Greetings!
Yesterday we released Elemental: Fallen Enchantress BETA 5-C. This build is our first pass at balance and UI enhancement.
Next week we will have a BETA 5-D which will focus almost exclusively on bug fixing and balancing as well as some new AI counter-strategies so those of you who have posted your game play strategies online (foolish humans! <g>). We are reaching the home stretch. We will also have a Beta 5-E. After that, we'll see where things stand.
Many of you have been in the beta for a very...very long time. I can't imagine the challenge it is to evaluate the game from the perspective of a typical PC gamer. But we're going to ask you, once again, to try to do just that:
Please go to: https://www.elementalgame.com/journals and vote on your impressions of the game in your hands.
We are very excited to see what players think.
These past two years have been wonderful. The community we have built together has been amazing and on behalf of the Stardock team, we really have enjoyed listening to your ideas, impressions and suggestions.
Like all Stardock games, 1.0 isn't the end of our journey. Even as I type, Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion v1.1 nears completion. Ideas and code snippets for FE expansions and successors float around. And there's some exciting things we hope to announce in the coming months.
We look forward to your opinions:
https://www.elementalgame.com/journals
Also guys, you might want to polish a few little things. As I was was loading a new game, there is a picture up of a dark wizard with a little skull, and he looks pretty cool, but you can actually see his skin poking through his robes. He is clipping through his robes, and this isn't animated, its a still picture, but in it you can see the clipping. Doesn't look good.
Well said Malsqueek. Could quibble slightly over some of your suggestions but overall I'm in agreement that FE is a good game now but it needs more work to become a great game.
Still too many crashes....
Balance is still all over the place....
Sorry, after beta-ing from the beginning, I can't get the current version to run on my XP box. That makes it the worst version ever. Even downloading the full version and reinstalling didn't help.
Magic's biggest issue, IMO, is that the only time I make a choice of magic is during character creation. I suppose there's a choice at level up, but it doesn't feel strategic, and there's so much randomness to when you get your spell level ups that they can't be planned for. It's not strategy, it's luck.
Contrast that to MOM or AOWSM, where you picked spheres (as you do with FE) at start up, but then each spell was individually researched from a choice in the spellbook. It felt strategic; do I pick a DD now, or something to help my cities? A summons?
Yes, you ended up with all the spells at the end anyway, just like in FE, but how you got there is way different, and much less rewarding and strategic.
@Winnihym: This thread contains some good suggestions to your concern.
Overall I'm liking the progress.
.982 is a great step forward. The unit balances are impressive and the tech tree runs much better now. I especially like the production changes. I didn't think you guys were listening, but there you go doing it again. I finally feel like I can play full games to test the later balances.
I'll agree that there is a lot of good stuff added to beta 0.982.
However, this has also been the beta with the most crashes I have ever had in one night.
I almost never crash. The game gets hung up, and I can't continue to the next turn. I can click on things, and I can save my game. But I will have to completely exit the game and open it back up and load the game from the save, and then it works fine.
You can still play the game with 1 unit in 0.982.
Same problems are still hanging around.
Maybe they're designing the game so that playing it with a single unit is an acceptable choice?
Afterall, you seem to continue to want to play that way...
I wonder if part of the reason it's playable with 1 unit has to do with the campaign? I agree it shouldn't be possible (otherwise the rest of the game isn't worthwhile), but it may need to be a post-1.0 issue since some of the changes are more radical.
I make cities just for something to do, but making troops is simply less efficient than rolling everything with my sov. Yes, I get you're sick of hearing me harp on the subject, which is why I didn't launch into a dissertation, but I felt that a small mention after the recent blanace pass was acceptable. We haven't had direct feedback on if playing with 1 unit is meant to be an "acceptable" choice (plus recent balance changes suggest not) and even if it's meant to be "an acceptable choice" right now it's not only that, it's also by far the most efficient strategy.
Now I wasn't intending to make a big deal about it, I just wanted to add my feedback that I felt the balance changes in 0.982 hadn't resolved the problem, and this thread and the "crunch time" thread seemed like the best places to do that. Did my brief comment really warrent a snarky response? I'm just trying to be constructive.
Frogboy thinks he has this one fixed -
https://forums.elementalgame.com/433274
I hope you get to play this game, it's really a lot of fun.
I don't think a normal user (I know I can't do it) could play that way.
There are certain exploits I can think of that allow this (troll charm for instance which is being changed). But someone getting through a game without building a city is pretty impressive - just like the guy who managed to win DOOM in like 15 minutes. But that doesn't mean the game needs to be changed to prevent that from being possible.
Ya, this is still mostly true. I wish I could get an AI to do it so that I could test ways to combat it. I think the best thing to do is to leave it in and balance some late game stuff to mop the floor with high level heroes. I know a strong archer army is quite effective against heroes. Teaching the AI to do this seems a good idea.
This completely flabbergasts me, Brad. It's not even difficult to win with 1 unit. I can knock out a game on hard in about 2 hours where I don't found a city and win with either master quest or by taking/razing every opponent city and going scorched earth and give you some screenshots and a save game if you like. Since you don't have to be bothered with running back to defend your own territory, I would argue that it's actually the easiest way to win, cause there's simply less bookkeeping and city babysitting to be done.
It doesn't take a troll charm, and it doesn't take kiting or tactical regen. All it takes is good equipment, which you get from goodie huts and lairs. You load up ~50 atk and ~30-40 def and you're practically untouchable. Its not even that I'm doing this as a challenge to myself, even when I *DO* found cities, they're just a hassle and I never even bother building troops, because my sov is constantly leaps and bounds more powerful than anything I'm capable of producing. Troops and cities just drag him down.
Seriously, your response is totally bewildering.
Well then all I can say is, congratulations. You're really good.
lol, that's about the best response you can have to something like that.
I have not seen that level of single unit winning in .982. Perhaps you could make a thread about it and show us your ingame progress?
I can make a full fledged thread of it monday or so, but for now you're more than welcome to have a look at my save game.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/86wa0oe31sm1c0o/Robb.EleSav
Sov is level 26, 60 atk, 43 def, 112 hps, 31 init, 132 accuracy, 68 spell resist. The world isn't even maybe half cleared, I expect to top out around level 35 or so.
Just got done auto-resolving every single fight in the wildland - I forget which one, mostly elementals with a storm dragon?
All my equipment is scavenged from goodie huts and monster lairs.
The thing is... I don't understand what the mystery is. I'm not like some super uber awesome player using my crazy cunning and l337 skills to defeat monsters that should be impossible. I'm just picking and choosing my battles, killing the mites & ruffians & wolves, and then banished ogres & darklings & plague stalkers and slowly working my way up and up and up and amassing slightly better and better gear and more and more levels.
Its just... its just not that hard! Pick and choose your battles, take all the +exp% traits when you can get them, and the world will cough up all the loot you need. I just don't see what the mystery is.
Good suggestion, Sean. I'd be interested in reading a post about that, CogBurn. I've seen a lot of posts about it, but seeing how you do it would be helpful.
I do think making towns more useful and interdependent with champions/sovereigns is a great goal for FE that would make it feel a bit more integrated.
I think a no city challenge might be fun. I will try this on hard tonight myself. I feel that I would have to get lucky on a lot of things though for this to work.
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