I discovered, downloaded and played your game. I'm very glad I did that. I only played for a couple of hours in solo mode. This is a first impressions list. - First, it compiled and ran flawlessly on Fedora 14. Rare enough for that kind of project that it's worth congratulating the people who made that so. - Then, straight from the menu, it's gorgeous. I didn't expect that. The game definitely has what it takes to attract players, and developers. The level of detail is captivating. So is the life on the maps: the units, animals, water, plants... even the mines look great. - The music is absolutely on par. I disable music in 99% of the games, because it's annoying or distracting. Here I didn't even look for a volume control. It was just perfect, all the time. - Playing was easy. The introduction text was enough. I didn't need a tutorial. All I needed was to change the opponent's AI (I was still only reading building descriptions when qBot almost wiped me, which it did with a second wave about 3 minutes later). I may have inherited bases from my very few past-played RTS games, yet I think you're doing great when it comes to simplicity. Few resources, no separate weapons making, no starvation, few figures to watch, less micro-management, and that's all good. - I don't know if this will be a game for me; maybe too war-orientated for my taste. Yet building was enjoyable. And it offers fortifications, so it may be a game for me after all. I just love to build walled cities and defend them under siege. Your system, with its rotation of buildings and walls, is the best thing that I know of. No more rectangular orderly towns. What's next ? Walls on slopes ? - You've got giraffes ! It doesn't matter if your fauna is geographically accurate or not. Having such beautiful camelopards roaming your maps will attract loads of players. In short, I can't compliment you enough for this little jewel you're cutting. I quickly forgot that this is only an alpha version. I already rank it higher than many finished games. Truly impressive. Now I'll mention a few flaws I noticed, so that I can pretend to be a little bit useful. Note that I don't know anything about the game status, your road map, etc. It will take me weeks to browse your forum. - My only serious problem was readability. It starts from the introduction screens, where everything is white on black. Beautiful, but it made my eyes sore, even on a 37" screen. In the maps, a lot to read also, and it's all very small. Please do not forget the "visually challenged". Fortunately, the trouble only lies at the bottom of the screen. Font size options would be great; a pre-set of background/font colours even better. - Path finding isn't perfect. I built a wall, 10 contiguous sections long, not linear. Units couldn't walk around it and got stuck at the base of the wall, until I deleted 1 section at the end of their awareness circle. - Rotated walls don't adjust well to towers. Perhaps a wall template could automatically anchor itself to a fortification when it exists, and rotate around this anchor ? Then graphical adjustment of the overlap ? Anyway, it's the only visual imperfection that I've seen, along with a tiny gap between 2 walls. - Persian units show their Persian names. Therefore I had to constantly go back to the correct buildings to be reminded what they mean. I commend the purist approach, but still disliked it. Things that surprised me: - I sent a couple of women to milk goats. Lovely. Then, when the goats died, they just went around killing every chicken they could find. I stopped them before I ran out of egg-makers. Joke aside, I'd expect that there will be an option to recreate farm animals automatically, to avoid micro-management. Or even better: creation of males that don't provide any food but make the species reproduce automatically. - Enemies kill absolutely everybody and destroy buildings and farms. Well, no conqueror does that. I hope the game will become more conquest and assimilation than destruction. Use of slaves to various degrees according to the factions would be brilliant. - I had a dozen guys idling in the oasis, and one of them died. That was a lion's doing. I checked more closely: nobody but the victim moved when it happened again, either in aggressive, violent or defensive mode. I guess the feature is not there yet. Still, I had the lion killed by a large warship, and that's something I don't see everyday. - Indeed, I had a giant warship built in a pond. Don't forget to find a way to disable that in the future. Some suggestions: - Add kids and elders to the city. Just for the added life. They aren't units but still show your colours. They do their own stuff, which isn't much, but run and hide when enemies attack. - Give us a speed adjustment in solo mode. Not everyone can give 50 orders per minute. darn that qBot was fast ! - Make a building where idle people automatically go back to, so that we can see them. Or use existing buildings like the bazaar or whatever. - Let us create a cemetery area. Populate it with dead units. Even if you don't find any practical benefit for it, it will look cool. - The most important resource of all is absent: water. It may be included in food, but it would make for nice buildings by itself. For more suggestions, I'll wait until after I've read the forum. I bet I've said more than enough known things already. That's it, for now. I just wanted to give you props really. And, for what it's worth, it's something I do at best once every 5 years, being a very busy, hard to impress, internet-lazy and condescending old fart. Props. Props. Props.