Fallen Enchantress

[dbd1963]

I think limiting the mana resources (at least in the early game) is intentional. Even though magic is nice, it doesn't seem to be essential, and there are other areas you can focus on, to make up for a lack of mana.


It may be intentional, but I seem to burn right through it early on. I probably am not building enough warrior types. I just had a go at building a dozen extra spearmen and using them as a following army to replace my losses. It was working pretty well, but then I had a crash. Might be my fault for alt-tabbing out to come here..

Anyway, the extra warriors worked, but I imagine they are going to stall my gold rate if I don't luck out and find a gold mine, which I had for that game.

[Peter Frazier]

I reloaded my game and was more aggressive, with better results. Being able to take out the local monsters and their lairs gave me enough time to develop a fleet in being to patrol my kingdom.
Some of my heroes have leveled up and I've noticed the irony that in order to make them better at administrating the city I have to send them into the wilds to beat up a bear. It's a pity that some heroes can't gain administration perks by staying in a city while it develops- especially since I'm foregoing their fighting power by using them as such.
I'm starting to take a shine to FE.

[ShivaX]

I reloaded my game and was more aggressive, with better results. Being able to take out the local monsters and their lairs gave me enough time to develop a fleet in being to patrol my kingdom.
Some of my heroes have leveled up and I've noticed the irony that in order to make them better at administrating the city I have to send them into the wilds to beat up a bear. It's a pity that some heroes can't gain administration perks by staying in a city while it develops- especially since I'm foregoing their fighting power by using them as such.
I'm starting to take a shine to FE.

Actually theres a technology that unlocks a building that gives heroes that stay in a town a chance at XP every turn.

[Nikolaj]

To be honest, I still haven't seen any useful perks/traits for administrators anyway, apart from the merchant one, which gives you gold each turn (regardless of whether that hero is in a city, apparantly). Has anyone seen any others? Otherwise, I guess (and hope) that has yet to be implemented.

[ydejin]

To be honest, I still haven't seen any useful perks/traits for administrators anyway, apart from the merchant one, which gives you gold each turn (regardless of whether that hero is in a city, apparantly). Has anyone seen any others? Otherwise, I guess (and hope) that has yet to be implemented.

I've gotten up to Administrator 3 which gives -10% to unit training time, building construction time, and Gildar. Let's hope that's either 10% lower Gildar costs for units or 10% higher Gildar production for the city and not -10% Gildar produced -- the tooltip doesn't really say and seems rather ambiguous on that point.

[Nikolaj]

I've gotten up to Administrator 3 which gives -10% to unit training time, building construction time, and Gildar. Let's hope that's either 10% lower Gildar costs for units or 10% higher Gildar production for the city and not -10% Gildar produced -- the tooltip doesn't really say and seems rather ambiguous on that point.

Cool, I haven't seen that trait yet, but it sounds useful. Have you tried moving the administrator in and out of the city to check if the gildar production changes?

[ydejin]

Cool, I haven't seen that trait yet, but it sounds useful. Have you tried moving the administrator in and out of the city to check if the gildar production changes?

Good call. I tried moving the administrator out and running a turn, I didn't notice any change in the Gildar tooltips for the city.

[ioticus]

I played the tutorial and it crashed on me (stopped responding). Elemental still often crashes in the same way. I hope the new game is more stable on my computer but I'm not off to a good start.

[Telefrog]

Oddly enough, I've had no crashes so far. Already I can tell I like this game a LOT more than the first Elemental. The changes to leveling up your heroes with particular traits is really good.

First thing I noticed that could use a change is that the quest giver locations have the same icon as the quest destination.

http://i40.tinypic.com/24oyheb.jpg

You've got the quest on the left side of the screen, but it would be nice to differentiate them on the map.

[ydejin]

I played the tutorial and it crashed on me (stopped responding). Elemental still often crashes in the same way. I hope the new game is more stable on my computer but I'm not off to a good start.

I had one crash right near the start -- I think it might be related to playing the Tutorial videos. After that I had one crash an hour in, and then one crash probably after playing the same game for about 5 hours.

I was a bit worried after that first crash during the Tutorial, but generally it hasn't been too bad. I would recommend changing the autosaves to every turn though. (See upper-righthand corner of Gameplay preferences).

[Mark L]

First off, let me be clear that I know this is a beta and that things are likely to change.

I feel like this game is barely different from Elemental. The systems seem a little more interesting and fleshed out, the races a bit different, but there is way, way more similarity than difference.

The units seem pretty boring. I got to use one of the special units for my race, and there was very little special about them. Lowered upkeep and better stats, I think. The spells have- thus far- seemed dull as well. Burning hands hurts one guy in front of you with fire damage. Heal heals, etc.

The weapons may have slightly differing attributes, but I have not seen a reason to care.

Strategy seems to focus on making a single super-stack, generally of levelled up heroes.

The factions are completely uninteresting, differing from each other by numbers- 10% to research here, a bonus to production there. They lack imagination, and especially lack visual flair, i.e. they all look pretty much the same.

God forbid you include elves, dwarves, etc in your game, but couldn't we have had more than this? A race of hovering, sentient crystals that move by telekinesis. A race that has no cities, but tears holes from the depths of the earth that widen and spill out their hordes. Aliens that crash landed and cannot use magic, but strive to rebuild their technology. Flying cities held aloft by massive dirigibles who send flotillas to raid the earth for supplies.

Now, truly radical stuff might be hard to balance, but I have faith that if anyone could do it, Kael could. And the game doesn't even have multiplayer to make balancing more demanding! Instead, we get a bunch of flavors of humans where the most different thing is that one guy with a purplish face.

I'd like to see epic threats that engulf the whole world, like some of the mega-events in galciv2. They could involve anything- the sun going dark, spores raining from the heavens and monsters emerging from them, holes in the timestream <wiping out> map tiles and units, leaving nothingness unless the source is found and stopped, all kinds of stuff.

I guess my problem is that I was expecting something like FF2, only with more graphical flair and major resources behind it. Instead, it looks like we are getting what essentially amounts to a rehash of elemental, with some improved mechanics.

In summary, I hear if you pre-order Conquest of Elysium 3, you get access to a rather full featured beta. Just saying.

[dbd1963]

I think one of the best things about FE is the perk system. I love it when I find a rare perk that I can use.

I'm also enjoying the tactical battles more now that they can be done quickly.

I still have a hard time getting ahead of most of my adversaries, and getting behind means they will go to war with me sooner or later (usually sooner). You can buy mutual defense pacts, but doing that really only puts me further behind.

I have found that spamming warrior units early is pretty important to survival. I do run into the problem of running out of money and then losing the units, only to see some huge army arrive at that point. But I'm sure there are things I'm not optimizing that would help.

[Jorune]

Your ideas sound awesome.

Jorune



First off, let me be clear that I know this is a beta and that things are likely to change.

I feel like this game is barely different from Elemental. The systems seem a little more interesting and fleshed out, the races a bit different, but there is way, way more similarity than difference.

The units seem pretty boring. I got to use one of the special units for my race, and there was very little special about them. Lowered upkeep and better stats, I think. The spells have- thus far- seemed dull as well. Burning hands hurts one guy in front of you with fire damage. Heal heals, etc.

The weapons may have slightly differing attributes, but I have not seen a reason to care.

Strategy seems to focus on making a single super-stack, generally of levelled up heroes.

The factions are completely uninteresting, differing from each other by numbers- 10% to research here, a bonus to production there. They lack imagination, and especially lack visual flair, i.e. they all look pretty much the same.

God forbid you include elves, dwarves, etc in your game, but couldn't we have had more than this? A race of hovering, sentient crystals that move by telekinesis. A race that has no cities, but tears holes from the depths of the earth that widen and spill out their hordes. Aliens that crash landed and cannot use magic, but strive to rebuild their technology. Flying cities held aloft by massive dirigibles who send flotillas to raid the earth for supplies.

Now, truly radical stuff might be hard to balance, but I have faith that if anyone could do it, Kael could. And the game doesn't even have multiplayer to make balancing more demanding! Instead, we get a bunch of flavors of humans where the most different thing is that one guy with a purplish face.

I'd like to see epic threats that engulf the whole world, like some of the mega-events in galciv2. They could involve anything- the sun going dark, spores raining from the heavens and monsters emerging from them, holes in the timestream <wiping out> map tiles and units, leaving nothingness unless the source is found and stopped, all kinds of stuff.

I guess my problem is that I was expecting something like FF2, only with more graphical flair and major resources behind it. Instead, it looks like we are getting what essentially amounts to a rehash of elemental, with some improved mechanics.

In summary, I hear if you pre-order Conquest of Elysium 3, you get access to a rather full featured beta. Just saying.

[dbd1963]

Dang -- one game killing bug is that the End Turn button gets stuck and the years suddenly start to fly by. This has happened twice. First time, I just restarted, but this last one I wanted to see what would happen so I left it going. Finally it stopped on its own, but then it became impossible to end the turn..

Another annoyance is that caravans will just stop in the middle of a route and never move again, and there's no way for you to do anything about it.

[ioticus]

Well Brad did say the game would give you a horrible life killing disease so you can't expect too much.

[HahaSoFunny]

FWIW, Master of Magic had races with unique pop growth, economic and other bonuses, a unique selection of buildings, unique unit types and unique characteristics for common units (e.g. draconian spearmen can fly).

[Alstein]

Anyone know if this can be played windowed? Didn't see an option.

I liked the game, although it felt somewhat generic. I didn't feel any connection to my hero or town. Maybe that will change in the full version.

I asked this on SD forums, got this response:

If you lower the resolution it runs windowed.

Needs better documentation but the option is there.

[TurinTur]

First off, let me be clear that I know this is a beta and that things are likely to change.

I feel like this game is barely different from Elemental. The systems seem a little more interesting and fleshed out, the races a bit different, but there is way, way more similarity than difference.

[...]

I guess my problem is that I was expecting something like FF2, only with more graphical flair and major resources behind it. Instead, it looks like we are getting what essentially amounts to a rehash of elemental, with some improved mechanics.


You should have adjusted your expectations. Don't be fooled by the new name, this is a big patch/mod based on Elemental; not a truly new game. All the ideas you give... well, the thing is not only that they would hard to balance, the important thing is that they would cost a lot of money, almost as much as a new game. It's much more cheaper to make small tweaks and changes over the existing base.
That's why FE is free to most of the previous Elemental users, do you think they were that generous giving away a full new game?

All this work was supposed to be successive new updates to Elemental, but at some point they decided they could try to somehow monetize all that work if they would fork the effort in a "new game" (we can suppose some people will buy it and play it, apart from the previous Elemental users), also putting a new name because "Elemental" have now a bad reputation.

[Dan_Theman]

While I think some of the above is a bit of a mischaracterization, I agree that anyone expecting an entirely new game from a sequel is likely off base. Do not fire up this game while saying "Okay, NOW I'll finally get my spiritual successor to MoM!" The intent was to make the original better, redesign where it needed it, and just essentially make it fun as opposed to an exercise in mediocrity.

As an aside, why does Chrome's spell-checker not know the words "mischaracterize" or "mischaracterization?"

[Alstein]

I don't care about the sacred cow that is MoM. I just want a good game, and I think this game has the potential to deliver in that regard.

What I want out of a 4X game is for each of the X's to be fun, and for mop-up to not drag. That last bit I feel is going to be somewhat of a problem, is it usually is in Stardock games. (it's a genre-wide issue though)

[WarrenD]

First off, let me be clear that I know this is a beta and that things are likely to change.

I feel like this game is barely different from Elemental. The systems seem a little more interesting and fleshed out, the races a bit different, but there is way, way more similarity than difference.

The units seem pretty boring. I got to use one of the special units for my race, and there was very little special about them. Lowered upkeep and better stats, I think. The spells have- thus far- seemed dull as well. Burning hands hurts one guy in front of you with fire damage. Heal heals, etc.


The weapons may have slightly differing attributes, but I have not seen a reason to care.

Strategy seems to focus on making a single super-stack, generally of levelled up heroes.

The factions are completely uninteresting, differing from each other by numbers- 10% to research here, a bonus to production there. They lack imagination, and especially lack visual flair, i.e. they all look pretty much the same.

God forbid you include elves, dwarves, etc in your game, but couldn't we have had more than this? A race of hovering, sentient crystals that move by telekinesis. A race that has no cities, but tears holes from the depths of the earth that widen and spill out their hordes. Aliens that crash landed and cannot use magic, but strive to rebuild their technology. Flying cities held aloft by massive dirigibles who send flotillas to raid the earth for supplies.

Now, truly radical stuff might be hard to balance, but I have faith that if anyone could do it, Kael could. And the game doesn't even have multiplayer to make balancing more demanding! Instead, we get a bunch of flavors of humans where the most different thing is that one guy with a purplish face.

I'd like to see epic threats that engulf the whole world, like some of the mega-events in galciv2. They could involve anything- the sun going dark, spores raining from the heavens and monsters emerging from them, holes in the timestream <wiping out> map tiles and units, leaving nothingness unless the source is found and stopped, all kinds of stuff.

I guess my problem is that I was expecting something like FF2, only with more graphical flair and major resources behind it. Instead, it looks like we are getting what essentially amounts to a rehash of elemental, with some improved mechanics.

In summary, I hear if you pre-order Conquest of Elysium 3, you get access to a rather full featured beta. Just saying.

Mark if you ever get into game development sign me up for a pre-order of your game, sounds great.

[Jason Lutes]

Try logging into Stardock with your Impulse login. It ought to be the same if you haven't changed it yourself, and the act of logging in should auto-direct you to your list of owned SD products. If you can download the beta yet, you should see it there.

Mind, I got the email a couple of days ago. I have no idea if that makes a difference.
Thanks, I tried that when I was troubleshooting and it didn't work. Stardock support got back to me within 24 hours though, and they managed to merge my various accounts into one, so I've since been able to download and install the beta.

[dbd1963]

Brad has a new .exe in the Beta forum over on Stardock which is supposed to cure the problems I had. I've used it today, and it has seemed to stop the endless end turn. But now I get some random crashes just before battles, so I'm still not able to finish a game in one go.

Also, I can keep up with the other guys until we are all at about 50 pts, and then they just take off on me. I'm sure they are growing new cities at that point, but I'm having trouble protecting everything when I expand. Anyone got any early game advice?

[lokiju]

Edit: Haha, yes, what DBD said ^ (must have posted at the same time!)

I didn't play more than an hour or 2 of WoM, so a little insecure about the opening FE game. Can someone with skills post a more detailed AAR than the few in this thread...or at least their opening 50 turn priorities? How important, outside of knowing what's around your city, is military vs civ vs magic? How far do you let your scout go...to the ends of the world?

Also, couple questions someone may be able to help with:

1) How does one use throwing weapons (like knives)? My hero had a staff and throwing knives equipped (and was within 3 squares), but I didn't find a way to throw them.

2) At level up I had a lot of common traits and 1 rare or uncommon trait. Not sure how the system works? Does the game always provide a small chance for less common attribute options to appear?

3) Is there a manual (hope it's not in some obvious spot I obviously missed)?

4) Can you give equipment you find in looted chests to militia out in the field? I seem to only have the option to give an axe to another champion , and only when I was in my city.

[Jab]

I have a question, regarding updates does the game auto update on load up, or do we just have to keep going back to the stardock download page and re download the exe?

[ydejin]

2) At level up I had a lot of common traits and 1 rare or uncommon trait. Not sure how the system works? Does the game always provide a small chance for less common attribute options to appear?

AFAICT yes. Originally I thought it was using your level 2 choice of "Path of the Mage", "Path of the Warrior", "Path of the Administrator", etc. to determine your choices for subsequent levels, and it may be doing that. However, I now have several characters which have managed to get more than one Path -- for example "Path of the Adminstrator" at level 1 and then "Path of the Defender" at level 7.

Sometimes when you level up, you'll get all common choices, and sometimes you'll get one or two rare choices tossed in. It does seem to be random.


3) Is there a manual (hope it's not in some obvious spot I obviously missed)?

Closest thing I've found is click on the '?' mark icon on the top right corner of the game screen and you'll get the help system.


4) Can you give equipment you find in looted chests to militia out in the field? I seem to only have the option to give an axe to another champion , and only when I was in my city.

Yes, use the "Trade" button in your list of actions down in the bottom left corner. This will bring up a window with two of your heroes at that location, then use the left and right arrows next to their portraits to choose which heroes you want to trade amongst. Only heroes can trade and equip, no regular units. Also it's possible to trade and equip from either the top character or the bottom one, whichever item gets clicked last (whether in the top-half or bottom-half of the trade window) is the one that gets traded.

[KiloOhm]

Can't get past a a few dozen turns before the game crashes. It has happened to me 3 times. :( Going to look on the SD forums to see if I can submit something to help them.

What little I did see, I like. I do agree that the races are bland - but that decision was set years ago when the released the races and said they were all human variants. I didn't like the idea of that then nor am I crazy about it now. Of course they could just throw some weird non-human species in there and make something up - it's not like I (or most people I imagine) really care about a cohesive backstory - I just want a strategic fantasy game. It migth be smart of SD to burn all ties to the current world and just make a fun game (books be damned!).

The game seems to have been streamlined in a few areas that I can see (before I crash). The cities are much less of a bother. I can just click to build something and it seems to get autoplaced. I can't point out specifically why but it seems easier to equip my heroes and the tactical combat seems like less of a chore than it used to be (I can't comment on AI, so far all enemies just run at me swinging).

I like it more, but I can't get very far in. I do think it's very close to elemental WoM but I didn't hate that game, it just was lacking in a lot of areas.

[Giaddon]

Here's 3 hours of streaming from the FE beta (http://www.livestream.com/spleendamage/video?clipId=pla_b2936747-d251-4550-b4d6-f3bf340eb4a4). Just some guy playing. There are other videos in his channel as well.

[Disconnected]

Only messed with it for about two hours so far, but:

I needs moar baseline/context info. Hypothetical example: what does +10% dodge mean? I dodge +1 time out of 10? +0.1 time out of 10? Something else entirely?

Pretty much everything with a number attached to it, is mystery pudding to some degree. Yes, sometimes some of it is explained in the elemtal-paedia. But that's only some of the time, and usually when the information is presented in-game with a huge and mostly empty screen that could easily incorporate the same info but for some reason doesn't. The city details screen, for example.

Other than that, it looks like WoM v1.5. The fat is mostly gone, and what's left has been made a little more interesting/significant in various ways.

Unfortunately I'm having a lot of bugs. Indeed, the very first time I hit the "new game" button, the FE died with a weird, soft whimper of bird chirps. Other than seemingly random (or at least not readily repeatable) crashes, it's mostly stuff like trees turning white when they get Fog of War'ed and quests not resolving correctly.

Anyway, top want right now is an exhaustive The System(s) Explained thingy.

[arakyd]

In summary, I hear if you pre-order Conquest of Elysium 3, you get access to a rather full featured beta. Just saying.

Or don't even bother with a beta and just get Dominions 3. Because it's a horrible ugly game with a horrible user interface and horrible balance and no AI to speak of and has to be played against humans who take forever to get their turns in and have stupid crazy personality flaws and generally suck, but it's actually got a soul and is a decent game that can produce some fairly epic battles if you're willing to put in a few months of time for them. Unlike some other boring games that look like butt.


Mark if you ever get into game development sign me up for a pre-order of your game, sounds great.

Wait, you'd sign up for a pre-order before you even know if it's 3D? That's crazy! It could be 320x200x256 hand drawn stick figures for all you know! I guess this is the crazy pre-order anything thread though.


Pretty much everything with a number attached to it, is mystery pudding to some degree.

What do you want, GalCiv2? Oh wait I forgot; GalCiv2 numbers were also total mystery pudding! Never mind.

[Disconnected]

What do you want, GalCiv2? Oh wait I forgot; GalCiv2 numbers were also total mystery pudding! Never mind.

That GalCiv2 was worse doesn't somehow make it bad or unnecessary to show players exactly how the game works. Then again, I'm of the nerd school that believes word-soup is always worse than the mathematics.

If nothing else, showing me how everything works means I can start crunching right away and find balance issues, weaknesses and broken bits/exploits before the game is out of beta.

Really, if you have any kind of confidence in your systems design, why not make it as transparent as possible?
...

Dom3's GUI isn't horrible. It's clunky and just as ugly as the rest of the game, but it is consistent and informative. And at least in TB strategy games, I'll take consistency and information over speed and pretty every time.

Dom3s AI is terrible. Sadly, AI almost always is. Civ4 and GalCiv2 have reasonable AI, but other than those I can't think of a TB strategy game off-hand with better AI than Dom3. I can think of some with less challenging AI, though.

But... This is the E:FE thread, right?

[dbd1963]

I finally got a good game going with only a few crashes. I don't know how many years have passed, but I do know that I got my magic on and kicked some Ironeer butt until I was only behind Magnar.

I think there's a good game in here, just waiting to get the bugs out. For instance, the sight of the ancient battlefield full of metal golem armies is something that'll wake you up. I can kick Ironeer butt, but I had to run away from them. But they have a lot of metal in there, and I could really use some..

[ydejin]

The AI is terrible. Sadly, AI almost always is. Civ4 and GalCiv2 have reasonable AI, but other than those I can't think of a TB strategy game off-hand with better AI than Dom3. I can think of some with less challenging AI, though.

But... This is the E:FE thread, right?

Brad can kick in here if he wants, but my impression from everything I've heard is that this really is a beta and that the AI is a work in progress that should get much better before release.

[Disconnected]

Brad can kick in here if he wants, but my impression from everything I've heard is that this really is a beta and that the AI is a work in progress that should get much better before release.

Oh, sorry I was being unclear. I was talking about Dom3s AI. It's hardly fair to compare E:FEs to that of a finished game at this point.

[Razgon]

I've beeen playing this a lot these past days, and while the game feels great, it really bogs down in the midgame... For some reason the enemy can spam smaller armies like insane and while my heroes can kill anything after a while, they have to be everywhere as well, dealing with incursions from everyone.

[ydejin]

I've beeen playing this a lot these past days, and while the game feels great, it really bogs down in the midgame... For some reason the enemy can spam smaller armies like insane and while my heroes can kill anything after a while, they have to be everywhere as well, dealing with incursions from everyone.

I agree. I've concluded at that point you need to split up your heroes and run a number of different armies, one on each of your borders. While I'm always reluctant to split up my stack of doom, one benefit is that this will give you more opportunities to gain xp, and regular units can actually get quite dangerous if their levels get high enough.

My last game was essentially over very early on (because of my relative strength to my opponents), but things really bogged finishing off the enemies. I think that's partly my fault for not being willing to concentrate on anything other than my main stack of heroes -- I did start coming up with additional stacks bolstered by heroes, but ultimately my main stack was so much stronger, I used it for all attacking.

Okay, different question. Didn't the tech trees for the two sides used to be different? I thought they were at least cosmetically different. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore. They look exactly identical except the Fallen tree unlocks Slave Pits and Skag Pens (whatever the heck those are).

[Razgon]

The problem with multiple stacks of heroes, is the way the end turn functions. Honestly - half the time I don't know if I just ended a turn or not, leading to a LOT of confusion with multiple armies and them bypassing me completely because I thought I was in the same turn, but then suddenly wasnt anymore.

[Disconnected]

Didn't WoM teach you to always disable the auto turn thingy? It's in the options somewhere.

[marxeil]

I agree. I've concluded at that point you need to split up your heroes and run a number of different armies, one on each of your borders. While I'm always reluctant to split up my stack of doom, one benefit is that this will give you more opportunities to gain xp, and regular units can actually get quite dangerous if their levels get high enough.

Isn't this a good thing? Games are usually negatively criticized for funnelling the player towards using a single stack of doom.

[ydejin]

Isn't this a good thing? Games are usually negatively criticized for funnelling the player towards using a single stack of doom.

Possibly. I think the issue is I'm mostly playing it as an RPG and less as a Civ game. I think it can be played either way successfully -- I'm just reluctant to take off my RPG hat and put on my strategy cap.

[WarrenD]

Wait, you'd sign up for a pre-order before you even know if it's 3D? That's crazy! It could be 320x200x256 hand drawn stick figures for all you know! I guess this is the crazy pre-order anything thread though.

Yeah I pre-ordered E:WoM, so I guess you're right there about being crazy.

[Bartholomew Roberts]

The problem with multiple stacks of heroes, is the way the end turn functions. Honestly - half the time I don't know if I just ended a turn or not, leading to a LOT of confusion with multiple armies and them bypassing me completely because I thought I was in the same turn, but then suddenly wasnt anymore.

I was in the same boat as you. I played a few more rounds of my game late last night and somehow I completed three or four turns when I didn't want to and got attacked by two groups of spiders. One problem I have found is that if your city (or space you are trying to walk around or through) is next to a hill sometimes it bounces your group back and ends your turn. I remembered that EWoM had an option to turn off an 'End-Turn' button thingy, but it was late and went to bed before doing so.

Two things about the game confuse me: city management and magic. First, how do I tell what is tactical magic and what is strategic? You click on the spell book from an overland perspective and I sometimes can't tell what spells are what. By the way, is imbuing a champion worth it in the early game? Because I find myself running out of mana quickly in early battles and my sovereign sucks at fighting. Second, in city management (and this is more of a gripe with most of these 4X games), I never really know what to build. Maybe it's because I never play a lot of these games but I always get bogged down and can't seem to focus on the primary things I need to build. I usually notice that folks that excel in these types of games build several cites and they each focus on certain things. Like one city is great for food, another city is focused on research, and another is focused on producing units, etc. So, I guess what I am asking is should your first city be made to produce gold, research, food, or units? any suggestions?

[Giaddon]

This dev journal (http://forums.elementalgame.com/411840) may provide some guidance (assuming it hasn't changed since then).

[Disconnected]

First, how do I tell what is tactical magic and what is strategic?

I can't remember if you can see it by mousing over the spell icons under the magic technologies in the technology tree, but I think so.

If that fails, though, you can check it in the spellbook. Click once on a spell and look on the right-side page of the spellbook. There's be a description of the spell, its stats, and whether it's a tactical, city or universal spell (not entirely sure about the terminology). Tactical spells are cast in combat, coty spells are cast on cities, and universal spells are cast on the world map, typically on a stack. I believe a couple of the spells can cast both in and out of combat.


Second, in city management (and this is more of a gripe with most of these 4X games), I never really know what to build. [...] Any suggestions?

Not any good ones. I've barely played the game yet. Still...

Everything appears to be on a per city basis; prestige, food, production, whatever.

Prestige is population growth, and you need all you can get as fast as you can get it, especially in your first city. Why? Because everything else is derived from population.

Unrest is, I think, 10% of a city's population, with additional 10% increases for every city size and tax level above zero. That can very quickly become a whole lot of people doing nothing.

Food is kind of a population+production barrier. The less you have, the less your city can produce and, at least in theory, the smaller a population the city can sustain.

Production is how fast a city can build and train stuff, and production is whatever population is left after unrest and food.

Both food and production is derived from some combination of the tiles under and around a city, and the city's population.

I'm less than clear on what research is derived from, but population is a major factor.

So what should you build? Probably study first, barracks next, spearmen third, merchant fourth and then try to increase population growth as rapidly as you can get away with, without leaving yourself wide open to attack.

Mouse over the various technologies in the research trees. Some nerf unrest, others nerf maintenance, others still lets you leave a prestigious hero in town without losing out on too much experience. Exactly what you'll want will depend on how your cities and your closest enemies are faring.

Of course, the massive caveat is that I really don't know how the hell the game works yet, and I've probably not seen more than 10% of the stuff you can do - none of which I remember very clearly yet.

TL;DR: Get Prestige.

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Ahhh, thanks Disconnected. Cool beans. As for the city stuff, it turns out I was (mostly) doing okay by your kind suggestion. Which means I am not as lost as I thought, which is a relief to me. Usually these games throw me for a loop.

Thanks for the heads up.

[nosoco]

Prestige is population growth, and you need all you can get as fast as you can get it, especially in your first city. Why? Because everything else is derived from population.


I think this was how it was done in WoM, but it's a bit different in EE. There is a separate stat called, funny enough, "Growth" that determines how fast the population grows. Prestige looks to be faction wide now.

Food determines how large your population can grow, but it is determines by grain. Food gives X grain base(determined by locations), but you can build buildings (granary, gardens, etc) that give more Food per base grain the city has (X + 10 + 5).

Production seems to work in the same factions, where Material = Grain and Production = Food.

[ydejin]

Both food and production is derived from some combination of the tiles under and around a city, and the city's population.

I believe food and production is determined only by the tile on which the city was originally created and not any surrounding tiles, so be careful where you place your city. There is no traditional Civ cross of tiles surrounding the city which can be worked. Only the single tile you place the city on will determine the Grain and Materials of the city. Unless your referring to nearby resources such as Mines and Orchards. These will send their resources to the nearest city.

You can see everything that's coming in to your city (including from nearby Mines, Orchards, Stables, etc) by mousing over them in the City Details window.



Food is kind of a population+production barrier. The less you have, the less your city can produce and, at least in theory, the smaller a population the city can sustain.

Definitely true. I've had cities stop growing. Basically they'll grow as big as they can sustain with the Food provided to them and then they'll stop.



I'm less than clear on what research is derived from, but population is a major factor.

From the tooltip over Research in the City Details window it looks like Research is 10% of population. So my city with 600 population generates +60 research which is further modified by any Studies, Sages, Schools, etc. in the city.

[ydejin]

Also don't neglect your Trade Caravans. AFAICT you can have one Trade Caravan from each city in your empire to every other city in your empire. These typically add 10% to your city wealth per route and I've seen them add closer to 15% with larger size cities.

Once you build Trade Caravan you must manually send it to the city you want to setup a trade relationship with. I'm not 100% positive, but these appear to be two-way relationships, so only one of the two cities needs to create the Caravan and send it out.

I'm not positive, but I think these can also be interdicted (or it's possible the enemy just had a lot of extra caravan units sitting around that I was killing). I'm not quite sure how this works though -- I don't know if the routes will automatically start going again or if you have to do something manually if someone kills the caravan.

[ioticus]

If 600 pop gives +6 research then research would be 1% of pop.

[ydejin]

If 600 pop gives +6 research then research would be 1% of pop.

Sorry, my bad. It's 10% of the population, so 600 pop should give +60 research. I'll correct my post.

[Sarkus]

So does anyone know if they plan on releasing an updated beta for the second phase (i.e. week 2) of the beta access? Because otherwise it seems somewhat less then productive to give the same version to the retail buyer group just to have them start reporting the same issues back that the pre-order group has already had a week to mess with.

[Giaddon]

Food/production is determined by nine tiles: the tile the city is on and the eight surrounding tiles. When you are settling, and each tile shows its production and food, that number is generated by adding all those tiles together. That's from the official forums.

[ydejin]

Food/production is determined by nine tiles: the tile the city is on and the eight surrounding tiles. When you are settling, and each tile shows its production and food, that number is generated by adding all those tiles together. That's from the official forums.

Hmm. That does not match my personal experience, for example, I built a city on a tile that said 5 grain, 3 material. The city is now level 3 and going in to the City Detail window it says 5 grain, 3 material. I suppose it's possible that it uses the largest number in each of the 9 tiles or some other complex formula. But it sure seems like the Grain and Materials numbers for my cities are exactly what was on the founding tile.

[Brad Wardell]

The 5/3 is the actual post-calculation bit of looking at the yield in the countryside.

When we first implemented it, it would display lie 1/0 and 0/1 in various tiles and then we had a separate display that showed the tiles add up to the 5/3 but it was tedious and confusing.

The display is meant to show you how much food a city placed in that spot can yield from the surrounding countryside.

[ydejin]

The 5/3 is the actual post-calculation bit of looking at the yield in the countryside.

When we first implemented it, it would display lie 1/0 and 0/1 in various tiles and then we had a separate display that showed the tiles add up to the 5/3 but it was tedious and confusing.

The display is meant to show you how much food a city placed in that spot can yield from the surrounding countryside.

Ah, thanks Brad!

[ydejin]

Is there ever any advantage to building an Outpost instead of a new town? I know sometimes you'll have a resource that you want to get to that you can't build a town at, either because the terrain won't allow building there or because it's too close to another town. However, failing that, I can't off-hand think of any cases where an Outpost would be better.

There is AFAICT no corruption factor or anything else in place that would make having a lot of towns bad, and generally in FE towns don't seem to lose money or other resources. Also towns can defend themselves at least somewhat.

Am I missing anything?

[Robert Sharp]

I still haven't even gotten the email about the beta. Should I have gotten it by now?

[lokiju]

Is there ever any advantage to building an Outpost instead of a new town? I know sometimes you'll have a resource that you want to get to that you can't build a town at, either because the terrain won't allow building there or because it's too close to another town. However, failing that, I can't off-hand think of any cases where an Outpost would be better.

There is AFAICT no corruption factor or anything else in place that would make having a lot of towns bad, and generally in FE towns don't seem to lose money or other resources. Also towns can defend themselves at least somewhat.

Am I missing anything?

From Brad's "Surviving the world of the Fallen Enchantress thread":[/URL]

FE has a new game mechanic called Outposts. They’re not cities. But they allow you to expand your zone of control far and wide. The resources will then flow to the nearest city letting you create a handful of super cities. It is better to have a few mega cities than a bunch of crappy ones (each time you found a city, your faction prestige is spread further out which slows growth in all cities). It also lets you claim land.

[URL]http://forums.elementalgame.com/415274 (http://forums.elementalgame.com/415274)

[KiloOhm]

Turned off AutoSave, played for about a hour. This is longer than I've been able to play previously. Saved the game and quit - hard crashed computer. :(

This game doesn't like my PC.

[ydejin]

From Brad's "Surviving the world of the Fallen Enchantress thread":[/URL]


[URL]http://forums.elementalgame.com/415274 (http://forums.elementalgame.com/415274)

Thanks lokiju.

[ydejin]

First, how do I tell what is tactical magic and what is strategic? You click on the spell book from an overland perspective and I sometimes can't tell what spells are what. By the way, is imbuing a champion worth it in the early game? Because I find myself running out of mana quickly in early battles and my sovereign sucks at fighting.

AFAICT anything that shows up in the Spell Book is a strategic spell that can be cast outside of combat. I know some of them are specifically marked as "Strategic" but the tactical spells such as Flamedart and Fireball simply aren't listed in the Spell Book, so there may be something more subtle going on as far as the "Strategic" labelling goes. But if it's listed in the Spell Book you can definitely cast it strategically.

There are some spells there that can target enemies -- such as Pillar of Flame -- but these are designed to strike enemy stacks of units from the strategic map.

As far as imbuing Champions, I think that depends in part of what your mana level looks like. This in turn depends on your starting situation: while there are some buildings later on which increase mana production, from what I can tell the main source of mana seems to be mana shards on the map. If you start near mana shards then you'll have a lot more magic to play with.

As long as you have the 25 mana to "Imbue Champion" though I think it's worth it. Magic can have a huge impact on tactical battles. Just don't use all your casters unless you are in a really tough fight, so you'll have enough mana for when you really need it. Then when you need it have all your casters hit the enemy boss with Slow, Wither, Blindness, Shrink, and Curse, while hitting the main enemy group with Fireball -- this can turn a very tough battle into something much more doable.

If you've really got mana to burn you can start casting enhantments on your units. Generally I don't think this is worth it in early game, you really want a good mana reserve for combat IMO. I think direct casting will make more of a difference than unit enchantments, and you can pick and choose which battles to use them on.

Some of the city enchantments are potentially worth it though. Just make sure you end up with a large enough positive mana flow so that you have mana for combat. I think early on, something like "Inspiration -- +10% to Research" is pretty good. There's also a bunch of handy enchantments that can increase the stats on units built in a city -- increasing their Constitution and Spell Resistance, etc. These are really great end game, but much too expensive early on.

[Armando Penblade]

I've been playing a bit more, from the Tutorial through a bit of the early game. I'm streaming it to Twitch.TV when possible, but that's currently a bit limited due to my living setup (fiancee does her grad school work in the same room and would be disrupted by my talking). Once I get her desk built and setup in the office, I may be able to do it a bit more often.

There's some volume issues and either the game's innate bugginess or my PC's inadequateness seem to cause some slowdown and frameskip issues, but hey, whatever, it's my first experience with livestreaming (I've done some little youtube videos and such in the past, but that was all offline-and-edited). Regardless, if you're wanting a second perspective, feel free to watch the saved videos.

http://www.twitch.tv/armandopenblade/videos

Final note: during the Tutorial recording, apparently my Xsplit lost communications w/ Twitch twice, causing the VOD to "break" at those points. It should continue fairly linearly, but you'll have to manually select each video as the prior one stops.

[Giaddon]

Getting a kinda Hinterland vibe from the videos I've seen. Which I wasn't expecting, but is very welcome.

[ydejin]

Do not pick fights with Procipinee, particularly early on. Her "Crown of Procipinee" (no mana cost to enchantments cast on the unit wearing it) makes her nigh unstoppable early on. Right now she's got Cloak of Fear, Fire Resistance, Courage, Evade, Regeneration, Mana Shield, and Blood Curse all cast on her. Without the Crown there is no way anyone could run that many enchantments this early in the game. She's got 267 hit points -- presumably spell boosted somehow. I just got Leather Armor unlocked (and 6 techs total unlocked) so this is relatively early in the game. I have two level 2 heroes and level 4 sovereign. Ouch this fight did not go well.

I suspect later in the game with some mid-level heroes and an army backing me up, she'll be possible to take down (although still tough). I guess I should not have picked a fight with her until I was really ready.

[marxeil]

So, other then some technical bugs (hopefully to be fixed until FE comes out), what's the general impression on it? Are you people enjoying playing it?

[ydejin]

So, other then some technical bugs (hopefully to be fixed until FE comes out), what's the general impression on it? Are you people enjoying playing it?

I'm actually enjoying it quite a bit. It took me a while to get in to it, but the more time I've spent with it and the more I've gotten to know the game mechanics the more I'm liking it. I'd really love to start another game tonight and do a Qt3 move but I have to remind myself I've got a meeting tomorrow morning (actually Qt3 isn't that late for me, but if I start a game, I'll be up a lot later than Qt3).

Things I like about it:

It does a good job highlighting the role of heroes. Leveling them up, the perks you choose for them each level, the equipment they earn from questing (or purchase at exorbitant cost from the shopkeeper if you've managed to research the appropriate technologies) all make a huge difference in how the heroes turn out. They also all start out quite differently, with a wide range of different abilities and specialties. Plus they all have cute little stories you can read about if you're in to that -- I usually am not, but some of them are actually pretty neat and really make the heroes feel more personal.
It does a good job making questing in the world meaningful. Sending out your heroes to explore the world early on is of key importance. Partly to scout out the land, partly to find heroes to join your cause, partly to destroy heroes of the opposing alignment before they get recruited and leveled up by your enemies. The experience points you earn and the equipment you find while exploring and questing makes a big difference in your heroes effectiveness long term.
Magic makes a huge difference in the game, yet there is only a limited supply of it. You'll need to decide how and when to use your limited supply. Do you use it to enchant your cities, enchant your units, or store it up for direct use in combat. Even within these categories there are lots of options -- do you buff your cities for research, casts spells on them to improve the units they build, or use it to defend your cities (surrounding them with a wall of fire, for example).
In contrast with the original Elemental game where the spells all felt very similar to each other, all the spells are quite different. Fire magic is used for direct strikes, Water magic can be used to slow opponents or speed up friends, Death magic curses and blinds opponents, Earth magic toughens your units. There's a small bit of overlap, for example Fireball and Earth Shockwave both do area damage, but Shockwave is centered around the caster whereas Fireball is ranged. To make up for Shockwave's limitations it does more damage, but it also costs more mana.

There are all sorts of interesting magic spells out there. Obscure fog makes your units harder to hit. Shrink makes your enemies smaller, which halves their attack value, but makes it much easier for them to dodge your attacks. Growth makes your unit big, which means they hit hard, but can't dodge. One neat one I ran into last game (on an opponent ...) was Mana Shield, instead of taking hits to health the enemy's mana pool is depleted. Because the global mana pool is usually pretty big, that one is crazy good, because it makes whoever it is cast on nigh un-killable, but the downside is that if your mana supply gets chewed up, you're going to be hurting long term. Another neat one is Crusade which is super-expensive (340 mana) but gives all trained units +1 level. Unfortunately I think it's currently bugged, or they decided it was overpowering and it just gives all units XP but not a full level.
The game changes a lot depending on your starting location. If you don't have a lot of mana, you'll have to figure out another way to play. If you don't have metal, you won't be able to equip troops with chainmail or plate armor. If you don't have horses, you won't be able to build cavalry. Sometimes the heroes in your starting area will seem to make better casters, whereas other times they're more suited to act as warriors. Sometimes they'll even act best as administrators reducing the building costs and training costs of units in cities in which they are stationed. The game also changes up depending on what types of magic your heroes have (Fire, Water, Life, Death, etc.).
As your heroes level up you'll make meaningful choices. Do you level up this hero's ability to go toe-to-toe with monsters by increasing their strength, do you take that perk which lets them stun an enemy for a turn, or do you take a perk that gives a slight bonus to your entire army's defense, or do you want to do something entirely different like take a perk that increases your faction's prestige (generating more fame and bringing more people to your cause)? Each time they level up they can choose one of 5 perks, all of which are good. The perks are rated as common, uncommon, and rare, and some of the rare ones are really great! But sometimes you'll have to choose between two rare ones, or maybe there's a common one that matches what you're trying to do with that hero, but oh boy that rare one sure does look nice, maybe I should make this guy more of a caster/warrior instead of a straight warrior -- hmm choices, choices.
I really love what they've done with the perks in the unit designer. You can create scout troops which improve your army's speed and visibility on the strategic map. You can create troops that are specially trained to fight larger monsters. You can create troops that provide a defensive bonus to others in the army. There are traits to fight harder when your strength is below 50%, there are traits where your unit gets all bloodthirsty when the enemy is damaged. For evil players there's even a trait that gives you mana each time someone in the unit gets killed. Each unit gets up to three perks, most of them do increase the cost of the unit, but two actually decrease the unit cost.

To provide you with an example of how a unit design might work out, I designed a fast Light Lancer cavalry unit. I wanted them to move as quickly as possible to get across the map, so I gave them fast (+1 movement, +1 initiative), scout (+1 movement, -20 carrying capacity), and charge (+3 movement, +3 initiative on first turn of combat). Not only can these units move quickly across the strategic map, they can also charge across the tactical battlefield in a single turn to take out enemy casters and archers. On the other hand, I wanted to create some heavy duty knights, these guys I gave Ironskin (+3 defense), Constitution (+2 constitution), Potential (+25% xp). These guys act entirely differently than the Light Lancers. Even though they're on horseback, they can't cross the battlefield in a single turn. They have a lot more staying power though.

The equipment on each is different. My Light Lancers started out with leather armor and a spear and I later upgraded them to chainmail and a spear. The Knights used all plate armor and shield. But in addition to the equipment the perks definitely make a big difference in how they're able to operate.
There's all sorts of dangerous stuff out in the world. At the lower levels, you'll definitely want to watch your step. Even at the higher levels there are some really tough monsters. I ran into this massive multi-square beast in this special desert area. He was kind of a giant armadillo named Torax. I had a heck of a time taking him out, but when I did, I was rewarded with his head, which I could place as a trophy in one of my cities, where it provided slight bonuses to growth and revenue (unfortunately it's currently bugged, IIRC it was supposed to give me a 10% growth and 10% revenue bonus, instead it give me the growth bonus, but actually gives a -100% to revenue -- ouch).

[DKDArtagnan]

Sounds very good. Thanks for info.

[TurinTur]

Thanks ydejin for the impressions, it looks promising.

[marxeil]

Thanks for the detailed impressions. Seems like there's something good to wait for :)

[Kelan]

Unfortunately I only got a few hours to play over the weekend and didn’t get far, but here are some questions & suggestions that I came across so far (these coming from an early beta WoM player that played through release for a short time before waiting on FE):

I really like the new coloring and shading. I have always liked the art style so the addition of more colors is welcome. My second city settlement area seemed to be a purple color, though. Instinctively I thought that was some sort of corruption or land I wouldn’t want to settle in, but turns out it was prime farmland/plains. It also seems that the prime settlement areas are pretty well defined in distinctive pockets of land, which I think I like.

I also like the addition of all the impassable chasms my map had (although maybe can bypass them later with magic?). The original game seemed to be too open and the chasms seemed to promote the use of more chokepoints, which I think is good.

I liked the icons that were added for goodie huts and inns/quest locations. The goodie-huts were always really hard for me to see and the green bags above them help a lot. The inn and quest placement and pacing seemed to be a lot more refined and better also compared to what I remembered. I also like the green/red coloring of the icons for things I could and could not access.

The new level up mechanic is much improved. I went from level 1 to 2 and got a significant upgrade to my stats. As others have mentioned, there are also special perks that can really change, refine and improve your hero. I don’t miss the old 0.1 increases.

Is there a combat log in the tactical combat screen? The real time animation with damage numbers and special attacks floating above the combatants looked good, but I couldn’t find a way to see a log of what was happening. Probably not a necessary thing, but was something I found myself looking for instinctively and would be helpful once more special abilities and spells start getting flung about the battlefield. A log of events on the main map would be helpful also, if not there already.

The list of icons at the left really startled me the first time I went into combat. I first thought the game bugged out on me and started a combat with 20 or so combatants. However, upon careful review, it appears to be an initiative bar like HOMM5 had. One gripe I had in HOMM6 was that it seemed to force all creatures to get an action each combat turn. I much preferred HOMM5 where you could get multiple attacks in the same time frame compared to really bad initiative creatures without a hard-line start/end of a combat turn. I suppose that could just be a personal preference, though. Having varying numbers and percentages to deal with initiative could add another layer of strategy and improvement for heroes, spells, creatures, etc.

Is there a way to see the special attacks and abilities a creature has before attacking them? Even after entering combat, it didn’t appear there was a way to see what a creature was capable of. I understand there is some learning curve to gauging battles and learning what a creature can do through experiences, but this bear just wasted me with one attack followed up by 3 mauls in a row on the same turn basically insta-killing my hero. I didn’t seem to have any way of knowing that ahead of time other than it being a Medium strength enemy even though its stats seemed to be Weak. Still, having a list of special attacks when mousing over an NPC would be helpful when determining targets and strategy. I did like that my hero was to be revived after dying, though, with a set time period he was disabled. Is there a way to flee early on in combat to avoid more losses? I didn’t see a retreat button.

I also went through what the others have with the End Turn option. Maybe change the default setting in options to forcing a manual End Turn press to continue as it trips up many of us I think.

Minor bug: I got a backpack that increased my weight capacity. I equipped it then checked my encumbrance limits and it didn’t change. A few turns later I checked my hero (champion) again and it was displaying properly. Probably just a minor re-calc trigger or something after equipping it.

Also, after reading ydejin’s post above it sounds like I have a lot more interesting and fun decisions and discoveries to come. I still think the real challenge is balancing the pacing and strength of the game and the AI to keep it fun for a wide skill range of players. I always enjoyed the Dominions 3 computer controlled opponents and had many fun challenging games with them, but many other skilled players here would steamroll them and lose fun with it quickly. Good thing there is a skilled AI man on the job, eh?

[ydejin]

I liked the icons that were added for goodie huts and inns/quest locations. The goodie-huts were always really hard for me to see and the green bags above them help a lot. The inn and quest placement and pacing seemed to be a lot more refined and better also compared to what I remembered. I also like the green/red coloring of the icons for things I could and could not access.

I wish the inn/quest locations would show their level. For example, once you unlock Epic questing you can't tell the difference between an Epic quest location and a Standard quest location.


Is there a way to see the special attacks and abilities a creature has before attacking them? Even after entering combat, it didn’t appear there was a way to see what a creature was capable of.

On the tactical map double-click on a unit friendly or enemy and you'll get the standard description window (the some one you use to equip your own heroes).

On the strategic map if you double-click on a stack, I think you'll get the description window of the most powerful unit in the stack. Alternatively single click on it to select it and look at the stack description in the lower-left corner of the screen.

AFAICT monsters don't list their abilities the same way heroes do, instead the monster abilities will be listed where hero perks are running along the left-side of their portraits in the big description window. You can also see them in the current stack selection area when a stack is selected on the main map.


I understand there is some learning curve to gauging battles and learning what a creature can do through experiences, but this bear just wasted me with one attack followed up by 3 mauls in a row on the same turn basically insta-killing my hero.

Maul is absolutely vicious. I've never seen it as a leveling perk, but I did get an "Axe of Mauling" in one game. They probably should do something about the mechanic, I think it's way overpowered (each time you hit an enemy, you get another chance to hit them, this continues until you miss). I think they either need to increase the difficulty of hitting on each subsequent hit, or if that's already there, they need to tweak the numbers and make each subsequent hit even harder. I've seen my guy with the "Axe of Mauling" take someone down 80 points in one round.


I did like that my hero was to be revived after dying, though, with a set time period he was disabled. Is there a way to flee early on in combat to avoid more losses? I didn’t see a retreat button.

There's an Escape spell. I'm not entirely sure how it's learned, but it's pretty common. I've had a fair number of casters who one way or another have managed to get it.

As to how I got it, the in game Elemental-pedia lists Escape but doesn't list a magic school. This might mean the Elemental-pedia is currently incomplete. Alternatively, apparently there are spells in books that you can pick up on quests. I think the UI needs some work, because I've gotten them from quests and read them and until reading a journal post on the FE website I had no idea what they did. They need to better indicate what these books actually do when consumed. I know some of them earn you a straight XP bonus. But others don't seem to do anything at all -- it's possible those are actually adding spells to your spell book. So Escape might be from a quest book reward, or it might be a standard spell from one of the schools of magic.

Also sometimes you'll get a scroll as a quest reward that I believe is an expendable one-time-only Escape use (or maybe I'm totally off and by reading it you'll learn the Escape spell).

[flatsinki]

Is there a combat log in the tactical combat screen? The real time animation with damage numbers and special attacks floating above the combatants looked good, but I couldn’t find a way to see a log of what was happening. Probably not a necessary thing, but was something I found myself looking for instinctively and would be helpful once more special abilities and spells start getting flung about the battlefield. A log of events on the main map would be helpful also, if not there already.

There is a complete log of events from the battle on the Result window once the battle is over that lists out everything that happened. I think the button is labelled 'Battle Details' or something like that. I would have personally preferred it being available during the battle so I could review at the time it occurred but I don't disagree with it being placed in the Results. I haven't as yet tried an auto-resolve to see if it too displays the log due to having a hard time trusting an AI to do my fighting for me :)

[Kelan]

Thanks for the responses. I should probably do some more research, but then I wouldn't be playing. Some of those I probably should have known, heheh. Thanks again for the help.

[Armando Penblade]

Just to say real quick, flatsinki: auto-resolve does seem to present the damage dealt and received. Given the extremely basic nature of tactical AI, unless your units can straight up beat down the enemy without using abilities, it's definitely a bad choice, and even then it will be painfully inefficient.

As I mentioned in one of the videos, I am really in love with the way that initiative plays out. It reminds me heavily of the battles in FFX, where a sufficiently speedy, Hasted character can just absolutely overwhelm a Slowed normal character. I haven't checked yet if the Dexterity stat pumps Init directly or not, but if so, it really solidifies the RPG elements by letting you build heroes to the three great RPG archetypes (Str-based bashers, Int-based casters, and Dex-based duelers/sneakers).

That said, let me say that as a moderate TBS gamer (about 100 hours apiece into Civ 5 and 2, maybe half that with Alpha Centauri, ~150 into GalCiv2, and a smattering in HOMM3 and 5), I find this game extraordinarily unforgiving. The game doesn't have any qualms about flat-out murdering your heroes ten turns in if you take on even a seemingly easy fight, and I had a new city sacked two turns after it was built by a roving band of air-spiders of some sort that only listed as a Medium fight.

In fact, in my games thus far, I haven't even lived long enough to meet another faction; I spend all my time just trying to survive the wildlife. Even low-level quests that are available from the start can pit you against tough enemies--one against what I take to be zombies showed up in two games in a row, and even three Level 3 heroes with a couple of pieces of okay loot were no match.

I'm almost tempted to sit on the defensive till I get my first military tech out and can build a support unit that's worth a damn, but I can't help but feel I'd get hugely behind if I didn't quest or expand before that point.

Maybe I'll have to kick the difficulty down a bit :(

[Jørn Weines]

There's an Escape spell. I'm not entirely sure how it's learned, but it's pretty common. I've had a fair number of casters who one way or another have managed to get it.

As to how I got it, the in game Elemental-pedia lists Escape but doesn't list a magic school. This might mean the Elemental-pedia is currently incomplete. Alternatively, apparently there are spells in books that you can pick up on quests. I think the UI needs some work, because I've gotten them from quests and read them and until reading a journal post on the FE website I had no idea what they did. They need to better indicate what these books actually do when consumed. I know some of them earn you a straight XP bonus. But others don't seem to do anything at all -- it's possible those are actually adding spells to your spell book. So Escape might be from a quest book reward, or it might be a standard spell from one of the schools of magic.

If I am not mistaken the Escape spell is learned when you research "book of winds" or something like that in the second tier of the Magic tree.

[ydejin]

If I am not mistaken the Escape spell is learned when you research "book of winds" or something like that in the second tier of the Magic tree.

Right, I totally forgot about that! I think there are a couple other useful spells on there too. Maybe Obscuring Fog?

[ydejin]

Okay so I took a look at the in game manual/Elemental-pedia. It actually has a lot of good information and answers a lot of my questions.

Maul, for example, gets a -3 on accuracy for each subsequent hit. I think they need to crank that up a bit, or maybe my hero with the Mauling Axe was just very high on accuracy compared to his target's dodge rating.

Also I was wondering earlier about the Caravan mechanics. Caravans earn increasingly more money the longer a route is plied. If a Caravan is intercepted and destroyed after a delay a new Caravan will automatically appear and take over the route.

[lokiju]

I haven't as yet tried an auto-resolve to see if it too displays the log due to having a hard time trusting an AI to do my fighting for me.

Honestly, aside from using way too much mana (which I think/hope Brad might be working on) at times, the AI often kicked major butt for me during auto-resolve in my last game. It's worth it in the late game when you get burned out fighting each battle personally.

[Sepiche]

Maul, for example, gets a -3 on accuracy for each subsequent hit. I think they need to crank that up a bit, or maybe my hero with the Mauling Axe was just very high on accuracy compared to his target's dodge rating.
Yeah weapons with maul seem pretty powerful. At this point in my main game I think all my heroes are equipped with them.

Another ability that seems a little out of line is the death spell Graveseal (it makes all hits on the effected unit critical hits)... as much as I love it it seems a little too strong and makes some boss fights much easier. My main army was at one point a caster who could cast Graveseal and a bunch of archers that could then make whatever was hit with Graveseal a pincushion. I was able to completely devastate the earth elemental lord with that once I was able to get Graveseal to stick on him.

[Armando Penblade]

Haste character with high initiative and a Mauling weapon. Graveseal enemy. Win before enemy can do anything?

[Bartholomew Roberts]

AFAICT anything that shows up in the Spell Book is a strategic spell that can be cast outside of combat. I know some of them are specifically marked as "Strategic" but the tactical spells such as Flamedart and Fireball simply aren't listed in the Spell Book, so there may be something more subtle going on as far as the "Strategic" labelling goes. But if it's listed in the Spell Book you can definitely cast it strategically.

Thanks ydejin. I must be getting old and my eyes are going out. I could have sworn that I looked and looked at the spell book and couldn't find a description but last night there it was in the spell book. The rest of your advice is solid as well. In the early game I was casting things like stoneskin but later on didn't need it as the unique items I was finding provided the defense I need.

For anyone who wants to cast the death spell 'corruption' be wary. It is supposed to turn any shard in your territory into a death shard. The first time I cast it, it didn't seem to work right plus the game crashed. Then, I reloaded the game and tried again with mixed results. The spell turned the shard into a death shard, but for one turn you couldn't see anything but a blank tile. One turn later there was a death shard there, but it had no shrine on it. When I hovered my hovered my cursor over it, it kept saying I needed to build a shrine but the 'build' option was greyed-out and wouldn't let me build anything. I reloaded a couple more times with the same result.

[Sepiche]

For anyone who wants to cast the death spell 'corruption' be wary. It is supposed to turn any shard in your territory into a death shard. The first time I cast it, it didn't seem to work right plus the game crashed. Then, I reloaded the game and tried again with mixed results. The spell turned the shard into a death shard, but for one turn you couldn't see anything but a blank tile. One turn later there was a death shard there, but it had no shrine on it. When I hovered my hovered my cursor over it, it kept saying I needed to build a shrine but the 'build' option was greyed-out and wouldn't let me build anything. I reloaded a couple more times with the same result.
The only way I was able to get it to work was to cast it on an uncapped shard. It still disappeared and looked bugged when I did that, but a turn later I was able to click on the space it used to be and it gave me the option to cap the new invisible death shard there.

[ydejin]

Thanks ydejin. I must be getting old and my eyes are going out. I could have sworn that I looked and looked at the spell book and couldn't find a description but last night there it was in the spell book. The rest of your advice is solid as well. In the early game I was casting things like stoneskin but later on didn't need it as the unique items I was finding provided the defense I need.

I discovered the Elemental-pedia in the Game Concepts section has a full description of the different spell types. I believe Strategic spells are one-shot spells that don't have a maintenance cost, whereas Enchantments are cast at the Strategic level, but have a maintenance cost. There are also a few other types listed.

I don't think the Spells section of the Elemental-pedia is very good at listing what type the various spells are, although perhaps I'm misremembering.

I think the main problem with casting things like Stoneskin early on is just the pitiful trickle of mana coming in. With just one or two enchantments that trickle drops to zero which means no mana for any direct combat spells or anything else.

[bakka bakka bakka]

I'm playing as Kraxis and recreated the Spikes of Krax as the Spikes of Kraxis. And now I see Pariden running around with my unit!

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/651002589791204933/94B41055AD2FBDE1F7C5E6DC07A8697C0470DEE1/

[Peter Frazier]

Once you develop squads and have the spell 'giant form', the game gets easy. For 15 mana you can have a unit that does at least 200 damage per attack.
Does anyone know how to colonise the abandoned Imperial city? I've cleared out all the enemies and sites inside but it still has a green border preventing me from doing anything.

[Sepiche]

I'm playing as Kraxis and recreated the Spikes of Krax as the Spikes of Kraxis. And now I see Pariden running around with my unit!

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/651002589791204933/94B41055AD2FBDE1F7C5E6DC07A8697C0470DEE1/
heh I noticed the same thing last night, except in my case I created a mounted uber scout to explore for me, but one of the AI's started producing that unit to defend it's cities.

I'm not opposed to the AI using my designs against me, but it needs to be able to determine that a unit specially built to scout isn't going to make a good combat unit. :P

[slikster]

Hmm, well, I haven't read anybody in this thread putting an army of four or so heroes together and steamrolling the map. Those kind of threads are common on the stardock FE forums.

Is it just a case of different playing styles accounting for different experiences? Like, recruiting numerous heroes and being hyper aggressive, as opposed to building your empire slowly with strong foundations, the way you think it *should* be done?

[ydejin]

Hmm, well, I haven't read anybody in this thread putting an army of four or so heroes together and steamrolling the map. Those kind of threads are common on the stardock FE forums.

Is it just a case of different playing styles accounting for different experiences? Like, recruiting numerous heroes and being hyper aggressive, as opposed to building your empire slowly with strong foundations, the way you think it *should* be done?

In one of my games I definitely put a stack of five heroes together and it kicked major ass. The main issue with this is it can only be in one place at once. Unless you happen to be in a starting location where you only face opponents on one side, this is not a "win instantly" strategy -- although it may be a "win ultimately, but after a fair bit of fighting" strategy. You really need to have stuff guarding your flanks, otherwise as you advance your hero stack to take out one enemy your other enemies will come in behind you and take out your main cities. The other main limitation of the hero stack is it takes a long time to heal up after a tough fight. So in that particular game, I would take out tough enemies and then I would have to spend 10-20 turns healing up before the next big advance. It was fun having a stack of heroes with the "Epic" label on them instead of "Weak" or "Medium."

In my current game I spent most of the game boxed in with only one hero plus my starting wizard. Finally I sent my hero out beyond the edge of civilization skirting some nasty monsters and he's been able to recruit more heroes -- but they are way the heck on the farside of the map (pretty much literally on the other side of the continent with the small-size map setting). They've been doing a pretty good job beating up on stuff out there and leveling up -- mostly they're trying to find more heroes before my Kingdom opponents (I'm Fallen) find them and kill them. But I need to get them back.

In the meantime, my main wizard has been holding off the enemy with support from some pretty decent troops. The main wizard himself can pretty much take any stack by himself -- Fire Archmage with multiple Fire Nodes giving multipliers. But my troops aren't that great -- they are better than some opponents, but one of my opponents recently upgraded to chainmail on their troops and they are just a major bear to take out.

I would say that the AI does need more work on it. It's pretty good at harassment -- taking out mines, mana nodes, and killing caravans. It doesn't seem to be very good at taking out cities. I've definitely lost cities to it, but it doesn't do a great job at it, I've had poorly defended cities it should have taken out but didn't.

[dbd1963]

Hmm, well, I haven't read anybody in this thread putting an army of four or so heroes together and steamrolling the map. Those kind of threads are common on the stardock FE forums.

Is it just a case of different playing styles accounting for different experiences? Like, recruiting numerous heroes and being hyper aggressive, as opposed to building your empire slowly with strong foundations, the way you think it *should* be done?

I haven't been lucky enough to get more than one hero in most of my games. I did have four in a game and I can see how that would have been very powerful, but crashes put me off that one.

You can sometimes get lucky and you are near quite a few heroes and few powerful monsters at first, and when that happens you are in the catbirds seat. The same with winding up near a bunch of nodes or gold mines.

[Arkon262]

As long as you have a bit of mana, it is easy to get back in to your territory. I don't recall the name of the spell, but for somewhere around 80 mana you can teleport back in to any square in your zone of control.

[ydejin]

As long as you have a bit of mana, it is easy to get back in to your territory. I don't recall the name of the spell, but for somewhere around 80 mana you can teleport back in to any square in your zone of control.

There is a Recall spell listed in the Elemental-pedia, but I actually don't know how to get it. AFAICT it's not a standard spell. It might be like the Alchemy Spell. I got the Alchemy Spell from a quest and can now convert Mana to Gold.

Now that I think about it, I suppose I could get in a fight with someone and then cast Escape. That seems kind of like cheating, but I think it would work. I'd have to double check and see if it brings your army units along or just heroes -- but hey I'm playing Fallen, so if the army has to fend for itself while I go home to wine and roses, so be it.

[ydejin]

0.76 changelog (http://forums.elementalgame.com/415307) is up, although 0.76 is not released yet.

[Sepiche]

As long as you have a bit of mana, it is easy to get back in to your territory. I don't recall the name of the spell, but for somewhere around 80 mana you can teleport back in to any square in your zone of control.
Cloudwalk. It's a fairly high rank air spell, but it's very handy.

[ydejin]

Cloudwalk. It's a fairly high rank air spell, but it's very handy.

That sounds handy. I'm going to have to pay more attention to Air magic!

I was just lamenting the lack of any gating ability between cities -- IIRC MoM had the ability at high levels to build a gate in your city that could connect to any other city with a gate (essentially the Magical equivalent of Civ 4 and earlier Civ's Airports -- although IIRC Civ 5 does not support unit air travel).

Some sort of move ability would be real handy for larger empires. I suppose this is a reasonable compromise and 80 mana is a high enough cost that you'll have to think carefully about when to use it.

[ydejin]

There is a Recall spell listed in the Elemental-pedia, but I actually don't know how to get it. AFAICT it's not a standard spell. It might be like the Alchemy Spell. I got the Alchemy Spell from a quest and can now convert Mana to Gold.

Now that I think about it, I suppose I could get in a fight with someone and then cast Escape. That seems kind of like cheating, but I think it would work. I'd have to double check and see if it brings your army units along or just heroes -- but hey I'm playing Fallen, so if the army has to fend for itself while I go home to wine and roses, so be it.

Okay, just on a Lark I decided to see if Escape would work. No dice. It does escape you out of combat, but it puts you right next to where the combat started, so it was of no use getting my units home. It's also fairly expensive at 30 mana. (Mana for me is always in short supply, I can stock pile it fairly rapidly, but in an extended campaign pushing into enemy territory the supply goes down quite quickly.)

[Warren]

0.76 changelog (http://forums.elementalgame.com/415307) is up, although 0.76 is not released yet.

+ Maul gives -4 Accuracy per strike instead of -3
+ Berserker's Axe reduced from 20 Attack to 10.

Well that's a start ...

+ More cowbell

HUH?!

[TurinTur]

+ Giant Form and Growth can only be cast on sovereigns or champions.

Why do they hate fun?


:P

[Razgon]

Honestly- I find the need to balance stuff in single player games like this a bit annoying.

MoM was fun because it was the most unbalanced game in centuries. Why should everyone be the same, be equal, be able to do the same? That just means no-one is special, in the words of a superfast dude.

Thank god for modding!

[TurinTur]

My posture is: don't cap spells or abilities like that, i.e. "this spell works in so and so but not in that creature, because it would be unbalanced". Which doesn't mean they should left shit unbalanced, it means they should try balance it in another way: make the spell a bit more expensive in mana if right now is too good, or make the bonus based on %stat instead of +stat or viceversa if it's not scaling properly in all the range of units, etc.

[ydejin]

Honestly- I find the need to balance stuff in single player games like this a bit annoying.

MoM was fun because it was the most unbalanced game in centuries. Why should everyone be the same, be equal, be able to do the same? That just means no-one is special, in the words of a superfast dude.

Thank god for modding!

Generally I agree with you that single player games don't have to be altogether balanced. In this case though the maul weapons were way out of balance. If your hero was equipped with one, it basically meant the opposing monster or hero was dead. Alternatively if the opposing hero had one it meant you were dead.

I don't mind weapons that are very good and really chew stuff up, but this was excessive. As I think I mentioned earlier, I had a hero do 80-90 points damage in one attack round, and it probably would have gone a lot higher, but that's all the health points his target had.

[Razgon]

Oh, sure - Things like Maul needs to go, or be done with, but Giant Growth? Really? Give everyone the same tools, and we can wreak havoc like nothing else you've seen, instead of this nerfing stuff.

[Alstein]

The key to this stuff is giving the AI counters to it, and the ability to do a variety of broken things itself.

It can't just come down to Maul or Giant Growth everytime.

That said it's WAY too early, given that it's Beta 1 of probably around 20 or so to worry about this stuff.

I also don't think MoM needs to be held up as the holy grail, nostalgia feeds a lot of the feeling for that game.

[Razgon]

The key to this stuff is giving the AI counters to it, and the ability to do a variety of broken things itself.

It can't just come down to Maul or Giant Growth everytime.

That said it's WAY too early, given that it's Beta 1 of probably around 20 or so to worry about this stuff.

I also don't think MoM needs to be held up as the holy grail, nostalgia feeds a lot of the feeling for that game.

No nostalgia here - I regularely play MoM, as I know a lot of people here do. Its a gem, actually. In terms of gamedesign, functionality and UI its a pretty damn great game.

[Kelan]

Played some more last night and the map I am currently on is really getting into a "fun" stage for me. I had to force myself to stop to get some sleep for work today! Some more observations:

Those bears that beat up my early game hero weren't really too bad in the end. After getting a couple levels, my hero dodged a few mauls and was able to take them down pretty easily. The special ability was pretty easy to notice too; I have no idea how I missed it the first time. Now, a weapon in a powerful hero's hand with Maul effect on it; that sounds scary.

I agree that hopefully there is a way to keep really fun, powerful abilities in the game without having a select few be so over the top they become "must have". I would rather have too many powerful abilities that are hard to balance than a perfectly balanced game. I tend to control the pacing myself to try to get a game experience I enjoy. As long as the enemy doesn't rampage on me and kill me in the early turns without a chance, I can usually work with just about any system.

I haven't run into any enemy players yet in my game. There are a lot of powerful creatures between us and we haven't ventured out much yet. I am slowly taking out the tough creatures one by one, but am having to do quite a bit of recovery in between.

I found a cave that had multiple battles in it and ended up with a tough fight I barely survived, but yielded quite a few powerful pieces of equipment. My two heroes were seriously wounded, but ended up quite a bit more powerful after just one fight. I always liked these type of locations like they had in Warlords and welcome them here. Perhaps more can show up randomly as you research more in the quest skill line (maybe it already does this), allowing you to uncover more special locations with creatures and treasures.

[TurinTur]

What is the estimated release date, btw?

[Giaddon]

I believe nothing more specific than "in several months."

[ydejin]

I found a cave that had multiple battles in it and ended up with a tough fight I barely survived, but yielded quite a few powerful pieces of equipment. My two heroes were seriously wounded, but ended up quite a bit more powerful after just one fight. I always liked these type of locations like they had in Warlords and welcome them here. Perhaps more can show up randomly as you research more in the quest skill line (maybe it already does this), allowing you to uncover more special locations with creatures and treasures.

That's more or less already in there, except the locations aren't random and are already visible on the map. Basically as you research up one of the trees on the Magic tech tree you are able to go on harder and harder quests. I believe the quests are rated same as units -- Weak, Medium, Strong, Deadly, Epic. Initially you are only able to go on Weak quests, those are found on Humble Inns. Later you can go on Medium Quests from Modest Inns. I'm not quite sure what the other quest locations are -- IIRC Epic is Dragon Statues. Some of them don't seem to match directly to the quest level -- for example there are random campsites you can find that I think can be one of several different levels. Anyway the higher level locations are locked out until you research the corresponding Questing tech in the tech tree.

[Fishbreath]

I played an hour or so last night. After losing my first game on the first turn, I tried again with a more adventurey hero, and have made it to one city.

I'm enjoying it. There's much more of a feeling of being an outpost of civilization in a hostile world this time around.

[ydejin]

I played an hour or so last night. After losing my first game on the first turn, I tried again with a more adventurey hero, and have made it to one city.

I'm enjoying it. There's much more of a feeling of being an outpost of civilization in a hostile world this time around.

The world can get extremely dangerous as you venture far from your starter area. It's not uncommon to go off exploring in a direction and then to come to a mountain pass that's guarded by some beast that essentially blocks off a large area of the map until you have champions that are of a much higher level.

One thing I like is that the beasts all seem to be different and require different strategies to take them out. For example, I ran into some Fire Elementals and looking at their stats they didn't seem very tough, but after looking over their special abilities, I realized that their attack was multiplied by the number of men in the unit they were attacking. So I did my best to keep my non-heroes from them (I had them attack the accompanying Fire Nagas), and used my heroes to box them in where I could isolate them where they couldn't take advantage of their best abilities.

Some monsters are highly magic resistant (dragons for example have a magic resistance of 200). So if your primary strategy is direct magical attack you'll need to come up with a new strategy. Also some monsters are resistant to one type of magic -- if you're a one-trick pony with only a Fire magic hero, you're going to be in big trouble when you try to take on the Fire Elements.

That said probably the least interesting opponents are the human ones. I've fought wave after wave of human armies with a simple Fireball to center of army -- boosted by controlling two Fire Shards and having a mage with Evoker (+damage to spell casting) -- instant destruction of 60% of enemy army. I will say that constant use of Fireball (along with other random magic use such as Obscuring Fog, Guardian Wind, Wither or various other useful spells I've got in the arsenal) does cut into my mana supply and I am currently constantly low on Mana.

My main Wizard has gotten so powerful at one point I had him holding a key city all by himself (actually the army units he was with got killed taking the city). The main concern being that if he's ever caught by himself without mana he's going to be in big trouble. I don't think your starting Wizard can get killed though, and I've never seen him get injured, so maybe it won't be that traumatic if he gets caught and defeated. I've definitely seen the other heroes get killed, and they do get injuries anytime they are defeated.

[lokiju]

Having a great time with this so far. Using a wizard-type in my 2nd small map playthrough...and having trouble since they start off weak and I only found 1 other champion so far.

The game doesn't like to close for me. Still runs in the background and I have to force close quite often.

[Timemaster Tim]

Reading these reports makes me want this game!

[ydejin]

Having a great time with this so far. Using a wizard-type in my 2nd small map playthrough...and having trouble since they start off weak and I only found 1 other champion so far.

My experience is that the two easiest characters to start with are Fire Mage with initial mana supply like Magnar or alternatively someone setup as a warrior with some mix of the following attributes adventurer (starts of at level 2), hardy (+2 constitution and half poison damage -- not that poison is that big of a deal, but the +2 constitution will help initially), possibly enduring although I haven't tried that one (+10 to defense when below 50% health). Natural Leader (50% off recruiting costs) can be really handy too.

Anything else is a tough go until you get some levels earned. My attempts at creating a scholarly (+2 to research, +2 to intelligence), brilliant (+1 intelligence per level) Life/Air/Earth mage have been a tough go.

[ydejin]

Reading these reports makes me want this game!

It's great fun! It's also rather buggy (for example, there's an enchantment that's supposed to reduce spell costs and instead it increases them). It crashes a lot. Plus I think the AI needs more work.

I think it's going to be amazing once all the bugs are cleaned up and the AI is tuned up.

[Timemaster Tim]

...It's also rather buggy (for example, there's an enchantment that's supposed to reduce spell costs and instead it increases them). It crashes a lot. Plus I think the AI needs more work.

This makes the beta of Fallen Enchantress sound like the released version of MoM.

[Razgon]

Lady Porpupine is an awesome choice as well for starter - Free research every rouch and free mana.

[ydejin]

Lady Porpupine is an awesome choice as well for starter - Free research every rouch and free mana.

Procipinee's Crown (no mana costs on enchantments for the hero wearing the crown) does look quite amazing! I've seen it in action (on the opposing side) and it's quite impressive.

[DeepT]

No nostalgia here - I regularely play MoM, as I know a lot of people here do. Its a gem, actually. In terms of gamedesign, functionality and UI its a pretty damn great game.

Does MoM run on Windows 7? If so, where can I get it? Are there any mods or updates for it?

[Brad Wardell]

Yea, I've been. Working on the crashes. They're overwhelmingly due to the complexity of making all the new threads play nice. Beta 1 has been a god send because you really need a lot of different machines to show this stuff up (dual core vs. hyper threaded vs. 6 core, etc.).

The ai will be relatively easy to improve here on out because the main goal for beta 1 was to get it to play the game. Now, it's just playing and finding good strategies to employ and have them manifest in the XML.

[Giaddon]

Does MoM run on Windows 7? If so, where can I get it? Are there any mods or updates for it?

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/master_of_magic

Runs great!

There's a fan patch, but it's not perfect. Details:

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/master_of_magic/unofficial_insecticide_patch/page1

[lokiju]

My experience is that the two easiest characters to start with are Fire Mage with initial mana supply like Magnar or alternatively someone setup as a warrior

Anything else is a tough go until you get some levels earned. My attempts at creating a scholarly (+2 to research, +2 to intelligence), brilliant (+1 intelligence per level) Life/Air/Earth mage have been a tough go.

I started as a fire/air apprentice (want to be able to teleport later on) with an awesome amount of 3-4 fire shards near me...but the early game is still rough! Takes time to get the shards under control plus mana use hurts in early exploration. That and only finding 1 champion within 15 hexes in each direction doesn't help. Heh, still fun though.

[Armando Penblade]

Mine hard-locked about four times last night during as many hours of playing. Was pretty frustrating; I got to remember to change my Auto-Save settings.

Beyond that, it's been fairly fun, but extremely frustrating. That "Us against the world" feel that Fishbreath mentioned is super accurate!

Example: In my last game of the night last night (not casted), I went for the hero Verga who gets all sorts of direct combat bonuses. I found one other hero who I recruited as a mage, but near my city was only a fruit bunch and an iron mine. I tried to venture out to the west and found myself hitting a dark green border that was the start of a nasty swamp zone.

It covered the entire western border, and entering it saw a large group of Ogre Shaman stacks (~200HP, "Strong" label) swarming toward me. I tried to go north and found the swamp extended along the coast there (I was bordered by sea to the east and south), leaving a thin strip of passable "Plains" land that couldn't support a settlement (no grain there). Eventually I hit the continent only to find my way blocked by another empire's 2nd city--I was fenced in.

As such, I had one city with only moderate population (maxed at 675 with all techs in the first half of the tree--I don't have enough Research to get to the "Refined Agriculture" repeating tech), a small supply of metal, and no magic buffs. Blegh.

I teched up my military and civ techs as high as I could profitably and built a few stacks of tough warriors that used all the metal I'd been accumulating since early game. I ventured into the swamps and started battering my way through monsters over and over again. Each time, I'd lose a unit or two of infantry and all my archers, but a couple of core infantry units were leveling up, and so were my two heroes.

I replenished the dead units when I could and approached the center of the swamp. Out of the darkness came an ENORMOUS swamp-beast. Like, it took up a good four tiles on the world map. "Manius, the Lord of Sorrow" or something like that. I then proceeded to lose my entire army except my two heroes to him and walked away with some glittering fire-resist chain mail and two Level 11 heroes.

Unfortunately, this did not trigger the swamp to clear away (when I first walked into it, it said that it could be turned to arable land by. . . something that wasn't very clear), so I still didn't have anywhere to expand to. With my entire army dead, my power ranking dropped by half and my neighbors to the north declared war and sent an endless stream of units my way.

My heroes are holding them off for now, but I don't have enough metal to produce real units and I can't leave my city without it getting sacked. Pretty sure that this game is over.

Anyone have any idea how to "clear" that swamp area now that I killed the boss?

[ydejin]

I started as a fire/air apprentice (want to be able to teleport later on) with an awesome amount of 3-4 fire shards near me...but the early game is still rough! Takes time to get the shards under control plus mana use hurts in early exploration. That and only finding 1 champion within 15 hexes in each direction doesn't help. Heh, still fun though.

Yeah mana in supply is really the tough part of playing a fire mage. I think starting out with Attunement (40 mana at start and +1 mana per turn) is probably an absolute necessity. You'll still need to sit around a fair bit waiting for you mana supply to recharge. If you get the right hero perks as you level up though it can help a lot -- you really need the Affinity Perk that reduces the mana cost of tactical spells. But if you're playing a warrior type you'll have to sit around waiting to heal after each fight, so there's sitting and recuperating time either way.

[ydejin]

Mine hard-locked about four times last night during as many hours of playing. Was pretty frustrating; I got to remember to change my Auto-Save settings.

Beyond that, it's been fairly fun, but extremely frustrating. That "Us against the world" feel that Fishbreath mentioned is super accurate!

Example: In my last game of the night last night (not casted), I went for the hero Verga who gets all sorts of direct combat bonuses. I found one other hero who I recruited as a mage, but near my city was only a fruit bunch and an iron mine. I tried to venture out to the west and found myself hitting a dark green border that was the start of a nasty swamp zone.

It covered the entire western border, and entering it saw a large group of Ogre Shaman stacks (~200HP, "Strong" label) swarming toward me. I tried to go north and found the swamp extended along the coast there (I was bordered by sea to the east and south), leaving a thin strip of passable "Plains" land that couldn't support a settlement (no grain there). Eventually I hit the continent only to find my way blocked by another empire's 2nd city--I was fenced in.

As such, I had one city with only moderate population (maxed at 675 with all techs in the first half of the tree--I don't have enough Research to get to the "Refined Agriculture" repeating tech), a small supply of metal, and no magic buffs. Blegh.

I teched up my military and civ techs as high as I could profitably and built a few stacks of tough warriors that used all the metal I'd been accumulating since early game. I ventured into the swamps and started battering my way through monsters over and over again. Each time, I'd lose a unit or two of infantry and all my archers, but a couple of core infantry units were leveling up, and so were my two heroes.

I replenished the dead units when I could and approached the center of the swamp. Out of the darkness came an ENORMOUS swamp-beast. Like, it took up a good four tiles on the world map. "Manius, the Lord of Sorrow" or something like that. I then proceeded to lose my entire army except my two heroes to him and walked away with some glittering fire-resist chain mail and two Level 11 heroes.

Unfortunately, this did not trigger the swamp to clear away (when I first walked into it, it said that it could be turned to arable land by. . . something that wasn't very clear), so I still didn't have anywhere to expand to. With my entire army dead, my power ranking dropped by half and my neighbors to the north declared war and sent an endless stream of units my way.

My heroes are holding them off for now, but I don't have enough metal to produce real units and I can't leave my city without it getting sacked. Pretty sure that this game is over.

Anyone have any idea how to "clear" that swamp area now that I killed the boss?

I had the same problem with the desert area. For the desert when I entered it, IIRC it said something about finding or clearing a specific temple. I did kill the main nasty beasty in the area Torax the giant Ankylosaurus like critter. But I never did find the temple that was referred to, and I swear I explored every inch of the area.

[Armando Penblade]

Yeah mana in supply is really the tough part of playing a fire mage. I think starting out with Attunement (40 mana at start and +1 mana per turn) is probably an absolute necessity. You'll still need to sit around a fair bit waiting for you mana supply to recharge. If you get the right hero perks as you level up though it can help a lot -- you really need the Affinity Perk that reduces the mana cost of tactical spells. But if you're playing a warrior type you'll have to sit around waiting to heal after each fight, so there's sitting and recuperating time either way.

I strongly suspect the secret to a great mage in FE is the same as it was in Skyrim: mana cost reduction abilities every single time they come up on the randomization levelup skill thing. I don't know off the top of my head if Elemental bonuses are additive or mulplicative, but I think each iteration of that trait is 25% from overall spell-cost. If additive, 4 skills in, you're casting for free.

Heck, even if mulplicative, after 4 levels, that 80-mana Air Walk spell is down to 25.

Then again, I've never lived long enough/gotten far enough to have more than one serious spellcasting hero, so maybe even 25 mana/shot is more than anyone can maintain in a serious war.

[Sepiche]

The only mana reducing trait I've seen (can't recall the name) only effects tactical spells, so strategic spells like cloudwalk would be unaffected. That said those abilities are very useful all the same since the less spells cost in combat, the more of them you can afford to use.

As you start getting your mana income up though it gets much easier to cast the spells you want in combat. If you use a ton of mana in a big fight you might need to be careful for a little while to let your mana build back up, but with enough shards capped that goes fairly quickly.

Oh and as far as I've been able to tell the various missions to clear wild lands are fairly buggy at this point, so I wouldn't make them a cornerstone of your strategy.

[Mysterio]

0.76 changelog (http://forums.elementalgame.com/415307) is up, although 0.76 is not released yet.

Thank you, good sir!

Brad, any idea when this version will go live? TIA for the updates!

[Alstein]

Thank you, good sir!

Brad, any idea when this version will go live? TIA for the updates!

I think he posted over on Stardock forums that it would be tomorrow.

[Mysterio]

I think he posted over on Stardock forums that it would be tomorrow.

Ah, I missed that post. Thanks!

[RepoMan]

Lady Porpupine

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f207/RepoManQt3/porpupine.jpg

Also, from the 0.76 changelog:


+ More cowbell

I DEMAND PROOF.

[Razgon]

Haha, okay - yeah, I knew something was wrong :-D

[Mysterio]

+ More cowbell

Still my favorite SNL skit ever (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRzds1HHkas)! It never gets old!

[Armando Penblade]

For shame, Mysterio: You newpaged the thread for to explain a joke? Tsk tsk :P

On the other hand, only a couple of hours before I'm heading back into the fray. I'd like to get a game far enough along to exploit all the balance stuff they're patching out before said patch hits :D

[Jason Lutes]

.76 is out for anybody who cares.

[Armando Penblade]

http://forums.elementalgame.com/416262

Has the download link. If you login to your account, you'll have the ability to grab a 32MB patch or the full game. Not quite as much as an autoupdate or client, but it definitely works. Going to play for awhile I think.

[Armando Penblade]

http://www.twitch.tv/armandopenblade/b/306658578

1.5 hr recording of the new patch. Get to see some cavalry at the very end, but this is yet another game where I felt crippled by a terrible starting location and a massive number of extremely tough monsters all around me. I'll try to continue that game later on, likely without voice commentary to not disturb those around me.

I know that Maul was supposedly weakened, but I still got my ass handed to me by a bear well below my level just because it kept f'ing hitting my main hero. I can't help but feel that ability is ridiculous. . . but I sort of love it :D

[dbd1963]

http://www.twitch.tv/armandopenblade/b/306658578

I know that Maul was supposedly weakened, but I still got my ass handed to me by a bear well below my level just because it kept f'ing hitting my main hero. I can't help but feel that ability is ridiculous. . . but I sort of love it :D

Makes you respect the bear.

[Warren]

Makes you respect the bear.

Good advice.

[Tom Chick]

Sometimes you eat the bear. Sometimes the bear eats you.

-Tom

[marxeil]

Anyone know how to run it in full screen?

[Razgon]

IF it doesnt do it by default, try Alt+Enter

[Tony M]

These reports that the game is too hard increase my interest in the game greatly. For the game to be balanced once we understand it properly, it does need to be hard on first viewing.

[Jarrodhk]

I'm liking the game a lot so far.

The world is much more alive than it used to be with all the monsters/zones/treasures/etc to find.

Playing a mage type sovereign seems to need a better starting position than a might based one.

That said, there are tons of different spells that you can play with once you get higher level spell knowledge.

My biggest problem at the moment (besides the occasional crash) is a complete lack of focus on my part. Everywhere I look there are new shinies to try out.

[dbd1963]

I played it pretty late into the night last night and I must say I enjoyed it. I found myself wedged between two of the special areas -- one had the disgusting swamp in it, and the other was full of caves that either held magic items or REALLY BIG NASTIES, up to you to find out which.

I thought, oh how bad can they really be?

Bad. Very very bad. After they had killed everyone, they made a bee-line for my nearest city to kill them all again. I took quite a few wounds whittling them down.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world decided to go to war with me.

But I was able to hold them all off because of my position in the middle of two danger zones.

They may be merciless ass kickers, but they are my merciless ass kickers.

[Jarrodhk]

In my current game, one of the AI's decided that trade would be great. Which is fine, except that the trade route goes right through a big nasty zone.

So basically I get a message every few turns about which roaming band killed my caravan this time.

Have to acknowledge the bravery... if not the intelligence of my caravan drivers.

[TurinTur]

The spice has to flow! You have to clean up the zone of outlaws!

Being serious, I don't know how I would resolve the problem... unless you allow to the player themselves to define the exact path of the caravans.

[Disconnected]

I think I need someone to create a FE wiki before I can appreciate it.

Seriously... Which is better, a Dodge score of "4" or a Dodge score of "half-eaten sandwich", and why is it better?

Without that kind of knowledge (aka how shit works), I'm flailing around in the game, wasting tonnes of times doing experiments to see if I've guessed how something works, or using silly tactics like making monsters chase my sovereign away from someplace I need to access, because I don't know enough to quickly kill the monster, but fortunately my sovereign is immortal and evidently tasty enough that monsters will chase him far, far away from place I need access to.

For me, that transforms what's no doubt a great early game, into a soul-crushing slog of me repeatedly doing things I'm almost certain are pretty damn stupid.

... Which, I guess, explains why I've been playing GalCiv2 instead. Same evil dev also declined to explain the rules of that game, but it has a wiki where fans have done it.

[lokiju]

... Which, I guess, explains why I've been playing GalCiv2 instead. Same evil dev also declined to explain the rules of that game, but it has a wiki where fans have done it.

While some extra info would be appreciated, I think the problem lies more with you than Brad. Many of us seem to be doing well enough having basic 4x knowledge. I didn't even play more than a few hours of WoM and I can understand what's going on with FE. You are playing a beta, which assumes you had some exposure to WoM, and therefore some competence with the basic system.

Oh and if the sandwich was half-eaten, then it obviously had poor dodge results. Take the +4.

[TurinTur]

I don't need the exact mechanics of the game. Only some context (say... Dodge 4 is 4 from a possible 1 to 10 range?)

[ydejin]

I don't need the exact mechanics of the game. Only some context (say... Dodge 4 is 4 from a possible 1 to 10 range?)

No. AFAICT there is no limit to how much Dodge you can stack up. A Target's Dodge is compared to an Attacker's Accuracy to see if a hit occurs. There's a brief description of each of the unit stats and what they do in the Hiergamenon help system under "Game Concepts" although I don't think it goes into as much details as you might desire.

Also while armor is supposed to increase defense, not dodge (although shields do increase dodge, and I think some special magical armor does as well), my heroes seem to dodge much more frequently when they're wearing armor. I'm not sure what that's all about. It might be biased perceptions or it might be they are higher level when they get armor. But it certainly seems like right around when I unlock Leather Armor and kit everyone up they start dodging a lot of attacks from basic units.

[Armando Penblade]

I'm still a little confused by the nature of unit stats.

There's the definite attributes that are actually labeled attributes and clearly describe how they impact other unit characteristics--Dexterity, Constitution, Strength, and Intelligence. They are (apparently) commonly raised by traits at the start and by levelup modifiers as the game goes on. . . except I think I've seen some items that raise them, too.

Then, there are the apparently separate other unit stats like Accuracy, Attack, Dodge, Crit Chance, Crit Multiplier, Spell Resist, and Defense, some of which seem to be tied to an attribute, some of which seem to be tied to traits/levelups, some of which seem to be tied to equipment, and some of which seem to come from everywhere at once.

I suppose I should just sit down and study the tooltips on every single one, but the interdependencies and sources for upgrades to them just feel bewildering, especially given the sheer *number* of stats and attributes. I mean, I think there's also Carrying Capacity, Spell Mastery, Initiative, and Moves.

Through it all, I just feel like there are so many little numbers to tick that I'm never quite sure how to upgrade my dudes--the fact that full tooltips don't come up in some relevant windows (i.e., it's hard to see the exact effects of, say, raising your strength, from some screens where you might perform an action that raises it) makes that worse.

Then there's just the parts that don't feel like they make sense, so it might be my preconceived notions at play. Dex improves dodge and crit chances, but has no effect on initiative, moves, or ranged damage. In fact, as far as I can tell, there's no way stat-based to raise ranged damage specifically.

The fact that all of this applies to *every single unit in the game* is even more bewildering. If it were just champs, I might have a chance, but since I can give my everyman-Joe units state-boosting traits, trait-boosting armors, and armor-boosting stat-traits, I have got to figure it out for each use case. It comes up in combat, too--the Wither spell drops a bunch of physical stats, which is nice. . . but what does that mean for the actual combat efficiency of the units I'm facing? How much does dropping a Dragon's strength by 3 really help me, anyway? Can I see, before casting the spell and wasting a turn, how much its Attack will drop? Will it suddenly lose carrying capacity and have reduced Moves? I just don't know!

Maybe I'm just whining for the sake of whining, or maybe it really is overly convoluted. Not sure.

[ydejin]

If anyone is sitting on the fence trying to decide whether or not to try the beta out, stability in 0.76 is way, way up. I've played quite a few hours and have not had a single crash. I have had a few times where the game completely stalled out and I thought the game had died. At one point, I tabbed out and went looking for the debug.err to report the crash on the Elemental Forums, but the game miraculously recovered.

Of course the AI is still being worked on, and there are still bugs here and there. So you might want to keep waiting. But the regular crashing seems to be gone.

[Razgon]

You mean 0.76 ;-)

[ydejin]

You mean 0.76 ;-)

Ooops. Post is corrected!

[ydejin]

I'm still a little confused by the nature of unit stats.

There's the definite attributes that are actually labeled attributes and clearly describe how they impact other unit characteristics--Dexterity, Constitution, Strength, and Intelligence. They are (apparently) commonly raised by traits at the start and by levelup modifiers as the game goes on. . . except I think I've seen some items that raise them, too.

Then, there are the apparently separate other unit stats like Accuracy, Attack, Dodge, Crit Chance, Crit Multiplier, Spell Resist, and Defense, some of which seem to be tied to an attribute, some of which seem to be tied to traits/levelups, some of which seem to be tied to equipment, and some of which seem to come from everywhere at once.

I suppose I should just sit down and study the tooltips on every single one, but the interdependencies and sources for upgrades to them just feel bewildering, especially given the sheer *number* of stats and attributes. I mean, I think there's also Carrying Capacity, Spell Mastery, Initiative, and Moves.

Through it all, I just feel like there are so many little numbers to tick that I'm never quite sure how to upgrade my dudes--the fact that full tooltips don't come up in some relevant windows (i.e., it's hard to see the exact effects of, say, raising your strength, from some screens where you might perform an action that raises it) makes that worse.

Then there's just the parts that don't feel like they make sense, so it might be my preconceived notions at play. Dex improves dodge and crit chances, but has no effect on initiative, moves, or ranged damage. In fact, as far as I can tell, there's no way stat-based to raise ranged damage specifically.

The fact that all of this applies to *every single unit in the game* is even more bewildering. If it were just champs, I might have a chance, but since I can give my everyman-Joe units state-boosting traits, trait-boosting armors, and armor-boosting stat-traits, I have got to figure it out for each use case. It comes up in combat, too--the Wither spell drops a bunch of physical stats, which is nice. . . but what does that mean for the actual combat efficiency of the units I'm facing? How much does dropping a Dragon's strength by 3 really help me, anyway? Can I see, before casting the spell and wasting a turn, how much its Attack will drop? Will it suddenly lose carrying capacity and have reduced Moves? I just don't know!

Maybe I'm just whining for the sake of whining, or maybe it really is overly convoluted. Not sure.

It does seem a bit complicated.

The tooltips do generally provide a lot of information on how the calculations take place and what impact leveling up has. For regular units leveling up increases unit accuracy and spell mastery/resistance. It also increases hit points (although oddly that part is not shown as a level bonus in the tooltip). I believe Heroes get the same leveling benefits, plus they get whatever leveling traits you choose.

I think Spell Resistance and Spell Mastery are pretty straightforward. As it's name suggests a unit with high Spell Resistance can't have hostile spells cast on it. For example dragon's typically have Spell Resistance of 200, so don't bother casting things like "Slow" on them. However, Spell Mastery can overcome Spell Resistance. So if you've got a really high level go ahead and cast away. I've never gotten it much over 50 though, so still no go on Dragons.

I actually like how the weight limit works. You'll notice a little "Encumberance" bar below the unit portrait. As you start stuffing gear on either your hero in game or a unit in the design editor you'll see the bar fill up. When it goes over 50% your hero or unit has a "Heavy Load" and receives an initiative penalty (which means it takes turns less frequently in combat) if it goes over 75% it becomes "Encumbered" and it takes an even stiffer penalty to initiative. Some heroes simply aren't strong enough to wear heavy armor unless you specifically boost their strength (which wastes a level up trait so it probably isn't worth it for a caster).

[Disconnected]

While some extra info would be appreciated, I think the problem lies more with you than Brad. Many of us seem to be doing well enough having basic 4x knowledge. I didn't even play more than a few hours of WoM and I can understand what's going on with FE. You are playing a beta, which assumes you had some exposure to WoM, and therefore some competence with the basic system.

I have/had the same problem with WoM, actually. And yes, it's no doubt more a problem with me than with Brad. After all, almost nobody seems to want to know the rules of the game.

Anyway, it's not a problem in the sense that I just can't win or whatever. I've tried, I think, five matches so far and while I technically haven't won any of them it's not because I couldn't have. It's because I grew bored.

The first long, long while seems to be about herding monsters away from resources and rival empires, so I can fast-expand or snuff rivals with rush'ed spearmans.

After a far, far too long while of doing that, I gain enough momentum to rush stuff that can kill even the very bad things roaming the maps, and at that point the rival AIs have been completely left in the dust. So it's really just mopping up the map.

But beyond the empire AI sucking, and the too great ease with which roaming ultra-baddies can be lured away from goodies or into unsuspecting rivals (who they'll gleefully stomp flat just like they will yours), there's... Well... Nothing.

I basically have no idea what I'm doing half the time. Or, I know in the broad strokes kind of way that means I'm not doing nothing, but I'm probably not doing something anywhere near the top 5 of things I should be doing at a given point in the match. Which also means I don't know why the AI sucks so bad, because all I can see is that it's flailing around doing slightly different stuff than me, and isn't clever enough to do the monster tug or whatever you want to call it.

So I'm both a terrible player and a terrible beta tester, and I'm not really having much fun. At least two of those problems could be fixed just by me understanding how the game mechanics actually work.

Compare to, for example, GalCiv2. I know if I play on the two hardest difficulties, the AI cheats more than I'm comfortable with and enough to reliably wipe the floor with me. And I know that on lower difficulties, most of the AIs from the expansion aren't good enough to have a real chance against me. The result is I can be reasonably good at the game and fully understand what the hell I'm doing, and tailor the game to be just hard enough that I really have to pay attention and won't win more than maybe 2/3rds of the time. All the way from the humble beginnings, to 20 hours later in a big, epic struggle for the galaxy.

Even if FE was a finished product with a reasonably good AI, I couldn't have that kind of experience with it. Because I don't know how it works. If I win, maybe it's just because the AI doesn't know how to play either. If I don't win, I have no idea what I did wrong.

If you're content to flail about in-game and maybe stumble onto a win or maybe not, then good for you. But to me that's not particularly entertaining.


Oh and if the sandwich was half-eaten, then it obviously had poor dodge results. Take the +4.

Good point :p

[Piemax2]

version .75 crashed on me before I could complete the tutorial.
with .76 I made it through the tutorial, which took me to the new-game screen;
I picked a ruler, accepted defaults, and it crashed while generating the world or just after- before I got into the game.

[Giaddon]

Progress!

[Telefrog]

I noticed that when you start the game, you can click the glowing symbol on the bottom of the main menu screen to bring up the Stardock overlay login box. It's the same style as the old Impulse in-game "overlay" that Elemental used, except SHIFT+TAB does nothing. Is that going to do anything in the final game?

[TurinTur]

No. AFAICT there is no limit to how much Dodge you can stack up. A Target's Dodge is compared to an Attacker's Accuracy to see if a hit occurs. There's a brief description of each of the unit stats and what they do in the Hiergamenon help system under "Game Concepts" although I don't think it goes into as much details as you might desire.



OK... but still, what is the range used in the game for Dodge? Units with low level dodge have it a X and units with high level dodge havet it at Y?
With your description, noobs have a problem, and it is this: they can't judge how good or bad is an unit looking at the description until compare it with a dozen descriptions more.

[Brad Wardell]

Looks like theres going to be a 0.77 today. Derek was able to fix the maul problem yesterday.

Also, dodge is vs. accuracy. Unit A rolls accuracy, Unit B rolls dodge. Result determines if there's a hit. Then damage is rolled which is based on attack vs. defense. Sometimes, and this is a bug, if the damage is 0 the animation played is the dodge instead of stay a "plink" sound or something.

Also, I don't want to steal Derek's thunder here. The goodness of FE is his. My role on FE is lead developer and AI developer. I make lots of suggestions like I would for any Stardock published game (whether it be Sins or Demigod) but the final call is with Derek.

As those who know me well can tell you, I'm not a game designer, I don't like designing games. I like playing them and making them. My design for WOM was basically supposed to be MOM but with multiplayer. Then I spent the following 3 years working on the non-game stuff, Impulse and of course Sins and Demigod. When I got back, the game had evolved.

The role that Derek has on FE didn't exist as a position at Stardock until now because game development at Stardock was considered a "hobby" while the main business (software) was where the serious focus was. The attitude was let the "team" decide what they want to put in and do. That attitude worked ok in GalCiv but during the WOM time, we had moved our experienced game developers over to work on Impulse and we learned a pretty harsh lesson.

Anyway, so now the games have a dedicated project manager and associate producer and designer across the board. And the reason Fallen Enchantress is turning out so well is because of Derek and his design and his management.

[Giaddon]

But what does "roll" mean?

[lokiju]

But what does "roll" mean?

I assume it's like when dice are rolled in Dungeons & Dragons or similar games. I always thought that, as an example, if accuracy is +6 and dodge is +3, the game rolls a D6 for each combatant and adds the bonus. But I haven't looked at the coding so not 100% sure.


If you're content to flail about in-game and maybe stumble onto a win or maybe not, then good for you. But to me that's not particularly entertaining.

Hey, like I said, I agree that more details would always be helpful. But as a veteran (with mediocre skills at best) of these types of games, I think FE gives us enough information to be successful in our adventures.

Once the game goes live though, Brad should ensure that documentation is there to help new players (or even veterans who like to get their hands dirty with exact stats and percentages) get a better grasp of the system.

[DKDArtagnan]

The game certainly feels more like a game than a set of connected systems like Elemental did. I haven't delved into it yet, but I've got a good feeling about it after a short time with the beta.

I'll never be a big fan of the art style or the "big units" approach - but that's relatively minor.

I'm, of course, pleased with the fact that I'm getting it for free - but I wouldn't mind paying for a good MoM clone.

After having gotten over how bad Elemental was, I find that I don't feel "betrayed" or anything silly like that.

I tell myself I understand WHY it turned out like it did, and I find it rather impressive that Brad can be man enough to acknowledge his weakness here.

Of course, I can't possibly fathom how one can be in a position to design games of this kind and NOT love it - but I guess such is the way we all differ. Also, since I'm working on my own game (finishing it is like a dream - and not within the realm of reality right now) - I think Elemental stands as an interesting lesson in how blind people can get when working on something for a long time.

[Kestral2040]

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f207/RepoManQt3/porpupine.jpg

Also, from the 0.76 changelog:



I DEMAND PROOF.

this is killing me.

[Sepiche]

She can look like whatever she wants as long as I can still use her crown to overpower my custom sovereign. :)

[ydejin]

There's a patch 0.77 up. (http://forums.elementalgame.com/416357)


Download:


Fallen Enchantress Beta 1 patch 1 (version 0.77) is available for download from the Stardock store. You should find a patch update if you already have the game installed (so you don't have redownload the whole game). Players installing for the first time will need to apply the "Full Beta" download and then download and install the "Beta Update".

https://store.stardock.com/myaccount/products



Patch 0.77 (Released 01/27/2012)

Bugs:

+ Fixed an issue causing some recruited monsters to train with subgroups

+ Fixed an issue keeping champions with mounts from being able to trade them

+ Fixed an issue that kept armor from being displayed on Adant

+ Fixed a DX invalid call issue

+ Fixed an issue keeping the Crusade spell from correctly leveling up units

+ Fixed Maul (it correctly applies its accuracy penalties)

+ Fixed an issue with the Exile of Ice quest not giving out the Staff of the Furnace

+ Fixed an issue with the Assassin's Blade quest not spawning the victims location

+ Fixed a crash in tactical battles

+ Fixed the issue if you choose to heal the mother in the Three Sons quest

+ Fixed an issue with the Diseased Livestock quest where it would only work if you were near a swamp

+ Fixed an issue with the Run Wild quest

+ Fixed crash bug due to garbage collection occuring at same time as pioneer improvement updating

+ Reduced memory usage

+ Added additional sound polling for skipped sound issues



Balance:

+ Changed General's +3 per level to accuracy and spell resistance to +3 accuracy for the army

+ Changed the Gauntlets of Grazna from 2 Defense to 4

+ Recruited champions are level 1/3/5/7/9 instead of 1/2/3/4/5

+ Merchants require city level 2

+ Removed the Sage improvement

+ Blight reduces the worlds population by 50% instead of 25%

+ Min distance between cities changed from 9 to 8

+ Units level up faster at low levels and slower at high levels



Cosmetic:

+ Fixed the icons on the Prodigy abilities

+ Fixed the Name on the Warrior Vest

+ Fixed the name on the Murchant Skirt

+ Fixed the medallions on the Abandoned Wells

+ Added better descriptions to the Ravenous Harriden mounts Tangled Web ability



AI:

+ AI focuses on specific units to get experience

+ AI will look more aggressively for vulnerable cities

+ Fixed AI bug where it'll not care if you have relations with a target player before asking to bribe you to attack them

+ Fixed AI bug where it wasn't looking correctly at your relations before engaging you in diplomacy in certain cases

+ AI Champions are more conservative about leaving cities that aren't well defended

+ Due to improvements in AI, higher difficulty levels turned down

[lokiju]

Geez that was fast!

[ioticus]

I'm not sure the open beta, design by committee approach Stardock is using for Elemental and FE is the way to go. If you look at the strategy gaming classics such as Civ, MoM, MOO, and Dominions 3, I don't think they asked the fans for input on the design. They had a vision, they stuck with it, and the games had soul and turned out great.

[Aceris]

I'm not sure the open beta, design by committee approach Stardock is using for Elemental and FE is the way to go. If you look at the strategy gaming classics such as Civ, MoM, MOO, and Dominions 3, I don't think they asked the fans for input on the design. They had a vision, they stuck with it, and the games had soul and turned out great.

I'd agree with you in general, but Kael is used to working in an environment where he is getting continuous feedback from a larger community, and given my interest in the product is pretty much entirely based in Kael being the lead designer, I think they're best off working in the way most familiar to him.

[Mr. Zero]

I'm not sure the open beta, design by committee approach Stardock is using for Elemental and FE is the way to go. If you look at the strategy gaming classics such as Civ, MoM, MOO, and Dominions 3, I don't think they asked the fans for input on the design. They had a vision, they stuck with it, and the games had soul and turned out great.

And many bad games went to market without the benefit of having their visions stress-tested. I don't see how more feedback can be bad -- do you get the feeling that Kael doesn't have a vision for the game? Because he seemed to do a nice job of incorporating the extensive notes he got from FFH fans, while doing what he thought was right for the mod.

[TurinTur]

. If you look at the strategy gaming classics such as Civ, MoM, MOO, and Dominions 3, I don't think they asked the fans for input on the design. They had a vision, they stuck with it, and the games had soul and turned out great.

Uhh... for every game where the devs stuck with their vision and ended with a great game, there are 20 games with a much worse result. So I'm not sure your argument serves for anything.

[Disconnected]

I'm not sure the open beta, design by committee approach Stardock is using for Elemental and FE is the way to go. If you look at the strategy gaming classics such as Civ, MoM, MOO, and Dominions 3, I don't think they asked the fans for input on the design. They had a vision, they stuck with it, and the games had soul and turned out great.

You're not the first I've seen express that opinion, but that doesn't make it any less strange to me.

If you ask the WoM testers, or better yet, go back and read what we were talking about at the SD forums, you'll discover that there wasn't any design by committee going on. On the contrary, no design-changing suggestions had any effect on the game until well after the proper release. And if you compare the release version to the 1.3'ish version where some of the beta tester suggestions finally sort of materialised, I'm confident you'll agree they made the game better. Not good, but better.

More, the way Stardock tells the story they never had A Man With A Plan kind of guy before they began working on FE, yet GalCiv2 is arguably one of the very best 4X games ever made, and not the least bit incoherent or directionless. So at least in the past, that way of making games didn't just work well or really well for them, it worked absolutely brilliantly.

Even more, they actually do have A Man With A Plan on FE. And as much as I like to complain about little things like the lack of documentation driving me nuts, FE isn't anything like the incoherent mess that WoM was.

I assume you're not part of the ongoing beta, but there's a YouTuber doing a (really, really blind) Let's Play of the FE beta at the moment, if you're interested in seeing what it's actually like.

And more still, the beta isn't entirely open. I'll admit I'm not entirely sure of the details, but I believe only people who pre-ordered WoM currently has access to it.

Finally, I'll be happy to argue GalCiv2 is a better single player game than any of the titles you mentioned, excluding Civ5 (which I haven't played, but very much doubt is better). Classic is some mysterious combination of age and quality, and if GalCiv2 isn't one it's certainly not for lack of quality.

[Tony M]

I'm not sure the open beta, design by committee approach Stardock is using for Elemental and FE is the way to go. If you look at the strategy gaming classics such as Civ, MoM, MOO, and Dominions 3, I don't think they asked the fans for input on the design. They had a vision, they stuck with it, and the games had soul and turned out great.

I think its best when the game design is done isolated, so the designer can produce his vision, but the balancing aspect is best done with community input. MoM was a great game, but I think it would have benefited from a wide beta test (not really an option in those days) towards the end of its development

Tony.

[DKDArtagnan]

Isn't FE supposed to have a lead designer pretty much in charge of the vision?

Then how is it "design by committee"?

[TurinTur]

I decided to check out Elemental, to see in what state is after the updates from the last year. Last time I played was in the release month, where i played the campaign scenario and one random game before deciding to wait some months of more patching. In the end months passed, more than a year passed, and still I didn't return to the game. Until now.

What I'm seeing... well, let's say I hope FE improves a lot the Elemental experience. I am not talking about the "fun factor", that part it seems everyone agrees saying FE is much better.
I am talking about the technical side. The performance is bad (really bad being a TB game, and even more having graphics so mediocre), the game clearly still have memory leaks because once you reach the middle game and have played for more than an hour, the already bad performance falls to a crawl (and crashes are more probable), and the AI is still braindead.
I hope they have resolved these problems in FE.

[ydejin]

I am talking about the technical side. The performance is bad (really bad being a TB game, and even more having graphics so mediocre), the game clearly still have memory leaks because once you reach the middle game and have played for more than an hour, the already bad performance falls to a crawl (and crashes are more probable), and the AI is still braindead.
I hope they have resolved these problems in FE.

Definitely not in Falling Enchantress. I have played many, many hours now with FE 0.76 and 0.77 and have only experienced one crash. I haven't noticed any slowdowns and have completed several games including one at the medium map size.

[Razgon]

I crash a lot, and I have a ton of slowdowns the longer the game drags on.

That said, the game is fun. Not yet Master of Magic fun, where I love to try new combinations and interesting maps, but still fun

[Zak Gordon]

I think its best when the game design is done isolated, so the designer can produce his vision, but the balancing aspect is best done with community input. MoM was a great game, but I think it would have benefited from a wide beta test (not really an option in those days) towards the end of its development

Tony.

This is my default gut feeling on game design(that's how i do mine for the most part), but then it depends really heavily on the variables of 'who'(as in the make up of the creative personality) and 'how good'(as in technical understanding) either the designers or group testers are at doing the job on hand.

FFH is one of the best fan mods ever, so i feel pretty positive that element in this project will bear delicous fruit. And i'm getting a much stronger feeling that things are being done well and with the right amount of time given, as in lessons learned from Elemental, for Fallen Enchantress.

Edit: And thanks to Armando Penblade for that great, long, play video - i really enjoyed it.

[HahaSoFunny]

FFH is one of the best fan mods ever, so i feel pretty positive that element in this project will bear delicous fruit. And i'm getting a much stronger feeling that things are being done well and with the right amount of time given, as in lessons learned from Elemental, for Fallen Enchantress.
About FFH2, my impression of it is that it's an extreme kitchen sink design, relatively hard to learn, and overall giving me trouble in figuring out how it was supposed to be played, and no confidence that the game was actually balanced and the AI was good.

However, that was most likely at least partially intentional, and not necessarily indicative of (in)ability to successfully design a more mainstream game.

[TurinTur]

First impression from the FE Beta.

Much better!

The framerate is smoother, the interface is better, more clear, organized and less buggy, the visuals/art is also a bit better, the game is more polished in details ranging from the sound feedback to the particle f/x from spells, and of course, it seems much more promising on being fun. From character customization to equipment and the new perk system, to race differences to maps more populated with interesting stuff to more interesting monsters, to the new condensed research system, etc etc. I still have to see how is the AI, but that needs more time to judge.

[Jason Lutes]

It's pretty clear, if you read the FE forums and pay attention to the changes implemented by Kael, that the game is not being designed by committee. As with FFH2, Kael is open to any good ideas that mesh with his vision, but he definitely has a vision. He seems to have an amazing capacity for processing a vast quantity of feedback, filtering out the noise, and holding on to valuable nuggets of insight.

I've put in roughly 20 hours on the beta so far, and the game is playable and engaging right now. There are a host of small issues that need addressing, but given the patch rate so far, I have little doubt they will all be addressed.

The biggest issue the game faces it that it still feels dull to me, lackluster in all the ways a fantasy game should not be. The music is enervating. The magic is limited and lackluster. The terrain is still boring; the "mountains" still look like muddy lumps, and terrain features and sites are scattered willy-nilly with no logical connection to their surroundings. It doesn't feel like an ancient devastated world on the way to recovery, it feels like a bunch of stuff dropped at random onto a brown mat.

Kael's unique creative perspective and sense of world-building -- one of the most compelling aspects of FFH2 -- is present, and the game is better for it. But right now it feels shoehorned into Brad's "Empire vs. Kingdom" set-up. I wish they had just thrown out the whole thematic conceit of WoM and allowed Kael to start the world-building over from scratch. Then, it would feel like a more coherent whole.

However, despite these issues, it is leaps and bounds ahead of WoM in terms of playability and fun factor.

[Alstein]

Well, if we get a very good compentent game that's fun to play, and we're getting this- then we'll see Derek get to do another game.

I really, really would like to see what Derek and Jon could do with a GalCiv III. I see greatness there.

[Armando Penblade]

I have to say that I find the game enormously buggy in the mid-to-late game. Every time I've gotten to the point of 4-5 cities, 400-HP armies, and slaying packs of dragons for fun and magic armor, I've had a recurring issue of the game slowly slowing down until I finally click the End Turn button one last time and the entire game simply stops, dead, and gives me a permanent "spinning circle" waiting cursor in Win7. Only thing to do is to force-stop it and restart. I've also gotten a DX error that crashed to desktop twice, but only while fucking with XSplit before streaming or after, so it's probably more a conflict between those two.

That said, the game does seem to have many of the same issues that plague late-game Civ5 and WoM, if you ask me: it just gets so utterly Goddamned slow. The UI follows the game-logic into this boggy, sloggy hell, too, which is even more maddening. It's even shown up on stream a few times: a new turn starts and you get a message popup which you can even click on and interact with for a second or three, and *then* a more-urgent message crops up and forces you to deal with it, instead.

Case in point: Combat overruling "we finished your research!" and leading me to forget to "fix" the research and start something else, sometimes for a dozen or more turns. That there's no significant visual cue for that is a bit annoying, since there's literally no disadvantage to researching more, as far as I can tell.

On the other hand. . . fielding an army of speedy knights, heavily-armored hit-absorbers, weak, puny archers, and a hero who can call down the wrath of ancient and terrible gods against swarms of drakes, ogres, and towering behemoth "bosses" is sort of unmistakably cool. While I agree that the "plot direction" could use some work and that the world could be made to feel a bit more cohesive via tweaks to the randomization engine, the game does let you have some neat moments every now and again, even this early on.

Also, Zak Gordon, you're totally welcome.

[Mr. Zero]

Kael's unique creative perspective and sense of world-building -- one of the most compelling aspects of FFH2.

I thought the FFH world building was kinda brutal -- it felt like he read some D&D sourcebooks and some Diablo lore and threw them together. Plus, isn't Elemental's story of civilization rebuilding after a cataclysm essentially identical to FFH's post Ice Age scenario? (Assuming I'm not mixing anything up...)

[Vic Davis]

I thought the FFH world building was kinda brutal -- it felt like he read some D&D sourcebooks and some Diablo lore and threw them together. Plus, isn't Elemental's story of civilization rebuilding after a cataclysm essentially identical to FFH's post Ice Age scenario? (Assuming I'm not mixing anything up...)

The joke goes that there are like 12 original stories/plots and everything else is a variation. I honestly can't see how you can criticize the FFH universe for lack of originality or creativity. The elements of those efforts ooze clever theme and even more importantly mechanics. I'd also strip Kael of his designer ID card if he hadn't read some D & D source books and knew some Diablo lore. I bought the Book of Vile Darkness for one of my last efforts. :)

The post-cataclysm setting is one of my favorites for these types of 4x strategy games because it gives you the clean slate you need to integrate the mechanics and the theme. If you are going start out with one node and build an empire the designers brain grapples with the thematic problem of explaining that progression even if it really shouldn't be a concern. With a space strategy game you have the pretense of a civilization achieving space travel and spreading out into the universe. With the post-cataclysm setting you can use the ruins of destruction as nice things to find as you Explore (one of the X's) the map. The wheel turns. The Ancients built the star gates. The Cylons are really humans. It's a very nice design tool.

[Armando Penblade]

Good fictional tool, too. It's actually got me going back and checking the dating on some notes for a novel I'm working on to make sure they pre-date Elemental promotional materials that mentioned plot matters, because there's some overlap there that makes me feel pretty uncomfortable :(

Edit: Whew, my docs go back to '05. SAFE!

On that note, for shame, Brad, for stealing so many of my ideas :P

[Jarrodhk]

Finished my first game on a medium sized world. Scored a whole 38 points.

The final fight for the master quest was pretty painful for me.

[ioticus]

I want to watch Armando's video but the sound was so bad I couldn't understand much of it.

I agree with Jason that FE still feels dull, lifeless, and lackluster.

[Armando Penblade]

Huh, just realized that. Thought lowering the quality of the video had allowed the sound to come through better. I'll be sure to correct when I start up the commentated streams again next week. Sorry :(

Interesting quote about uniqueness/the world from Brad's .76 walkthrough blog (http://forums.elementalgame.com/416322).


Originally posted by Brad Wardell

You can also choose which opponents you will have to play against. Your opponents races include Trogs (think Urakai Orcs from LOTR), Urxen (Goblin like creatures), Quendar (essentially evil elves), Amarian (essentially good elves), Ironeers (dwarves), Wraiths, and more. This is a screen that is still a work in progress (since I’m having to explain in text here more about the factions than is displayed).

Which makes it sound to me like they might consider making the races visually different in addition to functionally so? I mean, it could also be that's not the case at all and everyone will keep the current almost-identical models (only the lava dudes and vampire dudes are currently very different looking there, and even it's more texture-based than model-based).

No idea. . . going to play some .77 commentary-free for awhile today before I go try to assemble a desk. I'll let you guys know which is more fun!

[Jarrodhk]

Did notice a problem with the token that curses enemies that hit a hero, when that hero also has counter-attack.

When the hero kills an enemy unit with the counter-attack, it hangs on the enemies turn. I'm guessing it is trying to apply the curse to the attacker, but, the attacker is already removed. You can get out of the combat by auto-resolving the rest of the fight.

[Peter Frazier]

I also agree with Jason's points about how dull and lackluster the worlds feels (lose the mud, please) and especially with how the original lore of the world is disengaging.
I am glad to see the potential for different races- pale pink humans Vs grey humans just didn't enthrall me.

[Disconnected]

I kind of like how the game looks at this point. Yeah, the mountains are a bit crap, but other than that the graphics are mostly pretty charming.

I'd like to see FE take to the skies and oceans, though. I'd like to invade my neighbour's coastal city with my dragon turtle riding spearmans, and sink his navy with my stacks of kraken. And maybe get some fishing industry going. And I'd love to do the same with flying stuff. Attacking with stacks of vicious attack-eagles, airdropping in spearmans with a living hydrogen balloon monster, and doing Rok-raids on his livestock would be tonnes of fun.

I kind of agree the game lacks personality, but only kind of. Pretty much everything has at least half a page worth of background fluff associated with it, but not only are piles of text a really bad way to communicate such things in video games, it's actually hidden away well enough that you have to go looking for it to even realise it exists.
Point being: the personality is there, it's just buried in an unmarked grave.

[Tony M]

I enjoy the look of the game just because so many fantasy games use exactly the same generic art style, its refreshing to see something different.

[Mr. Zero]

The post-cataclysm setting is one of my favorites for these types of 4x strategy games because it gives you the clean slate you need to integrate the mechanics and the theme. Right, I was just pointing out that the setup for FFH and WoM are pretty similar.


The joke goes that there are like 12 original stories/plots and everything else is a variation. I honestly can't see how you can criticize the FFH universe for lack of originality or creativity. The fact that the FFH plot -- of an angel rebelling against its creator -- is taken from the story of Lucifer is no issue at all. But all the details are lifted from other mythologies, and not stirred together properly. I'm not certain if the names for characters are knowingly lifted, or if they were used because they are obscure enough to sound good. Like in FFH, there's this place called Erebus, and that means something in Greek myth (location in the Underworld), but here it's not that. And these angels are taken from various mythologies, and sometimes their FFH function corresponds with their real function: Mammon embodies greed in both. Sometimes there's no connection -- this angel Agares (a duke of Hell according to wikipedia, here the Lucifer stand in) builds this realm and it's called Nyx, which is the name for the greek deity of night.

So I'm confused as shit. It feels like Kael clipped some names out of a couple myth texts and pulled them from a hat to name his various characters. And then there are the original names: Kilmorph seems to be exclusive to FFH. Why is that name custom and so many others borrowed? It's completely patchwork.

EDIT: Oh, and also the stolen (borrowed?) concept art for the characters.

[lokiju]

Right, I was just pointing out that the setup for FFH and WoM are pretty similar.

The fact that the FFH plot -- of an angel rebelling against its creator -- is taken from the story of Lucifer is no issue at all. But all the details are lifted from other mythologies, and not stirred together properly. I'm not certain if the names for characters are knowingly lifted, or if they were used because they are obscure enough to sound good. Like in FFH, there's this place called Erebus, and that means something in Greek myth (location in the Underworld), but here it's not that. And these angels are taken from various mythologies, and sometimes their FFH function corresponds with their real function: Mammon embodies greed in both. Sometimes there's no connection -- this angel Agares (a duke of Hell according to wikipedia, here the Lucifer stand in) builds this realm and it's called Nyx, which is the name for the greek deity of night.

So I'm confused as shit. It feels like Kael clipped some names out of a couple myth texts and pulled them from a hat to name his various characters. And then there are the original names: Kilmorph seems to be exclusive to FFH. Why is that name custom and so many others borrowed? It's completely patchwork.

EDIT: Oh, and also the stolen concept art for the characters.

The funny thing is, I believe most of those names also appear in Vic's Solium Infernum (which I love).

On a side note, I wish they would give all magic schools an early game damage ability in FE. I always go fire because, well, it makes the early game so much easier.

Other disciplines should also help a pure caster (not an arcane-boosting melee type) survive in the first few levels. Ice shards, rocks, air blast...anything besides being support staff.

[ydejin]

The funny thing is, I believe most of those names also appear in Vic's Solium Infernum (which I love).

On a side note, I wish they would give all magic schools an early game damage ability in FE. I always go fire because, well, it makes the early game so much easier.

Other disciplines should also help a pure caster (not an arcane-boosting melee type) survive in the first few levels. Ice shards, rocks, air blast...anything besides being support staff.

I disagree. I think having some schools of magic be about direct attack whereas others specialize in different things like buffing, debuffing, healing, or summoning makes sense. I think the assumption is that your sovereign always has the option of having another unit with him. Usually at the start there's another hero nearby that you can pickup, or it could be a trained unit. If you're all about buffing then go buff your companion unit. If you're all about healing, then go heal that unit as it tanks for you.

The original E:WoM design was quite rightly criticized for having all schools of magic basically act the same. Having every school of magic have a low-level direct attack spell goes back to that E:WoM design where all schools are basically the same with color palette swaps. I really like this new design.

I will admit it makes playing non-direct attack casters a bit tougher in the early game. But this is a single player game, so I don't have a problem with some starting strategies being tougher than others.

[lokiju]

I don't believe having a level 1-2 single target attack spell would make the different disciplines anywhere close to similar given the spell selection I have seen thus far. Every caster should be able to protect themselves and not just buff others.

Guess we'll agree to disagree. ;)

[Jason Lutes]

The fact that the FFH plot -- of an angel rebelling against its creator -- is taken from the story of Lucifer is no issue at all. But all the details are lifted from other mythologies, and not stirred together properly. I'm not certain if the names for characters are knowingly lifted, or if they were used because they are obscure enough to sound good. Like in FFH, there's this place called Erebus, and that means something in Greek myth (location in the Underworld), but here it's not that. And these angels are taken from various mythologies, and sometimes their FFH function corresponds with their real function: Mammon embodies greed in both. Sometimes there's no connection -- this angel Agares (a duke of Hell according to wikipedia, here the Lucifer stand in) builds this realm and it's called Nyx, which is the name for the greek deity of night.

So I'm confused as shit. It feels like Kael clipped some names out of a couple myth texts and pulled them from a hat to name his various characters. And then there are the original names: Kilmorph seems to be exclusive to FFH. Why is that name custom and so many others borrowed? It's completely patchwork.

Those are valid criticisms, for sure, and I share some of them. What bugged me the most was the name thing. But what FFH has, and few other video game fantasy worlds have managed, is a sense of cohesion and atmosphere despite the cobbled-together feeling of its mythos.

I think I remember reading somewhere that the FFH world grew out of an old D&D campaign that Kael used to run, which lasted for years and drew upon a variety of sources. For me the patchwork quality coheres into something through the factional interrelationships and things like the extensive religious lore, details which must have accreted over the course of many years. The end result it a game world with an internal history that feels more real or earned (to me).

I do wish he'd invented a language and renamed everything, though.

[Armando Penblade]

The funny thing is, I believe most of those names also appear in Vic's Solium Infernum (which I love).

On a side note, I wish they would give all magic schools an early game damage ability in FE. I always go fire because, well, it makes the early game so much easier.

Other disciplines should also help a pure caster (not an arcane-boosting melee type) survive in the first few levels. Ice shards, rocks, air blast...anything besides being support staff.

I agreed till I got up to level 2 or 3 air with the Thunderstrike and Storm spells. One teleports to an area and does an 8-square AOE attack while the other randomly targets an enemy for high damage. Super great; the latter is ridiculous in "bossfights" where there's only one high HP baddie.

My main was running Fire & Water (direct damage + slow) when I decided to imbue a champ that had a couple of levels of Air magic. Noticed the lightning-based spells shortly thereafter and was thoroughly impressed.

Having to wait for it and having two really unique and interesting spells was a lot better than "Blue Elemental Blast," "Red Elemental Blast," and the all-too-gross-sounding "Brown Elemental Blast."

[lokiju]

The AOE teleporting did something like 5 base damage which didn't impress me all that much, plus you jumping into the middle of a group of baddies as a spell-caster doesn't seem prudent. I do LOVE teleporting around the strategic map with Walk of Clouds or whatever it's called.

Meh, guess I'll just stick with a blaster fire mage for now.

[Armando Penblade]

Well, to be fair, I did have 3 air shrines and all three levels of the spell damage increasing trait by the time the game starting crashing every 5 turns. Ah, the late-game :-/

[Zak Gordon]

The fact that the FFH plot -- of an angel rebelling against its creator -- is taken from the story of Lucifer is no issue at all. But all the details are lifted from other mythologies, and not stirred together properly. I'm not certain if the names for characters are knowingly lifted, or if they were used because they are obscure enough to sound good. Like in FFH, there's this place called Erebus, and that means something in Greek myth (location in the Underworld), but here it's not that. And these angels are taken from various mythologies, and sometimes their FFH function corresponds with their real function: Mammon embodies greed in both. Sometimes there's no connection -- this angel Agares (a duke of Hell according to wikipedia, here the Lucifer stand in) builds this realm and it's called Nyx, which is the name for the greek deity of night.

So I'm confused as shit. It feels like Kael clipped some names out of a couple myth texts and pulled them from a hat to name his various characters. And then there are the original names: Kilmorph seems to be exclusive to FFH. Why is that name custom and so many others borrowed? It's completely patchwork.

EDIT: Oh, and also the stolen (borrowed?) concept art for the characters.



I don't feel you can be too critical of any 'myth'. By their nature they are all part of long retold evolving stories that often mistake details. For example the myth of the greek 'cyclops' probably comes from mammoth/elephant skulls fossils that were being dug up during that period, likewise the stories in many cultures of 'Giants' could be born from general dinosaur bones that our ancient ancestors would have been finding in certain places. There is archeological evidence to show this(and i watched a program about it) in certain regions were we get the famous myths from.

In FFH's world the mix of our own real world myth and it own unique ones just worked as it meshed the known with the unknown to give it more substance, at least that was the way it felt to me. Myths are just ancient stories, not points of fact or things you can accurately judge or point errors in. And in a 'mythic' world who's to say there won't be a 'Agares' alongside a 'Guybrush Threepwood', it's all myth isn't it?

So i agree with Jason Lutes here, in FFH's world somehow the melting pot approach of using 'real' myths with the game worlds own somehow just helped the immersion for me. I still stand by my earlier statement that FFH's world made one of the best game mods i've ever played, and is number 1 on my CivIV list(followed by the Dune Wars mod). It was crazy, a bit twisted, a bit recognisable and different at the same time, and an awesome free to use effort. I can't fault it other than it was never finished 100%, and CivIV's Stacks of Doom problem makes the late game very slow.

[Jag]

Anyone know if the final game will require an internet connection to play? Apparently the demo needs to 'phone home' to log in to your account. Hopefully that is just part of the beta process.

Also, can the demo be played windowed? I didn't see an option for it. Other than that, i'm enjoying it much more lately. I was laid up in bed for a few days and had a few (too) late nighters with it on my older laptop. Slightly sluggish, but very playable.

[Telefrog]

I'd be very surprised if Stardock does a complete reversal on DRM with Fallen Enchantress and requires online connectivity, especially since it's entirely SP.

[Armando Penblade]

If you go into the Graphics Settings and change it to a resolution lower than your desktop resolution, it should run itself in a window automatically.

I'm actually a bit sad that they changed how the window functionality worked in .76. Previously, it was treated as a Borderless Window when left at the "Desktop" setting for resolution, meaning you could mouse in and out of it at will, which was *awesome* for double monitors. I could pop over to my second screen to answer an IM or change the song in my music software without having to Alt-Tab or anything.

Now it "locks" the mouse to the window, and will pause things like sound when you have to alt-tab out. You can still see the other stuff in the second monitor, you just can't escape from the boundaries of the game window to get to it without alt-tabbing.

I assume they did this to address map scrolling concerns. Hard to reliably use edge-scrolling on dual monitors if the mouse isn't locked. . . but for my particular use case, I'll miss it handily :(

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Anyone know if the final game will require an internet connection to play? Apparently the demo needs to 'phone home' to log in to your account. Hopefully that is just part of the beta process.

Also, can the demo be played windowed? I didn't see an option for it. Other than that, i'm enjoying it much more lately. I was laid up in bed for a few days and had a few (too) late nighters with it on my older laptop. Slightly sluggish, but very playable.


I have read one or two of the devs explain the internet access during beta and I can't find it. From what I recall it's just beta because they need to be able to stream changes to the game but you won't need internet access for the final game.

[Sepiche]

I have read one or two of the devs explain the internet access during beta and I can't find it. From what I recall it's just beta because they need to be able to stream changes to the game but you won't need internet access for the final game.
If I recall they did the exact same thing with Elemental, but once it released it didn't require a connection anymore.

[TurinTur]

Some questions and feeback to Stardock folk (Brad, Kael, are you there?) :

-What is the estimated release date? I know you don't have an exact date right now, but I was wondering if it's supposed to be out in two months or in five. Or what. Be honest, at least you have to have a general idea! :P
-What are the plans for the "campaign" I know I am almost alone in this, as most people just play the random games, but I was wondering what content we will have in the "campaign" button. Just another single scenario like in Elemental?
-The game start is right now a bit too harsh, but I think you know it already. In fact, it's so harsh that in my game half of the factions were erased in the first 30 turns! But that's also an AI issue.
-The unified build list (one queue for buildings, other for units) bother me, it does have to be the only thing which I prefered how it was in Elemental, than in FE.

-An idea: put a WASD scheme to move the camera. At this point I am so accustomed to that it feels weird to only use mouse to scroll. Another idea: put 1-2-3-4-5-6 numbers as shortcuts to abilities/spells/items that can be used in the tactical combat. I don't want to click the second button every time I want to launch a fire bolt. Press 1, click on the enemy! A mixed use of keyboard and mouse it's faster than a exclusive use of keyboard or exclusive use of mouse.
-I can't see clearly from what side is each unit without clicking on it. Why don't you put an colored circle around each unit? And in the cloth map, the color of the "statue" should also change. Yours= one color, neutral/monster = another, fixed, color, the rest = other colors

[WarrenD]

I don't feel you can be too critical of any 'myth'. By their nature they are all part of long retold evolving stories that often mistake details. For example the myth of the greek 'cyclops' probably comes from mammoth/elephant skulls fossils that were being dug up during that period, likewise the stories in many cultures of 'Giants' could be born from general dinosaur bones that our ancient ancestors would have been finding in certain places. There is archeological evidence to show this(and i watched a program about it) in certain regions were we get the famous myths from.

In FFH's world the mix of our own real world myth and it own unique ones just worked as it meshed the known with the unknown to give it more substance, at least that was the way it felt to me. Myths are just ancient stories, not points of fact or things you can accurately judge or point errors in. And in a 'mythic' world who's to say there won't be a 'Agares' alongside a 'Guybrush Threepwood', it's all myth isn't it?

So i agree with Jason Lutes here, in FFH's world somehow the melting pot approach of using 'real' myths with the game worlds own somehow just helped the immersion for me. I still stand by my earlier statement that FFH's world made one of the best game mods i've ever played, and is number 1 on my CivIV list(followed by the Dune Wars mod). It was crazy, a bit twisted, a bit recognisable and different at the same time, and an awesome free to use effort. I can't fault it other than it was never finished 100%, and CivIV's Stacks of Doom problem makes the late game very slow.

I agree with both Jason and Zak here.
FFH's world was so easy for me to jump into and to feel part of that world.

It's also I think the best overall mod I've played in any game, in fact it's the only reason I bought Civ IV to begin with as I usually require both fantasy and tactical combat in my TBS's for me to enjoy à la AoW.

It's weird but because of FFH I'm more excited about Warlock: Master of the Arcane than FE right this moment, especially after watching this video-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu4gvNo9omI&feature=channel_video_title.
Even though it's using the Elven Legacy engine, it really looks and feels like the natural successor to FFH.

I haven't tried the demo of FE, and probably won't as I had enough demoing/beta testing of War of Magic for the last year or so, so will wait to get my final version copy. But hoping for Kael's sake it turns out to be a hit.

[TurinTur]

Warlock: Master of Arcane looks pretty nice and it seems solid in its version of a magical Civ, but the setting and races looks like bland as hell. Which is pretty much the contrary of FFH.

[WarrenD]

Warlock: Master of Arcane looks pretty nice and it seems solid in its version of a magical Civ, but the setting and races looks like bland as hell. Which is pretty much the contrary of FFH.

Oh yeah it doesn't seem to have as rich a world a FFH that's for sure, but it can't be any duller than Elemental: WoM's world was.
I can only imagine Kael working on Warlock and where that could have gone.

Like I said I haven't played FE's beta so haven't given up hope for it either.

[TurinTur]

Looking at previous post in the FE journal, i found this:

Here’s another area that we still have to address. We show the destination cursor but we don’t show the path or how long it’ll take to get there. This is in the pipeline but won’t make it in for beta 1 unless we get ahead of schedule.

Oh yes, the game needs a full path for units, which is remember from turn to turn, and an indicator at the end of the path with the number of turns left to get there. Also, make an option to have the path always "on", without need to select a unit to see it. It's something that could be very useful too see your supply lines from city to city, the general movement of your armies, etc.

[Disconnected]

Warlock: Master of Arcane looks pretty nice and it seems solid in its version of a magical Civ, but the setting and races looks like bland as hell. Which is pretty much the contrary of FFH.

Well, we haven't really seen much yet. But personally, I have pretty high expectations. Both Fantasy Wars had solid unit design, and Majesty 2 was a pretty good attempt at fanta-silly. From the looks of things, Warlock will basically be MoM'ified Fantasy Wars, and it is set in the Majesty world.

I hope there's no equivalent of the FW turn limit, though. Trying to get gold on every map drove me crazy, but not enough to stop trying. Fortunately I can't think of how they could do something like it in a 4X.

[ydejin]

I'm actually a bit sad that they changed how the window functionality worked in .76. Previously, it was treated as a Borderless Window when left at the "Desktop" setting for resolution, meaning you could mouse in and out of it at will, which was *awesome* for double monitors. I could pop over to my second screen to answer an IM or change the song in my music software without having to Alt-Tab or anything.

Now it "locks" the mouse to the window, and will pause things like sound when you have to alt-tab out. You can still see the other stuff in the second monitor, you just can't escape from the boundaries of the game window to get to it without alt-tabbing.

I assume they did this to address map scrolling concerns. Hard to reliably use edge-scrolling on dual monitors if the mouse isn't locked. . . but for my particular use case, I'll miss it handily :(

I hate, hate, hate games which do not turn off their sound when they are alt-tabbed out. When I switch out of the game, it's often because I need to do something on work, and the last thing I want is for the game music to continue going in the background. IMO the game should kill the sound if it doesn't have focus.

Sorry pet peeve. But it's really annoying having a game that wants to keep playing music or displaying after I alt-tab out.

[Armando Penblade]

I dunno, I mean, they obviously made the change in the space of one patch, so I wonder if they could make it configurable. iTunes, when maximized but not hogging-mouse-control, manages to play sound regardless of focus level. . . and if Elemental is going to behave the same way as a window, I'd like it to behave the same way as a sound source.

Of course, now they've got it to the exact opposite of what I want, but admittedly, my desires might be counter to the general consensus.

[Jason Lutes]

Well, we haven't really seen much yet. But personally, I have pretty high expectations. Both Fantasy Wars had solid unit design, and Majesty 2 was a pretty good attempt at fanta-silly. From the looks of things, Warlock will basically be MoM'ified Fantasy Wars, and it is set in the Majesty world.

I hope there's no equivalent of the FW turn limit, though. Trying to get gold on every map drove me crazy, but not enough to stop trying. Fortunately I can't think of how they could do something like it in a 4X.
From the playthrough that GuildBoss posted, it looks like straight-up 4x. Start on a randomly generated map with a single settlement and go from there. It would be cool if they included scenarios and campaigns, but from what I can tell so far the basic gameplay is close to Civ V. No idea what the victory conditions are, though.

[TurinTur]

...Launch a spaceship to Alpha Centauri? :D

[Mr. Zero]

And in a 'mythic' world who's to say there won't be a 'Agares' alongside a 'Guybrush Threepwood', it's all myth isn't it?
It's not about the bone record... FFH mislabels. The FFH method would be to bring in a character named Guybrush Threepwood, and have him wear a fedora and use a whip and teach archaeology.

[ydejin]

...Launch a spaceship to Alpha Centauri? :D

:-)

45

[Sepiche]

It's not about the bone record... FFH mislabels.
I'm struggling to figure out why that's a big deal.

[Mr. Zero]

I'm struggling to figure out why that's a big deal.

I'll try to explain myself, Ceviche. Names matter. It's bizarre and distracting to use a name that will be familiar to some of your players, and then apply it to an entirely different character. There's no benefit, besides saving the creator some time in coming up with plausible sounding names.

[DarthMasta]

I'll try to explain myself, Ceviche. Names matter. It's bizarre and distracting to use a name that will be familiar to some of your players, and then apply it to an entirely different character. There's no benefit, besides saving the creator some time in coming up with plausible sounding names.

All names will be familiar to someone, somewhere. Unless you expect creators to come up with random collections of words, like, say, Mxyzptlk, every name will mean something to someone.

[aganazer]

Mxyzptlk

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3e/Mxyzptlk.PNG
Hehe I see what your did there.

[Sepiche]

I'll try to explain myself, Ceviche. Names matter. It's bizarre and distracting to use a name that will be familiar to some of your players, and then apply it to an entirely different character. There's no benefit, besides saving the creator some time in coming up with plausible sounding names.
Ah, I think I see part of the problem.

I dig that in your mind you were being clever by messing up my name to prove your point, but you missed the boat a bit. What you actually did was rudely mess up the spelling someone's chosen name intentionally, while Kael used the creative license he had as creator of his mod to name the characters he invented whatever the fuck he wanted.

It's subtle, but I expect a clever chap like yourself will see the distinction. :)

[Mr. Zero]

All names will be familiar to someone, somewhere. Unless you expect creators to come up with random collections of words, like, say, Mxyzptlk, every name will mean something to someone.

Names identify things, and if you have one name for two different things, it's a little tricky. This is why Wikipedia has to have disambiguation pages. Ideally, every name for every thing would be unique -- one ID for every object. Of course it is ridiculous to expect that someone come up with singular names for every character in his fictional world; as you say, these names will mean something to someone.

At the same time, a reasonable effort should be made to make the names as unique as possible, so the smallest number of the audience is irritated. (For name irritation, see Sepiche's response.) WoM takes pains to call its currency gildar and not euros, or crowns, or dollars. That's to keep suspension of disbelief intact; you don't want the players to be thinking of another universe while they're in yours. Kael didn't make that effort. Names from real world mythologies are more likely to be recognized by the lore nerds who will read up on FFH's background. Lifting from the Celts is smart; that’s a lesser known mythology. Greeks? Not so much. As a whole, the names are the laziest part in a game where everything else clearly got a lot of care and attention.

[Armando Penblade]

In other news, I can't get past the mid-game or late-mid-game in virtually any attempt at playing. I'd say that Xsplit is interfering badly with Elemental, but I've played plenty of games without my streaming software running with no benefit. It just seems to hang around turn-changeover as games grow more complex, and once a save starts exhibiting the bug, it will continue crashing within a dozen turns of reloading or so from then on. Very annoying :/

Especially since I got a start as Verga near an archer hero, two strong melee heroes, several magic items, and--shit you not--three Iron resources, two Elemental Shards, a Crystal resource, a food resource, a river, and a forest. That fucking city was going to be the tits. . . le sigh :(

[Jason Lutes]

All names will be familiar to someone, somewhere. Unless you expect creators to come up with random collections of words, like, say, Mxyzptlk, every name will mean something to someone.
The issue is not what any random individual might think of any random name, it's how large groups of people might respond to names with powerful cultural associations. The two that bugged me the most in FFH, and took me out of the game, were Loki and Guybrush Threepwood.

The thing is, Kael's a good writer, and the names that (I think) he made up himself were better and had a coherence that made the borrowed names feel even more dissonant. The campaign setting that was the basis for FFH apparently grew like a katamari, picking up ideas and language from a wide variety of sources, but I buy into it enough to lump the dissonance. In my ideal imaginary version of FFH, though, Kael would rework the prodigious background material to smooth out the parts that stick out too sharply (and put in some freaking unit stacking limits).

The disappointing thing about Fallen Enchantress for me is that Kael still hasn't been given a blank canvas. He's been tasked with taking someone else's world and game engine, and giving it life. So far he's done a great job, and his idiosyncratic sense of world-building is coming through, but it's still hamstrung by the fact that it's being applied on top of someone else's foundation.

I look forward to the day when FE is a nice feather in his cap, and he is able to design something from the ground up. Because that would be really interesting.

[Mr. Zero]

Wait Guybrush Threepwood is actually in the FFH universe and you guys made me defend my position?

ydejin and Armando, the floor is yours.

[Black Isis]

But he's a mighty pirate!

[ydejin]

Wait Guybrush Threepwood is actually in the FFH universe and you guys made me defend my position?

ydejin and Armando, the floor is yours.

I'm currently awaiting 0.78 :-)

I'm playing a new Bounty Hunter in SWTOR while I wait. Besides I think SWTOR works a bit better during the week, since it's relatively easy to pop-in play for an hour and get a quest or two done and logout. I suppose it's a good sign that FE gives me that Civ "one-more-turn" feeling.

[TurinTur]

So I was trying to figure out why AI players dropped like flies in the game.

The reason is a bit funny. So, a sovereign goes and gets killed by a monster. The monster has targeted that unit. The unit isn’t dead (it’s a sovereign) but merely transported home to its capital. Monster follows and double kills sovereign – and city he’s in. Game over.


Well, that explains so much of my game.

[Armando Penblade]

I assume it's the damned spiders.

"Oh, look, there's a little spider near my capital. I'll go kill it."

A few turns pass.

"Oh, look, there's a little party of spiders now! I'll go kill them with my two level 2 heroes! Yay XP!"

A few turns pass.

"Wait, why is there a Medium-strength Rock Spider's Army three tiles away from my capital? Wait, what's that above it? Oh hell, it's a Rock Spider Lair. Well, I'll just start researching some military tech so I can train up an army and go kill it."

A few turns pass.

"Oh God there are Strong spider armies everywhere! Everything is burning! Sweet Jesus, my Fruit Orchard! NO!"

Although the world is shrouded in the fog of war, news has reached us that the great empire of TestCustomEmpire has fallen to the roaming creatures and beasts of the wild.

[Razgon]

Once I start hiding in my starter city because of wandering monsters, it gets ugly.

Pretty soon roaming parties of monsters are everywhere, and its just a matter of time before one decided to try and see whats inside the weird stone and wood caves.

[TurinTur]

I think it's something interesting. I am talking about the extra enemy in this game: the World. Between the monsters everywhere (not only weak ones, also strong ones from the first turn), the monster lairs, the fact that the monsters can pursuit you a bit, the monsters can level up, also new leveled up monsters will appear in as the game progress, and the monster lair can be "opened" by cities, it's a pretty hostile world, more than in Civ games where you just have some barbarians and also more and in past fantasy games. So in a game played with 4 opponents, you really have 5: the other 4 factions, and the fifth one, the world.


BTW, I wanted to comment. something I think the design of the city system is a bit too favorable to the "few megacities" model. I mean, it's good they have put some mechanics (outposts, shared influence, levels for cities) to balance empires of few but big cities vs a bigger empire of medium sized cities, it gives choice to the player (instead of being the latter strategy the only good), but it seems they went a bit too far and now the former strategy (few, but powerful cities) is the one more clearly favorable.

[Armando Penblade]

In fact, the "You vs. the World" model and the current city strategy model leave me feeling like I'm 1-basing in Starcraft 2 all over again. I can't risk moving far enough away to find a good spot for a second city, and a new city in a bad location is just going to lose money and provide little benefit. . . so I may as well just sit on a single mega-city and try to turtle till the mid-game.

Then again, given how bad I am at keeping the production and research queues going on just one city, I probably don't need to be encouraged to run a massive empire :)

[HahaSoFunny]

The reason is a bit funny. So, a sovereign goes and gets killed by a monster. The monster has targeted that unit. The unit isn’t dead (it’s a sovereign) but merely transported home to its capital. Monster follows and double kills sovereign – and city he’s in. Game over.


Doesn't this actually mean that monsters are overpowered, that city defense is underpowered, that sovereigns move too aggressively or that the AI doesn't build enough defenses/defensive units?

Because I don't think monsters are supposed to be able to waltz in the capital and conquer it just because they want to do so.

[TurinTur]

Doesn't this actually mean that monsters are overpowered, that city defense is underpowered, that sovereigns move too aggressively or that the AI doesn't build enough defenses/defensive units?

Because I don't think monsters are supposed to be able to waltz in the capital and conquer it just because they want to do so.

It usually happens in the first turns of the game, where cities still haven't build any defenses/armies or almost none.

[Armando Penblade]

Or, if you try to load one of the bugged pre-built maps with no fertile lands for vast swaths of territory, the AI will just wander around looking for a place to create a city, hit a monster way beyond their level, and just straight-up die. Sort of makes me wish for a hack to see the whole map once just to watch it happen.

[TurinTur]

For beta version, it would be a good idea to have a complete cheat menu, to reveal the fog, give stuff to the players, etc. It would help to produce more feedback of weird AI behaviors, balancing the spells, etc.

[Kael]

Wait Guybrush Threepwood is actually in the FFH universe and you guys made me defend my position?

ydejin and Armando, the floor is yours.

FWIW Loki is named after the FfH team member of the same name, not the Norse god. When FfH2 was made Telltale hadn't yet announced their Monkey Island games. This was the background on Guybrush from FfH2:


Out of work since Lucasarts isn't making any more Monkey Island games (please please make another Lucasarts!), Guybrush has accepted work in our mod. According to his resume he is "Pirate Extraordinaire", captain of numerous vessels and master of the art of insult sword fighting.

Guybrush was quickly adopted into the Lanun ranks where he found Falamar to be a kindred spirit. He described Hannah as a cross between LeChuck and Lemonhead of Skull Island. We aren't really sure what he was talking about.

So as much as I like to pretend to some masterful tolkien'ish worldbuilding, FfH definitely has its tongue in cheek moments. There are monty python quotes, references to chariots with spinner rims, and a giant demon named Chuckles. I know it breaks immersion and is inconsistent beside the story of Hannah's birth or the background of Os-Gabella. It bothers some players while others enjoy it. Personally I always liked some goofiness spread throughout, but that doesn't make it right or wrong, it's just a personal preference thing.

[Sepiche]

It's subtle, but I expect a clever chap like yourself will see the distinction. :)



For name irritation, see Sepiche's response.
*sigh* I guess not. :P

[slikster]

The one more turn thing, I didn't experience that in WoM. But with FE, it is definately there.

The biggest problems as I see it with 0.77, is that the sov/champs level up way too fast compared to the world/tech tree around them. I've read somewhere that the xp will be split amongst the heroes, so a re-evaluation is in order after that. Also, high level spells/talents of mass destruction are a little too easily accessible and I am unsure if slowing leveling will completely fix that.

Another big thing that I'd like to see addressed is non aggression pacts. 99 turns is just way too long. If a scary neighbour pops up on my borders, I can just pay him off and get 99 turns to build up to the point of stomping him. Another problem is that it's an unbreakable agreement. Some sort of backstabbing element for both you and the AI would be great. How that would work, I don't know. Regardless, 99 turns is still too long. I think a 3rd of that would be more reasonable.

Oh, and a couple of spell bugs:

I cast shrink on an ogre and he went from 44 attack to 0. Was awarded 1xp for killing him, when the non-shrunk version was 55xp. (I did the fight twice to compare) Using an ability to win a fight shouldn't cost experience.

Also, if you cast blizzard and while targeting an enemy you also have to target a friendly, you can't cast the spell and are forced to auto-resolve to get out of the fight. Maybe works the same with fireball, idk. Being able to cancel the botched spell would work.

[TurinTur]

How are people doing armies in the game? Between the few cities i can create and the number of turns needed for everything and the shared queue for buildings and units, at least the first part of the game is very slow.

[Kael]

The biggest problems as I see it with 0.77, is that the sov/champs level up way too fast compared to the world/tech tree around them. I've read somewhere that the xp will be split amongst the heroes, so a re-evaluation is in order after that. Also, high level spells/talents of mass destruction are a little too easily accessible and I am unsure if slowing leveling will completely fix that.

Agree 100%. Im tweaking and play testing this to get it right.

[slikster]

Just had another thought on the non-aggression pact thing. Maybe if one wanted to turtle, they could make an unbreakable pact by siphoning off some of those diplomatic capital points every turn.

[Armando Penblade]

Agree 100%. Im tweaking and play testing this to get it right.

Noooooo. The only thing keeping me alive in these games is the fact that I can get 3-4 heroes to level 10 right away and just beat back the dark hordes around me long enough to tech up to something legitimately useful ;)

[lokiju]

Noooooo. The only thing keeping me alive in these games is the fact that I can get 3-4 heroes to level 10 right away and just beat back the dark hordes around me long enough to tech up to something legitimately useful ;)

Honestly, I'd rather have champions lead actual armies of units, but the present system of champions leveling too fast and units taking way too long prevents this. I wish we could train units separately from buildings. This would get them out much faster, thus offering a chance at early leveling with the beginning area clearing of easy monsters for xp. Right now, decent units come out far too late to really be bothered with much. The XP split will prolong the game more than I would care for, so faster unit production would keep it balanced and fun.

[Peter Frazier]

Is there any way of upgrading a particular unit to have a larger group once that group has been researched? I hate deleting experienced units.

[slikster]

Is there any way of upgrading a particular unit to have a larger group once that group has been researched? I hate deleting experienced units.
Not that I've been able to figure out. Being able to retain experience for early game units while upgrading them to larger unit formations would be swell.

The way I'd like to see it be done; if you wanted to upgrade a party, you'd have to be in a town (maybe with a training yard, and a blacksmith if metal equipment is required) and it would cost the difference in materials, metal, time, ect. to be able to upgrade. Plus, the experience previously gained by the squad would be split evenly amongst the new squad size.

Say, for example, you have a Redwatch party of 3 units and you wanted to upgrade them to a group of 5 units. To produce them, it costs 80 labor and 2 metal per a unit. You are adding two members to the group, so it would require 160 more lablour and 4 more metal. Once ordered, the unit would become inactive until the work order placed on the town's build queue has been completed. The party of 3 members had 150 experience, so that would be cut 3/5ths so that the new 5 member group now has 90 experience, most likely losing level(s).

I'd also like to see that kind of system for upgrading the weapons and armour of units, instead of the goofy gold amounts required to do so, presently.

Please steal my idea Derek. The more I think about it, the more I like it. Although, I might be alone in that. ;)

[marxeil]

Damn, I found an ass kicking axe yesterday and and Lord Relias was doing some serious ass kicking with it and all the (weak) monsters got their ass kicked.
Then I entered a shop at a bandit camp and the axe was suddenly gone. I guess Lord Relias got distracted by a bandit women or booze and someone stole it :(