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.
Thankfully no! While the AI is worked on by me, the other things that get updated are done by others.
Most of the FE team is working on a follow-on to FE (the expansion) but as they find bugs and such they do backport them.
I'm ready to start hearing stuff on the expansion. Lots of ways you could go, curious to see which way you did.
1. When in the build and train city menus, set mouse clicks outside the menu areas to cancel the menus, not make a selection based on the mouse's x axis.
2. Make it an AI tactic to create outposts right next to monster lairs that are nearer to enemy civs than themselves, and encourage them to "blanket" continuous, "monster-safe" territory as much as possible to make it harder for enemies to do this to the AI. Or, make it illegal to create outposts that would wake up a monster, at least until a certain tech is reached.
3. Have the tax rate default to zero at the start of the game.
4. In tactical combat, have the AI be more concerned about counterattacks when selecting targets. Often, I see the AI attack a unit with a sword, with lower attack instead of someone else with a mace, other things being equal. The maceman probably should be considered a 'softer' target.
5. More options for the potential faction weakness during faction creation.
Excellent! I guess that's why you prefer to hear from us about glitches and bugs and not features. I don't judge on that, FE must be profitable for you to continue working on it.
1. There is a bug that is kind of difficult to describe.
When a unit on the map is defeated in Auto Resolve combat, it will generally show a "retreat" animation from the attacking stack.
However, if the animation takes the "retreating" unit over an Outpost, they actually capture the Outpost (despite being destroyed in the battle). If they "retreat" over a resource, they destroy the mining structure. This works both for Human and AI units.
I once destroyed an enemy army via Auto Resolve, and watched as it "retreated" into a small city of mine and razed it instantly ... a few curse words and reload later, everything was fine.
2. I would reiterate the Pathfinding bugs, particularly the propensity of units to ignore roads when exiting a city, taking much slower paths.
My other major issue is supposed to be addressed by 1.2 (AI Knowledge points)
Keep up the good work
Yeah i'm starting to get curious about this myself. I hope they don't muck with the core design too much... because the the foundation of the design (to me at least) is great. I don't see major things that need changing... just tidying up / enhancements in some areas, some bug fixes and extra content would be enough for me.
Off the top of my head;
1. AI Sovereigns need to lose their fascination with leggings.2. Fix the AI trading tech abuse. I know you're already looking into it, just saying..3. Monsters should be more proactive about destroying Outposts if it disturbs their Lair4. AI Sovereigns should not be able to recruit Hirelings w/o having adjacency 5. When Monsters attack a city it gets razed to the ground, I would rather lose a % of the city population and an increase in unrest. Godzilla keeps smashing up Tokyo but has never burned it completely to the ground. The existing Razing mechanic is just irksome.
Edit: Forgot about this; The Imperium often cannot be completed because a city was built too close to the red area boundary and the quest cannot be completed as the (1) tile you need becomes unavailable. Unfun.
I'll just pick 5 things from my feedback thread:
I agree, but I think it would be really cool if we could place a few troops in the outpost for defense....or even an outpost upgrade that adds a few "Outpost Defenders" similar to city defenders.
#1 Movement points: Track individual units movement points. The current system has a lot of flaws, side effects and weaknesses I can`t really imagine that you would call this "intentional features". (Split/Merge of armies / City entering/leaving / Buying/Trading movement relevant equipment for champions / Applying spells / Considering individual units movement capabilities) #2 Pioneers should simply cost additionally (20?) pop: Split Pio & Outpost builder (the latter should cost less (5?) or no pop). That should also remove part of the endless tweaking (see changes to the wealthy trait) and further reduce/balance city spam.#3 City levelling: make choices harder (especially for higher levels - balance the choices) - acknowledging this might also be caused by a lack of willingness of trying out very different strategies on my side...#4 Fix entering deserted lairs: Sometimes one can loot, sometimes they just disappear without any message. (It seems I can`t tell upfront - for instance by the symbol above which will happen.)#5 Pathfinding (also display movement cost / remaining MP with fractions before move): Clicks if the field is not selected because something invisible is in the way causes running into random directions (usually trying to get to a field the other side of the mountains using up the full MPs - which were neither selected). When there is one MP left and I`m moving on a road, it seems there is no way telling where exactly the movement will stop.Most of the following should probably be evaluated for the next expansion but if something could be done upfront no one should blame Stardock:#X Enhance Loot variety (plus balance it even a bit more - seems for me also the worth of items should be verified after the changes in the last patches)#X Add Options for influencing/balancing starting positions (values for soil, nearby resources, influence type/race of hero nearby)#X Tweak Diplomacy (Allow making peace under reasonable circumstances / Adapt how AI evaluates the diplomatic suggestions)#X Manufacture/Design artefacts/items (Definitely Expansion stuff but while were at it )#X Add Minor factions (Again Expansion stuff but while were at it )#X Optionally make AI playing the same game as the human player does. It is still annoying that the AI seems to be able to do some stuff which I can`t and can`t/won`t do some reasonable stuff I do (and still seems to be treated considerably different by the monsters). It would be nice to be able to choose if one would like to accept this (for the sake of having an even more challenging AI) or not.By the way, I bought the DLC because I appreciate and wanted to support the effort trying create a great game that might be playable for years (budget restrictions sometimes can be devestating). Also I enjoyed seeing the beta evolve into something that I can appreciate aleady now.
But this does not imply that FE was not released prematurely concerning game balance and is still facing some technical/design trouble for some rather basic features. Apparently this is also devalueing your intense personal efforts to create a strong AI, when the balance is considerably influenced by nearly every patch.
I hope Stardock is not challenging my loyality as a customer (for instance getting a friend of mine to buy FE even after the Elemental disaster by pointing out what is already there during the final beta and what is the potential of the game) too hard by waiting for the next expansion for a fix with the flawed movement/pathfinding "features". Even if - being in professional software development myself - I understand that won`t be an quick and easy fix and might require something like a partial version downport for a reasonable amount of changes while already focusing on the expansion development right now.
I hope this does not sound too negative but imho there remains still some work to do (also to do justice to anyone who bought FE and afaik won`t get the next expansion for free)...
This is actually another really good suggestion, sometimes when you enter a lair, it vanishes with no text telling you what just happened, it would be nice (and probably really easy) to add a couple of different flavour texts explaining the lair was empty.
Sincerely~ Kongdej
or that you think the lair was empty and mama bear comes home angry!
Actually on that note i just thought of a few things. More multi-step encounters would be cool, kind of like the arena, but not on that scale/level.
Also, maybe whenever you engage a stack on the map, nearby stacks are automatically engaged as reinforcements at the end of the current battle. This could change the game strategy from using just one stack of doom to having to create more units.
1) Putting down a city only to find out you cannot build any upgrades (too close to another city).
2) A shortcut bar for spells in the overworld map, so I don't have to go to my spell book several times after every new hero recruited/city built.
3) Path of auto-roads between cities and outpost are not efficient at best. I would like more control over it... and instead of training a hero with road building, perhaps we can change it to a spell and let us just click and draw?
4) Real time border Update. When playing with Arcane Monolith, or rushing buildings that increase border... I would need to save and reload for it to take effect.
5) Need a better way to locate AI units crossing into your border while not at war... or grant us permission to attack these units without declaring war.
quoting jwallstone:
"Game crashes frequently upon saving or loading. This happens about once every 3 to 10 saves/loads, depending on the game's mood"
Errr, nope! Haven't had that happening even once...
As for my whishlist I'll stick to things not constantly being mentioned by others.
1: As it was mentioned a few times: Make AI actually design it's armies according to an overall plan AND to what we hurl at them. Especially Mages seem to be completely left out of the AI's equation as things are now. And I think henchmen too.
2: Try to let AI's Sov and Champs follow a consistent path of level up traits.
3: Make AI's Sov and Champs not only equip stuff they find in lairs but also BUY better equipment. And let them make the decision what to buy/equip based on the path they chose.
4: So far I have never seen a monster attack an outpost it crosses. That makes outpost upgrades useless. That should change.
5: Granted, up to now I have always won a game before the other factions could reach a wining condition. But it seems the AI is not following any tactics to win by allying with other empire or men races and obliterating the opposing ones, casting the spell of making, solving the Master Quest or gaining enough influence (that worked much better in GalCiv). That should change.
New glitch list:
#1 Outpost bug with high tower and recapture. Goes into negative and lessens ZoC instead of increasing it. Reload fixes but highly annoying.
#2 Paragon is bugged with +1 hp pr. level modifiers, and works even when you have 0 health to pay. +1 hp pr. level modifiers like Hardy at start lets you abuse it with no cost other than mana. Without that it feels right, since you end up with below 20 hp and that kinda sucks
#3 Kinda pathfinding bug I think. Sometimes when you click somewhere long away, the party gets stuck and you have to reselect and do a new path. Probably related to pressing next turn at the same time as moving. (I'm quick )
#4 Cloak of Thorns doesn't work at all, and please let reflect work before counting armor and dodge to make them more useful on tanking champions.
#5 Why do AI keep buying the +2 Initiative amulets? Every time I accept a surrender the AI has 20+ of them. I never get one from loot it seems so they must be buying them or something.
The fog of war reveal is annoying... if my unit spots something on auto-move a pause would be nice. Also it seems the FOW doesn't revealuntil my unit stops moving, even if the sov or hero has a +1 vision item.
Here's my real number 5. You have us pick skin, hair, metal, and clothing colors when designing a custom faction. Metal color doesn't do anything as far as I can tell. Clothing color is relevant for the first 5 turns until we find a piece of leather armor. Then the game seems to either completely or mostly ignore the skin and hair colors we pick beyond creating the sovereign. I pick Trogs with white skin and red hair, and my pioneers come out with gray skin and white hair, and my designed units have gray skin and red hair. I pick Wraiths with pitch black skin and white hair, and all my units have pitch black skin and dark gray hair. Why do we have these options if they are ignored?
"Metal" is actually one of the only color options which has any practical use in-game. It determines what metal weapons / shields look like; picking a color like lurid safety orange makes units easier to see on dark terrain where they can otherwise blend in.
I haven't seen that, but I suppose I also haven't tried to use such bright colors. Or perhaps that's just as buggy as hair and skin color and only works correctly with specific races and only when the game is feeling generous.
Edit: Yes, I fiddled around with a few other custom factions and suddenly I found one where the default wooden shield didn't look like wood. For the first time I can remember it was colored to my metal color. Which is actually kind of surprising, I would have thought just the metal part would be colored, but the whole thing was a solid color.
1. AI tech cheating and diplomacy
2. Pathfinding
3. Auto-combat/auto-resolve
4. AI buying items and design of units
5. Deorcnysse wildands bugging on city capture and not being defended (not sure if the bug only happens on "the wildlands" map)
Also I think some quests are too game changing early on, most notable the archers. By getting the archers you can really jump in power. The bow techs you would need to reproduce comparable bow guys are really out of the way.
The same can be said for beastlord/studded collar. Taming a hoarder spider (or other nasties) by turn 5 makes the game trivial.
Pick 5 things to fix (not entirely sure if it would be called glitches or not)
1. When a High Tower Outpost have been captured and then recaptured, the ZOC is reduced to almost nothing. Have to raze and rebuild everything.
2. The hold Ctrl to select a city stationed army.
3.Enemy instant razing cities, compared to player 5 turn raze.
Tha'ts actually all I can think off, otherwise, enjoying FE!
I did some more testing with that terrain/mouse issue after finding an amazing city location in the middle of a large patch of "afflicted" terrain and being forced to deal with it for a long stretch of time. Switching to the hardware/windows mouse does not effect it. Saving the game, quitting, and reloading does not fix it. Tilting the camera so it's looking straight down does "fix" it so long as you keep the camera at that angle.
It happens to specific tiles in specific parts of the map and changing the camera to a certain angle makes it go away, so I'm having a hard time coming up with anything other than it being a terrain elevation issue. The area in my last game was completely flat, but my best guess is it was a "stamp" and that stamp had the wrong height-map (type-thing) attached to it, or it's some sort of stamp overlap where there was a hilly section of terrain but then a flat section was dropped on top of it and the mouse is trying to navigate both at once.
Or another theory, in this game I was hitting Ctrl-N a lot before finding a decent start, and I know from past experience that the game tends not to clear everything from the previous world when it loads another. Maybe these locations have leftover height data from the previous world/s in some areas, perhaps whatever coordinates were visible on the screen when Ctrl-N was hit. I tend to Ctrl-N a few times before every game, so this might explain why it seems so common for me and not to somebody else who might accept any start.
1. When a city is captured by the enemy, I can't 'Go To' that location to figure out WTF it is. This works for wild resources, why not for cities? (Reiterating this point! ARGH I HATE THE CURRENT MECHANIC!!!!!)
2. When units appear outside a city they should appear on a road if any are present. Commonly I'll do one of the following three commands and my units will manifest in the forest somewhere, and then path towards my destination in a very suboptimal manner. This will happen when the player does any of the following:
Suggested Fix: If there is a road tile connected to the city, prioritize it as the default starting tile for all three above situations.
Bonus Issue: Some spells are completely useless and/or come so late in the game as to become so. Focus is a good example, and it drives me crazy. Yea it's cheap, but giving up two complete actions for +25% dmg is pretty pitiful for a fire-based caster's overall damage output. I have yet to find an example where this spell is useful. Another good example are the revive the land spells. By the time you get them the game is well into the later stages, and you have so many cities already that spending mana to possibly make a barren site useful is, well, not so useful.
Suggestions:
More to come as I think of more things that annoy me.
1. Add an option "max distance MOBs will wander from their starting poiint". 0 should be allowed. I consider this critical to playing the game anymore.
2. When trading between heros the weight bar gets screwed up and often shows the wrong weight.
3. Often times when fighting I can't move some of my heros. I can click the mob and they will run up and attack the mob but I can't place them. Makes Klunni (sp?) really difficult to use and also means I can't use any special attacks until my second turn.
4. When going through "Unit Details" I would like to be able to cancel an Enhancement like I can for cities.
5. Only buildings/etc that indicate "+1Zone of Control" should cause a cities zone to increase. I've had a city expand and still haven't figured out why (some buildings seem to do it even if they aren't +1zone).
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