Zyzyfer wrote:Things seem to be moving slowly, but usually I play pretty long sessions (with big gaps in between these days). Would you say that the game moves along at a healthy clip, or is it a bit on the sluggish side?
Are the menus onerous to navigate? IV was the worst for that.
Does in-game time pass appropriately? Sun Ce's Jiangdong invasion is usually a good litmus test for that.
From what I've seen so far, starting out seems a little more sluggish than the Koei games. Mostly due to the draft pool.
Once you get a good foundation and a nice mix of officers things start moving pretty quickly. I'm 7 years in (202) and have 9 cities, 54 officers and about 200k troops. 6 of those cities are "feeders" for the capital so I don't really have to recruit much or worry about food or money.
Also, when you sack a city in TLW you get gold, food and troops from the defeated force which I think is more realistic and really quickens the ability to get the city up and running.
Not having qualified officers for certain techs really slows your research which was a big issue for both Ma Teng and Han Sui.
Yuan Shao already has Elite Pikeman and Liu Zhang just got Chu-ko-nu squads with repeating crossbows, while I'm still trying to get up the armored knight tree.
The monthly disasters really bogs things down for everyone. For instance, Han Sui's Liang has been hit with blizzards every single year, sometimes every city. There's also riots, earthquakes, droughts etc, which seem a little too common. It just diverts your resources and time into repairs or helping refugees instead of conquest.
The AI is kind of sporadic from what I've seen. Some seem overly aggressive while some just seem to turtle.
In my game, Yuan Shao finally took out Zan but then allied with Lu Bu and Zhang Yan. And Cao Cao who was attacking Liu Biao successfully just made an alliance with him. I'm not sure if some of this is in reaction to what the player is doing or not.
I think Gray Riders covered #2 pretty well~
Sun Ce's heading west in my game and with no events going on, it just feels like a random sandbox type game to me.
Edit:I think with each turn being a month rather than 10 days, it gives the feeling that things take quite awhile. In X you could upgrade a small city to a medium one in a couple months if you had enough officers. In TLW it takes years no matter how many you have.