be fixed in the future

Unfortunately this is a bug.

 

[DDSDD]

I think one of the main problem with Lumine is that she doesn’t just punishes you, if you are not super sweaty to deal with her, she ends your game.
Even time sensitive attacks would be acceptable if the setback is proportional, but 1 mess up = full reset is an invitation to turtling the hell out of the game, and it’s just not fun.
I think it would be far more challenging if these “bosses” would just act like OP units that can randomly appear and decimate one of your army anywhere, setting you back and forcing you to expand to minimize damage.
It would still make her feel like the threat she is but you wouldn’t have to design your entire run around here to get to continue anymore.