If you’ve had a chance to play Beta 2, please take a second to go vote.
There's still months of work ahead of us but we're looking to see if we're on the right track.
Thanks!
https://www.elementalgame.com/journals
@drabhead
troll
IMO: Fair.
Here's a list of stuff that NEEDS to get changed:
Civilization:
Magic:
Warfare:
Champions:
General:
Not sure if this thread is the place for this in-comprehensive list, but what the hey. Thanks for reading it anyway.
-Gazing
This is definitely my favorite thread right now.
I know Derek is reading it as well as we've talked about ideas and such that are posted here.
I've seen everything I might have said here, so I'll just throw some little stuff in:
Tune-ups:
+Please fix the mouse cursors so I'm not using a dialogue bubble or crossed-swords in the game menu or some other screen. It's clunky and hard to use.
+Can you change the timing of start of turn announcements so that whatever is happening with a character on the ground is resolved first? For example, combat ensures before a city level-up. Do those level-ups and research and things after all of the "exciting" start of turn announcements.
+The end of combat summary pops up and can be dismissed before all of the death animations are complete. Furthermore, after getting out of combat, you have to watch that forest drake squirm and die again.
+General audio event volume adjustments: Those dust mites or whatever they're called are way too loud, for example.
+Can you color-code the spell buttons in tactical combat by element? Also, change descriptions to show only statistical effects, rather than descriptive ones.
+Please move the creature stat box that appears when hovering over a creature in combat. It often covers the creatures/general area of the combat zone. Maybe make it a fixed box in the bottom-right.
Wish-list:
+Add an alchemy option: Exchanging gold/metal/crystal/mana for another resource using magic. You could make it an Earth sphere ability. At a cost, of course.
+Mines add materials or production to the closest city.
Gazing said what I wanted to say. Built units are too expensive for their limited use. Cites are either mass building or snoozing. Roads are hard to see. Need more magic! Non combat jobs for champs.
I'd also like to see more diversity in the race of factions. So many enchanted beings out there yet humans are the only ones to develop cites and whatnot?
My suggestions on faction differentiation. We really need faction differentiation somehow.
Units
Techs
I focused my suggestion on what I thought would be relatively easy to implement and give a lot of bang for your buck. While I don't of course have any idea what the code is actually like I think these could all be implemented through XML changes. Except maybe idea 2 for the techs.
I would say no...
This drives me nuts.
Warmachine is the gentlemans tactical game. The current pinacle of miniature gaming. What if Fallen Enchantress could take some ideas from the developers behind this product?
Bow development and armor advances pretty much go hand in hand as I recall my warfare history.
When Shortbows were introduced into army warfare, heavy leathers and eventually chain mail was ultimately developed to give the more important units some measure of protection.
Then Longbows came along to allow the archers more distance from the front line but give them enough power to penetrate studded leather armor and most versions of chain. Light Plate mail was developed to counter the threat of Longbows and the crossbow was developed. Heavier plate was ultimately countered by heavy crossbows. And while it was true enough that archers tended to aim at horses to fell armored knights, barding was provided to horses to counter that threat as well.
At least that's what I remember from my medieval history classes.
When it comes to faction differentiation the main problem with the game right now is that faction traits are way too bland. You have to ask yourself whether a faction's traits allow them to play in unique ways or implement strategies no one else could. Civ5 does this tolerably well. Slave Lord is great example of a trait that really allows for a unique style of play. Every faction needs at least one ability like it. At the end of this thread I listed some faction trait ideas that I think would allow for this. All the fancy unique items and techs won't make factions feel unique without real differences in play style.
One additional Caveat with this. The crossbow was not expressly designed to "puncture plate" as the metalworking techniques of the time were unable to create practical metal armor thick enough to protect against a properly angled arrow (hence all the angles on later era plate) from a normal longbow. The benefit of the crossbow was more that you could slap one into a peasant's hands with a quiver of bolts for training and they would have a reasonable time taking down the knights since they were also up closer and more expendable. Proper longbowmen took months of training to become effective. So, while Crossbows of the time DID have a slightly higher force exertion behind their shots, they had dramatically worse range and no significant benefit over the longbow aside from training time. It was the NUMBER of crossbows on the field that killed the armor knight (so to speak) rather than the science of the device itself.
Back to Topic:
The discussion over greater differentiation of weapons is very valid. Particularly how there really isn't a strong reason to not just use hammers in plate for your defenders and spears for your cheap and cheerful mobs. A big part of that I think stems from our weapon choices and how you differentiate them beyond simple flavor.
* Daggers are cheap and fast, and honestly not really all that practical on the larger field of battle. In current in game incarnations, beyond the +initiative bonus, I have yet to feel that even the most powerful dagger I've found was worth using over a Boar Spear (which we will get to).
* Staves are cheap and useful tool and weapon which are more for personal protection than offense (a defensive weapon, if you will). In game, they are what you get for free on your sovereign and hope you never have to fight with because they never do more than 1 damage against anything. No legitimate reason to ever purposefully put these on a unit.
* Clubs are cheap things you can turn any tree branch or table leg into. I think they are perfectly well represented in game.
* Hammers are slow and hefty. In history, great against armored foes because of the ability to cave in plate armor, crippling the enemy, and possibly causing their armor to be the death of them. In game, 1 handed decent quality weapons with good damage output.
* Swords were all around utility weapons of varying lengths and styles, relatively fast weapons with a general focus on finesse. In game they are..... Different looking than hammers with less damage output and not enough + initiative to make a difference.
* Axes are large, brutal weapons used for severing limbs and turning forests into cities, slow and deadly. In game they are.... Different looking than hammers with a slightly lower initiative penalty, and the occasional awesome ability you get to use too late (I'm looking at you berserker axe).
* Spears were cheap weapons that were easy to train and put into the hands of conscripted men to help use numbers to offset skilled opponents and cavalry. In game they are cheap early game weapons that ignore 66% of an enemy's armor and don't use much by way of materials. No legitimate reason to NOT put these on your mass units.
What we really should see are things that make these other weapons worth taking. Frogboy said himself that Champion traits are pretty well trivial to program. How difficult would it be to add unit traits that they can *elect* to purchase but only when built with a certain weapon? Howabout giving all weapons one static "you use a sword so you get THIS ability" and then 2-3 other abilities tied to that weapon?
Make "Armor Piercing" a 2 turn respawn ability for all spears, and give them a 10/20/30% native AP rating for spear/boar spear/pike
Give hammers a knockdown or stun ability option
Give axes the ability to cripple a unit's strength or initiative on a failed resist (with damage either way, of course)
Let units wielding daggers have some manner of "cloaking" so they cant be seen until 2 tiles away, or the capacity to totally ignore armor once per combat.
Give swords an ability that attacks twice at full strength
Give staves something ANYTHING to make me not horrified that my sovereign has to use it. +1 Counter-attack for additional damage perhaps (like 5 points?)
Give ALL non-magic ranged units a limited number of shots per battle. They aren't exactly unbalanced, its just that with unlimited shots there's no reason not to kite if you can. Also, this lets you give players the option of taking the "Extra Large Quiver" feat to add 2 shots, and add production cost and weight to their units.
I don't think that the numbers are off on the weapons, per se. It's just that we really don't have a compelling reason not to just go for "highest DPS" and "Highest DPS for cheap".
I'm going to start sounding like a broken record here, but that's because you can't have situational tactics without situations. And the game has very little of the usual situation-creating elements: complex abilities (usually passive), facing, terrain modifiers, positional advantages and disadvantages (flanking/ganging up).
And because units are so fragile that all this shiny stuff matters little when "first strike" determines so much of the battle (when it should only matter for champions with 'impulsive' using their most powerful ability on round 1).
Here's a idea to boost *graphical* faction differentiation that could use a lot of the stuff that's already in place, in theory, and give the game a little more character.
Faction specific terrain types.
This is sort of in the game right now, in that the "good" kingdoms spread greenery in their city influence, and the "bad" kingdoms spread the dark terrain. But the effect is sporadic, not not very pronounced.
I'm reminded of one of the things I like about Disciples 2, where you had to plant a flag that spread your faction specific terrain, in order to claim resources and build cities. It was very satisfying seeing the personality of your faction spread across the map like a virus, kind of like playing the Zerg in Starcraft, or Hell terrain in FFH2. This reminds me a little bit of the outpost mechanic you have in place, except the outposts don't spread terrain like your cities do. Make the outposts also spread your terrain. Instead of only looking at thin colored borders on the map marking your influence, it is immediately apparent from the map terrain.
One of the things that bothered me about the Elemental games, is that for a "ruined" world, it looks in pretty good shape, for the most part, even at the start. There are lush forests, green patches, and varied scenery. It doesn't really sell the backstory that much. If the maps started out with a bit more of a neutral landscape that looked not evil, but rather more lifeless, more desaturated, slightly more homogenous, the different terrain types would stand out much more when they started to spread and give the land more character. You are supposed to be returning life to the land, or your idea of it, at any rate.
The idea is, the land takes on the character of your magical Sovereign. The effect of them imposing their will on the land. It would probably be tough to come up with 10 distinct terrains , so you might have to double up with a couple factions sharing a type, but lets take a look at what we have already.
I've seen:
"Spring" Greenery
"Summer" Greenery
"Autumn"
Winter/ Snow
Desert
Broken rock
"evil"
You might have to add a couple distinct terrain suitable for the Fallen factions. Consider:
"Volcanic/magma" for Magnar
Swamp
Some work there to be sure, but I have to believe working up some more tile types is much more in reach than models for unique buildings.
Just an idea to imbue factions with a little more personality.
I agree with these.
I add:
+ Please, please, please, let my faster units retain their additional moves when leaving a group with slower units
+ show me the faction traitss when creating a new sovereign (if they are there, I don't find them)
+ fix quicksave, it's broken (at least to me) and i don't get working games when I try to load quicksaves; also provide a shortcut to normal save game page without going through the main menu (if it is there, i don't know it)
+ in tactical battle, if I have moved my unit and I don't have any action available, automatically go to next turn without waiting for me to press the spacebar
Each faction having unique walls would allow the user to make some city based distinctions. That is the major part of what you see. Also, each faction needs a unique cityhub for their capital. Capitals should not be the same as every other city.
I loved this part of that link:
ConclusionMost soldiers on the battlefield would have been at risk from the longbow. The average archer would have had the tools to wound or kill most armour types. Even with the advent of coat of plates, the archer would have had an impact on an advancing army. Only the most expensive and well made plate armour wearers would have had an advantage. Although even with plate, I only tested the impacts to major protected areas. The joints and gaps would all still be vulnerable being mostly of maille until the 16th century. Without significant metal to withstand the energies of an arrow or excessive padding to spread out the force, arrows of the 1400’s would have been deadly.
But archers were missing their targets most of the time, it was even more patent with the use of shields. The skilled archers could throw between 6 and 12 arrows per minutes. And a hundred of archers could cloud the sky. Some things were added to the arrows to do more noises when they were falling down, creating the reall effect of arrow : fear. So, yes they "killed" some soldiers but their main effect was to reduce advance of enemy (which was close to be pinned down) and inspiring fear.
Even at Azincourt, which is one famous archers vs knights battle, the archers used some caltrops, the terrain was extremely muddy, and the knights charged mindlessly (why not add a "taunt" effect in the game ?) That's one of the best example of "kiting" in history (with the mongols and their mounted archers).
Bow vs crossbows : Bows had greater range, but did less damage because of a lesser penetration. A bolt could fly through 3 armored men when throw at close range. Crossbows was more of a defensive weapon, really easy to use, when bows were more of an attack weapon.
Bows : low to average damage, high range, add fear effect and reduce movement. Easy to shot a lot of arrows for trained soldiers, long training time.
Crossbows : high damage, low range (due to a straight shot instead of a curved one), long to recharge, very low training time.
I voted fair, though I am having fun with the game and the fact that the game is a huge improvement over WoM.
I have two problems with the game so far, after some days of playing.
1)The world is not dynamic enough.
Monsters should spawn in fog of war areas after some time. When you start the world seems alive, but it became bland really fast after the monsters are killed and their lairs cleared. I like how monster can get stronger after some time, and this should be improved. Keeping an area full of monsters should act as a buffer zone between you and an opponent, and this should be a valid strategy.
I think there is a bug because I almost don't see quests. They should be more frequent. We should have faction specific quests that give access to exclusive spells, artifacts and traits.
2)The tactical battles are boring
Right now I only play tactical when I'm not sure if the computer will win for me, because they aren't interesting. Or I steamroll the opponent or I have no chance.
The position of a unit should matter more. Not only this, but it should matter in relation to the other allies and enemies .It should suffer more damage if flanked (thus allowing rogue type heroes, a common fantasy trope). Some units (or all of them) should have a zone of control that if abandoned by an opponent, they would suffer a free attack.
Positioning units side to side would give defense bonus. Or some units would give defense bonus to units besides them.
Terrain should matter more, giving bonus do defense and attack (hills would give bonus in attack to archers and defense bonus to melee fighters)
3) Improve the arts assets.
I know you are using a lot of placeholder stuff, but the units sounds are really awful.
Update2: suffered a CTD last night; no error message, FE simply dissappeared; no crash report was generated so couldnt send anything... :/ System specs: WinXP, 2GB, NVIDIA GTX 7950 GO 1GB (Dell XPS M1710). Memory management seems to be a lot better ran for at least 3 hours between 94% and 98% memory in use with some slow downs and loss of sound but without crashing untill the CTD happened.
Play through wise: I was stuck in a hole having sacrificed my one and only city and was city hopping through enemy cities but was unable to keep them.
So I loaded up my save and 2 cities left I figured what if I try to negotiate peace; maybe they'll accept. Sure enough, took me almost all of my diplomatic capital but they accepted! So i managed to stabalize 2 cities and get my gildar in the positive, build some archers for defense support before the inevitable war decks came in again. Sure enough they came <pay 6932 gildar in tribute or we deck you> <pfff if I had that much you wouldnt have a kingdom matey!>.
Yay defense succesfull, they spam enormous amounts of armies at my cities (how can the cpu afford those?!?) but fight after fight against some really horrible odds I manage to survive. Mainly thanks to a large pool of mana I saved up and a new spell (blizzard?) that takes 2 turns to cast but knocks their entire army unconcious.
Slowly but surely defense gets up to par; with 4 leveled archer armies in both cities and I take Relias and 4 archer armies and retake the 3rd city and negiotiate peace again.
Then Capitar attacks one of my aggressors and crushes them, they surrender and quit and raze all their remaining cities which included my former capital... :/ A few turns later the other aggressor gets crushed by a faction I havent met yet. So I only have the Capitar to deal with now; whoohoo.
Having stabilized the 3rd city as well it's time for expansion; all three cities have no growth and one of them is turning a loss every month. I barely stay in the positive and 12 ranger armies with Relias as surviving champ is all I can support gildar wise. Again how is the cpu doing this, is he cheating?!? There doesnt seem to be a way to demolish buildings that cost too much maintenance or lower my growth nor does there seem to be anyway I can revitalize the growth of the cities; they are all static now it seems.
I manage to build a custom unit on horses with full plate, broadswords and some assorted goodies. It takes all my metal (161) but at least I have an offensive unit to go with Relias and his archers (2 level 8 archer armies and 1 level 9 archer army). All or nothing time, there seems to be a juicy city around the corner behind a mountain range time to liberate that out of the hands of Capitar.
Relias manages 1 season worth of travel on the way to Capitar when we run in to the mysterious crusher of my other Empire enemy; the Gilden. Yay I think, at least he's Kingdom! Wrong; he's hostile to me straight away; what gives. His strenght is number in the 900's versus my 75-ish.
Sure enough one season of travel further masses of armies flock towards my borders; about 20 to 30 full sized armies all equal or better strength then Relias his army (ranging 300-800 in strenght).
Sure enough another season in and *bam* here's the war deck. I switch to intercept mode with Relias and kill off about 3 or 4 of the main armies. However 3 sneak past me and attack my city, 3 intense fights later I come out victorious! Yay for the champless archers and city militia. At that point there are too many armies around Relias plus most of my units are severly wounded. I send an extra archer army for support down to the city they seem to be heading and send Relias there too.
Relias arrives just in time; one turn of crazy fighting with my worrying about crashing follows. It must have been 10~20 attacks in one turn at least. I lost some units including 2 of my highest ranked archer armies but I live and the surviving untis have leveled like crazy.
Borders clean with maybe 2-3 armies heading towards the other city I decide it's counter attack time. I take Relias, my custom horse unit and 5 archer armies in an all or nothing attempt to break out. I manage to take one of the newly build cities (man why do all the enemy armies contain pioneers) and have Relias dig in.
Sure enough the Gilden now throws almost all his units at Relias including his sovereign with his army. He's crushed. And I soon crush him again when I find him cruising about solo.
I then negiotiate piece, for which I need to pay. I mean heh, what, I just beat your sovereign twice and caused you to loose 40-50 full sized armies, defeated several of your champions, took a city and I need to pay??? He should have been begging for mercy. I find a nice cheat with the peace negotiations though, I have the cpu add gildar to balance my diplo offer. Much needed gildars too!
So currently I'm controlling 4 cities and have stabilized defense on all of them. Now I need to find a way to build up defense so that the 4th city can survive on it's own and Relias continue on to the original plan of taking the juicy city around the corner. At this point I CTD-ed and went to bed. Ideally I need to armor up my archers, no idea if it's possible but we'll see; then again I dont have any gildar to spend
"The damage in early game is much too high relative to units' health. Either basic armaments get a nerf, or basic armor (and hp) get a buff. Didn't play enough at high level gear to have an opinion on that."
I agree with this assesment of the problem, although not so much the proposed solutions. Part of this problem arises from the feature of only providing hit point bonuses to normal units as they level up. I would much prefer to see some damage bonuses too, it would make leveling up your units more interesting at higher levels, and allow the hp/damage ratios to be better balanced at low levels.
necromancer hero.
Alchemy is already in the game. One thing people miss is that the elemental spell levels combine with each other to unlock spells as well. Alchemy is a great spell. Increased food from Air and Water is also a great one. I hope the Hiergamemnon has a complete spellbook at release so we can plan accordingly.
I am quite enjoying the beta, but then I pretty much loved WoM too.
I do have two things to suggest for improvement.
First, SPEED. I've said it before, but the game is SLOWWWW. I know that it's beta, and as a programmer the thing I hate to hear most is that a program is slow. That's the hardest thing to program for, in my experience.However, when it takes 10 seconds to react when I click on the end-of-turn event popup, the delay becomes insanely annoying. And the delay between clicking one unit's destination and switching to another unit has caused me to send units to the wrong place many times.
Second. In WoM you had the ability to select a specific unit in tactical combat and have it act when you selected it. PLEASE either bring this back, or put in an ability to move where your units will be positioned before starting tactical combat.
I have my sovereign with an army where the best unit is all but useless because it is a melee unit in the middle of all the others but goes first.All I can ever do with this unit for the first 2 or 3 tactical turns is move it; I cannot get it into melee range because it starts out in the second rank and almost completely surrounded, but acts before any other unit.
I need to be able to either let this unit go later, or move it to a different starting position.
Those said, the game is beautiful; the graphics are just incredible.And there are a lot of small differences that do add up to improvements. I can't wait to see the next beta release.
Hmm.
Nerfing attack (rather severely), making armor piercing only a late-game metal-based activity ....
AND boosting HP while also having attack increase slightly with level (a bit slower, okay perhaps a lot slower, than health) ... This would be awesome
First off, I am really enjoying playing the game this time around. Work hasn't allowed me to spend too much time on it, but what time I have spent has been a pleasant surprise after the last game.
Anyway, I have two comments. One is wistful thinking, the other is more feasible.
The one thing the game misses in war is the epic feel of Dominions - having a large army clash. I really wish someone would make a fantasy war game with a similar combat mechanism - you script a large mass of troops like a general would and then pray they execute. Dominions battles were epic in this way, and a ton of fun. THey don't rely on dexterity like an RTS, nor do they have the tactical squad feel of Age of Wonders or Elemental. So, I love the other epic aspects of FE, but getting to battles with a small number of units moving around bit by bit spoils the epic feel for me. I know that's not changeable, but in case you make another game....hope you give it some consideration.
The second thing is I still think the factions could use some more differentiation. If it were me, since you are making them all basically look human, I'd at least tie them to distinct cultures / civs that people can relate too. Much as Martin does with Summer Islanders - Africa, Dothraki - Ghengis Khan, types etc. or Ilwinter does with Mictlan, Tien Chi, Tir Na Nog, etc. It may be somewhat cliche but it gives some distinction / flavor and helps one imagine the race they are playing. Could then make more distinct units, race-specific spells, etc.
Update 3:
I won! Victory from what looked like a total defeat at the beginning of the game... whooohooo End of game stats here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/419211
2 things, holy cow what is that Dragon quest about... last part was 5 dragons plus an epic dragon; my 1500+ strenght army wirh Relias was owned in 2 turns (Dragons cast fear fear fear and some more fear then stumped my entire army). Reload-cheat ftw.
I lost my champions early on and was only able to find one more after extensive searching; in a whole once youév completed all quests and collected all goodies there really isnt much left to do other then fight.
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