"Λακωνιζειν εστι φιλοσοφειν"

Dear Forum Lady, 

And Firebringer, and anyone else that is reading this, TL:DR at the bottom per usual.

Hi! It's me again! Guy who is here to give out some serious kudos to the Amphitheater because I honestly think it is awesome. Also the amount of negativity of the forums seems a bit childish lately and been rather put out with the Amphitheater, henceforth shortened to Amph because I'm lazy.

So I think in my two authored threads I've established that I like player choice. I like options. The more options the better. Even if they are bad options that do terrible things to you, you are least have the choice in picking that option. Sure people might complain that you don't know what that bad option will do and couldn't find out about it before hand and thus avoid the bad option. Well that takes a little bit of fun and adventure out of things and sometimes you just have to live with the consequences of your actions. Which is great for a browser game like this because there is no reload button.

Right, my last big rant was about the Agreement Tree and how pretty it looked and gave you all these seemingly endless options of how you will go about filling out said tree. Then the cold harsh reality of things smashes your dreams with forced unlocking paths and the GPs system, shattering any plans you had like a glass onto pavement. I was pretty disappointed but then the Amph came alone and at least perked me up a bit.

While most of you ranted and railed against the Amph, I'm here to rant and rave in support of it. I'm not giving it a complete pass. It has some issues to be sure, but it really is a neat feature that adds to my central theme here; Player Choice!

So let's unpack the Amph. It's Roman. Oh Jupiter is it Roman. In a Greek game. Called Sparta. Well, at least there is precedent set within the game so Greco-Roman coexistence so it's not completely out of left field. I just wanted to put that out there. The building itself looks good and the gladiator guy looks cool as do his opponents in the actual battle portion of the Amph. I am a bit confused as to the name of the gladiator. Phylarch is ruler or leader much like Archon or Doux or Baselius is leader. But we already have a General, and if we are supposed to be in the City-State era of Greece than the General is also the ruler who is us. And the Phylarch is also us. So the General is also the Phylarch?

Anyway, since we've mentioned the gladiator and his two buddies and the fighting, we might as well get the "bad" part out of the way. The battle you have with one of two opposing gladiators is meh. You click to strike, they strike back and you try to counter strike. I've heard you can counter strike while they are striking but honestly it's a crap shoot. The response time on Sparta is rather delayed. Very noticeably so. So having something that required smooth play in your game and being unable to deliver that smooth play experience makes things look, not so great. It doesn't make or break the game but it does highlight something that I think most people would try to cover up or mask; snail like server response time. That said, the 3 hour timer on the fights isn't bad and the pay out is pretty good actually.

Okay lets look at the Skill Tree. It's linear with a few branches. Most skill have 5 or 10 levels and you can unlock further down the tree once you have unlocked level 1 of a skill. Well, if it isn't broke, don't fix it. This sort of skill tree has been around for ages and will continue to be use by games all over the world because it works. 

Next is the Phylarch himself. Activation is every 3 hours as well but his activation is where things get awesome. Remember those skills I talked about? They aren't static modifiers that are active upon unlock like an Agreement is. These skills are temporary 3 hour boosts. And you can have up to 6 skill at once. Sweet mother of Hera, I need a moment.

I've mentioned before that given how things were set up in the cities, that every city is ultimately the same cookie cutter build. The Amph with the Phylarch changes that. You can get some pretty decent boosts to different things and you can change things up according to your needs. That is a choice you get to make. An impactful, meaningful choice that lets you tailor your city's production to suit your needs. I think I need another moment. Seriously you guys, this is awesome. 

Major pros to the Skill Tree/Phylarch are that you can unlock two skill slots pretty quickly and freely getting you up to 3 slots. You can even use said slots to boost the fight recharge timer and the amount of the new currency needed for the Phylarch skill tree. Having a new currency be needed leveled the playing field between new and old players. Sure the wallet warriors could pay their way to a lot of the bonuses but props to the devs for also putting in a wall to stop that.

Special marks. The Skill Tree has 2 tiers. The second tier requires special marks which are gained from tournaments only. Even if you paid for everything in tier 1, you have to get dirty with us peasants and compete in the tournaments to advance the skill tree. Brilliant move Devs, brilliant move. Now I haven't unlocked anything in the Tier 2 portion but I assume the rewards are greater. I do wonder if they stack with Tier 1 though. 

There is a wide variety of options available in regards to skills to activate. I'm sure it will be of some help to people as there is a grain production boost. However, what interested me were the training speed and constructions boosts. I'm so happy to be able to increase training speed. Sure it's only during the 3 hour duration and means I have to remember to come back to the game once in a while during the day but it's a good incentive and a neat lure by the devs.

TL:DR: So that's my 2 cents on the Amph, it's awesome and provides some much needed Meaningful Player Choice in the form of the skills activated by the player using the Phylarch.

Sincerely,

Guy who is going to go off to murder everything in Civ6 as the Romans. 

PS I really want my Legions here. I'll give up Cavalry. I think it's a fair trade. Just unlock Legions for me. I won't tell anyone. It will be a secret between you, me, and anyone who reads this on the internet.

lsolway74 said:

I'm off to read War and peace . . . it's shorter. Ok, joke aside, you do tend to go on long after making your point. While you do have some valuable things to say, calling posters childish is not one of them, could you please make your point/points without all the filler? The game is a drag at the best of times especially with all the sneak changes, so reading a dissertation on the game is not something I intend wasting my time on. Many thanks.

I put in a TL:DR. Do you want it to be even shorter? Okay: The Amph is awesome. The end.

And I'm expressing my opinion in detail so at least those that do read my posts in their entirety know my stance and why. I felt it was necessary with this thread in particular because everyone seems to be screaming about how the Amph is a terrible thing that has killed the game. 

And people are being childish. Have you seen some of the threads on the forums? The elitism? The demands for private talks with the Devs? If you buy a car from a company you aren't entitled to a 1 on 1 talk with the CEO of the car company. My favorite is the "Listen to Us" thread. It's the longest thread I've seen on these forums and nothing of substance has been said.