Fallen Enchantress is classic turn-based strategy: magisterial design, beautiful stylized art for grown ups, moving & evocative score, interesting decisions throughout. It has sweep and detail; variety and rigour. It is logical (the way fantasy must be to work at all -- Tolkien and Martin understood this, but few others) and it also stirs our sense of wonder. Puzzling criticisms have been made of this design, mostly by younger writers. But for mature strategy gamers, FE has an exciting "lived" quality: your Sovereign has cataracts and is past his best, but he quests on -- the world is wide and full of terrors. It's a bit like being plunged into a cross between Middle Earth and Westeros, without (thank the gods) any lame RPG narrative imposed from above. The mechanics and those luminous numbers (Initiative that means something) tell the stories. And out of the cauldron of those random maps (the heart of the game, where design time should be focused) what quirky, strange, and surprising stories emerge. I am old and have played them all: Master of Magic, Age of Wonders, Warlords I-IV, Disciples, the Civs -- these are great games, compelling, you keep coming back to them. Fallen Enchantress is such a one. It's a gem, a game for the ages. I didn't play its precursor, but bought the game after hearing Tom Chick rave about it in great detail (the man does his homework) on the 3MA podcast. And the designer himself spoke with great gusto. I'm glad I listened. Since then I've spent many many enjoyable hours in this crazy world that delivers just the right action-result ratio: I make a decision and that has a measurable, satisfying, and timely effect (not always what I wanted of course, if the Ophidian eats my henchman); clear, sweeping, and pleasurable. Thank you Derek Paxton and Brad Wardell. I can see why you love this game.
But I wonder if the population cost for Pioneers does not take the game in a weak direction. I haven't played 1.2 a great deal; and I'm keeping an older version installed because this change worries me. It seems to slow the pace and detract from the sweep and grandeur of the Expansion part of 4X. Expansion is fun, borders are fun; it's enjoyable to see your colour spreading across the map; and worrisome (in a fun way) to see other colours encroaching.... nDervish and other writers have made the same points. The population cost is a penalty that sets my cities back, guts them in a way (30 pop is a lot when you start at 3 and grow by 1 or 2 people a turn), and penalties -- especially in the areas of city growth and expansion -- aren't a lot of fun. The population cost is what killed Civ III in a way; or for me made it a chore, seeing your cities reduced as a settler is produced. And then, the more cities you had, the more corruption ran rampant until that city on a far away island that your fertile imagination just wanted to plant could do nothing. If the problem with expansion is that expansion becomes the single and ONLY best strategy every time, then a mechanism must be created to set up interesting decisions (the Sid Meier mantra) about expansion: bonuses for other things might be better, or allow for more powerful buildings in highly developed cities; something interesting and compelling to do instead of building the pioneer for expansion. Perhaps Pioneers might be given the option to travel to an already existing city and boost growth there, or help with production (rather in the manner of the old caravans in one Civ or other) -- again, in lieu of their traditional role as city builders. Too, the pop cost would really constrain the deployment of Outposts -- this is one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game: they have multiple functions, they are fun, the AI seems to be good at aggressively deploying them. A great feature I'd hate to see curtailed. But perhaps all this has been playtested. In general, though, bonuses are better than penalties.
In his essay on the design of Civ IV, Soren Johnson writes that in Civ III the designers dealt with the perceived problem of Infinite City Sprawl by raising corruption and waste penalties for more cities to high levels. This, he says, was a grave mistake. It killed the city sprawl, yes; but it also wrecked any pleasure the gamer took in expansion. "Gamers simply didn't like having their production taken away from them -- there was nothing fun about founding a city and finding out that it can only ever produce one shield per turn." Don't want this to happen to FE. When I read in Frogboy's post that Faction Prestige (a positive bonus at least, though a comprehensive list of sources of Prestige would help) will be dropped in favour of more Unrest penalties I get very worried (along with nDervish, whose posts are worth reading about all this). Surely we don't want a game focused on corruption/waste/unrest management. That just doesn't have the savour of high fantasy.
I'm sure good decisions will be made; this is the only time I've written with a concern about a game still in development. Fallen Enchantress is worth it.
I see the point of corruption getting crippling, especially in large games.
The 30 pop cost isn't a bad thing, it just adjusts the early - though I think the AI has trouble with it.
What would be the optimal solution is to buff high-level cities, so that not building that 2nd town and getting your city to lvl 3 fast would have real value. There are ways to do this (increased production bonus, buildings that require a higher city lvl, buildings that improve with city lvl, global unrest bonuses for cities levelling up that were originally yours)
Well-written, Diarch. I agree with a lot of your sentiment. In fact, when I first started playing FE and learning the mechanics, I was very impressed with the Faction Prestige mechanic - it's a beautifully simple way to constrain growth without being overly penalizing. I thought it was ingenious. I'm worried if the future direction of FE should take it away in favor of just more unrest penalties.
I'm of two minds with regards to pioneers costing population. On the one hand, it is realistic and helps mitigate city sprawl. On the other hand, it can be a heavy-handed approach to fixing the sprawl problem. Before the change, the best production choice for a city in the early game was almost always a pioneer. Now, the best choice is a pioneer when the city has enough population. The best game designs create interesting choices - pioneer population cost does not really create a choice, so much as eliminate one of the options for a time.
I think the problem can be traced back to another mechanic. Vertical development of cities is not as strong as horizontal proliferation. I.e. many small cities beats fewer big cities.
Why is that? Let's look at the production and research generated by a city as an example. Based on city size, the production and research bonus for each level of city is: 1,2,4,8,16. So it doubles every city level. But to get to level one, you need 50 population - and a pioneer costs 30. To get to level 3, you need to get to 200 population from 50 population - or +150 population for a +2 bonus to research and production. But 150 population is 5 cities worth of pioneers! Likewise, building a study costs way more labor (193) compared to a pioneer (48) and provides the same research bonus.
The difference is even more stark when you look at production rather than research - this is because the city level bonus is insignificant compared to the material yield. Upgrading to a level 2 city takes you from 1 to 2 production, whereas if you settle an average new city with 2 material, you are getting 6x2 production. +1 production versus +12... not much of a choice.
I said that I was pleasantly surprised by the Faction Prestige mechanic - I was similarly perplexed and disappointed with the bonuses that a larger city brings to its yields. No wonder spamming multiple cities is a far more advantageous choice. It would take a lot of penalties in addition to 30 population to make growing a city to level 2 or 3 a better choice than multiple new cities. Rather than taking the game in that direction, I would personally recommend making vertically developed cities much more attractive and making the choice an interesting, deep, and strategic one.
Personally, I find it's a bit refreshing. Instead of pumping out pioneers from just any old city, you're going to want to designate one or two for doing that and let the others focus on growth to the next level.
This is not a bad long-term strategy when you consider the outrageous bonuses you can rack up. Scrying Pool if you're playing Enchanters? +1 Essence please. Oracle? +1 Essence please. Then you get to cast two more enchantments in that city and if you already had any X per essence enchantments, they just got quite a bit stronger.
I've been playing a 1v1 against the AI on Normal difficulty and right up until I had built my armies up and started invading, it was consistently out-settling me, despite being stuck on a much smaller patch of land and unable to get any further into my territory thanks to a bunch of chokepoints.
Consulates comes early and fixes a lot of your issues. I like the change so far, it makes towns more usable early game as pioneer spammers. (focus on wells, inn's and festival's) It adds depth to the game and more choices. Before I spammed only Conclaves in my REX for the research,and relied on AI towns for the +HP%. Now I have to mix more and towns are more important for me early game.
My simcity game was better after the patch, so I feel the current direction is good.
There is also the balance issue of Pioneers costing population makes Decalon for the Arcane Monolith spell insanely better. 50 mana is pocket change compared to 30 population, especially when it's for an outpost so the Pioneers you do make can be used for just cities.
I have to disagree that consulates come early - they are halfway down the Civilization tree. I find that my games are halfway or mostly over before I can even start to build them. Furthermore, now they also cost a pioneer and hence 30 population. You would need 30 turns just to break even on the consulate. On top of the labor and population for the pioneer, they also cost 540 labor, making it one of the most time-consuming improvements. For reference, a Well costs 96, an Inn costs 249. I never feel like I am in a place to be producing consulates until the late game and only when plenty of other higher priority buildings and units are done.
@MarvinKosh - I agree that fully built-up cities are very powerful - but they only become that way after a long investment. The problem is that in the early to mid game, when resources are most tight and choices are most important, the choice to make a new city is almost always better. A player that first expands and then builds a militia or spearman from 4-6 cities is going to dominate a person who builds up one or two level 3 cities in the same amount of time. It is honestly not until only the poorest potential city spots are left that I feel that the time to develop vertically is a better choice than to expand horizontally. Perhaps part of it is the difficulty too, since I have been playing on Ridiculous.
I personally wish this were not the case. I wish the choice between expansion and development were truly a tough choice. I like developing my cities rather than feeling like I have to expand or fall behind. The choice to develop should allow the player to slingshot ahead of the player who expands at some point - but right now that point is way too late in the game and only if you assume that you are left alone.
Note the other top post right now: playing on Insane. https://forums.elementalgame.com/439550
Key quote:
"You need to get off to a flying start - meaning a good starting tile yield, good nearby resources and suitable locations nearby for early city spamming. I design my soveriegns with the Wealthy trait so that I can spam out pioneers to take advantage of city sites as soon as I find them. The advantages of city spamming have been covered well elsewhere but playing on this level means all of your focus in the early game is on getting to 5+ cities as soon as possible, everything else takes a back seat."
The poster is even choosing sovereign traits based on the need to help push early expansion - 500 gold up front instead of plenty of other traits that provide long-term benefits. When high difficulty forces you to make the best choices, then the best choice is to expand, expand, expand. There is no way to be able to survive on 1 or 2 cities on Ridiculous or Insane. Even 3 is probably not good enough.
Destiny's Gift costs 200 mana now, Celerity 250 Mana, Blood Rage 100 Mana and Paragon 90 mana. Where are you getting your excess mana from? I never have mana for improving champions/sovereigns AND tactical spells. 50 Mana is huge when you are fighting AI armies with bonuses. (Mana is power in this game IMO)
Well, the cost increases, so it's not really halfway down the tree. They are easily attainable once you get research rolling, and until then Town growth buildings makes due if you need pioneers.
If you have enough food to grow early game without the appropriate civilization techs, your start is ridicilous (I want a start like that). Early game food will limit you, late/mid game growth will limit you, and that's where consulates come in.
Yes, but towns are easy to get growth in Conclaves and Fortresses are another case entirely, and that is where you need consulates to get them up to appropriate levels ASAP. You can also rush buy if you got the gildar btw, so it's not just a counting hammers thing. I focus on research as my main priority and I'm beelining Arcane forge and the Civilization production improvements depending on essences etc. Research and Hammers is the name of this game (unlike CiV where food and hammers were the main thing)
My excess mana is from not casting high cost spells like Destiny's Gift or Celerity anymore. Plus I like having a lot of Conclaves/Oracles and frequently have Scrying Pools, so I generate a lot of mana as well.
What difficulty are you playing at? When you play Ridicilous and above, your mana is precious at least for me. It's a totally different ballgame regarding difficulties. If you aren't getting insta declared when you meet them, you are playing a different game (not being Elitist here ok? )
I still think using 50 mana for an outpost and a Pioneer for a city is far more efficient than using a Pioneer for an outpost and 50 mana on some other spell. Especially in the early game where that population is precious and comes much slower than mana.
Also, you totally come off as Elitist. That's like saying "no offense" and then saying something offensive, it doesn't clear you of what you just said.
Difficulty does matter though. Elitist or not. Feel free to elaborate with your strategy and how you are playing the game (and how AI's act towards you)
That's just an opinion, we need more depth to discuss it properly. (aka, game speed, difficulty etc.) Share your opener, it will only add to the discussion if you do, mine is biased towards Ridicilous+, but that doesn't mean yours is excluded. (to the contrary, every difficulty and differences need to be discussed to make a great game, and that is what I meant with the "Elitist" comment)
Loved the first part of your post Diarch. What a lyrical way to describe why this game is so special and great. This game really deserves to be mentioned among those great classics. In fact it's the kind of fantasy grand strategy I have been dreaming of for a long time now.
The part with finding the population costs of pioneers worrisome I couldn't agree on. I agree Civ3 non-producing
cities far away due to corruption and nothing you could do about it was slightly bad game design (but worked somehow, and you could move your capital and you could build The Forbidden Palace), but pioneers costing population is not.
You can compare it to Civ4 and 5 where food are used for settler-building, which makes the city stagnate on growth while you build settlers. It's a brilliant
design to help a little bit on making opportunity costs arround fast expansion. Civ4 also used upkeep costs for cities so having to many too early would cripple you economically, and by that also technology wise (remember the sliders?)
Civ5 uses global happiness. FE has extra unhappiness for unconnected cities. IAll these games have barbarians and competing nations hindering you building up cities unprotected.
It's not like you still cantt expand is it? Just needs abit more planning, and can't paint the map your color in no-time? I must say I think FE still is alot kinder then all the 3 last Civilization games when it comes to game mechanics giving opportunity costs to fast city spam. In my view the game could benefit from making the city levels mean abit more too, and that way giving city spamming even a little huger opportunity cost.
Thanks for the reassuring reply, Alstein. I'm glad you don't find the Pop cost unduly constraining. Exploration and colonisation shouldn't take over; but they should be possible and fun and suggest the flair and panache of the Phoenicians or the outpost savvy of the British-in-India. Your comments make me look forward a little more to 1.2. And enjoyed your thoughts about high level cities. The leveling of cities is one of the shining pleasures of the game: the whole experience could be given more octane and help to make automatic Pioneer building a tougher choice.
Thanks for your thoughtful response, jwallstone. Your analysis of the City Sprawl debate uses numbers in beautifully clear insightful way. I could never manage that. Helped me to account for my inchoate feelings about Pioneer cost and the whole problem of thoughtless & automatic city building. I just hope the Pop cost fix doesn't preclude the Clive-in-India joy of rapid expansion and territory gobbling. That should still be an option, if a player likes that experience and sees an opportunity to go that way; but militating against that option should be other attractive alternatives -- exactly what you suggest about high level cities! We should feel torn (in a nice abstract ludic way): a Pioneer OR press on with our plans to build Persepolis, Carthage, Londinium -- because getting that great city eclipses 12 or 13 shambling villages! Also liked what you said about Faction Prestige: elegantly put.
Not sure I'm posting these replies to replies correctly. My first time on a Forum.
Norseman Viking: yes, with Fallen Enchantress fantasy grand strategy has arrived. I feel the same way: it's a game that just coalesces so many things we look for: empire building, tactical battles, exploration of untamed wilds, character development (without, mercifully, narrative pasted on from above), magic, and the strategic clash of arms. It's dynamite, something to be lyrical about.
I'm glad you are not finding the Pioneer Pop cost a drag on the game. Have you played the new version 1.2 a fair bit? How does the change affect Outposts? Is the same delightful cat-and-mouse subgame still available if you want it?
I wasn't sure what you meant by "opportunity cost".
Diarch, I think the concern that prompted the pop cost for pioneers was that thet tactic of spamming out as many cities as you can, as fast as you can, was just far too effective from a power perspective. More smaller cities beats fewer bigger cities every time.
Part of the problem is that most of a cities advantages are gained on attaining level 2. Getting to level 3 and beyond takes along time (particularly for non-towns) and doesn't really add much - one special attribute and some minor gildar/production adds. Hence people talk about growing horizontally rather than vertically.
The pop cost helps address the issue to a degree, but to my mind a more complete solution involves improving the ebenfits for cities reaching level 3 and above. If these levels unlocked new sets of buildings that added to production/mana/research or gave special nonuses, then there would be more incentive to reach these levels and trade off expansion via more cities versus better cities. More strategic choices adds depth and enjoyment to the game, in my humble opinion.
As an example, you have (say) the workshop available at level 1, mill at level 2, guildhouse at level 3, factory at level 4 and enchanted forge at level 5 each of which adds to production (forgive the names, I'm not very inventive).
To be clear though, I think more cities should overall be better than fewer cities - it's just that the gap should be narrower and that focusing on a smaller number might be a bit better in the short term with more cities being clearly better in the long term.
Bang on the money, excellent post Diarch,
Several replies have stated that the 30 pop cost was necessary because expansion was too powerful and needed to be nerfed. That is a fallacious argument. Yes, early expansion needed to be nerfed, but 30 pop cost was just one way of doing it. There are other alternatives that I think would be better.
This is a really difficult subject, just look at how both Civ 3 and Civ 5 stuffed expansion balance up (3 worse than 5 IMO but both are poor) and those are big budget titles that had the best chance of getting it right. Fortunately Civ 4 exists as a shining example of how it is possible to balance expansion so that expansion hurts in the short term but pays off in the long term (so long as you can survive that long of course).
I'm not saying that FE necessarily needs to go the Civ 4 route but it is the gold standard IMO and any alternative scheme should be measured against it.
The only issue I have with the 30 population cost is that when building a new Pioneer the cost is deducted from your overall population, not the city population where you're wanting to build it in. There's no way a newly founded city should be able to immediately queue up a new Pioneer until that city has at least 31 citizens in play. The new costing hasn't affected any of the 1.2 games played so far, though it does appear to have slowed down the AI expansion a little bit. Which was a good thing.
I generally like the idea of using population to build Pioneers, but that is only half the problem. The ratio of vertical development vs horizontal development is what needs additional tuning. While horizontal development needs to be somewhat constrained, vertical development needs to be significantly encouraged.
My favorite parts of the game are exploration and expansion, and not so much faction fighting. As such, I don't want to see expansion curtailed too much - especially early in the game. A good solution would be some kind of game mechanic where I would cut off expansion sooner in favor of vertical expansion, and the benefits that would become available with vertical expansion.
Another issue which bothers me is the population cost which must be paid for building Pioneers. As has been mentioned earlier, one of the most enjoyable aspects of development is the establishment of outposts which, by definition, would use far less population than creating cities. I would rather see the population cost be exacted after the Pioneers have been used (i.e., -20 population when they build a city, and only -10 population when they build an outpost). Bottom line: building outposts shouldn't cost as many population as building cities.
In the final analysis, I guess what I would like to see is a slightly less population hit for building cities early in the game (say, -20 population), and even less for building outposts (say, -10 population), and more vertical building options that would make me choose to slow down horizontal sprawl in favor of vertical consolidation of what I have already built.
Another interesting option would be to have the severity of the 'population hit' be a choosable option during the game set-up. Why not let the user choose how they want the game to play (to each, his own).
Even with the pioneers costing population, you have to remember that there's usually quite a bit of time where you're bumping against the food cap and you're unable to level a city up.
In fact, if you were basically waiting on research and production of improved food supply, you could juggle pioneers while you're waiting - queue them up, then rotate them so none actually get finished, then cancel them all when you raise your food cap. Woosh, city level up. Now that's what we call an exploit.
I think that the number of pioneers you can have active and in production should be limited. To begin with you can only support one pioneer at a time. This would go up as you add buildings which add a faction-wide food cap bonus. To get two, say, you might need to add thirty to your faction food cap bonus. That isn't difficult, by the way, you could accomplish that by building a pier and a grocer in a city with three grain.
While you have more than one pioneer active, the food cap bonus will be decreased because, obviously, you're using it to keep your pioneers supplied.
Agreed. If I build a pioneer, I don't want the pop from my mega city to be taken away....I want the pop taken from the city where I build the pioneer.
I also agree that the population needs to come from the city building the pioneer. Also outposts need to not cost population.
Assuming of course the pop cost mechanic is staying at all.
You are right, Mistwraithe: this is a vexed design problem with a pedigree of heartache: in a 4X game we want expansion (which is fun) as a possible strategy, given certain map configurations and player taste, AND we want Minas Tirith (the single magnificently developed urbis mirabilis -- which is fun!) as an equally attractive countervailing strategy. It's a really hard balance to achieve; and I'm sure Mr Paxton has thought a great deal about this and will find elegant solutions. FE gets so much so very right; it is worth the polish. I think it's already a triumph -- just nervous about it moving down an awkward path.
Seems to be a feeling that increased power for highly developed cities would create interesting decisions about Pioneer production; and that, given some form of Pioneer cost, Outposts should be treated differently.
What if the Faction Prestige mechanic, far from being abandoned, were expanded in epic ways: Prestige, Clout, Charisma, Panache -- these are exciting as penalties are not. Just wondering. The designer spent two years of his life on this and made something really fine: he knows what he's doing. I just know how the game feels when I play it. Guess that's valid.
Very astute comments, Ambermonk. Succinct too. Your whole post just feels right for the game. Just discussing these quandries makes me marvel at successful game designers (such as FE's unquestionably) -- such a difficult art. Merits our attention.
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