itch.io

Thanks for this, and the follow up comment! I tried it out on Web. I don't have much time right now, but the first playthrough was definitely neat. I couldn't help myself though and wound up playing a second game while I was typing this up. I lost both games.

Game 1: 6 turns vs 1 ai, AzureA

Game 2: 9 turns vs 2 ai, VerdantV

Liked:

• Turn counter and conquered territory meter did well at giving the feeling that there is some depth, while keeping the unit variety very small. Great idea without adding complicated unit abilities.
• The difference between tent, house, and flag helped too.
• Turn counter simulates different economy intensities.
• AI is not trivially easy.
• 3p game, knew I needed to go for the empty space, and decided to go for blood on the trapped neighbour instead. I was completely ravaged by the other AI, who did expand into the open space. I like that even with 30 years of strategy game experience, I still lost to temptation to go for blood. I surrendered with 3 turns left - AI was actually on track for complete domination, but probably wouldn't have made it in time.

Feature suggestions you could explore:

• Impassible tiles
• Random commander option
• Different sized maps
• Different eco maps (more/fewer houses, more/fewer flags)
• A spiral map, which leads each player around the map to the rear of the next player.
• 3 player maps.
• Different starting units. Per commander, or selectable, or reduced start.
• Undo. At least one action, but since it's all deterministic, back to the start of the turn seems reasonable.

Improve:

• I'd love just a tiny bit more visibility on health and damage for units. Especially since the commander bonuses are so explicit. I don't have a sense of scale for how much +1 damage is. Maybe mouseover/highlight UI in tent selection screen?
• Higher contrast on health bars vs bar border, and on team colours vs grey moved units/unclaimed buildings. Pastel blue in particular.
• I missed the tutorial - maybe put that as option #1 or #2 in the future, instead of underneath credits?
• Unit pricing (4>3>3.5) feels weird with the names. Maybe Heavy, Balanced, and Scout?
  
• Show movement range for all units when cursor is over them. Don't require a click to get it. Maybe tint colour for your own units, based on exhausted vs ready vs clicked? I really wanted to check the movement range on my own units after I had moved them, to see how things would line up for the next round.
  
• Smart highlight for when you are out of units & purchasing power.

Bugs:

• Mouse controls didn't always catch up to the mouse cursor. Sometimes it would just leave a tile 1-2 spaces away highlighted, and I would have to move the mouse again to get it to catch up. Clicking without doing this will select the highlighted tile, not the tile the cursor is over, resulting in misclicks. This can be felt a lot on commander select screen, though the impact of it is the least. I wonder if there's some sort of dead space on the main game, similar to all the dead space in the CoSel screen, that this is picking up on? The worst was running into this when buying units though.