After we complete upcoming expansion pack for Elemental: Fallen Enchantress (which we expect to announce NEXT WEEK) we have to do some hard thinking. Specifically, what do we do next? After some trials and tribulations we’ve put together what is, in effect, a Master of Magic style engine (and before someone flips out, I’m not saying FE is just like MOM, I am saying that at this stage, our *game engine* is finally capable of actually making that game which is obviously was not capable of in 2010).
But first, let’s look at the history…
Once upon a time…
After Galactic Civilizations II I wanted to do a fantasy strategy game. I wrote up a brief treatment and had our lead artist draw a mockup of what it should look like:
Basically, I wanted Master of Magic with updated graphics and multiplayer.
During this time, Stardock had the opportunity to publish two games – Sins of a Solar Empire and Demigod. Two opportunities we couldn’t pass up. Meanwhile, Impulse was starting to really take off too.
Now, we’re a small company. REALLY small. People are always shocked at how tiny Stardock is. We might possibly be the oldest independent game studio left (20 years old this year) that still regularly produces new games but the entire enterprise is less than 60 people and that includes our main business – consumer software (Multiplicity, Start8, WindowBlinds, Fences, etc.).
What that meant, back in 2008 is that the team that made Galactic Civilizations had to be spread out to help out on Sins, Demigod and Impulse. To do Elemental, we hired up.
Elemental (and at this point, it was just called Elemental) was going to be a pretty straight forward game. Build cities, capture shards, learn magic, research tech and conquer the world.
Now, Stardock’s game studio didn’t run like a normal game studio. That is, there was really no such thing as a producer or a designer. You either coded or you did art. We had titles but they had no real meaning. Design was handled by the person who was implementing an “area” of the game (for example, GalCiv II did not have a visual tactical battle display in its design, the person who was assigned to code “resolution outcome” wrote that).
And we had a lot of ideas. Why stop with Master of Magic’s design elements when you can also throw in Magic the Gathering concepts, Total War, Civilization IV, Ultima, etc.
Slowly, things began to morph as people had more and more ideas get presented.
The spell system got more sophisticated.
The tactical combat design scope grew.
And the reality was that all this stuff just didn’t mesh together. At one point, we even had underground dungeons.
So when Elemental came out, it was extremely buggy (we had spread ourselves too thin – we had no redundancy) and the individual components just didn’t flow together.
Fall From Heaven
When we looked at what went wrong with Elemental it became clear that we were just wearing too many hats. No one owned the design. No one owned the look of it. No one owned the engine design. We needed to bring someone in who would own the project and enforce their will.
That’s what Kael, the designer of Fall From Heaven was able to do.
Kael (Derek Paxton) didn’t just have great game design skills, he was a senior project manager at Novell.
Originally, we had planned to do two expansion packs:
War of Magic – Fallen Enchantress and War of Magic – Forge of the Overlord. But it was decided that we should do a more ambitious overhaul to the base game and this became Elemental: Fallen Enchantress.
Fallen Enchantress
So with Fallen Enchantress, we ended up with a pretty good fantasy strategy game (if you don’t already have it, GET IT!). We have lots of ideas on how to improve it but the important thing is that we now have a fantasy strategy game engine that is capable of doing whatever type of game we’d like.
And that’s where we’re at. What do we do next? I can tell you one thing, it will not have the word “Elemental” in it. Why? Check this out: [Google Search Results]
That isn’t to say we’d scrap all our work and start over with a brand new design and recreate the millions of dollars in art assets. But it’s not going to be tied to Elemental. But this assumes that our players want us to continue making this style of strategy game at all.
After all, there are some exciting fantasy strategy games in the offing – Age of Wonders 3 I suspect will be announced soon and Eador: Masters of the Broken World looks excellent. Are there enough people who want Stardock to keep making fantasy strategy games of this type to justify that effort?
[Quick aside: What do I mean by “this type of strategy game”?]
Personally, there are two key differentiators in fantasy strategy games that help me define what sub-genre they belong to:
And specifically, the question is: Making fantasy strategy games that involve tactical battles, city building and RPG elements? That’s the niche I think we have here. I don’t think we’ve nailed down the perfect blend yet but that’s what time and experience exist for.
And that is what we’d like to hear from you. Do you like what we’re doing enough to keep Should we continue it forward (and don’t answer “Make Fall From Heaven” its future isn’t tied to this). Also, before someone screams GalCiv III the future of GalCiv is not tied to anything we do here.
Go here to answer:
https://www.elementalgame.com/journals
Discuss in the comments.
100 bucks? Not likely. But I would buy it full price, something I try to avoid nowadays.
I actually thought Elemental would be a MoM-like game and bought it more or less blind.
Imagine my surprise when there was only a single playable race in the game. (dark / light / gray / whatever colour humans)MoM was vibrant with crazy and fantastic races. I can only guess that Stardock wanted to keep the modeling costs in check by using a single model for all but a handful of units - and so that the "one size fits all" equipment would fit on all models, which it didn't anyway.
Maybe next time...
Hi Stardock! You are doing the great job! After Triumph Studios switched to Overlord I lost hope for any new game of such kind. Finally I found Fallen Enchantress and my hope was resurrected. In future you can develop 3 series of games: galactic civilisations, fallen enchantress and may I suggest another series. Imagine FE enigine, but let the process happen on the desert planet Dune... (or any other planet)... It will be Dune II (or C&C) in turn based style. Player needs to build bases, research technologies... There may be great potential in future weapons and technologies.
As for Fallen Enchantress... The name is strange for series names (to me). But its the gameplay which is principal in success, so I hope you keep developing FE series. The present game is great! Please give as much editor's capabilities to players as possible so that they could make different mods and publish them on your site.
What I don't like in FE is its hero system. Heroes appear on the map and player may kill heroes of opposite allignment and research all "Letters" and hire all heroes of his alignment, leaving AI with no heroes. I like MoM and AoW hero system. It's good, the less heroes - the better: they are more personal and I must rely on common troops. In my last game I had about 40 invincible heroes whith almost no need in regular army.
To make any unit more personal I suggest to refuse from common heroes/units systems. Cities produce population, for example fortress has 50 men and women. It's essential to keep women alive to grow cities faster. Any citizen though may have his/her own generated statistics such as strength/health/intelligence. When I want to recruit a unit I can choose the citisen I need, or may leave the choice to game settings. In manual form I open the list of citizen and choose those with the best strength and health. Sometimes there is a chance that a citizen of heroic capabilities in born in a city and it will be great to recruit him or her.
I don't like if my units get outdated and I can't improve them. For example units of three men in unit may not be upgraded to 7 men in unit. I'd prefer to combine 3-men units into bigger armies. Personally I'd prefer if any equipment could be reequipped. Thia may be good for AI because it often uses outdated units instead of disbanding them.
Also I suggest not to implement realtime tactical battles in your future games. Tactical battles require much more time, but the needed result is the same - victory. Any game should be dynamic in progress.
Also, I wish you very, very many and good ideas!
Great thanks to you!
Dear stardock,
it is great to hear that the expansion is on the way! After the evolution of Fallen Enchantress I will definately have a look at this one! Concerning the future projects, however, I still feel FE is not completely done yet. It is still too easy and unbalanced. (in CIV 3 - 5 I never managed to beat the game on the highest difficulty, with FE it is still possible after only a few tries..)
Apart from that, I feel like there is still something missing for a complete RPG and strategy game experience. For example, I would like to see more variety in the different units and races. Units have no abilities which would make tactical battle more interesting, they are still just cannon food. Maybe it would be cool to add for every race more special units, like special casters for Procipinee, which could cast 2 or 3 special spells. Or a special bow unit for the Tarth fraction, which can attack twice. It would be nice, if units gain skills after leveling up as well. (for example: after 3rd, 6th and 9th level every unit gains one selectable trait to the existing ones) So it makes actually sense to have trained units in my team besides my heroes.
Anyway, u have done a wonderful job so far! Keep it up!
cheers,
Garoon
I've seen this suggested before, and I know some would welcome it. Having every unit have a unique ability is a feature in the Might and Magic series. And while it certainly works for that game, I enjoy the simplicity of FE. In FE, I don't mind bringing up the details on some boss monster to see what it can do, but I really don't want to have to do that for every unit I fight.
I'm not saying yours is a bad suggestion. However, I am saying making FE more like HOMM won't make it better--just less different.
For tactical battles I would really like to see;
Line of Sight - a properly implemented line of sight would allow both sides to be surprised and to use terrain to stop threats from ranged attacks.
Variety of Battlefields - battlefields bisected by a river or chasm, battlefields that are a maze of forests or rocks, battles within the streets of a town
City Improvements that affect the battlefield.
Terrain - terrain that only infantry can enter, terrain that gives a bonus to the defender or a penalty to the attacker
Tactics
Spells that reveal units hidden by line of sight (clairvoyance) or reduce line of sight (fog), spells that block terrain (i.e. wall of stone) or change terrain to mud.
Fallout style remake?
That would be a cinch with this engine.
Almost everyone here is going to buy whatever your next game is even if it sucks. Go make yourselves happy and create something new. Your fans are pretty damned loyal.
And as I said, I find people work harder on the projects closer to they're heart, so me thinks they should make the game they want to make the most . Probably not too big differences in the mechanics.
I do want a new master of magic, but I also want a new something similar. The genre itself is the stuff apealing to me
Sincerely~ Kongdej
Doing a remake of a classic will almost certainly disappoint those with fond memories of said classic.
The expectations are just too high.
Keep improving Fallen Enchantress. For starters, I'd like to see docks, fishing boats and naval things.
I say, make a new IP. The fantasy genre that FE is competing in is a bit saturated.
Not enough Sci-Fi "conquer a new planet" strategy games out there. Alpha Centauri was great, but now we can do so much more. Rebuild society after an alien invasion, anyone?
Here's what I would work on:
More of the good, less of the bad.
Oh I know that sounds either obvious or obtuse, but in my opinion with E:FE you've put too many obstacles in the way of making a great game. The chief example in this area is how you've let the backstory of the Elemental world dictate several game-play options (or non-options, as the case may be). When i cracked open E:WOM, I played the campaign for 3 or 4 maps and then quit and got to the random generator. for E:FE I never even touched the campaign. And the most annoying part of playing E:FE (and E:WOM for that matter) is the backstory/world driven concept that only a handful of places are settleable.
That high-concept may work in the campaign mode in a more controlled environment, but I don't think i'm alone in thinking is a very frustrating part to have randominzed in game game. *Sometimes* is makes for a challenge. More often I find it's merely an annoyance. I can only restart my game so many times because I find out by turn 200 that I was screwed, or 3 of 4 enemies were screwed and either they are going to waltz all over me or (more often than not) I'm going to waltz all over them. All because the game is built around this "heal the world" concept.
To go even further, while i might be interested in a backstory-driven game such as this, I'm not interested in this one. Just my opinion, but I don't find any of the characters or the story compelling in any way. I mean, I played through the horrificness of Dragon Age II SIMPLY on the basis that the characters and the story were interesting (to me) - the gameplay left me wanting. The FE - I don't care about any of these people, much like I didn't in MOM - it was all about the game play. I feel most 4x games are going to live and die on their merits of gameplay in repeating games - don't let things get in the way of that.
Basically I'm saying when you get to a new game - give up on the entire concept of the "Elemental Story". Let *US* write the story with the game play.
All that being said, build on the good. The champion/hero system is well done - I'd like a little more uniqueness and more options. The questing system is nice, but underdeveloped by a mile. The tech tree is largely irrelevant to game play. The Elemental Nodes are largely irrelevant to game play beyond a handful of spells and to a lesser extent the mana they generate. (this was a problem in MOM as well, except if you didn't get them you were bottlenecked on mana). The monsters are, IMHO, well done, but not varied enough. The weapons/armour in the game are extremely boring, and maybe I'm missing an exception, serve only as a mathematical puzzle that is easily solved for each hero.
I guess that's my $.02 I think you can build on what you have for FE but you'll never reach the nadir you're hoping for (as well as others) until you remove all the walls you've thrown up in front of yourselves trying for a concept I just don't think lends itself to an otherwise good game.
I lilke this. Finish your work with FE and then do something like Alpha Centauri. THAT WOULD BE AMAZING. You could tie it in to the Gal Civ universe!!!
I still miss the (what I thought) original plan for WoM - an entire mechanic based around essence.
Then it would be a strategic decision on whether to:
That way every game could be different, regardless of faction. I could have a very low micro game and have a big badass...but be limited on how many things I could do per turn. The next game I could have the game we have now where the sovereign is just a bigger champion. The next game I can buff the heck out of my cities - at the cost of sovereign power. Kids... do I want magic users or not? Do I dilute my power?
Then I meet the next civilization, and what did they do? Do i have to focus all my effort on slowing/dogpiling their huge sovereign? Is my sovereign going to be dogpiled and do I weaken him to support the other front? Etc, Etc?
I think the engine could handle it, it would be the creation of new (old) game mechanics rather than a complete re-write.
More armour sets and appearances (if it's possible) would be a nice touch.
For example, I've modded an Archer's Cuirass and Vambraces in which become available with Archery, and vambraces/greaves designed for a Spear Captain or Shield Captain which become available after Heavy Armour is researched. But there aren't many alternate armour appearances to choose from.
The snag with having so many items that show up as available under on tech on the tach tree, is that there's only room to sensibly display six or seven things.
Whatever decision Stardock makes please do it really well. Meaning if you go tactical combat then go all out this time.
improveFE into something fantastic first - use forum to get the ideas, there are zillions...hell, you can do 1-2 DLCs/Exansions with all of it. Get us better tactical, more research, weapon crafting, dragon hatching and experimentation on living beings (morphing?), and tactical great battles - longer, larger, sieges, flying, diving, underworld....
Next, make gal civ III with more planetary tactical combat?hell, get us GalCiv multiplayer where two teams would have a commander leading strategic struggles, and Generals and admirals leading colonization and tactical combat as well as naval battles! Why not make some things like arcade battles, like we had in Star control? Make it something Master of Orion, Millenium mk2 and many other games never managed to go to...make it EPIC!
Use engine you have, and create a fabulous Story driven campaign, Which you can expand in 6 months DLCs. Just choose a good story, or use something already out, like witcher world or similar.....That game can have a MP option of tactical battles only (say, large terrain like 100x present battles in FE, up to 6-10 sides, alliances, starting money and mana to buy creatures and units and engage, capture flag, castle, mana shards (but no building, just like a giant chess batte) - terrain having some treasures, neutrals etc... but turn based battles, where allies can play simultaneously (or even go real time?)
As the last, I beg of you, create a new Demigod or whatever you wanna call it.
Present something new to the MOBA community, something Demigod was at start, and can be again. Something I know you can achieve (since all the other ideas are gobbled up by EA and similars, honour to few exceptions....)
Well, my dreams were flying high....I'll let you nicely surprise me again...and again...as you always do.
First let me say: Hell yes please continue to make Fantasy 4x (of whatever Vein) the niche is there (its my favorite subgenre ever since MOM of my favorite genre ever since Civ 1)Yes also containing tactical battles please (in current form or more like AoW:SM both seems fine).Won't be able to play it much due to severe time constraints. Will very likely buy it from you still if its even of average quality (though I think it will be stellar since the road your taking seems very much in the right direction).Voted make a MOM2 type of game but evolution of FE is just as well (don't try to do FFH3 anyways. Kael has already soundly explained why he whouldn't do another FFH2 looking back. Its reached its pinnacle with the many modmods. If someone got 3 Years of lifetime to spend and likes 4X he/she should just go play FFH2. A gaming studio is a business and should make games which are doable not set unsolvable goals. As you have most painfully experienced. No matter what gamers cry for.)Let me elaborate what I feel is missing from FE.First and foremost: Flesh to the bones. FE has a hard time grabbing my long term interest in its current state (lasted way longer than Elemental WoM and never had to force myself to play it. Thanks Stardock for the nice game. I like it. Kudos for it. Its just not one of those games which I will revisit) because in many parts the game is simply a bit to shallow for my tastes (stronger focus on balance > fun also plays a part).The Heroic Part of the game is already very good. Wildlands is neat and grabbing loot is fun. What is lacking with increasing severity: racial diversity (minor thing, allready largely enriching but I feel the factions are still not strongly diverse enough. Jaggernauts and henchmen power stuff for all factions in the game is what I'm talking, Game whouldn't suffer if things keep the current state but there is more fun to be mined here.)Magic System (another minor thing, already an enriching part but still lacking much more stuff about 2 times as much whould be neat. Latest additions have tilted that lack to marginal though. Still much to be gained from expansion)Map system (middle impact. might have been adressed by the DLC and is easily doable just by modders alone. Maybe Kael can have a chat with Cephalo. If he's still active modding stuff somewhere he is singlehandedly able to enrich that part in ways you whouldn't belive possible. He's the guy for maps.)City Building (larger one. Still feels stale. Not enough positive specialisation possible for vertical growth. Super-Cities are a staple of the better empire -build centric 4X, here while the Levels do matter the impact is still by far not enough to actually warrant the effort. Unrest is an ok mechanic. Actual positive feedback from focusing on a few big cities is way to low still. Negative mechanics I don't find enchanting to be honest. Give us more positive reasons for building those super-cities of whatever sort. Sadly actually drags the fun of the game down / feels a bit like a neccessary chore.)Tactical Battles (large one but partly by design): At least offer more variety of you don't want to go the AOW:SM route which I can understand. When you added the bit of variety we have in the beta it allready made a huge difference. No reason why that can't be expanded without exessive effort so please give the tactical map design and tactical mechanics at least a bit of love.Ability diversity (large one part of tactical mostly but deserves its own entry): talking stuff like flying, invisible and the likes here. Go to MoM for inspiration (had so much variety in that department the about 2/3 was insignficant clutter. Still even the relevant stuff was so much its still mind-boggling / unsurpassed. Clutter could be ignored or indulged in as prefered.)I hope you mean that one when you say your engine has evolved enough you could do a MOM2 now.This also encompasses the unit part of the game. Customisation in a paradox way lead to les diverity here. Military Units mostly feel the same (save stuff like jaggernauts which like most interesting stuff got somewhat hit with the nerf-bat. I feel the other stuff isn't neccessarily ignored because its weak but because its plain boring.)Diplomacy (this one seems virtually non exist in terms of fun gameplay to be honest compared to the few better examples in the genre. Even reduced as the game evolved as options where cut one by one and trade curbed to protect the AI from the evil player... )This includes: Dynasties (liked the concept, disliked the implementation to the point where the cut felt better to me than with it...), Trade, relation-system, treaty-system, caravan-system, diplomatic warfare, possible espionage ect. all things of interaction with other factionsEasily deserves its own stand alone though because while offering huge potential it whould also radicaly change the feel of the game if done right and is conceptually hard to do when other parts of the genre are the measure plus poses some considerable risks (very few 4 x games I know do get that one right as an actual asset / focus of the game. Also not something which exactly matches my preferences in 4X so maybe I'm just blind to the really good examples.)MOO2 might be an example I know here (or Lord Xia might be a good provider of examples since it seems he is a bit into that part of the 4X Genre. Much more than I)Go at it slowly instead of throwing all stuff into the pot leaving individual parts to be desired just like you have done so far with E:FE.1 DLC / Expansion / Standalone for each major lacking aspect of the game seems enough for focused effortPlease don't take this one as a damning statement. E:FE is a nice game and the world is also a nice one. Just nothing to keep me coming back for more.To end on a positive note: Let me close with an Idea which might benefit multiple aspects (your 3D-Artists will probably hate me for it though. As might your stellar 2 D Artist if that means to much work for him) while possibly not harming anything much (except working hours from a small part of staff since its a specialized part) and not elaborated by someone in detail before here on the forums from what I have ssen:Give an option! to also use a cloth-map like version of the tactical battle maps thus offering a full 2D experience TM (not joking here... Tactical 2D Sprites with the Elemental: Fallen Enchantress Art style is something I and possibly others whould kill for!) that should have none of the disadvantages of using a shader 2 model while opening up even a larger range of old hardware than elemental offered.Might make multiplayer quite a bit easier to implement from what I got from some of your comments (enforcing no tactical battles in multiplayer is a show-stopper I assure you, enforcing 2D tactical maps might very well not be since there are considerable benefits with negligable downsides for multiplayers. Can freely do a poll among the people interested in Multiplayer to prove me right. I assure you the results will be loud and clearly stating 2D-only in tactical still is regarded as feature equal ).Should further speed up the tac battle part (which seems to be a main focus for tac-battles. A direction I don't like but very well understand)Should stabilze the game (and offer a workaround for graphics cards issues which did pop up from time to time going as far as making tactical unplayable to those few affected).Yes it won't be possible in such a map to see each piece of equip or do lots of fancy combat animations (but I assure you, people who whould pass on 3 D whould gladly pass on that.).Don't let that hinder your 2 D Artist(s?) though if they want another few years of work to dump into Kumquat to enable item customisation and combat animations in 2 D... I feel Kumquats 2 D Art-Style is something which (increasingly) sets this game and possibly even the engine apart (one of the clear visibly outstanding parts of the Kumquat / Elemental brand. If I think Elemental: Fallen Enchantress the 2 D Art is the first image that comes up very litteraly). 3 D is also nicely different (to me) but that is strongly subjective (haven't seen anyone say something bad about the 2D art but quite a number who don't like the 3D part.)Might feel like a bit of an insult to your 3 D staff. It's not ment to be from my side though. Just understand it as a huge kudos for your 2D Art guys.
My impression is that with the current lore Derek hands are tied. He's shown with FFH2 to be a master when it comes to create different factions with important different mechanics. He could not do this properly in FE because of the lore: they're basically all humans. Sure, you can come up with differences, but you limit yourself on a very important dimension. Faction differentiation alone can be a very powerful feature of a game. I have the feeling that Derek could create something really unique once he's allowed to get rid of the lore of FE. A different type of game, but Starcraft was a masterpiece because of lore and faction differentiation.
So, truly, I would ask Derek if he feels that the lore of FE is for him too much of a constraint. We do not need to know the answer. But if he feels so, maybe removing this constraint could allow for something really memorable and one-of-a-kind.
Voted for Master of Magic II but that was before I saw that Age of Wonders III were announced.
But I would demand gameplaychanges from the original like fog of war, Age of Wonders II style retaliation rules and if you kill 4XP worth of enemies then that is what you get and it gets spread to all the units participating.
I'm possibly the only one here that have never tried either War of Magic nor Fallen Enchantress ^^
No demo, plus I've read so much about FE that I really don't think I'd like the designdecisions. I'm primarily thinking about leveling up your ONE supersquad which makes me think of Heroes of Might & Magic which stems from an old type of singleplayer games where you gain power along the way and finally win or lose the game in ONE lousy epic battle against the enemy sovereign. That is anathema to me in a TBS like Age of Wonders II & Shadow Magic in which you can compete against other players.
Yeah it also makes me think of AoW 1 where enhanced tier 3 & 4 units was totally overpowered and tier 1 units was useless to train (retaliationrules. They are critical).
I'd say: Ignore good advice and go for what you - or those you believe are better thinkers than you (Kael) - believe in.
I believe I'm gonna go over to Eador and AoW III once they hit.
One of my favorite games of ALL TIME is Dragon Force. I'm a huge fan of Disgaea and Final Fantasy Tactics as well. This game is strangely similar to me, but it could really use some influence from these games. I know I'm mentioning console games and some PC master race users are glaring at me but I'm not JUST into MoM/Moo/Civ/GalCiV and what not. I've spent 75% of my gaming life behind a PC, but I'd just kill for a game that embraces the qualities of something like CiV5 from an outside empire scope, but deals with combat on a tactical level like the forementioned games.
Seriously though: A lot of people are asking for tactical combat and if you want some ideas, check out the above games. When it comes to "grid" combat, stuff like HOMM and Kings Bountry are really behind the times when it comes to the toolsets that console SRPGs have in their tactics games. While the AI isn't adjustable (either incredibly hard or too easy), and most of those themes are anime-over-the-top-EXPLOSIONS!11!, the gameplay needs to influence PC gaming more. I'm tired of Baldur's Gate rehashing, and making Civ with different pieces has been done to death. I want to see something like X-com (just a tactical reference) with an empire management system. The thing is:
Fallen Enchantress is so brutally close to that concept. So close that it's nearly painful. I really hope Legendary Heroes pushes it over the edge for me. Nonetheless this game is still very fun and interesting , but I feel like with a bit of evolution (or even modding) it could be in my list along with Civ/Moo/Mom as the benchmark 4x games.
To the devs: I may be stating the obvious, but these polls suffer tremendously from selection bias. Keep it in mind when you take your decisions.
Wow, someone else who loved Dragon Force! I loved the game back in the day. The Saturn was responsible for a ton of my current gaming loves- particuarly VF.
I say, do what makes your heart sing, put in a capable framework (a lot you have already) and go for it! And try to listen to your heart and intuition, not your head. Intuition is rarely (ever?) wrong with a capable framework for keeping on track.
This is my first FE related post in a while. But I thought like chipping in here.
So I say:
Do what makes your heart sing!
My vote on the poll is entirely dependant on my mood of voting, and I am a silly airhead, granted. I for one actually liked most of the options anyhow, as since whether they make a new MoM or a new Elemental they will bring something interesting to play with.
But it is no secret that MoM lie closer to my heart than Fallen Enchantress.. Mostly due to all the magic in MoM (I loved all the silly magic, screw the balance, let me mess around with turning my halfling population into werewolves, or moving around my cities with my powerful earth magic, enchant the entire land with magical roads, brighten up every single tile with the spell that turned everything into either forests or grasslands, mess around with buffing my units to the extremes with life magic, cast fiery death and destruction with my superior fire magic, and scoff at sorcery mages!
I would like to say that I have been greatly impressed by your dedication and desire to make this game great.
I think that you have learned a lot from your previous attempt and have been happy with the growth so far.
I am pleased to see the directions you are taking and hope you continue to go down this road.
I, as you obviously are, an old time gamer. I loved turned based games as it gave me time to think and really immerse and enjoy the game.
Then Lame Time, er Real Time came out and AI went out the window and it became a race between you and the computer to mass build one type
of unit and spam it.
On top of that the game usually cheated horribly. Worse game I played during the rise of RT (no S as there is little to no
strategy in these type of games) was DUNE. I forced myself to accept my empire was struck with no long term memory as I had to rebuild each
map and relearn all my tech, but on the final map the enemy had a full city, full tech, and had the world killer Nuke/Bomb. On turn 2 or 3
they would launch it. Game over! I never finished that game and to this day that still pisses me off. lol.
I will wait til the next expansion comes out and if it is as good as I think it will be I plan to do the following. In light of your dedication and
seriously great attitude about it all, (unlike Kerberos and Sword of the Stars II, Meccon (huge arrogant ass)), I will be purchasing at least
2 new copies to give to my friends whom have held off because of the rocky start. I think it is time to start to seriously promote this game
through my contacts and if necessary, buy and gift copies to skeptics.
Once again thank you for loving games and the type of games that we do. Thank you for having the perseverance to go on when all seemed
lost. I await your new ideas with an eagerness I have not felt in a long time.
Serin Maldy
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