Got Beta 2? Please vote » Forum Post by Frogboy

I voted Fair for a couple of reasons.

First, the game is BEAUTIFUL. As much as I like WoM, all the graphics for FE 0.86 are better, simply gorgeous.

Second, there are some very cool improvements. Most notably, interesting equipment and items. Most importantly, the ability to upgrade existing troops instead of disbanding and building new.

Third, speed. I realize this is beta, but it is SLOWWWWWWW!!!. I am running on a Dell computer with Windows 7 Home Premium and 2 GB of RAM, not an environment that should hold the game back.
It can take 5 seconds for almost any control in the game to react.

Again, I know it's beta, but this MUST improve for this to be a viable game.

Fourth, I'm still seeing a couple of quirky things that didn't work right in WoM, either. In particular, there's a bug in tactical combat where a ranged unit can take MUCH longer to act than a HtH unit, and sometimes the attack doesn't complete at all.

I was really hoping this one would have already been caught and fixed.

I haven't played it long enough to have much of an opinion on balance and gameplay so far.
The only exception would be that it does seem (as other posters have noted) that the monsters close to your starting position can be awfully strong compared to your level at the time.

So overall, it's headed the right direction, but still needs some work.
I'm excited about where it is now, and can't wait to see what comes next.

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Ok, here are some thoughts and observations after having playing several games to the mid-point (Almost finished with one).

1. The visuals are excellent. The game is beautiful to look at, and the artwork is both original and engaging.

2. Stability is much better. I think I might have had a single crash so far with this latest build, and that's it.

3. The UI is improved over WOM, and most things are fairly easy to figure out. I do have some suggestions though, which I will mention later

4. The world is much more interesting now, and that is definitely a plus. WOM felt pretty blah most of the time, and one area felt much like another. I strongly encourage you to take this a step further, and have even more varied and/or differentiated areas in the world. More on this later.

5. All three branches of the tech tree are a decided improvement over the previous system, and I think that you have hit on the right track here. The current research system works well, and needs only minor tuning.

I have two serious concerns for the game: re-playability and the end-game.

Replay value is something that is important to me, and to a lot of my friends who play strategy games. Right now I worry FE plays too similarly every time I run a game. Fortunately, there are several ways to adjust FE to make it worthwhile to play the game over and over that are already part of the current game.

The first would be to make the world even more interesting and varied. Right now you have special zones which provide considerable danger, and considerable reward, to whomever explores and cleans them out. I would make these zones both more prevalent, and more valuable to secure. Also, I would create smaller "danger zones" which provide a stepping zone up to the serious challenges which make up the current wastelands of the world. Then I would create other specialty zones which might not have the resultant danger of the current challenge regions, but affect game play in other ways. For example, a large region where a player might start out in that has tons of ore in it, but very little food. This requires a change in strategy when you start there. The opposite type of region, where you have lots of food and zero minerals, would also provide a challenge as well. The idea is to make it so that the world has a significant and ever changing effect on what strategy and tactics will be appropriate to win.

A have a few concerns about the end-game, and they mostly focus on the relative similarity of factions and forcing players to choose strategies early. Right now the factions don't really play any differently, even between Kingdom and Empire. I strongly encourage you to differentiate the behavior of leaders, and the strategies that each AI will enact to win the game. When I start next to an empire or kingdom, I should in most cases have a pretty good idea what they will do, assuming I know both the leader and the land around them. Right now that isn't the case.

Also, I think it should be important for players to lay the groundwork for their winning strategy earlier, and make it easier for them to determine that strategy earlier. Right now there are four paths to victory: Spell of Making, Quest of Mastery, Conquest or Diplomatic. I think that it is important that players, and AI, should have to really commit to each path. Towards that end we would need to be able to tell what each AI is doing, necessitating some form of espionage system. That might be too much at this point, but I would think that there would be ways to make it work out. Give the magic tree scrying spells, give the warfare tree scout/spy units (nearly invisible, can move through enemy territory, etc.), and give the civilization tree a means of using diplomatic capital or something else to spy on enemy cities.

Once I complete my most advanced game I should have some more thoughts and advice to offer.

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DevildogFF

Join Date 03/2010

+10

Dude, tancred1425, it's time for an upgrade. No wonder you're having issues . That rig is not fast enough!!

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DevildogFF

Join Date 03/2010

+10

And I'll echo sentiments on faction differences. I'd also like to see general polish increases, too.

And for the sovereign select screen, can they be in different poses? It's weird that they're all in the same pose.

And would you be able to incorporate faction-specific quests and items? That'd be pretty neat-o.

You've had me sold since the original Galactic Civ. I have faith.

I'll post more impressions, soon.

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Frogboy, have you guys ever tossed around the idea of differentiating factions?

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I voted Fair for a couple of reasons...

Most important one being the interface: it's extremely tedious and unergonomic! It needs work!

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Tactical Battle AI Problem: Human Sovereign vs AI champion

Human Sovereign Attacks and AI champion retreats 1 title and casts slow, HU advances and attacks, AI retreats and casts slow, HU advances and attacks, AI retreats and casts slow....etc. until AI champion is slain.

In this case the AI should have attacked instead of continually taking damage, retreating and casting slow.

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I happen to be in the group that thinks that the game is 'good' but not there yet. I've read through many of the suggestions here and feel many have some merit and I'm sure that Brad and Kiel will think about all of them.

Here is my thought about the strategic portion of the game. I saw a post in the forums where a player said that he played the game basically out of one city, with no taxes and did not build a single improvement that cost maintenance. The result was higher research and higher production to the point that he completely outstripped the computer AI in those areas. Since he paid out no maintenance (he didn't build troops either), but only hired champions since once you paid them, the cost was done. And he indicated that he won games with ease even on hard levels.

So I tried it. And it works just as he said. I never needed a single unit other than my Sovereign and my couple of heroes that I wandered around with. I didn't even buy them any equipment other than a few heals because I just used what I found, selling off what I didn't need to build my treasury. If I found a hero available, I just hired him and sent him on his way to kill or be killed. The only unit I built were pioneers to build outposts to claim territory and shards. By turn 100, I was controlling 6 or 7 shards and picking up 20+ mana per turn. I blazed through the tech tree as well. The couple of AI opponents I ran into, I defeated with mana and my sole sovereign or occasionally with one or two extra champions.

What did this tell me? That the whole city part of the game really could be ignored, unrest is flawed, the taxes are flawed the building structure of the cities is flawed. When I captured a city, I would destroy anything that cost maintenance in order to keep my tax rate at none or occasionally at low. Every AI civilization was usually out of gildar while I had thousands to spend.

I still had a lot of fun with the game, but you could use the same one square city square and not even bother with buildings and still play the game without the whole city experience. If you can do that, then Stardock should ask what they are trying to achieve with the city building aspect of the game.

Tactical battles, while fun, pretty much are the same battle over and over again with the exception that occasionally, there is some interesting terrain feature that slightly changes my strategy. However, my basic tactics are pretty much the same battle after battle, Haste, Growth, Mud. If I get close to dying I use Thunderstrike as if it was a teleport spell and move to the other side of the map (on the other side of the mud) and I get several turns to heal, or attack from a distance. The AI never has a chance. I really think Stardock needs to think outside the box to make tactical battles more interesting. For example, make Obscuring fog, really obscuring. When the AI uses it, their units disappear off the map, when I use it, my units are invisible to the AI. Now counterspells can come into play. How about dumping the player in the middle of the map with enemies on all sides? When assulting a city, actually have a city map with buildings that offer obstructions to LOS spells and objects? Walls that need to be taken down and breeched. Spearmen without sheilds that easily break and run at lower levels to reduce the cheese effect and reward trained units. In real battles, the security that armor gave troops was to increase their confidence in a battle so that they were less likely to break and run. Lightly armored troops often ran after throwing down their weapons. You have made tactical combat too simple and as a result, you have made it all the same. Design tactical battles to favor the computer AI, you can always dial it back, but chances are, you will only make it more competitive to the human player.

JMO.

+1

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Faction Difference Here.

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Quoting nitey,

reply 158

So I tried it. And it works just as he said. I never needed a single unit other than my Sovereign and my couple of heroes that I wandered around with. I didn't even buy them any equipment other than a few heals because I just used what I found, selling off what I didn't need to build my treasury. If I found a hero available, I just hired him and sent him on his way to kill or be killed. The only unit I built were pioneers to build outposts to claim territory and shards. By turn 100, I was controlling 6 or 7 shards and picking up 20+ mana per turn. I blazed through the tech tree as well. The couple of AI opponents I ran into, I defeated with mana and my sole sovereign or occasionally with one or two extra champions.

Interesting. If you dont mind my asking, was this in version .77, or .86? Because what you describe is exactly the way the game plays in .77, but in .86, I find Champions level much slower, end up around level 10 give or take on large maps, and are too weak to solo many monsters until the end game.

Are you saying you just took the XP split penalty and grouped your champions anyway, and didn't have any problems leveling up? Or are you saying that you solo'd your champs past death demons and rock golems, and I basically suck at the game ?

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I also voted FAIR.

You guys are already MILES ahead of where you were at any point in EWoM, but there are things really making it lackluster for me.

- Magic: There needs to be more magic. Lots, and lots and LOTS more. 2 spells per element level plus a small handful of random others is WAY not enough. There needs to be more spells for tactical combat, more for city buffs, and more useful things all around. Why are there no earth spells that give a small defense buff to all units in a combat? Why no life spells that do Overworld healing for an entire stack? I want to be given choices at every level. Why always the same two spells? Basic fire? Pick two. Fire Adept? Pick two at Adept level and one from each of the preceeding levels. The thing that really fuels a game's replayability, and therefore interest for me, are CHOICES. Legitimate, mutually exclusive, equally attractive choices. Finally, there should be attack spells in the first level of just about every school. Some form of something so that early game sovereign choice isn't "Do I take a Bow or Fire School?"

- Cities: I have a really hard time caring about cities in their current incarnation. Removing the second build queue was a wonderful thing as far as I'm concerned (not that there aren't ways to do it properly with two, but it wasn't being done). How and why does my population grow? Why does it come to a dead halt right before level 3, and why does it take so long to do anything about it once it does? Why do I run out of things to do with my cities so quickly? Most games, the cities sit there, empty queued because my economy can't support the army that I have more than enough production to produce, and have no buildings that are useful. Why can't I see the grain/production of squares without having an active pioneer near them? Aren't there surveyors in the recovering Empire? Additionally, there isn't any clear way to see what benefit many of the buildings are truly giving. +1 Production per grain? Ok, that's great, but without closing out of build and digging around through menus, what does that mean for my city? Is it a good choice? Who knows. Also, empty queues are wasted production, regardless of the +20% gold when queue is empty building. The perception is of opportunity lost, not of value gained. If you want to tie a "Trade Goods" build option to a building (or please, just a tech) that's fine, but I see "No Construction" and I'm thinking "What a Waste", not "Oh goodie, 7 more gold this turn". "What a Waste" is not a player response that should be scattered all over your kingdom.

- Tactical Combat: You guys are REALLY close on this one. Tactical combat is by far the best part of the game at the moment. So much so that I'm pretty much ignoring any tree except warfare (not because the likelihood of actually winning are greater, but because it yields more apparently entertaining gameplay). Unit abilities are great. They are wonderful, but why do master spellcaster champions have all 7 of their tactical spell choices right there alongside their abilities? It clutters up the interface. There should be a Spells button that opens a menu to select from, rather than having them out there next to and mixed in with the Defense and Throwing Knives abilities. Same with consumable Items. I would also really like to see some sort of static or rechargeable ability tied to every style of weapon. Things like the backswing on axes, and the armor pen of spears is great, as is the Defense ability of shields. Daggers are still pretty lackluster against any manner of armor, and swords arent worth their +1 initiative over 1H weapons with higher damage output.

- Special Zones: I want to like these really badly. They are a really cool idea, and have good theme and wonderful models. Problem I'm having is that they are so very tough to beat that I can usually crush all of my opponents before I have a prayer of taming these zones. That may be by design, but it makes me respond by largely ignoring them, because the AI factions don't stop trying to crush me while I take out Ignys. So, that's a good 20% of the map that doesn't get explored before the game is over.

+1

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Bingjack,

It was version .86. I pretty much solo my heroes unless I come accross what might be a difficult monster or AI stack and then I would join them together (I did that maybe 3 times). Most of my heroes are 5-7th level and my sovereign is 12th?, perhaps 11th. I usually play with dense monsters which probably offsets the effect of the slower leveling.

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I voted "Good." Here's why:

Things I like about my time with the game:

* The world is infinitely more inviting to explore than EWoM ever was.

* Tactical battles are almost at a good state. I like the fast pacing that is reminiscent of MoM and the inclusion of non-magical, reusable weapon abilities was sorely needed (also, there need to be more of them!).

* Unit creation streamlining was for the best in this case. I immediately see the benefit to increased squad size. I still have some concerns though.

* The questing system has been more fleshed out and the tech trees are looking much better.

* City building is ALMOST there.

Things I think need to be improved:

[Tactical combat]

Given the fast pace and relatively static battle landscape, you need more unit special abilities to make things more spicy. Nothing too involved, but a single active ability per unit (or a decent passive ability in lieu of that) would make things better. Sure, tactical battles less than 3 minutes long are the name of the game here, but do they really need to be so simplistic as: (1) Sovereign casts a spell, (2) move spearmen to attack units, (3) bows (if present) attack, (4) wash rinse repeat. The typical tactical battle lasted only 15-30 seconds for me. While refreshing at first, I started to become bored with the lack of tactical options in mundane (and even champion) units.

[City building]

The prestige mechanic is a great idea, but further balancing is needed. On a whole, the city-maintenance scheme needs balancing to make: (1) oppressive tax levels viable, (2) idle production mean something in the early game (suggestion: idle production, by default, increases growth rate by a very, very small amount), (3) city level decisions mean something more than an unlocked building and (4) city defense actually deter unplanned incursions at higher city levels.

[Quests]

The current system is good, but I think that it is VERY easy to avoid questing. This is particularly true when you realize that the magic tech tree is slightly less potent than the other trees in terms of economic growth and military conquest (two major aspects of 4x games). Perhaps it might be wise to take a page out of Kael's previous work and add in random events? Make it so that investment in the magic tree allows for "better rolls" on those events to encourage investment in the tree. In two of my games I almost completely ignored the magic tree because of its lack of perceived benefit on play.

[Faction diversity]

I won't harp too much here. I see many posts on this and I think that you guys are aware of this. Perhaps reconsider the universal availability of all weapons to all factions and make more faction specific weapons? Also, maybe mix up the tech trees (at least between the Empire and Kingdom)?

[Magic]

The lack of early/cheap summoning spells is a glaring omission. Also, the current crop of spells needs to be beefed up a little. You guys are on the right track here, but there is still some work to do.

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Quoting nitey,

reply 162

Bingjack,

It was version .86. I pretty much solo my heroes unless I come accross what might be a difficult monster or AI stack and then I would join them together (I did that maybe 3 times). Most of my heroes are 5-7th level and my sovereign is 12th?, perhaps 11th. I usually play with dense monsters which probably offsets the effect of the slower leveling.

Ah yes, that makes sense. That would make a difference. It probably increases the amount of more easily defeated monsters enough to level up and take on the tougher ones, at which point the XP would roll in.

I wonder if XP should scale with monster spawn rate, in order to keep the game experience more uniform. Increased monster spawn should make the game more challenging, not easier.

It's still possible I just suck at the game though

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Monsters are currently not functioning as devs stated the intent. Many of them are supposed to be a seriously dangerous element in Act I. If they were as aggressive as they should be, dense monsters would be suicide for most players. But dense is the way to go with .86.

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Another problem with spells now is that they are ridiculously imbalanced : most of the buff and healing spells have a negligible effect that does not seem to scale with evoker, path of the mage or whatever, so they could as well not be in the game.

I already explained in the thread why I rated the game as fair, but if I were to rate the different component separately, I'd rate the parts of the game as :

Adventuring : Good. Stats are horribly imbalanced: Strength does too much, INT is somewhat subpar (serves no purpose concerning damages), and DEX is horrible : => Dex should govern accuracy too, and INT should provide a bonus for spell damage (or there should be a resistance check to reduce spell damage, so that penetration is not useless for a damage oriented caster). The traits are not balanced at all (the ones who give +2 to a stat are really subpar, especially compared to the +1/level ones).

Economy : Terrible (the tax system makes little sense, not enough stuff to produce, but I already takled about it earlier)

Warfare : Poor (movement is a bit too slow without roads compared to intercity distance, units lack variety, tactical battles are disappointing : no flanking, no retaliation, no penalty for range, battlegrounds are still a bit too small, unit design is horribly imbalanced in favor of spearmen levies).

Magic : Fair (the current system work OK, and if spells were better balanced, I think there would be almost enough of them already).

Technology : Somewhat fair (too many unlocked things are boring, starts are too slow, tech path do not depend much on the surroundings, except sometimes, it is better to go for the collect lvl5 heroes tech early).

Stability : Poor (too many crashes when loading a game, when exiting unit design screen, when saving), still many bugs are in there.

UI : Poor (army management is a mess, pathfinding too, there needs to be something to stop the player ending turn without anything researched).

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Overall I like it much better than WOM - tactical battles are much improved, that said;

Spells - I would like to see a summoning magic path with a number of summoning spells. Of course this path would use up a lot of mana quickly and if the AI destroyed your shrines you could be in a pickle. That said, I would really like the opportunity to play a Sovereign that summons creates to fight for himr (or her). Perhaps, this ia magic branch that you could unlock via research or a trait that you can choose if you are wriath (if you selected path of the mage previously). The key here would be allowing the caster to cast summoning spells multiple times during combat or outside of combat (+1 mana maintenance cost). Perhaps 3 or 4 summoning paths (a Sovereign could only research one of them) where each one would give you access to a different type of creature, with their own strengths and weaknesses.

I want something that will shake up tactical combat and force me to adopt my tactics or use the escape spell to leave and prepare for a rematch.

Summon Wolves
Summon Dire Bears
Web - immobilizes a unit for x turns
Downpour - Rainstorm reduces vision and attack range to 2 tiles
Summon Skeletons (Strategic Summons Spell, can be cast multiple times)

Cities - are too much alike for a fantasy game, I would really like to city improvements affect the tactical battle maps once a city reaches level 4 or 5. Level 1,2 and 3 cities I can understand being alike as cultural differences don't take effect until a city reaches a substantial size.

Example Improvements:

Forest Maze - Tactical battle area is a maze of forest paths that block the line of sight of each side's units
Moats - Tactical battlefield outside the city is divided a moat with a single bridge crossing
Scorpian Tower - Fixed battlefield Improvement; cannot move, shoots a large arrow at attacking enemy unit until it is destroyed

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 139

I'm not accusing: let me just point out that when we were debating things like these, a couple of weeks ago, we were rather bluntly told that suggestions that felt too disruptive WEREN'T basically being considered.

Now in this very thread many are suggesting things that feel to me more disruptive than what we were suggesting then (I was talking about removing a couple of ugly mechanics from the tech tree, personally).

So what's changed? Maybe it's becoming evident that a return to the drawing board is needed, at least partially, and at least for a good portion of users. And don't get me wrong, if it does happen, I'll be happy because I still think the game has potential. It's just that right now it seems headed to waste a good part of it.

Our point of view on this hasn't changed. We're not taking out tech trees, we're not going to be removing factions.

I think the challenge sometimes is that non-game designers don't realize how trivial some things are to implement and how hard other things are.

For example, giving custom equipment and such to each faction: trivial. Giving champions special abilities: Trivial.

And in both cases, part of the original design for FE that we've been adding in bit by bit.

I'll say it again: People who think FE in beta 2 is "poor" or "terrible" (other than for stability reasons) are likely not going to like the final product. We're not catering to that group because it makes a lot more sense to focus on the (literally) 95% of users who think the game is fair to excellent already and make what they like in the game even better and iron out the kinks that they don't like.

Ok I know your not taking out the tech trees but could we make them independant of each other. What I mean is that to not have prereqs that are in another tree. As it stands now you have to learn several Civics Tech then Warfare tech to have a chance. The magic has to wait for the most part until mid to end game except for the first couple of techs to get the crystals and the nodes. Now I do play on challanging and above most of the time.

Also the Wargs and Horses should really only have prereq should really only be in the Warfare tree. Blacksmithing and Haninal husbandtry should be moved to Warfare.

Any why that is my two cents for what it is worth. As it stands now every game is the same as far as the tech is concerned.

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Quoting Sarudak,

reply 150

2. Rebalance weapons (and armor) to give them meaningful differentiation and reflect real world weaponry. I absolutely hate the fact that you guys gave piercing weapons armor penetration. It makes no sense to me at all. And it's maddening that the first decent weapon you get is also your armor pen weapon meaning that you can easily use spears on all your units for the whole game (it's what I typically do). In the real world the weapons people used to counter heavy armor were typically heavy swinging weapons with points ie warhammers. I think a few simple principles would be good to follow.

The long bow is a piercing weapon and it was very effective against Armor.

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Could Longbows penetrate heavy plate? I think even on St. Chrispen's Day those arrows were mostly effective against horse armor and hitting weaker areas between plates. The advantage was in killing their horses and generally knocking the brave knights to the ground, where daggers were used to reach inside the armor and cut major arteries.

I think it was effective in history due to large numbers of arrows and the concussive force, as well as lucky hits on weak points in the design. In the case of FE, we are using far fewer numbers which eliminates then logic of a longbow being as effective. Heavy soldiers in plate should be able to avoid most of a longbow's damage, but the slow nature of the armor would allow for several chances to shoot. If trained units could crit, which they can't currently, we could mimic the chance to hit a weak spot. For game design, it would be better to have piercing not be the best weapon at every tier. I can currently do more damage against plate with a pike than a warhammer. That is not right.

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Quoting seanw3,

reply 170

Could Longbows penetrate heavy plate? I

From what I understand, yes, depending on the quality of the plate, but it would be the result of an extreme matchup (superior longbow/arrow tip vs inferior plate/short range) and an exception, not the rule. As you say, they were still very dangerous as not all plate is of the same quality, and there are weak points.

Now Crossbows could penetrate Plate at good range, and are frequently given armor piercing qualities in strategy games.

I am, however, sensitive to the need to give pluses and minuses to the various physical damage types in the game, so there's a good reason to use a piercing weapon over, say, a blunt one. If reality takes a back seat to make that happen, I'm ok with that. I agree that low level armor piercing spears are probably a bad idea.

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Voted Fair. Ok, got around to playing it. First game I started was a large world with 4x anti-aliasing turned on. Boy game was irresponsive and choppy. Guess my dual core 2GB winxp rig doesnt cut it hehehe. Retired and restarted a medium world without AA on normal around 21:00, looked at the clock around 02:00 and thought well one more turn... that turn ended at 06:45 to my total disbelief and utter shock.

General impression I got is that it feels like a streamlined version of WoM and is well done in that sense. Unfun stuff gone (away with the tedious city management and caravans), fun stuff expanded/made better. Also like the artstyle a lot more, it definitely feels like a fantasy world now.

Playwise I actually got into exploring and found an awesome quest (dungeon!), (-start-old-fart-alert-)it really felt a bit like adventurer kings (PBM)(-end-old-fart-alert-). My champions mattered.

I did make a couple of classic mistakes, I kept all my champions together (I think the game should have an one champion per army limit) and explored and looted the world with them whilst building up my city and teching along quit happily. I did not defend my city at all, taking my champions back when threats appeared.

Then I decided it was time to expand and build a second city. Errr what... Cant build a second city? Can only build outposts? Like the outpost mechanism but why is the CPU able to build cities; I must be overlooking something. Also it's a bit wierd how far you can build outposts, but alas.

Outposts build I feel content about my city layout and progress. Then finally I meet 2 CPU's, both Empire (im playing Kingdom). As expected the threats start and are ignored (heh paying them only helps them and they will delcare on you anyway so why give them anything). Soon the first war declaration comes in. And nothing happens. Err what? You declare war on me and it takes 50+ turns maybe even 100 for you to send some lame ass troops over? (AI really should only declare war if he has troops 1 or 2 turns away from my borders). Anyway as the war declaration comes in, I switch to teching military (standing army etc); by the time the first army arrives I have 4 armies of 5 defenders plus my three decked out champions. Defense is still a bit hairy but I survive the noob-wave. During this period I also meet the Capitar, jeah for Kingdom buddies.

From here on it's a constant mess of patrolling my kingdom, teching up and creating a better military.

Then my forces are up to speed and it's counter attack time and cleanup time. I easily walk over the enemy forces untill out of the blue my buddy the Capitar starts extorting me en sure enough declares on me too... errr what??? why??? Ass!

I cant handle 2 empire enemies and capitar who are the strongest in this game so I decide to retreat my armies. Then it all goes down the drain. My main army gets stuck; pinned between some armies and a city I think (not sure since I gave that army the order to walk home but never check on them). Then suddenly my main army is attacked it seems and dissappears.

30 plus turns later with a kingdom that is in trouble now; my capital is fending off the attacks but loosing outposts and resources as capitar goes on a destroy all bonanza with no champions to lead an army my forces are stuck in the capital. I find out that my main army didnt dissappear but attacked a city by itself (and conquered it LOL). Mean while my second army (which was now my main army so I thought) gets caught on the way home by an Earth Elemental. Stats wise the elemental should be a walkover... Wow was I wrong. Second army obliterated.

So it's back to bringing my main army home; easier said then done. The captured city is completly surrounded by armies from 3 different enemies, i'l have to fight my way out. Which I do, quit succesfully too I may add. Untill General Capitar comes for a visit with an army 3 times the strenght of the remains of my main army. Since he has a boatload of archers I decided I better not risk my army. So I decided to sarcifice the city and use the scroll of escape I had been saving for a moment like this.

Buhbye General Capitar, hahahaha, ow wait where the feck is my army??? It's not in the capital where it should be... What the *#^#$.... Not again... I scroll back to the city I just sarcificed only to find my main army standing in a tile cornered by a mountain and the city... There is no way out unless I fight General Capitar. Some bleeding scroll of escape that was (allready reported as bug). So I end up throwing my crippled army that did take some damage trying to get to his archers at the city, finding it defended by a much smaller force then expected. I retake the city and get attacked instantly by General Capitar the traitor of the Kingdom. I loose; badly...

So now im back in my capital with 3 champions recovering, not a single healthy one and only a handfull of archers left since i lost all other units trying to clean house a little; that were meant to supplement my main armies, all because I send my armies on a march home but didnt check on their progress.

From here on the struggle is on, wave after wave after wave of Capitar troops fill my lands, destroy my resources and make my kingdom a living hell. I manage to pull out some amazing victories but the fact remains that my city is barely able to keep up producing replacements for the losses. Somewhere in this struggle I offer peace to the 2 empire factions (at a cost of 4 diplomatic capital; huh), they accept. Finally when I start to get a hold on the situation and am chasing the remainder of Capitar his troops around in my borders those backstabbing Empire rulers declare on me again (bought off by Capitar?) and one of them easily walks into my lightly defended city with my main army 1 step out from the city. This causes me to loose my 2 champions as there is no city left for them to respawn/recover in.

I retake the city but im now loosing gildar per turn and have almost ran dry. I sell off some loot, decide the game is as good as lost and decide to take my army out to go and wreak havoc in their empires/kingdoms; take the battle to them. An overlooked army sneaks in and grabs my city. Bugger that.

The first city I encounter is easily taken; I decide to rebuild my army there and root them out. Then not having paid attention to my gildars I loose the 4 ranger armies I just spend 80 turns on building due to desertion. I sell off more loot but i'm on a gliding slope here. Tons of armies come and get whooped followed by offensive messages (errr dont talk manly when you are getting your ass handed over and over noobs). I manage to level up some more rangers to support my one remaining ground force of chuck norris' and decided to abandon this city and find one that is at least capable of supporting my army.

On the way out I encounter my dear old friend the traitor; General Capitar. I send him home leaving a trail of his own blood but do loose by chuck noris' force to knights (!!! hadnt encountered them before); so now im stuck with my champions and a bunch of rangers. I find a bigger and better city which I take at the cost of 2 of my level 8 ranger armies (ouch). The production is not enough to cover my costs.

What follows is a game of cat and mouse where I basicly destroy Capitar inside his kingdom; I currently control 3 of his cities but am unable to defend any of them due to having no gildar and still loosing money per turn. So it's take and retake but completly hopeless. He keeps throwing single 5 man ranger or mage units at my cities.

Findings

The bad and the ugly

1. One major crash (report send through microsoft send bugreport) due to running out of memory is my guess (97% of my mem was in use at the time of the crash). Save game to the rescue. Occured after playing for about 5-6 hours nonstop on medium world on winxp, 2GB.

2. Diplomacy is a mess. 4-5 diplomatic capital gets you a peace treaty; completly owning them with a win to loss ratio of 100 to 1 and they still big mouth me and demand money? Seriously? Come to think of it how did they even finance all that? They incurred so much losses it must have grinded their entire progress to a halt producing all those troops. 250 diplomatic capital doesnt get you a trade or economic treaty even if it's in their favor (+3 gildar for me versus +12 gildar for them)? War declaration without sending troops for another 50-100 turns? Comeon. You move within 1-2 turns range and then you declare not before. It wasnt like Germany told France in 1850 they were going to invade them in 1918; they simply walked in and declared in 1918.

3. AI is much improved but still based on spam spam spam over quality. Also the AI seems to think that if they just lost their best army where I didnt take any losses a lesser army would do better and then an even worse army etc etc etc. I was surprised by Capitar going on a rampage in my kingdom, but it was a frustrating experience.

4. City defense wise how realistic is it to loose a city when your army is standing next to it. It's not fun. I say put the city in siege mode where all production queues are halted and no resources are being produced but let the attackers kill all armies in a 3 tile radius of the city. Just give the defenders a retreat option where they are teleported out of the 3 tile radius but loose their movement points (from exhaustion) for the next turn (so they can be caught if the desire is there). Took a look at Libya/Tripoli. The resistance walked right in to the centre city square but it took them 4-5 weeks of additional fighting before they really controlled the city. They had to purge the troops first.

5. Is it possible to build new cities? Or is that a tech I overlooked or something.

6. Counterspell spell never seems to have a valid target.

7. Scroll of Escape is bugged; description clearly says it takes you to your capital but instead when using it in city defense it teleports you to outside the city.

8. IMHO resources should be indestructable and outposts should be able to hold guard towers (granting defense bonus to the rangers based on city and tech level) where you can put in a maximum of 2 ranged combat units and can be won by either destroying the guard towers in the battlefield or by killing the ranged units inside. Either make the structures defendable or make them indestructabile. Razing is a cool feature on paper but playwise it's simply a frustrating experience that adds nothing other then forementioned frustration. Or give my armies the ability to teleport anywhere within my borders. Current implementation as said, cool on paper, frustrating and unfun in practice.

9. A separate troop building queue would be real nice, having to cancel building projects etc is somewhat of a bore/annoyance. A second build queue for troops which penalizes both queues when in use (ie construction is halved and training time doubled) would be a great solution and still effectively give the same result balance as it is now whilst removing a micromanagement annoyance.

10. Keeping in hiding is a solid tactic, in a way the game penalizes you to explore. Because as soon as the other factions find you the threats and inevitably the war declarations are allready in the writing then. Explorers are a dangerous unit to your kingdom and not worth the intell imho.

11. Took me a bit to figure out how to end a turn (turn button didnt flash at the start of the game untill way later in the game). Silly oversight on my behalve? Could be.

12. Limit armies to 1 champion per army? I mean how can someone be the champion if he has to share those duties with someone else, that sounds more like contested leader then champion and grand leader and adventurer of the army.

The good

1. Wow love the streamlining, questing and exploring is fun now. Champions feel like champions not as some over abundant bred of unit type that require a lot of micromanagement.

2. Love not having to build caravans anymore.

3. World looks and feels like a decent fanatasy world now.

4. City management is great like this.

5. Holy cow where did the time go...

6. UI is much better now.

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I would like to see an economy that works better; adventuring is too profitable compared to citybuilding, and upkeeps for buildings are mostly 0 or 1 per turn - that doesnt seem very flexible.

I want to be able to choose how I build up my cities; at the moment there are frequently too few things to build, at the start, and one has to tide things over until the settlement grows.

I would like to see more unit variaty - would like to see traits and equipment that require particular buildings before you can build the unit (Eg a trait letting the unit cast fireball could require a School of Elemental Fire, or a fancy sword could require a swordsmith).

I would be interested in seeing units that cost mana to produce, as an additional resource.

I would like to see buildings that require other buildings to make; both an armoursmith and a swordsmith might require a blacksmith, but provide different more specialised benefits.

I would like combat to be more interesting - abilities that a position dependant, terrain that is more significant, abilities that change enemy positions (think knockback, or pulling units into range), or penalise enemies for attacking the 'wrong' target (eg something between wow taunts, or d&d marking), or spells that change the terrain (eg traps, firewalls, spearwalls, gooey blobs, thorn bushes, crevases). Would like to have more interesting traits on trainable units that do something active in combat, such as these sorts of abilities.

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I would like 16 different races, all with different models for each and all of their units. I also want a special hat customization option under unit design so i can have a variation of hats on my creatures. if this is implemented i think a 90% metacritic score is more or less a given.

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Werewindlefr

Join Date 03/2007

+28

The main issue with the game so far, I think, is how one of the main aspects of the game isn't really entertaining yet. I'm talking about tactical combat.

A lot of stuff in Fallen Enchantress revolves around tactical combat: army makeup, for instance, spell research, mana gathering, champion leveling. If it's not the main feature of FE, it's really close to be so.

What is the problem of tactical combat? It's bland. Spearmen, axemen, swordmen feel the same. Not only are they just a bunch of numbers, they're a bunch of numbers fighting in featureless battlefields. There's little tactics in tactical battles yet.

The current issues of tactical battles, seen from my very subjective self:

Special abilities for most units - at least passive ones, even simple ones - are lacking. Regular troops now make most of the armies, but they're terribly similar in the end. I don't want rock-paper-scissors per say, but I do want situational advantages; units which will be good at doing certain things in certain conditions, and bad in other circumstances.There's a bit of that, but nowhere near enough. Even heroes, at least melee heroes, are quite bland because they really lack these "situational advantages/drawbacks".

Positioning and maneuvering. Positioning matters way, way too little in Fallen Enchantress. Why? Because the terrain doesn't matter, ranged units have no range and relative unit positioning has almost no effect in game (aside from a bit of ZOC-effect). There's no aura abilities, no ganging-up bonus/flanking bonus, no hills, no forest, no possible ambush. FE doesn't need to feature *all* of the above to be tactically interesting, but it would benefit greatly from having a few items in that list. Elemental had tactical-landscape-features based bonuses to defense. That was a good start, and I can't understand what motivated the removal of such bonuses in FE.
Balance still needs work. In particular, heroes progression and artifact progression needs to be smoother: it shouldn't go from weapons which deal 12 damage to weapons dealing 35 with almost nothing inbetween. I've had very few middle-powered weapons, or too late.There's also the glass canon issue for trained units; the battle becomes a first-blow management game, because receiving the first blow basically cuts a unit's power drastically before it gets a chance to fight.
Troupcount-based damage is poorly implemented, for instance. Giving the Overpower ability to a weapon that deals ~50 damage is ridiculous. It should be either high damage, or lower damage that affects several units. Also, Overpower in particular is nonsensical: the larger the unit, the least its armor will count. An armor 20 hero attacked by an attack 20 Overpower weapon will take 10 damage max. Logically unit with 5 soldiers with 20 armor should take 50 damage max. In reality, since it'll be a 100 attack against 20 armor, the max damage will be around 83. Another example is fireball: with one shard, it deals 8 damage per troupcount. With path of the mage (and worse: with evoker I) it cleans the map of ANY trained unit. Dirge of Ceresa is actually a ridiculous spell: it adds damage over time to something which already kills every trained unit outright, or close to that. Increasing the casting time on fireball was a terrible response to the issues that plagued that spell, in my estimation. Reducing damage and increasing base HP was the proper one. What's the point of spells that deal 12 damage per troop in the hands of a basic mage (4 basic, 4 for one shard, +50% for path of the mage) when the average troop has 7 hit points? It makes fireball binary (useless/overpowered instead of "reliably good"), it makes other spells irrelevant (why use "slow" or "growth" when I can wipe the enemy out?), and it makes mage progression less interesting. I've massacred the troops defending the Dragon's Eye (not sure it's the right name) with nothing but the fireball spell; that quest didn't feel epic at all, and that combat didn't involve any particular tactical skills, just fireball spamming.

There are other issues with the game, but they're mostly content/tuning issues. Factions similarity is one, lack of relevant, situational choices is another; for instance, city improvement building doesn't really feel exciting, and the buildings could use something to make them less bland. City leveling choices feel a bit weak and not as rewarding as they should be. They feel like regular improvement, when they should specialize the city and give it personality.

An average game features dozens and dozens of tactical battles. If they all feel the same, if they don't have this whole "tactical" feeling to them, where choosing where to position a unit and what ability/weapon to use in different situations makes the difference bettwen victory and defeat, they end up being repetitive after a couple hours. While Elemental's tactical battle system was unsound, Fallen Enchantress has a system that makes much more sense. But that doesn't stop battles for being bland for now.

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