Building castles/defences is my favourite part of the game, but I’d love to see a few tweaks to make building less frustrating.
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The default position for walls and other pieces that are being upgraded or replaced by a higher tier should be the same. In other words, if you are upgrading a wall, the default “outer face” should be the same as the one you’re replacing. As it stands, the direction often flips for no reason, and you can’t tell (depending on the type of piece) which direction it’s facing, because the text isn’t visible. The default should be to follow suit on the prior tier you’re upgrading.
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There should also be a text saying “outer face/inner face” like at the top of the screen or something, so that you have visual confirmation before you finalize the build. The text that says this currently is often hidden by the existing building, so you have to guess. Having a duplicate text written or highlighted at the top of your screen is especially crucial if you’re not allowed to move a piece after it’s built – and can only demolish it to try again.
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Build items should also be replaceable when they are not being “upgraded” to a higher tier as well. There have been many times where I’ve started building say, Black Ice and wanted to switch to wood, or Aquilonian, or something, and it won’t let you replace Tier 3 with a different Tier 3 architecture. Dismantling the original piece is then the only recourse, but it is much riskier than replacement – because it can cause adjacent pieces to collapse (if they don’t have sufficient support), or it can cause nearby furniture pieces to prevent a wall from being placed in the exact same spot.)
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Shrines that expand / take up more space when upgraded to “exalted” should not be able to built if they won’t have the required space for the highest temple upgrade. Or, they ought to be able to be returned to inventory to allow re-placement in a larger space. One or the other. The materials cost for building all three tiers of a religious shrine are too great to lose, when you find out that you can’t make your “exalted” tier because the lower tier was placed too close to a cliff, or something.
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Since the recent patch, it seems like the L2/R2 button that flips the direction of a building piece is only occasionally flipping the piece, and instead resulting in a combat mode kick. This makes building a bit of a challenge if you can’t actually control the facing of the piece.
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If you can lay a foundation, you ought to be able to build a wall on top of it. But there are some cases where land is claimed by adjacent players, or perhaps even by NPC territory/villages, when I have experienced this weird restriction. I have been able to build foundation pieces, but then find out later that space above my own foundation is restricted in such a way that prevents building walls on my own foundation pieces. Sometimes this is only discovered after a great deal of resources have been spent building a foundation layout, and this can result in having to demolish and start again, or change the original plan. It seems to me that if you aren’t allowed to build a wall on a foundation piece, I’d rather I had been barred from building the foundation in the first place. It’s a relatively minor issue but it would be nice if some of the build mode was a little more forgiving when every mistake tends to cost you massive amounts of resources because you have to sometimes “dismantle” and start over.
Anyway, love the flexible build options but hoping for some greater forgiveness and control in situations where the building piece cannot be returned to inventory or moved in some way after the fact!