High Strategy: Urukon

Positives-- The game has a lot of info if/when you know where to look. The detailed descriptions are evocative enough to paint a clear feeling of the world and its inhabitants without turning the game into a book. And the fact that each faction has different goals makes each faction a more unique experience. That said... Negatives-- the map. I'll use regions as an example of what I mean. If I click a city, and then click the region tab, I will discover the name of the region the city inhabits as well as one of the brief but powerful descriptions of the region. BUT when it comes to understanding where any of the regions actually are is a nightmare. There's a helpful guide of regions which explains what cities are in what regions, but good luck finding the city names. The other major negative is that for all the world-building the different factions of different cultures with different goals are terribly homogeneous. I presume The Fist is supposed to be difficult because it's small wedged in-between The Hegemony and Guras Mog, but it's not really that hard to keep both off your back while you colonize around their empires. Whereas the Children of Eternity trying to stockpile the Love resource (despite getting a 25% discount for negotiating cities) has just... not been in the cards for me, apparently (maybe I didn't NEED to collapse 4 of the surrounding factions, but then how would I get any relics? I'm not wasting a turn on Excavate. EVER.) If the factions had a preference for certain actions (instead of just historical starting relations) it might make them feel more al...ive? Maybe that's the wrong word I want. And the map, man. It needs more than two colors for land versus water. I understand that this world is supposed to be super barren, but OBSIDIAN island is the same color as the Night Forest which is the same colo...you see what I'm saying? I don't think anyone needs pages of tables showing them what each culture's population requires for certain actions-- there's literally a summary of what you need when you click the action you want to take and hover over the city in question. But I'm so sick of seeing that someone raided Kovetto and then looking all around the map trying to find one (admittedly somewhat more important) city. It dampens the fun of the learning curve, and it just makes me feel like my time would be better spent learning about ACTUAL human cultures. Good luck m8 Edit: Weeping Ziggurat in Ignommium (Dead River Valley-- I know some of my spelling is off) doesn't work correctly; I finished the landmark, and everyone else can negotiate the Dead River Valley cities away from me-- but I CANT negotiate them back? Like what the actual... ----- small crap like this makes this game really hard to enjoy