Greetings! Over the next day, tens of thousands of new beta testers will be added to the Fallen Enchantress beta.
Elemental: Fallen Enchantress is a turn-based strategy game in which the player takes on the role of a powerful Sorcerer called a Channeler. As one of the very few beings in the world who are capable of channeling magic through the various elemental shards, you have become leader of a people who hope you to lead them to building a great civilization.
Here, I’ll walk you through the few turns and for those familiar with War of Magic, I’ll try to find some way to tie the two together (they’re drastically different but they’re both fantasy strategy games).
In the beginning…
The first question is, who are you?
You can choose amongst existing sovereigns or create your own. Balon is a character I made who is an adventurer gifted with magical power.
The second question is, where are you.
This is where you set up the world conditions for yourself. Maps are randomly generated so you will never see that map again. Ever. The World difficulty determines how aggressive monsters are and how powerful they will become.
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).
One criticism of WOM (which I agree with) is that the distinctions between the factions aren’t great enough. This is something we’re working on, particularly in helping make clear that the name of the faction is not the race. I.e. in LOTR, the Kingdom of Gondor doesn’t mean that they’re Gondorians, they’re men. So we have some work to do here.
You can have up to 32 players in a game regardless of map size. It all depends on what kind of game you want to play.
You can also choose what victory conditions that shall be active:
Conquest, Diplomatic (ally with everyone), Master Quest (complete the master quest), Spell of Making (cast the spell of making which requires a ton of mana and magic knowledge).
After that, you’re ready to go.
The lands
So the game comes up with a backstory for my character (since I didn’t type one in myself because I’m dangerously lazy).
When the player enters the world, they’re alone. When you decide to settle your first city, you’ll want to find a location that has good food and production potential. This is represented by grain and materials which are displayed either by mousing over the Settle button or clicking on the terrain detail button in the top right of the screen.
These numbers look at all nearby tiles to give a summary of just how much food and material are in the surrounding countryside.
Once I settle, I start to go out and explore the world, gather loot, recruiting allies, fighting monsters.
The Monsters
To be candid, the world wants to kill you. It will try hard to kill you.
For thousands of years, there were great civilizations across the world. But that’s all gone now. And various creatures have settled in to the places that civilized beings once dwelt. You will have to build your empire by making it safe for people to live in it.
The further you travel from your starting location, the more dangerous they get. Worse, the longer they hang around, the more powerful they become.
Loot
One of my personal favorite features of Fallen Enchantress is the loot. Exploring the world, going on quests, fighting monsters, etc. will result in you gathering a lot lf loot.
Here I got a skullcap from a ruin, an arctic wolf cloak from a traveling merchant, a telescope from a destroyed caravan I came across and a backpack from a the stomach of something I really don’t want to talk about.
And even though it’s a little thing, the things you equip will show up on the map even though this isn’t an RPG, it’s a strategy game. Hence, every unit in the game, and there can and will be thousands of them depending on the map, can look different.
Your Empire is more than your cities
One to emphasize is that it’s not as much about having lots of cities but rather having lots of territory. Anything in your territory can be made use of and will build up the closest city it is to (even if it were on the other side of the world). The goal here is so that late game, you’re not wrestling with dozens of cities but instead a handful of really good ones.
There are still advantages to having lots of cities too but it is very viable to have a few, very powerful, cities.
BTW, here’s what things start to look at if you wander too far away from your starting location…
Battles
Early on, battles are a pretty small affair. Most of our screenshots of battles are from early stages of the game. Later on, they get much bigger.
The battle system is fairly straight forward (at least to understand it) but has a lot of nuance.
First, you have initiative. This determines how often that particular unit moves.
Next, you have accuracy, this is put up against the other unit’s dodge. If your accuracy roll beats their dodge roll, you hit.
Next, is damage, Balon here has a War Hammer which does 11 Blunt damage. Luckily, Ash Serpent here has no particular defense against blunt weapons (but has a general defense of 4).
As a quasi-Fire elemental, he is very vulnerable to cold. Hence, if I had a weapon that did cold damage, it would be doubled against him. He is also immune to poison and fire which, this early on, means little since I don’t have anything that good to attack him with.
Magic
So I’m in a battle with the Ignys and I do have one decent spell…
But…unfortunately, it does fire damage. Feel free to cast it, it won’t do anything to the Ash serpent because it’s immune to fire.
But anyway, after killing the creature the old fashion way, I am ready to start getting my magic mojo going.
Magic comes from the elemental shards that are spread across the world. If you build a shard shrine on them, their power begins to flow into you (channel you might even say). You, in turn, can bind your champions to you by Imbuing them with some of your magical essence. Thus, what magical knowledge they have becomes yours to use and this is how you learn most of your spells.
Use your spells to buff your units, cities and wreak havoc on your enemies.
From here, it’s up to you. Feel free to ask questions in this thread. We still have months of work ahead of us.
My roommate bought WoM in September of 2010 (well, technically *we* bought it and split the price, but we put it on his impulse account, because I didn't have one at the time), but we haven't seen anything about the game yet on his impulse. How will we know when we get our turn at the FE Beta?
The beta is available only from stardock's online store. Login using the same user/password for Impulse and check the My Downloads section.
https://store.stardock.com/
ZombiesRus5 beat me to posting a reply (had it all typed too). Here's the latest update as to who gets to be in on the current Beta.
https://forums.elementalgame.com/416262
It's not an insurmountable problem. As I said, a game developer has to make a lot of decisions about graphics that come down to performance and memory, and has to decide where they want to spend those commodities. As it is, with the ability to design units and having buildings for your cities on the map, we're making a lot more draw calls and using a lot more memory than games where all the units are pre-designed and you might only build a few structures on the map.
As for it being too bright, you might want to adjust your brightness and contrast settings on the video tab in the options screen to see if that helps for you.
Thanks, yes I have been having some issues with my monitor. I still can't see the logic with the clothing colours though. But then I'm not a programmer..
Hi ! At this point, I think the FE is becoming pretty good:
- The game has a lot more personality now. I don't know if it's already been done, but high praise for the cinematics for the wild lands area.
- The game mechanics are much more understandable. Unit statistics: I'm looking at you !
- City management is for me close to perfection: it's different from other games and it works. In a game with Resoln, I chose to develop Research first and it worked as intended. City level up is an awesome idea. And Cities just look great (in WoM already).
- Early Exploration is really sweet. More quests, more items would be great, I hope there will be more.
- Faction customization is perfect. One of the strong points of the game in my opinion.
I nearly have my MoM killer (which would be an achievement given I still play it occasionnaly since I acquired it at its release).
Now, it is difficult for me to see where are the last steps to reach that goal:
- I think some balance tweaking (items, research tree), but we're so close of it now (IMHO), that I'm sure it will be perfect for the release. I'm not worried about that.
- receiving random spells is great, but I do think that the list of spells is too short so that I finally most of the time play with the same spells if I chose the same magical traits. And I don't understand why some overland spells don't have their counterpart in tactical battles. Maybe it would be cool as well to get randomly one or either or both of the spell versions ? example: stoneskin. Overland costs more but would be more powerful, against tactical, cheaper but of course limited to the battle.
- My biggest -if not only-: 'I wish it was different' concerns heroes immortality. I would like them to have a chance to die (including my sovereign) and there should be some other ways for acquiring heroes later in the game (because the path in magic research for more experienced heroes is cool, but I fear that most heroes will be killed by the time research has been made). I assume the aim was to have a controlled heroes population. Maybe an option would be the more prestige, the more chance to get an hero if max has not been reached ? And also, after killing the enemy's biggest heroes sometimes after a difficult battle, it is not so great to see them respawn (even with injuries and less hit points).
Hence my question: is there any chance for heroes demographics to be changed?
Can we havve an info session on how the resources work in a similar format as above. I understand the tile you place a city on has the most to bear. When adding a second city, do the resouces pool? Does production pool? Obviously research does. I can understand specialising cities to some extgent. A research city is easy to make. What about a food city. Are the grain resources global? - compared to food which grain is converted into. People talk about making cities to make units, as well as manufacturing cities - would they not be the same thing - what else is there to make other than city improvements.
I would like to hear more on this aspect please
Yes they used the same basic elements from E:WOM, but it's the details that you so casually dismiss that make them 2 totally different games.
IMHO, FE is much more than an improved version of E:WOM.
Just a quick post here: Im a bit under two hours of gameplay up to now on E:FE. Considering how I had been deeply disappointed wit WOM, I am pleased to announce that i am actually having a good time with FE so far (Y). Having more fun than I ever had with WOM.
I am taking notes on paper about the annoyances, bugs, ideas etc that I encounter.
Will be making more detailed posts when i have more gametime under the belt, but so far this is encouraging!
I am still waiting for my chance to get in on the demo, but I've been reading up on the forums, and I've seen this request more than once. Have you (stardock) considered a "hardcore" mode/game setting where champions and sovereigns can die in combat? That way you can satisfy everyone. Also, aren't I right that champions actually CAN die, but they usually don't? I thought that's the way that it works, can someone confirm this?
Champions can't die (once recruited), they accumulate injuries and get knocked out of action, longer as they gain more levels (a very long time at high levels).
Currently, heroes are a finite resource, so permadeath could easily screw you or the AI over badly. As it is, not every faction gets equal numbers of heroes, there's no mechanic to recruit new heroes, so once the heroes on the map are recruited (or, more often, killed), that's it for the rest of the game.
Perhaps the best solution to the heroes / champions thing would be the following:
1. Re-introduce dynasties as an alternative means to generate new champions in long games
2. Allow for a "kill heroes" option for those who want it (so that we can recreate Game of Thrones )
Also, perhaps on an expansion, PLEASE PLEASE let us craft or imbue, choose an icon for and NAME our equipment/weapons/armor !!! I loved the way MoM allowed you to construct magical weapons and give them meaninful names, and I would LOVE a the ability to do this in FE (perhaps through a spell, an ability or a forge building)...
Great idea ! (if we have a way to replace dead heroes)
Would be awesome of course !
i love the idea of using the dynasty system for recreating champions. it could run in the background and do its work. making up names and having them on standby when a champion falls or something to that effect. this would make the world much more organic. i think champions should die in the game, and others be reborn.
I would like to know more about the city system. How do cities differentiate from each other in terms of specialization, and are there spcific building to actually make them look special and add punch to the wow factor? May sound silly, but "working" for hours on the development of an empire in my opinion needs to be repayed with stuff that looks very unique: a beautiful palace, a huge tower, a special magic fortification... Maybe even stuff that is so rare that you may not even be able to see it in every game!
Some spells are automatically available if you have the right traits. There are some you research from the tech tree of course. Personally, I prefer the MOM way where most spells are from research, and some champions came with special spells you may not have.
Another oddity that isnt quite in theme for me is that the channeler and champions are exactly just as powerful magically speaking if both have the same traits.. The channeler is the source of ALL magic but he doesnt seem to be any more powerful or efficient once imbue is cast...
Thats why FE lacks the epic lack of wizard king clashing feel I had in MOM and apparently in Warlock Master of Arcane, another game that is trying to be spiritual sucuessor of MOM.
I'll echo EvilMaxWar and say I was disappointed with WOM, but am enjoying FE much much more. I feel it really says something about Stardock that they are trying to make things right and inviting a lot of testers to help provide input. I've plowed a good few hours into FE now and it feels like it has that certain something, 'soul' if you will, that makes for a great game which sadly WOM lacked.
Likes :
Loot - good variety, meaningful and powerful stuff to get.
Battles - Feel a lot better balanced and tactically more options
Levelling up - Great feel to customising your sovereign and champions both in creation and gameplay
Overall feel - Immersive, enjoyable
Quests - I love how some quests can throw up surprises and take different paths on different playthroughs. (Arena quest for example, awesome, challenging and rewarding)
Dislikes -
Battles - there is no way to get out of a clearly losing battle with the exception of escape scrolls (rarish loot). If you get jumped by roaming critters early on this can be a big set-back
Sound - Seems to keep cutting out on me after a while. Would like more variety to the battle sounds as well, roars which sound like roars, evil critters sounding a bit more menacing etc. Little touches like that go a long way to adding to the immersion.
Neutral -
Quests - Sometimes a quest will have a WTF moment, in a bad way. Had a few which were 'low level' quests which threw up opposition which were 'strong' rated to my 'weak' party early on in the game. To think of a specific example I got one where a caravan was ambushed by trolls, fair enough I can handle a few... battle pops up and its a troll shaman, 2 warriors and a couple regular.
Requests -
More spells, more loot! More branching quests. More variety of city upgrades and research.
Not sure if it is a balance concern or not, but towards endgame I can make my sovereign pretty much unkillable. Had a lvl 37 one with over 700hp and absurdly powerful abilities... which might be fine if it is something someone specifically worked towards, but nagging doubts that is can be a bit easy to do this even playing on hard.
hmm,
did anyone found tens of thousands of ppl getting FE a strange sentence?
If Forest/Grassland is going to have 2-3 hammers per tile ... I would think regular grassland should have at most 1-2 hammers per tile. (as opposed to the possibility of a regular grassland tile having 3 hammers)
In any case, I don't mind grass having more food+ hammers than less fertile ground terrain ... but I think forest (and minerals) tiles should produce more hammers
Combat looks a bit better. However! I think its important that each soldier within a single unit has a separate attack, that is the unit attacking is a bunch of separate attacks. Which means that an enemy's defense is essentially multiplied by the number of attackers. That, and each separate attack should not be able to kill more than one enemy.
Meaning that if there are 4 soldiers in a unit with 1000 attack each, attacking 8 soldiers with 5 defense each ... the most they can do is kill 4 enemy soldiers (with one attack).
Another Example: a unit with 4 soldiers with 20 HP and 5 damage attacks attacking a unit with 4 soldiers at 10 HP and 0 defense. Assume all attacks hit.
attack 1 part A, soldierY1 attacks enemy soldierX1, and deals 5 damage.
attack 1 part B, soldierY2 attacks enemy soldierX1, and deals 5 damage killing the soldier.
attack 1 part C, soldierY3 attacks enemy soldierX2, dealing 5 damage
attack 1 part D, soldierY4 attacks enemy soldierX2, dealing 5 damage and killing the soldier.
Now the enemy unit has only 2 soldiers (instead of 4) -> or 6 soldiers instead of 8, etc. Enemy unit only loses 2 soldiers after all 4 attack.
->enemy attacks. Lets say X soldiers have 30 damage, while Y soldiers have 5 defense.
SoldierX3 attacks soldier Y1 for 25 damage (30 damage -5), killing soldier Y1.
Soldier X4 attacks soldier Y2 for 25 damage, killing soldier Y2.
(important)-> even though there was 10 extra damage from the 2 attacks, its not added to soldier Y3 because the attacks are made individually against 1 soldier at a time (instead of adding up all the damage done and subtracting it from the enemy's HP, 1 soldier cannot kill 10 enemy soldiers at one time.) The only exception would be a large beast such as a Dragon, who lets say could attack as many as 8 different soldiers with one attack. Therefore even if he only had 20 damage to their 10 HP and 10 defense he could still kill 8 enemy soldiers.
Basically, the bigger the Monster is, possibly the more soldiers they can hit. But a single human soldier should not be able to kill more than 1 soldier with a single attack. Just give heroes more initiative for more attacks during a battle, OR give them special abilities like "spin attack" which could allow them to attack maybe 3 enemy soldiers (within the same unit) in a given blow. Or possibly attack 1 soldier per adjacent enemy unit. AKA surrounded by 8 enemy units of 4 soldier each ... attack once and reduce those units to 3 soldiers each.
I know its basic, and it could be made more complicated, but I think even this small change would make the large scale battle a bit more fun ... thoughts?
I like the unit details screen.
I like how the Map looks.
They don't. The numbers in each tile is a total of that square and the 8 immediately surrounding it. Basically, FE is doing the math for you, just pick your square and go.
Incidentally 5,3 (food, production) is the best I've seen so far, anyone see anything larger/better?
Interesting. How are cities handled now? Do they still grow in size? or do they just work the 8 surrounding tiles? Or do they have an expanding BFC.
(as in, is the city a single square now, and how far out does the 'workable' BFC go ... or are none of the tiles workable, and its just initial bonus-> with the rest of the yield coming from population)
Yep, you got it right with this last part. At least as far as resources go. As it stands now, the city expands depending on how you place buildings, but you do not actually work tiles or gain more "base" resources. The only way you gain more than your base, is bonuses via buildings, and building on specific resources (i.e. clay pit for production, or grain fields for more food, plus iron, horses, crystal, and wargs, which go to global pool) With the food/production bonuses I think that specific resource goes to whichever of your cities is closest, but I am not 100% on that.
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