Yes, I'm making this thread for myself because there are many things I simply still do not understand with this game.
So ask your stupid questions here. If you know the answer to a stupid question, post it here as well and I will edit the main post.
Please note that the answers below are from beta testers and are based on their experiences with 0.86. Mechanics can and will change during beta, and some of them we might not fully understand at this point.
Edit: The information in this post is NOT updated since the release of Beta 0.90!
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City founding, leveling and development.
Q: How do you build a second city?A: You have to build a pioneer and find a spot that supports cities again; best way of doing that is activate the show yields button. Know that cities have to be at least 6 tiles apart from each other and that locations that allow for cities are really hard to find later in the game so expand early. The pioneer has two buttons, settle will build a new city and outpost will expand the influence area of an existing city by a 2 tiles in every direction square around the outpost. There is no limit on how far away an outpost can be from the city. [Karma to: DrAtomic1]
Q: When founding a city, does the grain/material values on the surrounding tiles matter?A: No, it has no impact what so ever. Pick the spot with the best values. Don't worry much about nearby special terrain items (shards, gold etc) as you can capture those through outposts, instead concentrate on getting the absolute best values you can for food and materials. Keep in mind you will need a minimum of seven grain (get some through nearby outposts!) to achieve a L5 city. [Karma to: Manii Names]
Q: Is there a way to the the tile values other than hovering over the settle button on a Pioneer?
A: In the upper right hand corner is a button, press it to have the yields displayed. Note that when you load a saved game it will become unselected and you have to press it again. [Karma to: Manii Names]
Q: What are outposts good for? Can't I just build another city?
A: Cities can only be build on tiles with grain, outposts can be built anywhere. Also, you might not want to build a city everywhere. Every extra city splits your faction prestige, which allows cities to grow faster. If you build a lot of cities, they will grow very slow. [Karma to: Heavenfall]
Q: Could someone please explain growth, grain, and city leveling? How do you check/estimate when a city will grow again and/or when they're out of grain to continue growth?
A: Grain provides food to feed your people. How much food is a function of your technology, I'll give some more details in a minute. Each person in your city consumes one food to survive, so if you want to achieve a L2 city you need at least 50 food, and 900 food for a L5 city. To get a bigger city you need more food to increase your base multiplier, and then you leverage that with more technology. IMPORTANT!!! There is also a Water/Air spell called Gentle Rain, which increases the food generation of your city by 20%. It can be Extremely beneficial to have either your Sovereign or some other hero able to cast this, and I actively work for it in every single game.
Potential Food Multipliers:
Base (+25).
Civics (+20): Watermill +10 (Kingdom only), Docks +10. Note you need a river for these, so when trying for a huge Metropolis build next to a river.
Restoration (+10): Just for researching you get +10, this also unlocks the ability to build Orchards (+1 Food) and Apiaries (+1 Food / +1 Gildar).
[Karma to: Manii Names]
Q: How can I tell when my city's/cities' Zone of Control (ZoC) will expand based on the prestige I have? What sorts of things increase (or decrease) prestige? Is the only function of prestige to increase my ZoC so I can see things better and have access to building resources?
A: Prestige is not directly related to your ZoC size. Prestige helps grow your cities by adding growth to them which makes them grow faster. Then, as your cities increase in level, they will spread more ZoC up until city level 3 (after that, there are no more ZoC gains from city level). The ZoC is updated the turn AFTER the city gains a level. [Karma to: Heavenfall]
Q: Other than changing the tax rate and building a few buildings (Gallows comes to mind), are there any other ways to deal with Unrest in cities? Do number of cities impact Unrest? How is Unrest calculated?
A: Unrest is generated 100% from taxes. Lower taxes is less unrest. You can impact it through buildings (Gallows, Prison, Town Hall) and spells (Calm or Bless City).
As a general rule I run at zero taxes for as long as possible. Keep your expenses low by not building unnecessary buildings or else destroying them after they are no longer needed. I will commonly build a barracks, crank out a bunch of troops, and then scrap the barracks to save the upkeep costs.
It's like this - early on normal taxes will give you 40% unrest but only generate like 2 gildars. I'd rather have zero unrest and slowly lose money. Raise money by selling stuff, go out and kill things and sell the loot, use said loot to keep your Empire going. The Merchant trait and gold mines can both help a bunch too. Sell the dogs, escape scrolls, fire resistance pots, sand golems etc. They are all worth quite a bit of cash and are of relatively little utility overall. Keep some spare weapons and armour, but when you have a ton of it sell that crap too. [Karma to: Manii Names]
Q: Are terrain bonuses present in this version FE? There was a post where Brad alluded to their existence. If so, how can we see them?
A: No
Q: Are there specific buildings to choose for each city level e.g. prison only appears when city levels to level 3, or is there a chance to get the option prison at both city level 2 and 3?
A: Improvements are specific to the city level (based on info in CoreAbilites.xml and from experience.) [Karma to: mmilleder]
Q: Is there any benefit to having idle (ZZzz...) production in cities, other than when you build units that do something with them? For instance, does it add Gildar? Research? Growth? Prestige? etc.
A: Some of the level up city improvements provide a bonus (gildar, research) if the city is idle, otherwise there is no benefit.
[Tactic] I will commonly use these cities for Pioneer production, and use them to make sure every last scrap of my claimed area is covered by my influence via outposts. This allows me to order people to leave and have them actually be gone. It also allows me to strategically nuke the bejabbers out of any invaders. [Karma to: Manii Names]
Resources
Q: Which resources are global and which are specific to a given city
A: The only resources which are truly local and can only be consumed locally are the grain resources. All of the others - Iron, Shards, Horses, Wargs, Crystal - go into a global pool and can be used by any city.
Q: What is the importance of iron ore? How does it impact gameplay?
A: Iron ore is used to make metal weapons and armour. For example you need one iron to equip a figure with a Boar Spear. If your unit (such as my current Spiky Armadillos) has five figures then you'll need five iron to train that unit. Metal armour also uses metal, and there are city improvements and racial traits which decrease the amount of metal used.
Q: How is the Crystal resource used to make magical weapons/armor?
A: When you are designing units you can assign them magic weapons, armour and special equipment, all of which will require one or more crystal to construct. Basically its uses are identical to iron, you just can make different and better things with it. [Karma to: Manii Names]
Q: When you build on a mine inside an outpost, does it cost anything?
A: In the next update (after 0.86) mines will cost 10 gold. [Karma to: Frogboy]
Unit/Sovereign stats, spells and abilities
Q: What is accuracy good for? Is it just archers?
A: Accuracy is used on all attacks with an equipped weapon (Including wands). Accuracy increases by 2 points per level up. My best guess at how this is calculated is: Accuracy/Dodge (needs citation) as a percentage, with the maximum hit rating being 95%. [Karma to: CdrRogdan]
Q: What is intelligence good for? Does it have an affect on spell casters?A: Intelligence helps your spell ability and your spell resistence. [Karma to: Frogboy]
Q: Other than the spells that come out of the magic research tree how does my sovereign gain new spells? How do I determine which spells my sovereign starts with ?
A: Your spellbook is determined by the ranks you have in the various schools of magic. For example if you know Death Magic III you will have access to Antipathy, Berserk, Blindness, Curse, Drain Life and Wither. Other than in the Magic tree there is no researching of spells, you get what you get and that's what you get. As you level up and gain more ranks in the various spell lines you will gain access to more spells.
The only way to gain new spell lines (ie you want Fire and did not start with it at all) is through the Steal Spirit spell. You sacrifice a champion and your sovereign steals one spell rank from the now deceased champion, as long as the rank you steal is greater than what you already have. Example you have Air II, Death II and Water II. If you sacrifice somebody with Fire II you will gain ONE (1) count it ONE (1) rank in Fire magic. Say you later on sacrifice somebody who has Air II, Earth II, and Fire II. You could choose to gain one rank in Earth (Earth I) or one rank in Fire (Fire II, since you already have Fire I). [Karma to: Manii Names]
Q: Is there a way to predict the maintenance costs of units generated? Or is there a rule of thumb to apply?
A: It is 10% of the production cost. [Karma to: Manii Names]
Q: How much does normal units actually improve from levelling. Is there an formula, or do I just have to look at stats?
A: They gain greatly in HP (I don't know the formula but CON plays a big part in it). Accuracy goes up by +2 per level, Spell Resistance and Spell Mastery at +1 per level. These values are true for heroes as well.
Q: Will adding the trait Accuracy to my archers make them do more damage
A: The Accuracy trait is essentially equal to +1.5 levels worth of to-hit bonuses. Each figure in a unit has a chance to hit the target, when you attack something they will each make their own individual check to see if they were successful. More accuracy means you're more likely to hit and do damage. If you're building a serious military town try to choose the Training facility at town L2, as it will provide a free and automatic +5 accuracy upgrade for every unit built there. There are also some major city buffs which can greatly enhance the combat effectiveness of newly trained troops as well.
Q: Can the injuries a champion received after losing battle be removed?
A: Currently, they can be removed by using a potion that is sometimes available as a quest reward.
AI
Q: Are monsters more, less or equally likely to attack your city if their lair is taken over by the ZoC?
A: Probably not. Frogboy has alluded to them being fairly intelligent when it comes to deciding to attack or not. They will never simply wander into your city and start a fight. So, monsters only attack or move against you when they think they have a chance to win. I believe that what you are seeing is that the defenders of a goodiehut are often STRONGER than the units a monster lair spawns over time. Therefore, they will act more aggressively. [Karma to: Heavenfall]
UI
Q: Are there any hotkeys?
"Control+N" will start a new game with your preset choices (Sovereign, faction, difficulty etc). Note doing this a bunch of times in a row will crash FE. I suggest that once you find a starting spot you like that you save the game as "Starting" or some such, then exit out completely and relaunch FE with your saved game.
"PrintScreen" saves screenshots in <My Documents>\My Games\FallenEnchantress\ScreenShots. It is also stored temporarily in memory, so if you're making edits in Paint to post here on the forums you can just switch to Paint and paste it in for immediate use. I do this a lot BTW, quite a few of my posts have graphics in them that I made in this manner to help illustrate one point or another.
Pressing "Tab" on the strategic map will select the next unit which still have movement points remaining.
Pressing "Enter" ends your turn.
Pressing "Space" will end the turn of a unit in the tactical map.
Pressing "Space" on the strategic map will end the turn of the currently selected unit, setting it's movement to zero and removing it from the 'Tab' queue. However if said unit is currently on a long journey pressing "Space" in this manner will cause it to not move at all this turn.
"1" through "4" are shortcuts for various views. "1" is the skewed view you start the game with. "4" is zoomed out all the way with the cloth map.
"Control+S" quick-saves the game. I have had extremely bad luck with reloading these games however. Use at your own risk.
When a city is selected, "B" brings up build side bar. "T" brings up unit training side bar. "Escape" will close these side bars. You can hit "B" or "T" to switch back and forth between them. Hitting "D" will pop up the city details window (which the escape key won't close).
When an individual hero is selected, "E" brings up equip window. "T" brings up trade window if another hero is close by.
Q: How can I identify Kingdom versus Empire units in the UI?
A: There is no good way, but by color (each faction has their own color) and once you see them, you can talk to them - actually their leader, and you likely know which side he/she is on. [Karma to: mmilleder]
Combat mechanics and Damage types
Q: Combat mechanics. How do they work? Which values are compared against one another? How are rolls are generated from stats and compared against one another to get hits, misses, clinks and the like?
A: This is to the best of my knowledge.
When rolling to hit in melee, for the attacker's accuracy and the defender's dodge are compared. The game selects one number between 0 and the stat. Whoever rolls higher wins, which means it lands if it's the attacker, or "dodge" if it's the defender. A unit with multiple units roll several times, once for each member. So a unit with 7 members may hit 3 swings in one attack, and 4 would then be dodged. This is not displayed, it simply shows the damage from those 3 hits.
For ranged attacks, accuracy is rolled against "Dodge against ranged" instead. It is also possible that Dodge against ranged is added to the Dodge stat when trying to dodge ranged attacks, I do not know this.When casting a spell that can be resisted (note: many can't), then the attacker uses Spell Mastery and the defender uses Spell Resist. The same roll is performed as when trying to hit with accuracy vs dodge.
As for how much an attack hits for, the following formulas are used:Max Damage = Attack * (Attack / (Attack + Defense)) Min Damage = Max Damage / 2A number is rolled between the minimum and the maximum damage. Therefore, the average damage is just in between minimum and maximum damage as far as I know. Again, just like accuracy and dodge, each member in a unit will roll their own damage. So a unit with 2 members that hit twice will not deal double damage, they will simply perform two attacks that deal normal damage.
There are also resistances in the game. For example, you can have 25% fire resistance. This resistance value is removed from the final damage, after all other things have been taken into consideration. It is possible to have 100% resistance, in which case the unit becomes immune to that damage.
If you are running an un-modded game, in beta 0.86, physical attacks (cutting, pierce, blunt) only have defense values from armor. Magical attacks (fire, cold, lightning, poison) only have resistances. For crits to happen, the game looks at your accuracy vs dodge roll. If your accuracy hit was 10 or more above the dodge roll (above the "threshold"), you may crit. Then, the game checks your crit chance. That is a straight up percentage number. Ie, if you have 20 crit and your accuracy roll was 10 or more above the dodge, you have 20% chance to crit that particular attack. Also, you will notice that trained units can never crit. I believe that spells cannot crit, but ranged attacks and melee attacks can. Note that this kind of threshold mechanic means that accuracy increases your opportunity to crit, and a monster with high dodge will be doubly difficult to crit on, even if you manage to hit it. There is also a few items and traits that make it so that the unit cannot be critted.
The italic parts are things I'm not sure about. [Karma to: Heavenfall]
Q: What is the difference between blunt and cutting damage?
A: Cutting, blunt and pierce damage are completely different types of attack. A weapon usually has only one type of physical damage, and may have additional magical damage such as fire or poison. What type of physical damage is relevant when attacking enemies with different types of defense. Plate armor, for example, is particularly good at defending against blunt attacks. Chainmail is better against cutting damage, and leather it not good against anything in particular. Note that an armor item may say "+20 defense" and "+5 blunt defense". This means that the item has 25 Blunt defense in total, and 20 cutting and piercing defense. [Karma to: Heavenfall]
Q: How does the existing initiative system work and how are "rounds" a part of this process? How can this info be viewed in the UI?
A: Initiatives are used to determine how often a unit gets a turn in battle. A unit with 20 initiative would get twice as many turns as a unit with 10 initiative. [Karma to: Frogboy]
Q: How is a unit's power rating calculated? And how is this value used if you use auto-resolve instead of playing out the tactical battle?
A: The combat rating of a unit is just a rough guide we use to get an approximation of a unit's non magical power. It isn't actually used. Auto-resolve simply plays a simplified version of tactical battles off screen. [Karma to: Frogboy]
Other
Q: What things can I do to improve my relations with other opponents other than crush them with my armies?
A: In 0.86 you can make economic, trade, non-aggression, and alliance treaties with them. These show up in the relations screen as improving your relation. Presumably there will be more options once diplomacy is developed further. [Karma to: Publius of NV]
This has been a excellent thread, hopefully it is updated/corrected for the new build as it sounds like a ton of changes are coming down the pipe.
I expect we'll make a new thread, one where beagle pictures will be prevalent!
Can you create that thread Manii when the time comes? You're the one who deserves the karma here anyway, not me.
Question: Is there a source which indexes spells against school of magic and level required to cast?
EDIT: It would also be good to know if some spells are not available to some factions.
Only spells I found that are unavailable to factions are death and life based spells.
Also earth mastery (lvl 5 spells) and some research gives a "Revive the land spell" to kingdom factions, which for empire factions is... something similar, I wouldn't call it mutually exclusive though, they just made 2 spells to change the flavor a bit.
As for the spellbook, I would point to:https://www.elementalgame.com/fallen-enchantress/spellbookbut as there is a new beta about to be release, and the spellbook already seemingly a bit out of sync, meaby it won't be accurate at all after the beta.
Sincerely~ Kongdej
Thank you Kongdej. Unless I missed something that is about half the answer I was asking to receive. I did not find an index of spells vs; level required to cast. Also, I am wondering if there are more prerequisite limited spells like "Aura of Commerce."
I want Frogboy's secret spellbook - hundreds of spells.
Gah, Quoting rarely works for me!.Elrhamlin, look at this.
http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/3815/screenshotwd.png
I am hovering my mouse over the little blue icon, where there is a tooltip to say water level 2.
The Current Index is not "complete", Aura of Commerce is not included for example, another example is 2 master earth magics "Birth of Summer" and "Bloom of Twilight" is only available after said research is being discovered, and having access to "Level 5 Earth Magic" (Making lvl 5 earth magic really limited to people who haven't researched down the magic tree).
Q. How do improvements that give bonuses based on "materials" work?
Do those materials need to be in the city building the improvement? IE does an iron mine need to be present and built on to provide the +3?
Or is it empire wide? IE I have 2 iron mines, 3 gold mines = 5?
Also what constitutes a "material"? Is it only iron mines? Does it include crystal? Does it include grain?
Materials are different to iron, and to gold. They are present at sites you can build cities in the same way grain is. There is a resource (clay pits) which can add a material to a city.
Production is derived from materials. At the start of the game you get 5 production for each material. Various technologies and buildings add to the amount of production you get from each material. A workshop for instance adds 3 production per material. The buildings only effect the city that they are built in. Technologies effect all of your cities.
*bump* please sticky this
I wrote a quick note so i can follow the thread tks.
- When you destroy an enemy city yields don't appear on the ground, does it mean that each each faction needs a certain type of terrain to build ?
- If a city containing a World Achievement is destroyed, is the achievement lost or can it be built in another city ?
- I have a 11 attack axe with 9 cutting and 2 fire attack, how does it work ? Does fire adds to attack (2+11) if the target is not protected against fire ? Does cutting add to attack (9+11) ?
- If a city containing a World Achievement is destroyed, is the achievement lost or can it be built in another city ?- I have a 11 attack axe with 9 cutting and 2 fire attack, how does it work ? Does fire adds to attack (2+11) if the target is not protected against fire ? Does cutting add to attack (9+11) ?
"When you destroy an enemy city...."
If you capture a city and RAZE it, the ground around which it was placed will be considered useless terrain (most of the time atleast).You will not be able to refund a city there again.
"I have a 11 attack axe with 9 cutting and 2 fire..."the 11 attack is "usually" the combined attack force of all elements in the attack damage chain, so the 11 is the 9 + 2 to a COMBINED 11 damage.The smaller damage is there to show you what types of damage the weapon deals, There are special armor's that improve the armor rating versus Cutting attacks.
"If a city containing a World Acheivement..."
No it will not be buildable again (I just tested by RAZING the city), that is contrary to local "Faction Wonders" where you can build one per faction, if you delete one of those, or raze the city in which they are located, they will be buildable in another city.But "World Wonders/World Acheivement" will NOT be buildable again.
this is unfair ! a city uses only the yield coming from ONE SINGLE TILE but all the tiles of the ZOC become useless if you raze it ...
9+2=11 all right, didn't see that
world wonders not being buildable again seems legit
thanks Kongdej
No problem Ihetre
sincerely~ Kongdej
Actually the values given for each tile are a combination of that tile and the 8 immediately surrounding tiles.
Custom-designed units, with upgradable weapons and armour: do these units automatically upgrade for free when you research a new tier of weapon / armour?
Improving my research doesn't seem to be helping me at all. Is it because I have taken over too many cities? What good is taking over cities if your growth rate is slowed to a crawl? How about an option to combine units into one? If I lose 3 guys from one and 2 from the other I can form one that has five. Maybe keeping the lowest experience level of the two as a penalty. Why are the Build and Train queues emptied when you take over a city. Usually people don't care who owns the city as long as the garbage gets picked up on time. Why can a monarch disband his kingdom when I am about to destroy him? I did the work I deserve the spoils of war. Thanks for your help.
Is their a keyboard shortcut to select all the units of a city and walking them out at the same time? How do I reform a group that I walked into a city with? I have been selecting each one and reforming the party out side of the city limits. Even a shift + left click (select all units) then right click to select the tile they go into or attack into would be handy. Thanks.
When I upgrade a units weapons why can't I choose to just give them leather? Why do I have to upgrade them to the latest and greatest available. Sometimes it's too expensive.
research works quite well, numbers change over time, for example +5 food per grain raises the population of your cities, but sometimes you need to build an improvement in your city to profit of the advantage researched, I find the research tree difficult to read, it seems that just by researching the node things will improve, but you have to actually build something before (not sure I was able to make it clear ...)
this is a false impression, they gave too much hype to the "faction prestige" system, which works quite well to scare inexperienced players (like me ...), but there are several buildings and some research that increase prestige, so it is limiting only during the first 200 turns
units heal over time
good question, having your town conquered two turns before the end of a 40 turns worth building is infuriating, you conquer the city back the following turn and have to rebuild it from scraps
because they are old geezers
you're welcome
agreed, we are in dire need of shortcuts
also agreed
but then both are out of topic, these are features the devs should implement, maybe open a new thread ?
I would like to point out that this thread will not be updated further. Feel free to keep using it though.
If someone wants to start a new thread for the current beta, feel free to do so as well.
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