And add fancy visuals and sounds. Magic that devastates a continent needs to feel like it devastates a continent. This should be extremely visceral. Zoom the camera in to where it happens, so we really feel those visuals (disablable in options, of course). That worked well in B&W2.

Frogboy. Personally, I want them to look visually different so I can feel more immersed in the game. It's Kingdoms vs Empires. Nothing more. I can't tell the difference between the races. It destroys the immersion gamers are looking for and comes off as lazy and cheap. This said, again, I know 3d modeling is a pain. I've tinkered with it so I know. But as I suggested before, one thing that would add some variety to the races would be to set different sizes for each one. Tall, fat, thin, short, medium, etc etc. On top of that I would do something to makes cities different too. Empire vs Kingdom are the two cities. Race makes not a whiff of difference.

My suggestion would be to add a new tech tree. One specific for each race, that completely pulls from the flavor and lore of each. So, for example Magnars could have a part in their tech tree that opens construction for a slave trade building. Visually it would add a cool looking new building that is Magnar specific and mechanically it could give a slight boost to population, trade, and unrest. If each race had a dozen or so buildings, that stood out more than the standard empire buildings. Then the cities would start taking on each races shape more and more over time.

It's partly a visual thing, and partly as sound thing. But it's more complicated than that. If I had to some it up. I would say magic lacks "impact". The spells don't make me, the player, the mighty wizard blah blah feel strong or powerful. Magic just doesn't have that oomph I'm looking for. A cheap fix that may give the impression of impact that I see a lot of games do? Knocking up sound effects, specifically, BASS! Increase the bass for spell sound effects. Let me "Feel" the rumble of my lighting spell. I've seen many gaming companies do this, and it DOES work. Just have whomever does your sound effects do this to a few spells, put on a good pair of headphones and "feel" the difference. I'm serious about this, try it. You'll see what I'm talking about. Other then that, making the spells more flashy would of course help immensely too. But that's far harder of course. I would also recommend slowing down animations in combat. It's WAY too fast, which makes spells feel brief and uninspiring as a result. Or at least give us the option to slow it down! lol

Just my two zeni...

1st of all thank you for taking the time to reply, it's nice to see a CEO devoted to his product. I voted poor not to dishearten you but give my true opinion of what I think of the game. In my life i've put the most hours of game time in mom/civ type games so when I think of FE it must be a classic to me. Maybe my expectation are set too high.

I want different races/factions because;

It plays differently! (I hate to bring up MOM but it's a good example). Playing dwarves on Mirror was way different then high evles playing on the normal plane. I don't necessarily have to play the standard elves/dwarves fantasy setup. I just want different playthrough experiences. I don't have this with 8 (sorf of) similar humans.

This leads to my main worry of replayability, it's good to see you acknowledge this but from WOM to the current FE Beta I still see the same factions. I don't see a major broadening scope of increasing racial differences throught WOM to current beta FE to expect the final FE product to reach a state of being able to choose from interesting different races/factions on startup.

 Looks... I don't care much for looks. For all I care you could have made the entire game sprite based. A game like Terraria is awesome, even though everything is sprites.

I understand what you say about tech and spells... I'd rather have resources allocated to implement changes to different factions and races then anything else so I stand by what you say about that. And Ythril are elves? Oh, I totally didn't get that.

The best thing is, those huge bonuses wouldn't have to be perfectly balanced, since you're not playing a multiplayer game.

I gave it excellent. But if this was to be the 1.0 version, I'd drop the note because as 1.0 it's certainly not excellent. So many things that I still hope to be improved/changed for 1.0...

Faction differentation requires money and some engineering hours of those. Do you have them?

Elves, orcs, dwarves or smurfs are irrelevant by themselves if there is nothing behind that makes them tick. Dark Elves in MoM required me to play in Myrran and lacked things like archers but in exchange all of them could shot fire and their best unit was a flier. High Men would not start in Myrran but would get stuff like engineers or paladins. In the end, Dark Elves and High Men play the same city wise (and magic wise, as it totally depended on the Wizard) but their units don't. The units could have used the same pixels and still would have worked different.

Urxen, trog and such, being different, can support them having abilities that are different from each other. Men being Men, one could argue about them behaving very similarly and having their differences in other areas. Each faction should have one theme (and a secondary one could work) and not just in their diplomatic/gaming behaviour.

If Verga's people are naturally strong and therefore more good at using heavier armours, you can add special unlocks to the tech tree that reflect their "brutish" nature. No need for new "racial techs" (could be good though), just unlock some stuff here and there that supports their theme (which should be mundane warfare?). Unit traits is a field that can be exploited for good use in differentation between factions. Some unique buildings and/or bonuses. Maybe some unique weapons that no one else may hope to use.

Spells is also a good source of differentiation. A faction based on warfare is more likely to develop/use spells of tactical nature while a scholar faction is more likely to use strategic spells/enchantments. Guerrilla factions on the other hand, may use a blend of tactical and strategic spells to support their hit and run tactics.

Champions could use some unique traits to them. Now that everybody and their mother is a caster (although some have no elemental ranks so they are like lesser casters), traits is the only real difference between them (ok, some have some unique mounts!) and they could use some unique Paths (Path of the Rat Killer, Path of the Not In The Face...), unique traits that match their background/lore (not just "Merchant" for example), etc. Some totally unique gear could be used for high level ones (a good reason to recruit him or kill/loot him).

Some extra textures may do wonders (hey, Men and Fallen armours already have different textures so if new models are a no go, at least use new textures. And for the love of Afrodita, add Arielle's complete armour set! It's the best!!!). Those textures can also go to buildings and even weapons/mounts.

Just sharing. Surely you already knew all that stuff.

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

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

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

Perhaps the answer is to expand the tech tree with more focused paths.

Example: What would be the effect of a seperate branch for fortifications - not just fortifications that give the defenders a bonus to their attack or defense, but those that change the tactical battlefield or aid defenders.

Example 01. City Improvement: Floodgates

A city next to a river might build Floodgates - if attacked defending city can decide to open up the floodgates flooding the surrounding fields. This negatively impacts crop production for x seasons and floods the tactical battle field with water, limiting the avenue of advance for units and slowing units that decide to move through the now muddy ground (i.e. move through water tiles costs 1 additional movement point and units in plate cannot move through flooded tiles. (they would sink in the mud).

Example 02. City Improvement: Flamining Moat

A narrow moat crosses the battlefield, it takes 1 turn to cross it. Once during the battle the defender can setit alight, damaging all units within the moat with fire damage.

Glad to hear it frogboy.  For me this game is already a success. I checked steam and found I have only played Civ 5 for 14 hours before I got bored. In comparison, I think I have put hundreds of hours into WOM and FE. The recent 0.86 has definitely got a one more turn feeling. I am checking out these forums on a regular basis for any signs of he next patch. It is very exciting to be this close and involved in a game genre that I love playing. Thanks for the openness and dedication to making FE a awesome game.

i started a game in .85 and am a bit wary of updating to .86 as i was expecting .87 to pop up soon after heavenfall's report on some dodgy tag (no idea what it does...) and other crash bits.

should i expect .87 soon? can't really make a judgement based on a few turns of .85

The game is definitely in the good to very good range now.  It is much more refined than War of Magic.  I also am liking the way Stardock is utilizing some of the cool things about Galactic Civilizations 2 such as outposts, many of the diplomatic communications and options, and the unit upgrades.  Like some other players I think that you should be able to upgrade the outposts similar to the way they were updated in Galactic Civilizations 2.

When playing on normal I got beaten twice, so the AI is definitely improving.  Keep up the good work guys.

Brad with regard to differentiation I hope that EVENTUALLY the factions reach a level of strategic variety comparable to FFH2 and Twilight of the Arnor - I realise this is a massive task and by no means do I expect that for FE; that's something for a subsequent expansion. It took years of work with GalCiv 2 and FFH2 to make their factions truly different but both are among my all time favourite strategy games for the sheer variation in strategies and identities. FFH had the religions and branching tech trees and varied mana nodes which allowed radically different approaches with the SAME civ too - in fact FFH2 is BY FAR the best fantasy strategy game out there IMO - I think FE could eventually surpass it but it will take years via the game evolving first. What I'm looking for with FE is a good base that modders and expansion packs can take forward.

 Flavour wise I'm fine with the races and creatures you have in the game and all I'm looking for with regard to faction differentiation is some unique units, equipment, unit traits, buildings, spells and quests for each civ - I'm not talking about loads, but just a few so that they feel different. Also the civ traits that give free starting techs are pretty lacklustre and uninteresting whereas traits like death cults and serpent pact are far far more interesting and are more in tune with the differentiation in ToA and FFH2 - could you possibly have a 2nd look at civ traits like builders and do something a bit more creative with them?

With regard to the whole spearman/archer/(zombie clubman) swarms - I think one of the key things is to give solid defensive advantages to civs so that it's difficult to rush them really early on. Spells like pillar of fire help, but its often too little too late against a full on rush. So in terms of feasible defences against early swarms here are a couple of suggestions:

1) move conscription trait to something that becomes available halfway down the economics branch and instead have a militia trait at the start which offers similar penalties to conscription but additionally these units cannot move 2 squares further away from their city - i.e. they are a citizen defence force that is willing to defend their homes but not to go out risking their necks in the wilds - these units get discounted maintenance as they are not full time professional soldiers/mercs. The point of this is that civs should be able to build large defence forces to deal with early pushes.

2) if a city is attacked then all empty defence slots (after garrison and militia) spawn weak units with makeshift weapons to represent villagers defending thier homes - these last ditch units reduce population if killed (so they aren't ideal and cant be relied upon) but they are better than nothing and the mobs get bigger with settlement size (say groups of 3 for size 1, groups of 5 for size 2, 7 for size 3 etc) and the makeshift weapons could be things like pitchforks, hoes, butchers cleavers etc.

By making early defences more solid this gives time to build up to the more advanced units and equipment.

Also please make monsters much more aggressive against improvements, armies and settlements - it really breaks immersion when I see AI players building villages and outposts right next to swarms of monsters and the monsters simply ignore these things - I want the monsters to make areas inhospitable and actively block expansion until they are cleared out, at the moment they just feel like headless chickens aimlessly wandering about until someone puts them out their misery - Comparing this again to FFH2, I used to ramp up the barbarian settings so high that it was quite possible to lose your city in the first 20 turns if you were unlucky and careless - that game was full of lairs that were risky to try to clear out and spawned lots of monsters that ATTACKED your cities - the monsters in FE just feel like a barrier to movement, not a real threat.

Anyway those are a few thoughts, sorry about the long post

Does it make the monsters more aggressive to AI factions?

I think it's definitely getting very good. Other than the obvious balancing things and extra content for more interesting options I had a couple suggestions.

1. Make all world level improvements require production from the closest city. This makes protecting/razing them more of a big deal and means harder choices for your city build queues. (If you don't do this then at least make it so that they never take up the city build queue even if they are adjacent to the city as the inconsistency/metagameyness of it is driving me nuts)

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

Early Blunt (clubs, maces) - Very cheap, very poor attack power, relatively effective against all but plate armor, ineffective against most creatures

Pierce (spears, bow) - Slightly more expensive, poor attack power, average effectiveness against armor, barely scratches plate, effective against high defense creatures

Sword Type Cutting - Relatively expensive, excellent attack power, poor effectiveness against armor, barely scratches plate, effective against most creatures, give dodge bonus based on level to reflect parrying

Axe Type Cutting (Two handed swords here too) - Slightly less expensive than sword type, better against armor, dodge penalty, accuracy penalty

Late 'Blunt' (warhammer, maul) - Slightly less expensive than sword, armor piercing, dodge penalty, accuracy penalty, largely ineffective against creatures

Now I haven't thought out the exact mechanics that would accomplish this ideal but I think most of them could be fairly obvious. This would give us real incentive to have different kinds of troops. For example swords would be good to give to defensive units as swords are a good defensive weapon and do decent all around damage. Plate armor should be crazy strong and terrifying if you don't have late game blunt weapons to counter (also it should be possible to reduce damage to 0 esp with plate). Spears need some kind of special ability to distinguish them I think (besides armor piercing) something to reflect their ability as a standoff weapon (I want to be motivated to make phalanx units).

EDIT: One more thing. Please tone down the experience reduction for heroes/army. It is too harsh and basically means that I never am willing to put more than one hero in an army. Perhaps a gradual reduction where 2 heroes get 75% xp each, 3 heroes get 66%, 4 heroes get 50%? It really kills the adventurer strategy. I just feel like you guys went to far in nerfing heroes. I've yet to get a my channeler to level 10 even though I fought most battle with just her and I've fought 3 major wars and done a lot of adventuring.