I played the game too much, water management is mine Vietnam PTSD.
I completed the first 400% run WITH PEACEFUL ENDING HAHAHA.
The game is good, the updates are frequent, I did playtest this game before release and I keep coming back to it due to its increasing replayability and ease of 'access'. Its easy to start and do a run, and there are many ways to do things.
Like did you know you can cap a province and build many houses in it, then let the enemy recapture it so it breaks their entire empire's economy? Now you do! the game is like Dwarf Fortress, it is now in its initial slow startup phase. It will take some time before a 'Kitfox' Publisher approaches them for 3d epic mouse support (which DSS 2 already has!)
- There is little music or sound as of now, like in old DF ASCII. So get used to repeating sounds.
- The game is close in spirit with DF !FUN! learning curve. You learn mechanics or behaviour with playthroughs. Like using economy to offensively destroy a much stronger foe. For example: good placement of multiple Taverns+warehouses per province in order to minimize travel time, thus maximizing work time per worker, province specialization with Province trait usage for maximum food and industrial through-put.
- The embassies are OP. you can use diplomacy points to 'manipulate' others. Like you become allies with all the allies of a neighbour. If that person declares war it iwill turn into a 'free for all world war' between all parties. You only need to make 'peace' or 'truce' (which is preferable, because you can use truce then extend time for 1 diplo point and then use truce to hard-lock others into fighting your wars!)
- Water is your biggest concern. Its hard-set value per province. The more water 'income' you gain them more 'inefficient' or massive you can be in said province. 3.4 water with deep well trait (which doubles the 'tick rate' of water income from 3.4 per sec to 6.8 per sec). You can use brewers to make beer and oil makers to make extra horny olive oil (lubricants) and gain massive throughput with resource processing. From using 4 water and 8 raw food or something and 4 coal (or charcoal) to make 8 food into 8 water and 1 raw food for 12 beer and then use 4 beer and 8 raw food and 4 coal (or charcoal) for 12 food!
- The game has a lot of underlying math or 'Dwarf Fortress !FUN!'. It is easy to learn but hard to master.
- The artstyle is nice and reminds me heavily of Stonehearth. God I hate how RIOT ruined that game. BUT THE ACE MOD is still up-to date as of writing this review and kept alive, and the game too!
- DSS 2 is going to have an overhaul of the entire map system like they did with Kingdoms and Castles around V1.0.
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This game's biggest 'negative' if I have to use that term, is that it does not have an easy to specify (or paint more clearly) end point of what it wants to be. Its like the initial stage of Dwarf Fortress where there were plans for Magic but even nowadays it stil is not present (without mods I mean. I know they announced that they finally got to the Magic part bit thingy and I bet its probably also thanks to the new programmer that Zach and Tarn hired. The guy that also made multi-core processing possible and frigging made late game so much more playable! FOr people interested look up DFHack Timeskip. Don't thank me, please enjoy that thingie. you can use DF hack utilities with DF (Dwarf Fortress) On steam, you can download it as a separate game I think? But you only need DF as prerequisite. OR You can go old-school and play DF in ASCII for free! (yes the old DF is still playable and downloadable from OG devs, but it has no mouse support!))
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DSS 2 Is a worthy game to try and play, and with its future visions that the Creator? Dev? uuh the guy making it, Fabian, has. He is a nice chap that does put functions and bugfixing over aesthetics, so if you report bugs you will see the results faster (and an actual response from the madlad himself) over content additions. He is a little bit of a Factorio Developer Mindset in that regards (I still don't believe its skill and experience, that guy probably has an Autism+ degree in efficiency and results).
Anyway! if you want a good resource management and big scale, with escalating management and capabilities RTS, then I recommend this game. If you want some BS Quadrupple A graphics with their fancy Mud -overlay layer that makes everything look blurrier than us when we are looking for trees that can speak in the cold war, then I don't recommend this.
This game is still alive and new stuff is being done but it takes time due to one developer working on it. Again reminds me of DF back in the (g)olden days! (The first ones, the steam release I see as the second golden age!)
The dev does update frequently with bugfixes etc. But like some other Indie games I saw he does not post a bugfix or minor update to steam announcements page thingie.
UPDATE: I posted the review as a save-thingie, updating with rest of my rant.
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The army building and customizing is nice. You can choose which 'background' of your 'troop' you want. A troop is one 'unit' basically. and they can be added, removed, split from, retired and so on. They can be part of an 'army'. Anyway. The troop or how I'll call it for ease and bloody simplicity the 'unit', is a combination of the 'soldiers' which basically as of now is either a plebaen (pleb( villager)), or a 'noble' which is basically your 'premium eugenics' kind. More hitpoints, bit more damage and efficiency, movement speed yada yada.
Then you can choose their weapon. Which can be a sword or ranged or special or other. Swords are from wooden to copper to bronze to iron to metal to steel to brass to Mythril (mythril is your endgame resouce/thingie, rest is normal medieval/pre Victorian age thingie).
- Ranged is a slinghsot, so your little squary guys can be the pebble yeeters even David would be proud of! Then a short bow then bow then longbow I think? Then arbalest and crossbow, and finally an arquebuese and single shot hand-cannon
- special is a warhammer, sweihander, literal roman Testudo kit (with shield!), and htose are the current options I think? Basically Zweihander gives AOE attack to EACH soldier of said UNIT. which is I think 30 per unit? The Testudo Kit as I call it gives them 80% ranged defense (MOBILE TANKS AND SPONGES GO BRRR), and Warhammer gives a 'stun' effect and other stuff, good armour breaker.
-Specials are siege engines. So : small ballista big ballista? and catapult. Then you get the cannon and 'tube. Which is basically 2 cannons with one being more aoe and 1 being more damage in your face.
- THEN you get shields!: Currently there are 4. a Bucker some kind of small heater a medium one and the big square one. These ones give you additional defense and deflect. I think only the buckler can be used on mounts? Or that one and the 2nd heater one. ANYWAY.
YOU get a unit with their origin, which is pleb or noble for example, 1 weapon of choice, for example a Crossbow, a shield (buckler? is currently the only choice for unmounted ranged units?) and their armor!
- Armor goes from basic leather to linen to copper to bronze to iron to heavy iron to brass to steel to mithrill. Each one has modifiers .
-- Modifiers of equipment now come with health, armor, block chance, movement speed, attack speed, attack range, attack strength, AOE size for some, block amount and I think a few more. I am too lazy to double check so heyho!
-- The end result of your unit can be a crossbowman with Helmet-Lacking Ultramarine level of plot armor that UltraFists your enemies over UltraRanges with UltraEfficiencies!
You also have mounts, which also can have carriages! So you have combination WITH and WITHOUT a cart behind them. another layer of customization!
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more in comments I post Because character limit. BS!
