With v1.2 just about ready to go out, it's time to think about v1.3.
Before people start making feature requests, I would like to emphasize what I'd like v1.3 to be about: Playability glitches.
A playability glitch is hard to really classify. It's not a crash. It's some feature that doesn't work as you'd expect or as you would assume was intended. And if you play a game for hundreds of hours, they become maddening.
So what I would like to use this post for is to ask the regulars here to post five (and only five so that people have to put some thought into what really bugs them) things you'd like to see us "fix" about Fallen Enchantress.
I'll post my 5 later in the thread but I don't want to bias things with my own pet peeves.
!!! Update !!!
We read through this thread carefully and tried to implement as many of these things as possible. Here are a few of the things that got special attention for 1.3 which should be going into internal beta soon:
That's not the only change in 1.3. There's the usual assortment of bug fixes and balance changes. But those the above are the things that got the most engineering hours.
How about we just concentrate one the one thing that is personally keeping me from playing this game(and i have heard others not playing for the same reason)?
DUMB AI, combat and strategic
Look at games like Eador - this is an example of how to make a good combat AI as well as the whole tactical system being great, on a pretty large field with strategic tiles that matter, etc. And this is a game that was made by just a couple of people.
I know that's a rather shocking suggestion but I'm gonna go with it anyway.... Maybe hire a dedicated AI guy?
Thanks for taking the time and asking the opinion of us players & beta testers. I believe I speak for all of us when I say 'that we really appriciate being included in this process'.
That comment surprised me.
As is, AI cities receive full militia defense (and catapults) every battle. The player can't attack the city several times in the same round because the city defense is replenished for each battle. This forces the player to build the death stack of heros in order to one shot these impenetrable cities.
Compounding the issue is the fact that players player cities don't even follow the same rules. In those cases, miltia defense only exists for the first battle, even if no miltia is lost. Subsequent battles result is no additional help from those would-be defenders...
I see miltia defense to operate as follows:
At the start of each round, the militia in a city is replenished to it's capacity. During the turn, if the city is attacked once, whatever militia units are lost or wounded should be remembered so that if a subsequent battle occurs, the defending status continues from where it left off...ie....has the same killed and wounded units. By this reasoning, a city could hold up against multiple assaults, yet it's forces deminish and will eventually cave to a superior foe.
As for my 5:
#1:
Roads. I really like the concept of auto-roads between two points. It removes the tedious, mundane, road building one tile at a time. But the process still feels lacking. Imo, an element of control should still exist as to where you want the roads to be built.....not on a tile by tile basis....but on a location to location basis. There could be cases where I don't want two cities connected with a road....perhaps it gives too much benefit to a nearby opponent.
I still think roads should be buildable items from a city's build queue.....enchantable too if it can be programed. Though....more essence may be required if another dimension of enchantments are produced.
#2:
The Path of the Govenor just does not work. You need to keep him in the city to gain bonuses....but you need him out of the city to gain experiance. Something needs to be done to fix this. I would think that any unit in a city should be able to gain experiance over time.....just at a much slower rate than those seeing combat.
#3:
UI for loot items. This frustrates me. The only options given are to equip the item (without knowing what it does), or to 'ok' the item (and have to search for your hero again to see what the item does). Please please change the UI popup to be a three-pronged menu: 'Ok' to stay the same. 'Use' to equip/consume the item without detail. Lastly 'Equip' to open up the equip screen so that you can explore the item and decide what you want to do with it.
#4:
Influence. There needs to be more active and apparent generic uses for the stuff. I've previously mentioned in another thread that heroes should cost influence (with incremental cost increases) instead of gildar and I still think that's a really good idea. It actively gives purpose to influence, giving the player a strategic choice: Have another hero OR have more influence against your opponents. Also, actually knowing what the influence is doing for you in terms of diplomacy would be a really good addition too. Maybe in the trade screen have a color coded parenthesis showing the discount that you are receiving in account of the influence you have.
#5:
Razing. Only thing I'd like to mention here is that everyone should be playing by the same rules. Either AI and player can insta-raze OR AI and player must wait 5 turns. Just have it consistent please.
1) Sea travel (possibly explore/conquer a couple mysterious islands)
2) Minor factions (good, bad and the ugly)
3) Improve diversity in regards to faction chances of winning (so many games Lord Markin and Lord Relias dominate other factions - this gets really old)
4) Improve the strength of city defenders - Catapults are too weak - The city defenders should be equiped with the latest equipment resaerched
5) The mid to late game needs to be improved (by the time you research some really cool techs the games has already been decided (in most games, I find this to be the case on most difficulty levels). I think this is because only a couple of AI factions are too powerful and/or other AI factions are too weak. Lord Markin and Lord Relias seem to always dominate. This ruins the game imo.
Great Game.....Just needs some tweaking!
Suggestion on a Path of the Governor Fix.
Heroes should unlock a Governor's Mansion that can be built in each city- that gives an XP amount per turn for units Governing (maybe limited to path of the Governor). That XP bonus ups with Ereog/Breon techs, or a better building unlocks with each of those techs. It should be a significant building to build (equivalent to a butchery), but not limited to one per faction.
As for roads, I'm fine with roads being auto-built. That said, roads shouldn't be constructed all at once, it should be gradual. That said, Path of Governor hero in town should increase the rate, and Road Building increase it even more. Also, add an "Enchanted Roads" enchant for Earth Masters that makes it instant as a global faction enchant.
It would be neat in the expansion if a monster could destroy roads (new mid-game bandit monster perhaps)
This is an amazing idea. Another tip of the hat off to Parrotmath. Level 4 & Level 5 cities gaining essence would be a very strong motivation to encourage building few strong citied empires as an alternative to many weak citied empires.
Top 5 Playability Glitches?
#1: I would like movement paths that show the number of turns to get to that location before you move https://forums.elementalgame.com/434017
#2: I would like an improved empire tree which includes highlighting the currently selected unit/town. https://forums.elementalgame.com/434355
#3: I would like an undo (or buyback) button in the shop https://forums.elementalgame.com/437655
#4: I would like the AI to be more intelligent about buying stuff for its sovereign. Stop buying greaves! https://forums.elementalgame.com/435604
#5: I would like governors to earn XP/turn by being in a city
Bonus #6: I know I was only supposed to list 5, but another thing that really bugs me is caravans getting in the way. For example, if you try to click on a tile with a caravan in it, 1) you are unable to move there and 2) it initiates a diplomacy dialogue. Argh.
(Sorry for my copy/paste from other posts but this is better than trying to explain such things in a language that I can't scribe correctly)
#1: I would like movement paths that show the number of turns to get to that location before you move (HOMM / CIV style as said in previous replies)
#3: I would like the AI to be more intelligent about horses and wargs : AI should not stock mounts in it's purse but instead it should give them to the troops
#4: I would like to see the real terrain type on EACH tile on the map. No forests looking like plains because the goodie hut or the mobs there have disappeared. No construction on rivers because the tile is, in fact, a plain ... and so on. You can see lots of these issues on the handmade maps (Anthys etc.) and the random maps.
#5: I would like you to consider the "gameplay" as a pleasure, not a competition. Early city spam has no interest, this is not fun, I don't think it's important to nerf it. You have lots of work to do, put this settling debate aside
Once again, please forgive my poor english. And many thanks for offering me this game, based on my Elemental licence (I gave up with this game very early, I was very disappointed but it's allmost forgotten now !)
To all : please explain what's the level of difficulty of the games you play when you say "AI sucks". Playing for 3 weeks now with expert/ridiculous, both on World and AI Players settings, I don't think that AI really sucks. Not when I am attacked by one ennemy on 3 fronts by 6 or more stacks of 9 troops each (yes, 2 or 3 stacks on each front, at least). It's far from perfect, I agree with that, but I've often seen situations that were strategically very complicated, and that were most of the time well managed by my "ridiculous" ennemies. UI, game mechanics and mapmaking have to be polished first, imho.
There are some great posts here. Thank you very much!
I am very surprised at how many are feature requests. There are threads in which people state, as if it's a fact, that FE is "gane breakingly buggy" and so I was kind of hoping this thread would list some of these bugs since we don't find FE to be buggy.
Remember, this isn't a feature request thread, it's a glitch fix thread. Things that you find frustrating (like path finding that takes a unit through the woods rather than taking the road).
It's some feature that doesn't work as you'd expect or as you would assume was intended. And if you play a game for hundreds of hours, they become maddening.
#1 Monsters AI and overall idea implementation. https://forums.elementalgame.com/435537 Can be classified as maddening (c)
Good idea is disabling roaming for big and medium monsters. Once they in city area they can act as penalty for food, population and happiness.
#2 Strict unit positioning on battlefield i.e. 1,2,3 are on front rest on back row
For what it's worth, I think it would be good to see a bunch of the small things fixed also. We're not listed them here because you've asked for the top 5... but there's a lot of little things that could (presumably) be easily fixed. For example someone pointed out recently that the Lumber Camp line of improvements have an "old" AITag so the AI never builds them. That's like a 5 min job for someone to fix up. Cheers.
in that case.
#1-5. Mouse pointer not lining up to the correct tile, and the goofy slowdown with the mouse when you are getting folks out of your city.
# 6 -breaking the law- breakn' the law; I want more loot.
(edit: How long did it take you frog to develop tough enough skin to do what your doing? Lots and lots of people lose it when criticized constantly. You handle it pretty well. Or do you have (like I do anymore) your wife read things before you hit "send".)
Forgot about that one.....mouse pointer not lining up to the proper tile drives me nuts sometimes.
I've never seen that issue (mouse pointer line up)
Could you describe how you have your video resolution for the game set up? Do you play in a window, do you have the taskbar at the bottom of the screen?
I'm wondering if there is some setup that would cause that. What happens if you turn on the hardware mouse cursor?
I have seen this happen a few times. It typically happens in tactical combat on the outer most tiles of the map when the terrain is hilly.
Here's my list:
Note that i have seen that all issues except #5 have already been reported by others as well.
And as a bonus: There are a lot of issues regarding UI that is not immediately updated when it should.
Hmm you are right, that said I am not really good at distinguishing between feature requests and bugs , its a bug the game doesn't behave as I want when I right click.... *idiot mode off*
Am I supposed to edit my old post then? . I can't go re-test the bugs now though, since I can't open FE... (I can't now, and for the next MONTH).I did pick the top 5 things close to my heart I want to see, but well... *feels stupid*
Sincerely~ Kongdej
Frogboy,
Per your post of 12:03 PM today on features vs "playability": we may be dealing with a semantics issue. When I hear playability I think of things that make the geme less playable. That can be bugs or features that are not at the point of adding to the enjoyment of the game.
I can see from your 12:03 post that you describe playability improvements as fixing bugs or glitches. I can see either perspective but I think some of us worked from the former definition rather than the later when we posted.
By the way, IMHO FE is in no way "game breakingly buggy". FE has some bugs left but for the most part it is a joy to play. Others may see the remaining bugs as more serious than I do but that, once again, is a matter of opinion.
Thanks for all you and your teams continuing hard work on this game. It is a pleasure to see a company support its product this well.
1.) AI more likely to fill all available army slots in a stack before sending it out
2.) AI more likely to mix army stacks with melee units, ranged units like archers/mages, and champions for combined arms effectiveness
3.) AI much more likely to build mages (or the empire equivalent) whenever tech and crystal make it possible. This will instantly make the AI's armies a lot more effective, and necessitate spying on the enemy to counter elemental staffs with the appropriate resistance.
4.) AI sets a higher priority for keeping at least 1-2 units in a city for defense, decreasing likelihood of only militias defending city (particularly when the AI has high gildar income to afford it)
5.) AI less likely to declare war simply based on faction power ratios. It declares war based on pre-set ratio, AND when it has stacks near the enemy borders (defined by presence in friendly city closest to enemy territory?), AND has some kind of city defense quota met first.
Comment on #5: Barring desperation or overriding strategic factors , before the AI declares war it is ready to make some kind of imminent offensive on its target, without over-extending its domestic offense.
Thanks for your work on the game after release.
1 Bigger radius for allowing tile specific improvements on a city - piers and lumber.
2 Mouse speed//framerate when holding down control to multi select units.
3 Offers of tribute are horribly confusing.
4 Give us a way to control which city an outpost belongs to; I hate when outposts, and their improvements switch to being part of a new city.
5 Diplomacy; treaties can be broken by AI's, and they overvalue their resources. Their gold should never be worth two gold; other things should change value.
I dont get it all that often. It's just every once in a while when im really enjoying the game, and you have to restart get get it to reset. Im on a 27" monitor at whatever the full rez is for that. I've never changed anything in the settings for resolution. Full screen.
I've heard others mention it. Kongdej could explain it better than me. He's kinda mad at the moment though
I really just appreciate the game. whatever anyone says. I got it for free and even if you dont care, you let us think that you do. I've gotten my moneys worth 5 fold. Thanks guys.
I think you're mincing words here, Frogboy. Poor implementation, even though it's not 'bugged' per se', is still very, frustratingly annoying (ie diplomacy, etc.)
Bug squashing for current features should have mostly been take care of by 1.0. You have users reporting bugs all the time on the support forum. Why would you need us to do that here, too?
You even mention in the OP:
Yes, some of the items listed are feature requests, but most of us are reporting annoyances in the current features which we would like to see altered for a better game experience.
This is what I was talking about in my number 3. It usually happens these days in very hilly areas or the edges of the maps, in both tactical and strategic. The rest of the map will be fine, but certain areas are just bonkers and extremely difficult to click on accurately (it might just be certain "map stamps" or whatever you call them). This has been a commonly complained about issue since WoM beta, I think it's a map problem and it keeps popping back up.
I'm only pissed at my computer, Frogboy right now wants to listen to bug reports, so I want to go into the game to make them as detailed as possible.I try to use lots of smileys to get a happier tone (I'm drugged too much out to really be mad )
Regarding the militia design choice:
Militia is not a trained, paid and standing military resource. They are people grabbing the best weapons out of the blacksmith to save their kids. That's why they have great weaponry and no armor. It isn't entirely crazy that they are only around for 1 battle - no one is leading them to respond to the threat at the other end of town.
Maybe the presence of trained units could organize militia so they'd be around all turn?
So sure, it still doesn't entirely make sense to me, but isn't this a great reason to leave dedicated full-time military units as defenders in your city?
Altered my options after reading a bunch and giving a bit more of a think (but not too much.)
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