First off, I would like to say I am in massive support for this game. I loved Advanced Wars as a child, getting my first AW game on my 10th birthday. I also played the english-friendly Fire Emblem games but did not get that same sense of army commander, but rather band of heroes commander. From my understanding, War Groove is going to be some what inbetween the two, with the standard units composed of many specialized and equipped soldiers with hero units thrown in. My only issue is that it seems that the hero units are composed of only the hero themselves which I disagree with. I would rather that the hero units be composed of that hero and normal or at least their hand-picked companions. I disagree with the idea of heroes lone wolfing it is that it goes back to the feeling of them being one man armies which I have always found distasteful, that a single individual is so powerful that they mop the floor with 20 professional fighters. I want heroes to be a normal unit of the heroes choice with that hero in the front, say for this old looking sword-woman would lead an improved unit of swordsmen and in combat the swordsmen will get whittled down as they take damage until it is just the hero left, and then the unit is defeated when the hero is. My understanding is that these heroes are also basically a protect/destroy objective, which is logical but not something I am too too used to, but is still a motion I support. Old Blue from what I've heard will heal nearby allies as her "CO" power, which will kinda make her like Andy and Brenner, but I do hope they go with the CO system they used in AW DoR, where a CO unit had a CO zone around them which buffed allies. If not, that is fine, but then it makes it feel that nobody's armies have specialized training to make them special or build on a strategy or strength. If it is going to be activated AOE buffs, then I would love to see a hero that focuses on Cavalry; horsies and doggos. The ability would be say a "Charge" which buffs attack and move range of nearby cavalry. I am also excited because this game is using mythological creatures as units like dragons, harpies, and you can't hide the fish-faces from me. I saw them. They aren't sneaking up on me. Tough, because I'm not going any where near the water, so HA! I hope that you will use more mythological creatures. Also, horse archers please. I am also made aware that this game will have mod support, which particularly tickles my interest as I have had ideas that were inspired by AW and other games, but I will detail my mod ideas in my next post. All in all, I like the direction that the game is going, and I wish it safe and sane development. Just don't muck it up please.
With mod support and modding tools available, War Groove would go miles. Seeing as how this game isn't too different from the old Advance Wars, I think that an AW mod would be very popular and highly requested. Apart from modding in new units, you could even go so far as to make a Fire Emblem mod where FE characters are added as hero units. But what do I want? What ideas were my head filled with in my childhood? Back then, I wanted to make a game where you build an empire on an alien/foreign and exploit the environment around you for resources and design your units from top to bottom based on what you want. I have already described my idea in my thread in the Chuckiefisk Social Games section, which is found here but I will describe here how it could pertain to War Groove as a mod. I will use the simple economic system as it is closest to AW (Advance Wars) and WG (War Groove). You start in fresh terrain with resources capable of being exploited, say thick woods or metal deposits. Your initial building can build Construction Rigs which go out and build structures in the world, essentially a worker unit. Mines can be built over metal deposits and Mills over thick woods for credits, or currency. Settlements can also be built by Rigs to increase the unit cap and also provide another form of income. Unit producing structures can also be build by Rigs, those being; Land Bases, Air Bases, and Sea Bases, each base being capable of producing units of their respective movement types. What is written already can be best fit into what is AW and WG as both are meant to be brief and contained, but this idea requiring slightly more room for building and exploitation of terrain. What comes next is only really suited for longer matched games like Civilization, Hearts of Iron, or Supreme Commander. Technology is available to be researched which unlock new components for building units. Infantry are composed (technology wise) of their weapons and body armor. Tanks and other Vehicles are composed of their Chassis, Mobility Type, Main Gun, and Side Gun. Engine too if you don't mind it being just a little more complicated. I want there to be many different parts so that there is a wide variety of options and combinations, such as intentionally making units either cheap and numerous or expensive and powerful. What kind of infantry do you want? Maybe you want your anti-infantry Infantry to be equipped with flamethrowers and not heavy suppressive rifles. Maybe you want to upgrade your light scouting team to long range snipers. Outside of technology, units can also a few different modifications, such as crew and unit size. I would have crew affect how a unit performs, with soldiers being the control group. Recon would have better vision range and possibly better stealth capabilities, Veterans consume more of the unit cap but are much more powerful than soldiers, Mercenaries are more expensive but do not take up any of the unit cap, etc. Unit size is also important because it determines how expensive a unit is, how powerful it is, and how detectable it is. Bigger units are stronger but are more likely to be spotted by the enemy and are easier to hit, giving the enemy accuracy buffs. Unit size can be attained in two idea models; produced units start at a minimum and need to be built up or be predetermined in the blueprint. Lastly, pertaining to Rigs, they can also build Walls, Turrets, Sensors, Mine Fields, and Terraform with Technology. With all of these options available, I think a very fun Mod could be made. Please help me refine these ideas by providing me feedback. By all means, if it sucks, stop me in my tracks before I get ahead of myself.
This next post is in regards to the newest footage released on NinEverything, found here. This video has broadened my understanding of the game and its mechanics, and now I have some new things to comment and regard concerning the game, and it made me cringe considerably less than the last one. They will be bulleted for organizational purposes. Color Pallets and Unit Colors I understand that Wargroove, with a lower case g, will be using a coloring system that allows the game to change the base colors of a unit to match that of the aligned faction or player. I am inn support of this but I am going to ask a favor from the players that we be allowed more than 4 colors to choose from. I am simply asking for the 7-8 basic colors, those being; red, blue, yellow, green, purple, orange, black, and white. I am fine with playing as blue or red but I would greatly appreciate all of my units and properties being orange. Garrisons and Reinforcements I was playing with the idea of units needing to garrison properties in order to capture them as I was watching the video, but it created too many issues in my mind. Units needing to be consumed to capture properties would cut from your income as you need to build more infantry to capture more properties, but it would slow the expansion of a player if that is what the devs are looking for. There is also the question of what it would do if a hero unit tried to capture a property, so that promptly shut down the idea of unit garrisons. At the very least, a property starts with a single hit point and gains one every turn, so it is not like my argument has strong ground to stand on. Then I saw in the video that units could reinforce from properties at the expense of the property's health and gold, which answered my previous questions on how to heal units outside of a hero as units could not actually enter a property's tile. Swordsmen and Spearmen Please switch the cost of the swordsmen and spearmen. As I have already stated in my other thread "Why are swordsmen always dumped on?" Swordsmen should be a beefy more expensive unit while spearmen should have a special ability where it always attacks first, even when attacked. It makes sense as you need to get past the spear in order to attack the spearman. Swordsmen should have more health or defense as they have a shield. Air Play Ok, so Witches and Wraiths are your jets, or air superiority units. Why do they cast fire ball? I get that they are witches and they cast magic but if they really wanted to make a harpy have a bad day then they should cast lightning, not fire. Also, vampires are the counter culture to harpies? I think that is a bit of a stretch. If you wanted a winged demon, then why did you not use gargoyle, or imp as the felheim harpy?
