EDIT: On page three you can find a little battle report to give you and idea of how battles are fought in the game.
Hello,
I would like to introduce you to Arcadia Online, a browser MMORTS that I've been working on with my team for the past 4 years. The closed beta test is finished and now Arcadia is released.
I know teamliquid is a great community since I use to lurk alot here, and I would like to hear your opinions about the game, we are a small team of indie game developers and any help is appreciated.
If you like to play browser games like Ogame or Imperia you might give Arcadia Online a try. What separates Arcadia from other games is that the entire game is played on a huge 2d world map (think medieval total war campaign style map) and the tone of the game is more hardcore than the mainstream browser mmorts-es out there. Player cities can be destroyed or conquered, and even total defeat is possible under some conditions.
Here are some screenshots of the game to give you a quick idea of what it looks like:
For more info you can got to the faq or screenshots section of the website.
What I would like to hear is what do you think about a game of this type? Can it compete with other more mainstream mmorts?
We support mobile phones and the game works on the iphones (iphone 3+). However there are some problems with how the fixed elements of the user interface are rendered and thats why you probably could not see intro screen that tells you to choose your flag color and then choose your start location because that screen was rendered on the bottom center of the map (instead of being rendered at the center of your screen). This problem doesnt surface on regular play because the fixed window is used much less than the city/unit windows
Right now thats a little inconvenience that proves almost impossible to fix for all different mobile browsers.
For the techies that have done some web design: The problem is in the fact that many mobile browser dont support position:fixed; and those that support many of them are buggy with fixed position. This is one of the problems that will get fixed as better mobile browsers gain market share.
I like how you guys dont implement any pay-for-resources in your game, which makes it appeal a lot more to me.
Something you could fix is the large amount of typos in your game, such as the academy( Accademy ), founding a city (fund city), stone/iron excavation (escavation), etc
The FAQ and guide need to be more fleshed out. A lot of things that aren't obvious, such as exploitation of map tile resource bonuses and how resource gain/loss is calculated.
On December 26 2012 10:58 KtheZ wrote: I like how you guys dont implement any pay-for-resources in your game, which makes it appeal a lot more to me.
Something you could fix is the large amount of typos in your game, such as the academy( Accademy ), founding a city (fund city), stone/iron excavation (escavation), etc
Yep, we are all from Croatia so the language might have some typos in it. Thanks for pointing that out, I'll fix it!
On December 26 2012 17:10 Wegandi wrote: How do you increase gold production?
A city gets gold by the taxes that are payed, so the bigger the population (Male and Female) the bigger the gold income.
On December 26 2012 20:51 lichter wrote: The FAQ and guide need to be more fleshed out. A lot of things that aren't obvious, such as exploitation of map tile resource bonuses and how resource gain/loss is calculated.
Agree, the Guide is a work in progress and I'll start updating it now that I'm getting player feedback on things they are not sure how to accomplish.
I'm also not sure what happens when I attack a rebel city. Is there a population there that becomes mine when I conquer it? Or do I need to bring people to populate it? Pros/cons of conquering versus founding a city would be nice.
Another comment is that making a move plan allows me to set the command to cross rivers and lakes, and once I get to the river, the move just stops. No error or message to inform me that may army has stopped. Would be nice to either have an error when issuing the move (so that I don't accidentally try to cross a river in vain) or get a message when the move command ends abruptly.
On December 26 2012 21:36 lichter wrote: I'm also not sure what happens when I attack a rebel city. Is there a population there that becomes mine when I conquer it? Or do I need to bring people to populate it? Pros/cons of conquering versus founding a city would be nice.
When you attack a rebel village you destroy it if you win the battle (taking the resources). It would be too easy to get new cities since rebel villages are easy to defeat. However cities can be conquered from other players, but only if the defender has a bigger number of cities than the attacker or else the city gets destroyed.
On December 26 2012 21:36 lichter wrote: Another comment is that making a move plan allows me to set the command to cross rivers and lakes, and once I get to the river, the move just stops. No error or message to inform me that may army has stopped. Would be nice to either have an error when issuing the move (so that I don't accidentally try to cross a river in vain) or get a message when the move command ends abruptly.
More comments soon
The "Plan army movement" doesnt check if the terrain is crossasble or not, because you may want to set a plan to board your army on a fleet and for that you need to be able to move to non crossable terrain (water). If you want you can use the "Move army" command that works like in any other rts, using pathfinding.
On December 26 2012 23:57 Silencioseu wrote: Is it any different from games like Ikariam and such?
The best way to find out is to try it, but I would say that the game offers more freedom and doesnt have a pay-to-win feature where you can swap real money for resources. This is not gonna happen in Arcadia Online since we are of a strong opinion that those kind of features destroy the gameplay.
On December 26 2012 23:57 Silencioseu wrote: Is it any different from games like Ikariam and such?
There are a few difference that could be pretty big. From what I have noticed, your army must travel with a general (I'm not sure how may of these you could have but it could making things more interesting in wars if people don't always have them readily available). Another thing I have noticed are the random NPCs that I don't know too much about (killed a mammoth today and lost around 350 troops doing it - 600 units v 95 mammoths that didn't seem to drop any loot). It appears you can transfer population between cities. Combat can happen anywhere instead of only in a city. Different mechanics of how resource gathering works but its not a huge difference (I actually went down in resource generation after upgrading the structure that generates it because my population couldn't support it. It normally gives you a message when this will happen but it didn't for me this time).
I also have a few questions about the game. Does killing NPCs (orcs/mammoths/black dragon/etc) yield loot? What about NPC cities? Are there upkeep cost(food of gold) for soldiers while they're in a town(something is using 1k+ food per hr for me and I am unsure what it is)? If I get lost on the map by scrolling around too much, is there a way to return to one of my cities without relogging?
EDIT: I figured out, you do get loot for killing NPCs but its not reported anywhere, it just appears in your general's cargo
On December 27 2012 16:42 Dissenia wrote: Another thing I have noticed are the random NPCs that I don't know too much about (killed a mammoth today and lost around 350 troops doing it - 600 units v 95 mammoths that didn't seem to drop any loot). It appears you can transfer population between cities.
You probably didn't notice because Mammoths drop only food, all hostile NPC drop loot.
On December 27 2012 16:42 Dissenia wrote: Are there upkeep cost(food of gold) for soldiers while they're in a town(something is using 1k+ food per hr for me and I am unsure what it is)? If I get lost on the map by scrolling around too much, is there a way to return to one of my cities without relogging?
The upkeep cost are for armies and navies are always present, the only difference is that while an army is outside the city it consumes 120% of the gold than while being in the city.
In the UI window Manage Realm there is a list of all cities/armies/navies, so if you want to get to one of them just click on the "Go to location" link.
A little update, many things have happened since the last time I posted.
Now that almost a month has passed since the release of the game things are starting to get interesting with three major alliances forming and war is on the horizon
1. House Bolton 2. Equestria 3. Troll
There have been lots of changes and bug fixes thanks to the input of the community and some of the major ones are: - Alliance Ranking - Improved Manage Realm and Market
Here are some of the screenshots to document how the world is evolving:
This is the heart of the House Bolton Alliance, the strongest one on the realm
This is the heart of my own alliance Troll I joined
And here is a tribute to DAMMIT, the top ranked player in the realm, he choose to live a secluded life on the outskirts of the map
On January 22 2013 09:51 Sufficiency wrote: How come this looks like civilization?
No idea, but so far I'm enjoying this game. I took out my starting army and pwned some rebels. Looted over 8k in gold and I was pretty excited lol. I feel like there's not much going on, probably because I just started yesterday, and I keep refreshing my browser every 10 or so minutes. I'm pretty secluded because I only have one neighbor, but he has two cities right next to me in the mountains.
Can NPC's attack cities? There's a black dragon that keeps flying near my city and plenty of rebels and orcs roaming around. That'd be cool if they tried to lay a siege every once in a while.
On January 22 2013 09:48 PaqMan wrote: I've signed up. In-game name is TribaL!
Civilization was a game that I loved playing, but what Civilization lacked for my taste was the MMO component. Thats one of the reasons I made Arcadia Online.
On January 22 2013 09:51 Sufficiency wrote: How come this looks like civilization?
No idea, but so far I'm enjoying this game. I took out my starting army and pwned some rebels. Looted over 8k in gold and I was pretty excited lol. I feel like there's not much going on, probably because I just started yesterday, and I keep refreshing my browser every 10 or so minutes. I'm pretty secluded because I only have one neighbor, but he has two cities right next to me in the mountains.
Can NPC's attack cities? There's a black dragon that keeps flying near my city and plenty of rebels and orcs roaming around. That'd be cool if they tried to lay a siege every once in a while.
It takes a few days for things to really start to get interesting, right now you should be focusing on attacking Rebels/Orcs/Trolls for resources, developing your city and building a new one. As soon as you have a strong army 1000+ with at least 40 catapults you can try to conquer a city from another player if he is inactive.
NPCs cannot siege cities. A for the black dragon, ignore it, there is nothing you can do about it for now :D
On January 22 2013 16:42 Archers_bane wrote: Can you trade resources within alliances?? Looks a lot like civilization
Yes you can trade resources, and not only within alliances. The Market tab has all the options you need for trading resources, but you need to build a Market first.
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