Expeditions: Conquistador Development Report
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The combat in the preview build of Conquistador that we got our hands on felt very basic at some points, and it seemed the optimal strategy was often to focus on bringing down single enemies, going from enemy to enemy. When faced with this opinion, Wæver ponders for a spell, and then says: (I think the tactical challenge in our combat doesn't necessarily come from the system itself. The actual battlefield is hugely important in terms of what you can and cannot do. We really focused on getting a lot of different layouts in and also different configurations. Sometimes you're flanked when combat begins, sometimes you're only attacked from one side, sometimes you're surrounded, or your dudes are spread out.) Eskildsen adds: (yeah, or you have to reach a certain part of the map.) (Yeah,) Wæver continues, (we also have different victory conditions. All this requires different tactics, obviously. I think that we just focused on having a flexible combat system more than having a super-complex one. So that you will have to kind of analyze the tactical situation more than the system. There are a fair few battlefields where if you just kind of play them on autopilot simply advance and try to take the enemy out you will get creamed, because a lot of the time there's more of them than of you. So a lot of the time you have to think (hmm, how do I get these guys to where I want them, how to get them in a position where I can flank them?)) Wæver and Eskildsen add that the preview build contains only 15 battles out of the full game's 75, that these are among the first battles the team actually designed (and therefore have simple, flat terrain for example), and that these battles are at the beginning of the game and are therefore easier than what you can expect in the game's later stages.
When it comes to the rest system, which allows you to manage which of your followers you put on guard duty, hunting duty, healing duty and so on, the Codex staff felt it was a lot of busywork for rewards that weren't great, and some ended up simply auto-assigning companions to their duties. Wæver looks up in surprise. (Well, actually, most of our preview testers who used auto-assign simply got wrecked. As you pick up more people, the demands of the camping system grows steeper. If you use auto-assign you will never be crafting or researching. You will never be doing herbalism or preserving. You always only do the three basic tasks. Especially if you are in the mountains or swamps in Mexico, those have very little to hunt, which makes preserving much more important. You will gain very little medicine if you don't use herbalism, because then you will only get the medicine that you buy. And then of course, once you get injured, you'll have to think about who you heal first. Especially if you don't have that many doctors or your doctor is among the injured. In the end though, this is not a strategy-game. The camping system is meant to add some choice to the exploration, not be a main part of the game.)
Wæver goes on to talk a bit about the way different difficulty settings work in the game. For example, besides the usual Easy/Normal/Hard difficulty settings, Conquistador also has a set of sliders. One of them controls enemy intelligence. It determines whether enemies focus their fire on vulnerable followers, and how many tactical mistakes they make - such as provoking attacks of opportunity. There seems to be a good variety of settings here. For example, normally in Conquistador, followers that go down in battle are rendered unconscious, and their injuries or death are resolved only after combat has concluded, at which point you will have a chance to use your doctors to help alleviate the pain and injuries of your followers. An option in the difficulty settings, however, allows your followers to die directly on the battlefield if they've been down for extended periods of time. Conquistador also features an Ironman mode where you are restricted to a limit number of saves, and the game automatically saves after each event and each time you make camp.
