I'm not a big fan of the very little usage of the keyboard. It's tiring to be moving the mouse around so much when you could very easily add a few shortcuts for things like moving, attacking, or building. Using the mouse would obviously still be an option if the played wanted to do so, but some people would rather use the keyboard. You have a keyboard, why not use it?
There will be many more keyboard shortcuts eventually, I just haven't gotten around to doing them yet. The GUI system has stubs in place for them already.
The tutorial levels also seemed a bit long-winded. I don't know if you plan on these being in the final product, but to me it seemed that the player gets the concept you are trying to teach him, and then some. Maybe a bit too much some. This may also have been attributed to the annoyance I had as I contracted arthritis from moving the mouse around so much (to be fair, I was using a touchpad, but all the same).
I'll evaluate the tutorial lengths again as I get closer to release, everything is still in flux at this point, but I'll keep their length in mind.
Also, I'm not a big fan of primarily using the arrow keys to move the view around in a strategy game. It's fine to have it as an alternate (as sometimes it is nice to have the extra precision of the arrow keys), but I would prefer being allowed the usage moving the pointer to the edge of the screen, and having the screen scroll that way (like in games like Warcraft and Starcraft).
This is another thing I was planning on doing eventually, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
It was also sometimes difficult to determine which unit was actually selected to be doing stuff. I realize that you can hit "C" to go to the unit, but, especially when the unit is amongst quite a few other units, sometimes it is still difficult to tell which unit is selected.
This won't be an issue when the real graphics are in place.
Some of the symbols and acronyms in the game are also somewhat cryptic.
What does ADSM mean? Attack/Defense/?/Magic? I don't know. It's just sort of a guessing game. And maybe you explained this in one of the tutorials, and I just missed it. I'm not sure.
Attack/Defense/Speed/Movement. The full game will have documentation for all that.
There are also various aspects of the HUD that I don't really know what's going on with them. What do the (+#) after things like money and whatever the thing in the top right mean?
The (+#) is income rate, I thought that one was obvious, maybe not. Many games of this type do that sort of thing. The thing in the top right is a production progress gauge.
Also, when selecting a unit to produce, "5/10/20 Production" is pretty cryptic. I did eventually get it, but it was fairly confusing at first.
This was actually explained in this first tutorial map, Civ veterans will pick up on it right away, too.
The order in which units had their turns also seemed random. Were they?
They're semi-random. People always move before vehicles. After that, the order is determined by a sort of initiative roll based on the unit's speed. It's loosely based on Shining Force.
Don't take all this criticism as negativity
The only reason I spent this much time replying is that I see potential in it.
Not at all, it's appreciated. Most of the things you pointed out were things I was planning to do anyway.
Also, do you have a team to work with on this, or are you planning on doing all aspects of the game development by yourself? If so, perhaps its time to start working on the sprites and things as they seem pretty place-holdery, especially the unit sprites. Never mind this. I just saw the part of your post about this.
I have a partner who is working on shaders and 3D models. We just don't have any of that ready yet.
Edit: Strangely, I get an error message *only* when I run the game from my start menu (As in, I search "franchise" and run the .exe from there).
This is the error:
"Exception name: FONT_MANAGER.LOAD_FAILURE
Message: graphics/fonts/luximbi.ttf"
Hmm, must be some kind of working directory error. I'll check that out, I think I know what's causing it and how to fix it.