I agree with Bryan completely. If it's any other game, it'd be cosidered badly balanced. The thing is that only at the beginning there is a sense of urgency. But as you build up the tula, learn all the myths, there are less and less to do on a per-turn basis. Past mid-game it's generally just a matter of tweaking an already working strategy. Of course, it's a this point we start looking for trouble, but then we can do this at a leisurely pace and usually have enough time to recover from any disaster.
I've actually deliberately left myself defenseless for a long time. Of course I suffered from a lot of attacks, but I then I've never actually been really damaged by raids.
There are some difficulties in heroquesting and tribemaking, but again you can do these at your own pace -- there's no urgency to it.
The only "difficulty" I've experienced past mid-game is the inexplicable food underproduction, which I've posted about before. But I'm still not sure if it wasn't a weird bug.
Lastly, not really a balancing issue, but if you were going to tweak the game somewhat, I'd love to see jesters a bit more frequently. They are so rare that they are almost exclusive to the beginning.
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> In all honesty, I think the hardest part is the first yeras of any clan, where you are very vulnerable and don't have much in place. Over time things get easier.
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> This is the opposite of how most modern games are built, I think....they deliberately start easy, then make it harder as you gain experience. But the game is modeling a particular situation, which would make it odd if it were too easy early on. I suppose this could be finagled, but it might seem a bit artificial:
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> - always have one elderly ring member of your main cult who has excellent or better leadership and renowned in another appropriate ability.
> - start with a treasure that reduces wounds when fighting on your tula, but it breaks down after a few years. Or an event offering the same sort of thing for a few years.
> - trigger an event, such that if your weaponthanes drop too low, a few fighters from your old clan show up to join you.
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> Having said that, there are some things you can take advantage of early, if you know to do so (find the dragon and take appropriate action, go and hopefully steal the dragonnewt statue, explore kero finn then tell another clan about it to get that boost of magic....then do your first heroquest with the magic still in the bank).
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> --- On Thu, 1/20/11, David Dunham <david_at_...> wrote:
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> From: David Dunham <david_at_...>
> Subject: What's the hardest part?
> To: KingOfDragonPass_at_yahoogroups.com
> Received: Thursday, January 20, 2011, 1:18 AM
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> A common comment about KoDP is that it's too hard. One factor is of course that the difficulty labels weren't very accurate, and people played on a harder level than they realized. But in fixing that, I'm wondering what in particular makes the game hard. Food? Cattle? Goods? (Heroquests are intentionally hard, though perhaps some could be easier.)
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> BTW, if you haven't seen the new UI at <http://kingofdragonpass.blogspot.com/>, check it out!
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> David Dunham http://a-sharp.com Twitter: _at_KingDragonPass
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