One of the three focuses for Fallen Enchantress is Magic. We want the spells to be unique, to feel like casters with enough mana can change the world. We want magic to fill the game, all the sovereigns start with spells though some like Procipinee are better spell casters than Verga. As in Master of Magic you can choose your sovereigns proficiency with the various magic types when you create them.
I’ve attached a PDF of the spells with this post. It includes the normal spells the player can cast, it doesn’t include spell abilities of creatures, spell like abilities granted by equipment and some other special abilities in the game.
I’d like to give a special thanks both to Unacomn for suggesting the Shadow World spell and NuclearNeumann for suggesting the Blood Curse spell. They are fun spells to play with.
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I Removed the spell PDF as it is almost a year old and woefully out of date. New spells have been added and even more are coming. check out out dev journal on spells here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ArdQVqLHsI&feature=youtu.be
- Derek 4/11/2012
"The dynasties (wife, child, ...)"
^ Actually, dynasties were completely removed from FE. Also many of the points you mentioned are purely based on assumptions, and/or a matter of taste.
I'd still choose MoM at this point myself, however I truly hope Stardock proves me wrong with FE.
Quoting Souls-Stream, reply 199Army Customization, you don't see that in MoM, which is really great.The world, the quests, the monsters, the graphics + general feeling (FE will have more charisma than MoM)(I could even add the Zoom option I really like)The different environmentsBossThe dynasties (wife, child, ...)WeaponsMaybe mounts (there I don't really know what FE plans for the mounts but WoM was okay I guess with Mounts)Your sovereign is physically present and can act in fights, move, etc.Customization of the sovereign won't stop at how many books of one school you posess and a couple perk/flawsCustomization of the city that you can do by yourself (those who played MoM will know what I mean, I think almost everybody here, lol)The Tech Tree while in MoM Magic is the only research.Indeed for fun, it really made me laugh, like Louist said it doesn't require DosBox ! LOOOL !!! (hi Louist, long time no see by the way)+ I would say the economical system which looks like it will be more developpedAs well as the diplomatic system !I think the IA will be more developped too which will be a big + because everybody how dumb the IA is in MoM and how easy it is.I even want to say the battle system which will be better, based on more attributes than MoM where it stays pretty simple even if MoM has still an advantage with the City Battle System we won't see here.Now Artefact creation (might still come?), Spells (main goal of the game after all), City Battle (might still come?) and Races (FE's lore is set, we won't see our klackons, Trolls, Elves, ...) and finally flying units or Water Units (We might still get stuff like that) will be the down point of FE compared to MoM.There, you see ? There's a lot in FE that will be greater than MoM I think but right now with how the spells are, it's a bit dull I haven't been thinking that much but I'm sure if I think more, I can find more good points for FE =D
Wow, what are you trying to do, sell me the game? I've already bought it, I don't need to see a point list of all the potential features
A lot of what you mentioned is subjective and I'm not going to try to change your opinion, but on a few of those I have to really disagree. Of course, FE isn't out, so again, it's all about what we know and what we hope, and what we have seen in Elemental. Ignoring anything graphical related (cause that's not really fair):
Army customization is not that great in Elemental, to be honest. It's a generic person, who is strapped into specific armor and weapons. It doesn't feel like you have a customized army, because everyone feels the same. It feels like a generic soldier, but he has a horse, so he's cavalry, but if he had a spear, he'd be a pikeman (or something). Hopefully, better in FE.
-World, quests, monsters, graphics, FEELING: besides the graphics, which is a no-brainer, I don't believe any of those are better. World, quests, FEELING was boring, IMO. We'll see what FE will bring.
-Different environments? Like swamps, forests, and such? MoM had these.
-Boss? What Boss, you mean the campaign boss? Ugh. But if you mean big baddies, like dragons, then MoM had this beat too (I'd take a Sky Drake over the entire Elemental roster
-No dynasties in FE
-Weapons - MoM is better, no question
-AI: Now this, hopefully, will be much better than Elemental; that will be a really good benefit, and yes, could be better than what MoM had (weak AI)
The rest, IMO, is either worse or equal to what MoM had. If you think they're better, then that's fine, but I played them both extensively and if Elemental was better, I would be playing it right now. And this is not unwarranted criticism, because a lot of what I'm hearing from the dev's is praising it (Wardell saying that it's a lot more like MoM than Elemental, Shafer or Paxton saying that they and Wardell think it's going to get a really high metacritic score, etc) because of it's new features. If this was the first game, then I'd be a lot more excited than I am right now. But now we'll have to wait and see.
Look, I will be right here praising FE if it turns out to be a great game. I know I have been critical of it, and of Elemental, but that's mainly because I was led to believe it was a different game than what it turned out to be. If I'm wrong about the expansion, I'll say it. But I really want this game to be good, and blindly praising it will not make it so.
You asked for what's in FE more than the graphics ? I answered ! LOL I'm talking about FE, not WoM, don't get me wrong ! I'm not a real fan of WoM and I'm still disapointed by WoM even if it has good stuffs, the magic system is just not good enough for me to give it any time.
I'm not trying to sell the game but I'm defending it for what it is and for the great job the devs already made even if I still have an enourmous complain about the magic system.
I didn't buy the game yet (I bought WoM only a couple month ago) but what's going to decide me to buy the game or not is definitely the magic system because it's my favorite feature in MoM and I never saw any magic system equaling it.
I'm talking about the Feeling of FE, not WoM, don't get me wrong, the feeling in WoM was rather generic but in FE they seemed to have worked a lot on this point and from the screenshots and videos, it really looks great, that was my point
Because in Mom you could chose the weapons for your armies ? Not talking about the create artefact for heroes.
The AI yes, it will be better for sure ! don't have a doubt about it.
World, quest, etc... Well, MoM did not have that and from the first stuff I can see, and what was said about FE, I know it will be fun.
Army customization, I have to disagree with you and stop you ! Did you read completely the new features of FE for army customization? it goes further and I think it will be good.
I played MoM since it came out in 1994 and so I was 11 at the time, I spend days and nights on it, I love MoM and it's one of the greatest game ever made, I never found any game which could rivalize with it and so I still play it, MoM is even the reason why I jailbroke my Iphone, to play on it anywhere because MoM is still under license and copying or remaking it is illegal even if it's free right now.
For the boss I mean those presented by the devs during all those news, they look pretty good and strong and defend territories, MoM did not have that.
For the terrains, yes, MoM had different terrains but it wasn't has good as what FE will be, but again, there's the time too, you're right.
I have a lot of hope in FE since Derek came and showed us stuff that proves we're not blind to trust it, we have good info about the game and how hard they work on it but for the magic system I feel like they worked so hard on other parts of the game that they forgot the most important aspect of the game, Magic of course. I feel like they were a bit too proud of what they accomplished (and I'm with them) and relaxed on the magic system.
I feel exactly the same as you, MoM is really the top 1 ! And I want FE to be better than MoM, I truly want it ! I want to be able to look back and say wow, MoM has been thrown away finally by a greater game ! But to succeed this, it's not easy and everybody will be really criticizing FE very hardly (I feel really sorry for the devs to have to subish so harsh comments).
I'd still like to see air / sea units and city battles though ! I was so disapointed with City battle in WoM, I was like WHAT ? A background of city vaguely and that's all ? Not even a wall like in heroes ? What's the purpose of putting your army in the city ??? The spells did not affect the battlefield really or only one case of the battlefield... Which a bit dumb because that case could be easily avoided and you just lost one turn to cast the spell while the ennemy was even closer
Right now, all my hopes for FE went a bit down the drain when I saw Magic ! The most important Area for me ! Even AOW2 did it way better [e digicons]:'([/e]
But yes, I agree with all of you, the game is not done yet and I know the devs are active on the forums and look at our post to make the game as good as possible !
Overall a good start. In the beta I will be looking for answers to the following questions:
A. Does the AI know how to use magic both strategically and tactically?
B. Will the AI execute different strategies for magic. (i.e. I don't want to see only Sovereigns that are Masters of Fire)
C. Will there be more tactical spells that affect the battle adn the battlefield in different ways?
D. Will there be counter spells and more summons spells?
E. How does the Teleport (Air Walk) affect player strategy and can the AI use it properly?
Nice list. There are no "shit" spells, which is nice.
Death seems to be overpowered compared to life magic, due to the number of spells. While Life seems to have better spells book vs book, death has the advantage of one extra book and a lot more attainable spells from quests and research. While the numbers don't have to be even, they should be similar.
You did not list a Counterspell of any sort- is it impossible to defend my cities from magical quakes? Is it impossible for me to disenchant a unit? I believe an Astral book should be added, containing the various spells such as dispel magic, Spell of Mastery, and all the other none-elemental spells (mana blast as well, maybe).
A spell that has been missing in Elemental is Create artifact. Using your 1337 archmage skills to create a weapon that instills awe in all of your enemies when equipped by your demigod champion was pretty neat in Master of Magic, and should be repeated in Elemental.
No casting time on spells, and no limitations seems as if to make it a bit unbalanced. As people has said before, saving your mana to the endgame and then using your mana in a burst can result in questionable results. For example, using Call to arms to instantly raise an army of high end units which otherwise would take tens or hundreds of turns to make can be a bit much. It also makes you unable to stop a player from casting spell of mastery, as long as he control the shards, without wiping his whole kingdom. If you are late, (and we assume you know he is able to cast it soon) your only option according to your list of spells is to march to his capital in hope that you got the bigger army and magical resources (since he has to save some for the spell of mastery).\
This makes spells more of an endgame thing than early and midgame feature.
Let's remember that the game as 5 paths to victory (Armies, Infrastructure, Magic, Diplomacy, Champions), and one fundamental task for developers it to keep them balanced enough. This means that magic cannot be too powerful otherwise nobody will ever focus on armies. I am sure that developers, when coming up with spells, want to keep magic with the right amount of power. As someone wrote, in MoM magic was the only direction to specialize, and therefore magic was very powerful, the option being which magic direction to take (which school, wether to focus on summoning, direct damage, or enchantments, and so on). In FE, magic is one of several important pieces to be balanced one against the other.
That said, I would still like to see more spells . Having a +3 defence armor on all units is better than having to cast a +3 armor spell on each of them during every tactical combat. There are many ways to keep magic balanced with the other 4 paths to victory without having to create a restricted chioce of spells. I know that having too many spells could make balancing the game harder (in fact MoM was no balanced), but the beta will also help a lot in this direction.
One curiosity: will there be an Infrastructure Victory (something reminescent of the cultural victory in civ)?
You are expected to invest in all 5 of the trees in order to win in either. For example, if you focus spells only, it will be easy to conquer you. Without infrastructure, you won't have the resources to build and support an army. Champions gives a boost to your power, and I hope a force multiplier, which makes you want to have 1 in each army, if not an army of heroes. Master of Magic was very magic oriented, but you couldn't forget everything else, and so should FE. The way I see it now, high chances players will ignore spells entirely for the first half of the game, and then rush specific spells in order to boost their armies.
Marionesi, I have to disagree with the first part of your post !
Why MoM is so great ? It's because of it's magic system and battles... In MoM you can take an army, not cast any spells and still win while if you're weak, magic will greatly help you to win ! (i.e.: One unit in a city being attacked by moderate forces)
Now let's think a minute why should magic BE overpowered ? The answer is quite simple:
What is magic ? The very source that allows you to control elements, create earthquakes, volcanoes, summon units, cast powerful attack spells, protect your units or curse the ennemi, +tons more applications... Do you think that this ability (which should be the main focus in surch a world, meaning without it, you cannot survive in the ruthless world) should not be more powerful ? When actually magic allows you to be a god only by reading the description ? You should be able to crush easily anyone coming in your way (strategycally and tactically) unprepared (without any good protection or anything spell to retaliate), block their path, freezing them, make them sick and hungry, weaken them, summoning any monster in their path and well, reducing them to oblivion before they can reach the door of your city.
I would like to point out something I really like : The amazing introduction of MoM ! And in that intro, you can really feel that 2 gods are fighting against each other with powerful spells but one was stronger! I really love it, it's the only intro I watched so many times! Even though it's very short, you understand immediately that you're going to have to be careful before starting an attack.
In the end, that's what will make the game really strategic because you know you fight and try annihilate another God who can have the same spells as you ! Will you be prepared enough for the ennemy coming at your door ? Will you be prepared enough to attack such god ?
Magic should be really powerful and maybe feel a bit overpowered like in MoM, meaning if you're smart enough, you should be able to take your sovereign alone in a battle against a huge army and win (considering the openent is not using magic or magically protected units) while using a wide variety of spells (considering you have enough mana).
And I think it should be the main focus of the game just like in MoM.
The other path to victory should only come to your mind if you want to take that path or if you see that your oponent is too strong and that another strategy has to come into play and you have to outsmart him. Actually you should be able to concentrate on multiple side to be powerful but ballanced or concentrate on one path and be weak in the other.
That's how I see FE, that's how I would like it to be !
If you are looking for A&B in the beta you are going to be sorely disappointed. Brad just started on the AI (or maybe hasn't started yet), and for the initial release of the beta, there is unlikely to be any kind of intelligent use of magic. I just hope they set expectations correctly, or I am just going to avoid the forums for several days.
Actually, in Master of Magic, they had magic, champions and armies. Any of those ways can win you the game. Research in magic can get you the spell of mastery (though getting there without a huge army or champions would be very hard); you could build up massive non-magical armies which can be very powerful; or you could win the game simply with a group or groups of champions (I've done it, very fun ). However, you really should use all 3 to be successful.
I agree though, in FE those paths to victory need to be balanced. If I want to build up a gigantic army, there should be enough of an incentive to do so, as opposed to getting a large group of Imbued champions casting spells. To be honest though, the diplomacy might be the hardest to balance; I hardly ever used it in Elemental, and I don't see myself using it unless it has strict advantages over warring with enemies.
The diplomacy system needs to include manipulative actions to make it powerful (and eventually spells to help this) and then it will be truly interesting.
A massive army, if not enchanted by any spells or magic weapons / armor, should still be able to be annihilated easily with powerful spells... In master of magic, chaos was really my favorite school and the spell, I believe mass incinaration (I might be wrong with the name), was definitely my favorite spell !
Only with that spell, you could annihilate a huge army unprepared to magic (so an army without dragons, etc. but even then it was still possible) and that's the kind of stuff I want to see in FE with Magic !
I want to be able to entrave the path of an army, slow them, curse them, weaken them, freeze them in time, create areas where using magic is impossible, area of darkness (tactical and strategical), wall of fire, wall (dirt, rock, whatever... a wall the oposing army has to attack to destroy it and goes through it), large area of fire, ice, whatever (strategic and tactical) which will act like traps...
If Someone well prepared with magic is attacked by a huge army, he should be able to wipe it out ! And I hope the AI will do that kind of stuff too, to force us to be more careful, more prepared and act more strategically before succeeding an attack. Force us to invest in dispell / counter magic if we can to go through an area !
In MoM the big flaw, was that you were against an AI with the same power as you but of course magic seemed way overpowered on our side because the AI was not using it very well and you could wipe their ass easily by using spells they would not use against you.
Though a well prepared army should be able to wipe anything with the help of magic.
Those are my true hope for FE as I already said ! But honnestly, I'm starting to wonder if we will ever see that
Derek -It looks like you've done a great job remaking EWOM into an interesting place. However, please see the one constant in all the reponses to your FE-Magic post. Magic can't be one of three focuses for FE to succeed. It needs to be the #1 focus. IMHO this is the main problem with EWOM. We wanted wizards battling with Magic (War of Magic). It's why we all played (still play) MOM! When we don't want magic we'll play Civ or Gal Civ. Please make us want to play FE.
I disagree. #1 should be movement, which is the most important thing in any strategy and WoM got it all wrong. It is a proven fact that when movement is well done it is quite fun (see chess).
As it is a terrestrial game that means terrain must be done right. As it is a fantasy game then it need magic that affects movement in interesting ways. Basically movement done well will interact with many other parts of the game in a way that will make that aspect of the game more interesting.
To do anything meaningful with movement the base movement distance needs to be increased (say to 8 tiles as an average).
I just want the bugs to be gone. Is there a spell for that?
-.-
Well personally I liked the Land Destruct and Spell resist decks in MTG. I liked plsying them but more importantantly I liked playing against them. They tended to be more challanging to fight than most other decks. Burn Decks as well were fun to both play and fight against.
Still play MTG with my group of friends but we mostly play with a group not one on one so the games are a lot more dangerous. Start countering too early in the game or Destroying lands and you might find yourself fighting an alliance of players aginst you.
Yes I agree with you on AOW2 and AOW:SM magic system pretty good. Infact they are my favorite magic system for a TB Fantasy comuter game sor far
Did you ever play MoM ? A unit had one or two tiles of distance and it was far from enough ! Turns are so quick, it doesn't matter, it's not heroes, 8 would be far too much IMHO !
Magic should still be the #1 focus because in the end, it's with magic that you will change the world !
With Magic, you could cast haste and make your army move 4 or 5 tiles a turn (which would be really fast).
Movements on chess is not comparable because chess is made to be quicker (not talking of those brainiacs playing for hours) but MoM and so FE, the world is huge and you take a lot of turns to make research, develop, etc. So movement should stay pretty slow.
Oh I agree they should be higher level. Level 3 would be just right I think
RE: Spell Levels
In EWOM I could rapidly reach level 5.
Perhaps add more tactical spells and have advancing a Spell Level take as long as researching 5 current level spells. Then a person has to balance advancing to the next spell level vs Learning 5 spells.
Of course, this only works if there are 5 spells worthwhile researching at each level.
In EWOM I found only 0 to 2 good spells at each level. In fact, I would skip learning any 1st level spells... i.e. 25 turns to reach the next spell level or reasearch 5 spells.
Unit design is a must. Loved it in Galactic Civ 2 as well as MOO. However there needs to be an easy way to create predesigned units (mod them) for the game. In fact the mod editor should make it easy to create them as well as other aspect of the game like spells and such without having to go into the files and adjusting lines on a HTLM document or what ever like we had to do in E:wom.
AOW:SM had a unti editor that while not the most user friendly allowed a rather easy way to create new units. It also had an easy way to create Heros and Magic items for the game, going so far as to let you equit them to heros outside the game so when you start a new map and that hero shows up he will have that item.
Needless to say I still play AOW:SM with friends and we have created over 400 units on top of the basic units the game came with. And we have hundreds of heros and items in the database that could show up in any given game if we so choose. Makes for awsome games.
No, but I have played Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic which does movement VERY well. And 8 tiles is not overkill if you cannot go in a straight line and achieve that distance... which is most of the time in games like Age of Wonders that have terrain worth mentioning.
Well, EWoM keeps crashing at an alarming frequency. I truly want to enjoy this game too, but it or something won't let me. For the mean time, I'm going to consider Age of Wonders (?) since many here have mentioned great things about that game. Impulse has the trilogy pack w/ soundtracks of all 3 titles for 20 USD so I might just get that *tonight* and put EWoM to rest until they get it ironed out.
There has been nine pages and no dev feedback here. You are pretty much yelling into the wind at this point. Please continue.
Hey, turnbased robot from the 50'ies
I don't play Civ or GalCiv at all but I still like Master of Magic and Age of Wonders series.
Just want to make sure that he doesn't believe that just because someone likes MoM & AoW means you like Civ & GalCiv as well.
I agree with others that the lack of 'magic / arcane / whatever' type spells is a shame. How do we deal with dispelling things or defending against magic? This seems like a fairly obvious issue, so what am I missing?
My main issue is that each spellbook should be different, but viable. I don't want them all to be the same, but most books should include more spells. Everyone should have a Level 1 damage spell of some kind, IMHO. As has been mentioned before, at least something to give a pure mage some offense and defense from the start. It could be a very low level damage spell or something that scales with power. There could be a generic 'magic missile' type spell that most mages can get, or something specific for each book with a slight twist. Again, I don't want every book to be the same, but I do want to feel like each book is viable on its own. I like the idea of making a pure fire/water/whatever focused mage. That should be a viable option, as should a mage that goes for a wider spread of magic.
Overall though I like what I have seen. Implementation will be key of course. Keep up the great work!
There is a basic arcane missile spell.
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