The Beta 2 series of Fallen Enchantress is where we begin to introduce the bread and butter differences between the different factions. Beta 2-B, which, I’m sad to say, won’t be out until at least the 22nd, will reintroduce players to Magnar and Gilden. We’ll be talking a lot about the differences in an upcoming journal.
Broadly speaking, each faction will receive unique equipment, weapons, armor, items, improvements and abilities. While most of our focus will be on making each faction distinct in how you play, we will be working to make them visually different as well. A Wraith city will look different from a Trog city which will look different from a Krax city and so on.
In the meantime, let us know which faction you tend to play as the most and how you would like to see them differentiated from the others. What would make them feel special to you?
Vote here:
https://www.elementalgame.com/journals
If everyone keeps saying they want elements from FFH in, alignment was a nice part of that. I, personally, don't see what the big deal is...
And as far in the current system where Tarth has a high Con and slightly lower Dex and Str, I can get behind that based on the lore. It is a brave and unique story the Tarth have. I initially aimed for them to be more elvish with lower Str and high Dex, but now that just feels like a carbon copy and a cop out. It would be much better to have high Con, but make sure the difference is set to about +33% Hp of units they are fighting. Maybe a special Gladiator Arena could give units the extra Dex and Str in just one city. So you would train all your elite troops there. The cool thing about Tarth should be that every city can train good troops for general defense, but their cities should have a growth penalty not based on city number. That will keep with the lore of them being the best Kingdom soldiers, but too few in number to seize power. In general, as Tarth, I train archers and scouts in one city; tanks and fighters in another; and mages in another. Archers require less production and can be trained by my smaller cities with little production. Tanks and fighters are trained in my city that gives the best stat bonuses and has the highest production. Mages are trained in my research cities that offer Intelligence bonuses. It would be great if Tarth had a special building that could focus one city for tanks and fighters, leaving the rest to train archers and scouts. Mages should be less usable as Tarth. For them, the Magic Tree should be more about poison, stat boosts, and enchanted weapons and armor.
Well first of all, rather than an unoriginal D&D alignment I'd rather see something more akin to Alpha Centuari's social engineering. You knew where each faction was going anyways for the most part, but it made it more flavorful. You might have choices of the type of government, religion, values, ethics, or attitudes towards implementing a magical society.
As for factions I play I alternate. My first game is generally always Tarth with unmodified Lady Irane. Then I go Gilden or Pariden with unaltered sovs. I usually end up playing Tarth or Pariden with a custom sov because I like those races but their sovereigns need work. I've made a lot of comments in the beta forums previously comparing them.
Tarth should get a bonus to all warfare research because of their gladiator history. Pariden should get a bonus to magic research and the Ironeers should get a bonus to civics research. Tarth needs a much better starting tech and their Sovereign should not be gimped with a rather useless (for an Archer) Tarthan trait for a sovereign trait. The Tarthans I feel should be a bunch of Pseudo-Anarchist-Libertarians who are about united survival and don't have time for good/evil or law and chaos. Their Gladiator history should give them exotic weapons to develop, but they're not so good in groups and don't have large group tactics and are unable to develop the logistical support needed for large fighting groups. They should rely more on Champions and small units. Victory through questing, military or diplomacy but definitely not magic. They would probably oppose anyone who appears to be working towards the Spell of Making. Seanw3 feedback thread has a lot of other great ideas for Tarth.
The Ironeers are Empire builders and believe in the power of technology and a united society. Strong men with heavy armor and heavy melee weapons. Armored Knights in Fortified Castles. I see them not being as good with magical equipment and their enchantments come from spells and not crystal. No magic staves and a weakened spell resistance I could see as being major downsides. They are big on economy, signing trade treaties with anyone they can. Low taxation might be disabled for them. I see them to tend towards turtling and working towards a diplomacy, quest, or magic victory.
Procipinee is on a good start with her crown and the new summoner changes. They should focus on magic and the Spell of Making but be willing to go for a diplomatic victory if possible. By the way, why is it warfare needs civic techs but you don't need to know how to make axes to make magic axes? Anyways more summons for Procipinee is great and more Champions coming to serve her (Maybe a starter quest that gives a champion as a reward?). Procipinee should be a heavy supporter for all her Champions and armies. I also see her enchanting her cities to be more productive. Best mage schools in the land and their best army units should be mage staff casters. Any diplomacy favoring magic development would be golden for her. Special spells might be additional summons or low to no upkeep cost enchantments (No cost enchantments should be limited in the number you can have active). A spell to turn death shards into life shards would be good. Also, she might need a way to generate crystal resources as they are somewhat rare.
It would be rather neat if your Arena had a chance to generate a Champion if the number of champions in your kingdom was too low.
Amen !
Please be very careful about spawning ever more of the dreaded "Out of Memory" ( OOM ) crashes. I love the FE Beta, thus far, and have had a lot of fun playing a number of games on the small map. But the most common crash/bug that I encounter are OOM crashes. I am speaking for myself, of course; and I have to acknowledge that I have an older, rather puny, dual core system.
But (as I said on another thread previously), once Stardock gets past its core audience of 4x gamers, fantasy/war-game players, and deep-strategy game players, you are also going to want to sell your Creation to a whole lot of more casual game players, who may well have (on average) older, weaker, slower, and less robust systems.
If you can sell Fallen Enchantress to even a small fraction of this other audience, you will have a huge hit on your hands!
Your Beta audience is providing ALL of your feedback now. At some future point, you will also want a game that appeals to (and is viable for) a significant portion of that other ( "the rest of us" ) audience. Good programming can get you there!! Please don't over-design this game so that triviality trumps viability/playability.
What about giving certain types of equipment reduced encumbrance for the various factions as well? Bows, light blades, and light armor for Tarth allowing them better overall initiative but forcing a less toe-to-toe style.
Altering the numbers favorably would help nudge the unit builds without forcing the player's hand. Not sure exactly how the computer makes its choices, but it should help the computer optimize as well.
As a Lawful Kingdom, it would make sense that they would have less unrest from taxes. Chaotic nations should hate taxes. That would be an interesting aspect when choosing a faction. Neutrals should be more likely to trade with anyone, while Chaotics and Lawfuls stick to their side of the fence. Perhaps Chaotics are unlikely to trade at all, preferring no roads that invite conquerors.
I would like;
Umberdroths for Umber
Where do Capitar fit into this? I'm assuming Neutral Evil or Lawful evil.
They were the original enslavers of one of the factions afterall, and seem to love money and "structure".....seems like they embody all the evils of capitalism. Pain profiteering anyone?
I think lawful evil would fit.
Personally I think the Capitar would fit into Lawful Neutral... but then again I also think Tarth would be Chaotic Neutral.
Lawful Good to down to chaotic evil?
Hehe is it my idea or where those ideas taken straight from Galactic Civilizations?
Nice why not use something which was already successful in the past
In his counting house, counting out his money.
This is the greatest news. Although I'm not expecting miracles, it is still a vital point that I feel fall in the background often when discussing faction differentiation.
I agree also. This is great news! I'm sure that visual distinctness will appeal to a lot of people. And Good/evil alignment, although cliche maybe, will also. I have never heard anyone complain about this for games like Master of Magic or Age of Wonders. If you have to change the lore a bit for it, so be it.
I think this direction will make sure the game will be interesting for a broader audience than just the hardcore turn-based strategy fans.
I think it is amusing how the figures closer to the bottom and the right (more "evil", more "chaotic") look more like textbook Hollywood villians or alien lifeforms. Since the world of FE obviously only has humanoids as sapient life forms capable of building societies (as opposed to a race of arachnoids or fungus or gases or toothbrush-like crystalline brassier-washers), a slightly more subtle visual distribution would be in order.
Such a matrix could help a lot to setup fractions initial diplomatic relationship (diagonals prohibited). Sitting in the middle as true neutral would obviousley help a lot to trade and peacefully coexist with half of the alignements, while still being pretty acceptable to the other four.
I voted for Pariden, although I generally use a custom faction. My custom factions are usually Amarians or Wraiths by race.
I worry, like some others, that the faction is getting lost/swamped by the race. I don't mind having some nice standard factions but please don't squeeze the fun out of making custom factions. I suspect you are skimping on your coding work by coding behaviour to race rather than being effected by (faction/sovereign) traits. I hope not because that will leave room for custom races which the CPU will 'understand'. Otherwise faction customisation will be like choosing a red or green hat... (also applies to any strategic effects of sovereign customisation...)
Pariden should have a very large main city. The rightful capital of the world! Not sure how this is to be accomplished. Extra prestige would grow all Paridens cities and not just the capital - so maybe the starting city gets counted as 2 or 3 cities when prestige gets divied up for growth? A vertical faction but a centralised one as well. Maybe a (very) high mana cost spell for extra growth? Also the unique ability to potentially get a level 6 city.
Resolyn has extra Death spells but via faction trait. As a race they could have a spell to control enemy units (or even stacks?) with a mana upkeep cost like an summons. Didn't their sovereign figure this out to get power? Probably don't want it to work on champions or monsters for balance reasons. Also access to more potent cursing abilities, maybe enchantments which reduce grain and material numbers (yes, grain/material not merely food/production). Or an expensive spell to kill poplulation in enemy cities.
I'd rather have graphical assets devoted towards more summoned/allied creatures than specific buildings for each nation. If you can do both, it would be even better, but the complete lack of anything interesting to summon is a great problem at the moment. I think faction differentiation could be achieved with a much cheaper approach (like large bonus/malus in a few areas, and some specific traits).
Having a few buildings and weapons reserved for each faction is cool, I just hope you don't overdo it with faction specific asset.
Who are these Resolyn everybody talks about and why do people obsess about an aligment chart? Aligment charts have been always been a guide, not a rule. Old school Paladins are ruled by class and not the aligment, so they could act like ass if they wanted... just would lose class stuff and (this for everybody) even get an aligment shift if most of their actions don't match regularly with their declared aligment.
Plus that pic can be just an example. The XMLs only have tag for morality (which if it works, I don't know how or where), not adherence to stablished social order (which if the chart were to be serious, they would need to add tag for that too).
From the in-game text:
"The people of Resoln are called Wraiths by some... monsters by others. They are neither man nor Fallen, but creatures of dark sorcery and magic, transformed by the spell that gave Ceresa power. They are bound to her by that spell, a bond that cannot be broken even by the most powerful of enchanters."
They have Death Worship, which gives the empire access to Ceresa spells (i.e., Infection, Corruption, Graveseal, and Dirge of Ceresa).
I them.
Edit: They're also True Neutral on the alignment picture... And (potential spoiler ) their leader, Oracle Ceresa, can be found on the main page next to the text "the world's most powerful sorceress will destroy the world unless you stop her" (additional spoiler... I won't stop her).
In game, there is no good/evil rating on factions. I just like that meme going around. People are certainly capable of putting together their own subjective views on the relative virtues of each faction.
After all, in SWTOR, I play a Sith Lord. And from my point of view, the Jedi are evil...
I know the instructions for this post said "tell us how to make your favorite group more special," but I have a special place in my heart for Magnar as well as Resoln. I'm not sure what that says about me.
I would like to see a couple unit abilities for the empire... Not sure if these would make the most sense as items, traits, or champion / sov abilities, but I want to throw the ideas out anyway. I like to think of Magnar as awful slavelords.
Abilities:
Taskmaster. Strategic ability. Deal 1 damage to each unit in the army (e.g., a stack with 9 guys would take 9 damage), the army gains 1 additional move this round. Usable on your armies only. Does not affect Sovereign.
Slavedriver. Tactical ability. Deal 1 damage to each unit in stack, affected stack gains +5 initiative. May not be used on your Sovereign.
Capture. Tactical ability, melee range. The attacker subdues and enslaves the defender, dealing regular melee damage. In addition, any unit who falls to this ability is captured as for the glory of Magnar. Humanoids are captured as slaves, providing population (1 / slain unit) to the nearest city. Monsters are captured and sold as novelties, providing gold for the empire.
Yeah, but who are those Resolyn people talks about?
I think you refer to them as Resolyn if you're trying to be diplomatic and not say "those crazy, magic-fueled monsters from the east."
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