EDIT: Since 1.5 just came out, I am changing the title and some small elements of the OP, the bulk of the original post is, however, still applicable.
I really like what I can see of FE:LH 1.3 a lot so far, and don't think that LH needs much to become a truly "great" game (rating above 8/10). I think this is all it needs to go down in history as meeting the promise of the best successor to M&M and surpassing it as the next milestone. With one exception (see §5 below), I do not think that any of the following should be made into DLC or passed off to modders, but should form the basis of those projects.
1. UI
- Many screens are not closable via hotkey. All screens should be able to be closed by pressing "escape", and/or the same hotkey used to open them, by default (instead of having to click a "done" button).
- Important screens, such as research, should be accessable via their own hotkey, not the "K" key and then the click of a tab. Research, for instance, should be instantly accessible via "R", or something else, by default.
- All hotkeys should be customizable.
- There is currently no way in-game (or out of it) to view the progression tree available to Champions except in the few opportunities one has during level-up; this should be viewable by pressing a hotkey, or at least by clicking a button somewhere on the "unit details" screen.
- On the main UI overlay, with a city selected, rollover information tells me at what level the city's population is capped due to food, but nowhere can I actually see the current population -- for this, I must click on the city's details. I should not need an extra click, and hence should see the currenty population either in the round overlay window bottom left or in the mouseover info on the city's level bar.
- Entity hotkeys: It has become standard syntax in strategy games to be able to assign units or groups of units or locations a hotkey by pressing ctrl-# and then using the appropriate # key to select that entity. This is currently lacking in LH. This would also be useful for assigning makeshift Rallypoints, by being able to assign a hotkey to a tile.
- Rally Points: Although LH is more about Champions than units, still much of the game resolves around training at least a couple of units. Each unit-producing location (or at least towns) should have a default Rally Point (currently, the town itself) which can be altered to automatically send produced units to the selected destination upon completion of their training.
- More varied selection in game setup: Research can currently only be slow, fast, or normal, but I would like to have at least 7 choices, if I cannot enter a % integer on my own (as in Distant Worlds). Slow is too slow for me, but normal is too fast.
- An additional screen, much like the City overview, for Champions, so you can always find those that may inadvertently be stationed somewhere. The overview should list the basic stats, enchantments, and little icons for the equipement carried.
2. Tactical Combat features
Tactical combat is currently good, but still not quite as good as one might expect or hope, even looking at some oldies but goodies (e.g. AoW:SM).
- Currently, there is no accuracy penalty to distant or obscured targets with ranged weapons, which not only feels counterintuitive (archers shooting around corners, 20 tiles away just as likely to hit as point blank) but reduces the tactical choices players have with ranged units (currently, it's a no-brainer: move your ranged units as far away as possible and run around if necessary). Introducing penalties for obscured (LOS) or distant targets would allow players to make a choice (do I stay in mid-range for better chances to hit, or play it safe, or a bit more risky?). Additionally, this would make the difference between ranged weapons more variable and interesting, e.g.: magic staves may have the longest optimal range, crossbows the second longest, longbows the third, shortbows the forth, and thrown weapons the worst. Some rudimentary system should suffice, e.g. so that archers, for example, have a slightly less than optimal chance to hit a target on the other side of the tactical board than at point-blank range (while magic staves, for instance, might have an infinite range), and some form of rudimentary line-of-sight calculation (so that obstacles, debris and other units give a slight penalty to hit) -- all of which could be modified by a unit's level or traits. One very simple way of implementing this would be to simply name an integer for each weapon as that unit's optimal range at or below which no accuracy penalty is applied, with a modification type (S, M, L, XL) to roughly indicate a range penalty beyond this point. One could then imagine that an integer penalty per tile is applied based on the type of weapon (Short ranged weapons (S), for instance, might have a -10 accuracy penalty per tile beyond the optimal, while XL-ranged weapons only -5. Unit traits and spells may affect any of these values. Admittedly, LOS calculations would be harder to implement, and I do not have a simple suggestion to remedy its lack.
- Terrain in tactical battles could be so much better in offering real choices to the player. For instance, some rudimentary form of terrain-type bonuses and penalties (plains, hills, forest, desert, swamp, city) for most units or factions, should be fairly easy to implement, utilizing both the value of the tile on the strategic map (e.g. bears get a bonus in forest tiles, Ironmen in hills, etc.) and the individual tiles on the strategic map (being on a hill could give a defensive bonus and an accuracy bonus to ranged units, etc.).
- Not all Resistance rolls should be the same: Some spells and units should allow for +bonuses or - penalties to certain resistance rolls, so that some skills become more interesting and usable, e.g. "... unless the target resists at a -15 penalty". Some attributes should allow some units a bonus or penalty to some rolls as well, e.g. being "Large" might grant extra resistance to a "Web" attempt by default, for example...
3. Documentation
- The Manual, the Spellbook, and, in some instances, the Hiergamenon is in many places very out-of-date, being frequently the status quo ante of Fallen Enchantress of 18 months ago.
- Currently nearly impossible to determine which spells are obtainable under which circumstances, except for very few exceptions. The "prerequisites" listings of the Hiergamenon spells are frequently missing, and the mouseovers of traits (e.g. "Air Mage") only show what that level offers, not the ones before it (e.g. Air Apprentice). There is no way in-game (or out of it) to view the progression tree available to Champions except in the few opportunities one has during level-up -- this should be viewable by pressing a hotkey.
4. AI
The AI has seen improvement, but still has faults in some areas. Please see the consolidated AI thread (This thread here ) for more info.
5. Content
- Spells: There are a great many variables in LH, but most spells seem to affect only a few. Frankly, I find most of the spells available to most of the champions fairly mundane. While I am not expecting the variety available in a game such as Dominions without DLC, I do think that at least half of the suggestions for spells one can find on the forums over the past months are suitable and easily implementable for vanilla LH, at the very least more variety amongst the tactical spells for the "standard" spellbooks (elemental/life/death), and a few to unlock in the "Magic" research tab. I think an increase of anywhere between 25% and 50%, including the cross-class spells (below), would be worthwhile for Vanilla LH.
- Cross-class spells: I'd like to see at least some spells unlock for mages who have access to different spellbooks, e.g. Earth Mage und Death Disciple might unlock Raise Fallen, etc.
- 10-25% increase in variety of items and monsters (without DLC)
- I would pay DLC-$ for additional quests, maps, and also items, monsters, and spells above the scope of that described above.
6. Ruleset
- Non-hostile entities should not disrupt movement (see pathing dilemmas for more details). Currently, it is the case that by clicking on a nearby destination, I have inadvertently sent my units on a 20-turn hike around the world because some friendly unit may be moving through or sitting on a bottleneck. Friendly units should be able to pass through these, and if they end the turn on them together, we should simply see the little "2" or whatever icon to show that 2 or more armies are present in that one tile. Allied cities should also be able to be moved through.
- It would be nice if at least some of the greatly over- or underpowered elements of the game were adjusted without resorting to Modding. Selecting the 20 most common remarks, such as the "Tame" ability, from these forums should be sufficient. This is particularly important because the AI seems to be better at adjusting its strategy to Vanilla values vs. those generated by mods.
7. Thank you for listening and your constructive criticism / feedback.
I'd definately like to have a choice concerning my loot. That would be great.
Also concerning Maul and Magical Staffs, I am sure it does work for melee staffs.
Concerning Maul and ranged combat: Can't you imagine Legolas firing arrows very fast at an Olifant, taking down the monster one shot after another?
If you argue that the attacker sees the damage done or the blood and gets a kick out of it, why wouldn't a magic user or archer be able to see that and quickly gain a rage to attack more?
Just because the enemy isn't near him? I don't think that's a valid explanation.
What I miss is ITEM FORGE like it is in King Arthur II.
How it works. I research building Item Forge. Build it. When a hero visits a city with item forge, he has options Trade, Shop and Forge. When I choose Forge there appears 4 slots. 1 slot - for base item (weapon or armor), 2 slots for another two items (ingredients) which will be consumed. And the result will be put in the 4 slot. So if I place a sword into 1 slot, a fire ring into 2 slot, healing potion into 3-d slot and press Create I receive in the 4 slot a sword with Fire attack and with Heal of some points per turn. For example. I suggest not to make any models for new items, just add a halo of some color.
I could see this working, although I'm a bit confused as to why an ice ring would result in a sword with a fire attack? Seems counterintuitive.
I've mistaken. Surely Ice ring should give Ice attack to weapon or Cold resistance it we make an armor.
Perhaps it would be better that consumable items should not be added to the forge since items with limited charges are as valuable as separate items and scrolls. And it be needed to program item charges, now the game doesn't have nonconsumable items with limited charges.
I'm reposting a suggestion made elsewhere, so it get's in the correct thread.
Wait-command
I'd like a wait-command in tactical battles (think I remember that from HoMM or MOO). This would make the unit wait with it's action until after the next unit in the queue. This would provide you with more decisions/options in battle.
Better use for late champions
In my short experience I don't find much use for the late champions. On a large map the gap to the Sov and main /first/ champion becomes too big. HoMM had Xp-locations to visit on the map and Xp-buildings in cities, that you could visit once for a fixed Xp-bonus. This could help making the newer champions a bit more competitive, as the bonus is more noticeable on low level units. (And I don't think we need the tree that gave +1 level, that would benefit the Sov too much.)
I also think double Hero-armies shouldn't get quite as hard Xp-decrease. As I understand the present situation; two heroes split the Xp, three get one third each, etc - and then troops get half of that. IMHO it's not Xp-efficient to use 2+ Sov/Champions-led troops - but it would be fun. I'd suggest to make two heroes get 66% or 75% of the Xp (instead of 50%) OR give the troops the same Xp as a 1-hero-army would get (even though this could make troops level faster than heroes, which shouldn't be a big problem IMHO) - so it gets slightly better to use 2-hero armies.
There is an exploit and I suggest to "fix" it.
If I need to keep high growth rate of my city, I put Pioneers as last items in production queue. For example, I produce a market, then pioneers, pioneers... And my city grows at 6-7 people per turn.
When I put pioneers to queue total population of the city is less than 30, though it still gives tax income and production as if there were plenty of population in the city.
I suggest to tie population with income and production coefficients. This needs to rework the whole mechanic though. Because now starting outposts of 3 men produce about 20 production, but hige cities of 600 may produce only 200. For example. I really like MoM system of workers/peasants. It doesn't allow to keep people in queue without penalties to income and production.
I suggest to correct higher level heroes.
Just look - 1 level heroes have 2 traits.
Then look - 3 level heroes mostly have 2-3 traits. Why so? They should have 4!
Al others - 5 - 9 level heroes all (or almost all) have less traits than they should. Please add them some traits!
I also suggest to give better equipment to heroes. All 1 level heroes should at least have something with them. 3 level heroes should be 100 equipped in leather or similar unique equipment. 5 level heroes should have partially chain and leather armor, 7 levels all in chain or lightplate armor, 9 levels all in masterwork chain or plate or similar unique armor.
I think that human player will find the way to equip heroes, while AI heroes are poorly equiped thus they loose battles often and collect many wounds-drawbacks.
Play on higher difficulties. I've been playing challenging where the description says ai has no boni that the player can't get but I moved up to hard and AI heroes and sovereigns have health bars as long as a texas eagle a flying over the state capital ( I don't know what that means). They have a lot of extra health and traits so they won't get as many injuries.
I agree with your other points, I've been using Champion Bonaza mod to add in a much greater variety of champions so I don't see these problems as much.
They really don't take too much injures, but have occasionally 0-2 even on ridiculous level. Now I'm playing on ridiculous level and fall behind all AI in research. Their troops armed and armored with elite equipment. While their heroes look much as beggars in leather and rusty armor or even don't have a complete set of armor. AI heroes are very weaker than AI troops.
I think that items in shops should be twice cheaper and AI should buy items. Btw, my own keroes are also dressed like elite beggars. With some brilliant equipment and with some rags.
My another wish for a new patch is to recalculate overall rating of a faction.
Armies should value much more than now - strong armies are the key to victory. Then research progress should be estimated more than now. Number of cities should weight less of all.
Example.
Now I play on ridiculous difficulty level. I have more cities than any other faction 7. Others have 6, 4 and 3. All of opponents are far ahead of me in research and number of armies. For example, an opponent with 4 cities already has units with best maces (22 Att) and with masterwork chainmail, while I even didn't research common chainmails.
Opponent with 6 cities is of the same rating as I. Other opponents are of lower rating.
All of them payed me for non-aggression pacts. Two of them even agreed to pay me tribute. They have better armies, better technologies - why do they have worse rating and worship me? I have more cities but I have no army except 4 heroes, 2 wolves, 2 panca archers and 2 starting troops which are extremly outdated.
Faction is powerfull when it has strong army. Technologies make an army strong. Cities only help to maintain armies. Their role should be decreased.
Otherwise you see how its easy to "survive" on ridiculous difficulty and even demand more from real winners.
I want the game be more combat oriented.
Add additional queue for training units! There should be two queues - for building structures and for training units. Like it is in Total War series.
Also make AI less peaceful and let wars begin earlier!
I agree with the UI, Documentation and Misc. issues.
The rest can wait until another patch.
I think the Elemental and Total War series really are different kinds of games. With Total War games going all the way back to Shogun 1, the main and usually only way to win was to conquer your enemies. They're all about the battles and conquest. Elemental is closer to the Civ games, in that you can win by conquest, but can also pursue other goals such as maintaining peace, or making some great technological/magical achievement.
If they made the game more like Total War, you'd be hard pressed to pursue a magical, quest or diplomatic victory, there would be only war and that would be making a fundamental change to the game.
The best balance I think would be like the one in Stardock's other major Turn Based Strategy series, Galactic Civilizations. You can win by pursuing the path of peace, technological achievement or ascension, but you cannot ignore creating and maintaining a military or the AI will take advantage of your weakness. So if you want you can be Space Switzerland, neutral and armed to the teeth. But not going out to conquer the galaxy.
Just my thoughts. All the Best.
Additional AI issues:
In addition to AI unit design, pathing, citybuilding, settling, and risk assessment (on all of which the AI still desperately needs help!), the AI still needs work on
- Champion building: The AI will often, to its great disadvantage, choose the wrong strategy in equipping and fielding its champions. I've seen the AI (unsuccessfully) attempt to field Procipine as a warrior. I honestly do not know if the path Warrior or Defender was chosen, or if she remained a mage and simply failed to cast spells, but rather continued to wield her axe, while decked out in armor, in all of our encounters (in which she was soundly thrashed).
- Selecting when to accept peace. Warhungry AIs will attack when they deem fit, even if it means their own downfall, but in at least one situation I've had Tarth decide to kill me, then it succeeded in losing all but two of its cities in quick succession, not to mention most of its troops, while I did not lose a single unit. I wanted to offer Tarth peace, but found that it valued peace with me at around 800 Gildar (I owned about 200). If anything, Tarth should have begged me for peace, but would not accept it when offered "for free". And hence it was subsequently destroyed.
Pathing
I can't resist saying it again. Gosh please considering looking into a method of allowing units to pass through / stack with non-hostile entities (including structures), some were suggested above. Please
Balance
These things should not rely completely on MODs, because the AI does not work optimally with non-vanilla data.
- Make strategic spells which hamper enemy production less expensive. Have you ever seen anyone, AI or Human, cast those spells (whose name sadly escape me and which I sadly cannot look up here on the website) with wintery-sounding names that slow production? I haven't. Perhaps because they are not "worth it"? Even spells such as Curgeon's Volcano, should that be the name, do not seem all that appealing, considering the fact that for less than 1200 mana I can teleport in to that city and sack it after a quick 100-mana-costing battle.
- End-game researched items and spells should be more powerful. I've never really seen anyone cast Blight, or the spell whose name I cannot remember but perhaps starts with Q.
- Experience rewards for ALL quests, lairs, and creatures needs to be seriously readjusted. Some rewards might be relics of earlier iterations of the Elemental franchise. Sometimes the difference in experience between comparable challenges is 10-fold. It's frustrating to have the same team (say, 2 champions and 5 troops) fight 10 comparable battles, gaining in each 10 exp for the champions, while fighting an 11th battle of comparable difficulty, to be awarded 150 each.
- The "value" of many items in the game need readjusting. Some might be relics of earlier iterations of the Elemental franchise. There are some items of comparable use (e.g. weapons which deal similar damage and have similar effects and similar initiative), only to have some be "worth" 10 times more .
Again, I am not suggesting that most of these changes be made primarily because I want an aesthetically balanced game, rather I am suggesting these changes be made so that the AI can make a much more reasonable judgement regarding what to build, cast, research, and equip.
Easy Spells
It doesn't have to be anything groundbreaking, but there needs to be more spells which are not available through research; each node of the Elemental / Life / Death branch should have at least 3 choices, if not more.
Some obvious ones (locus classicus, surprisingly not already in):
- flaming arrows; tactical; mid-range fire tree: gives all bowcasters on your team +x fire attack for the rest of the battle
- mirror image; tactical; early-mid air tree: creates x mirror images of self, which disappear when hit
- Raise Zombie; tactical; mid-range death tree: create a zombie from a wounded unit on the battlefield
- Disease; tactical; late death: Champion suffers an Injury (Disease) which has a chance of causing a further random injury each turn to that unit and any other Champion in its army
- Flight; strategic; mid-late air tree: unit blessing, grants the flying ability
- Cure; strategic; late-game life: rids a champion of an injury or all injuries
- Frost; strategic; early-game water: unit bless, successful attacks have a chance to slow target
Again, unlocking cross-class spells, such as Mud (water and earth), Rust (water and air), Sleep (Air and Life), Boil (water and fire), Virus (Death and Air), Banish (Fire, Life), Angel (Life, Air, Earth), Bog Golem (Death, Earth, Water) or Sulphur Golem (Death, Earth, Water, Fire) would be nice to have, eventually.
I'm not a battle hardened veteran of this game yet but:
Some things that I'd consider 'staple' for a genre such as this, but don't see in the game:
"template abilities" i.e. all summons have X, or all constructs have X abilities. How about 'absorb' damage of the same element? I do see some immune out there. Undead is another great template... half damage from piercing? full damage from blunt? etc.
Ranged miss chance based on terrain. Terrain modifiers for combat. This was covered by the OP, I'd really like to see something implemented here. Late game archery... is there really a strong counter for it? (one of my first games was deploying an archery heavy army, very successful). Currently the only way to avoid ranged fire is probably with the immune damage spell.. I forget what its called. Using terrain to hide units behind would add depth.
Also: the game currently has 2 healing spells (aside from death ward).. which don't hold up well near end game. I.e. you might have a "company" with 6 members, totally nearly 200 HP, of which your heal spell might heal 25, 45ish with the mass heal. Maybe a bit more with a few pieces of +healing gear?
A few 'fun' ideas:
Extra-dimensional Storage - empire-spanning. Somewhat late game modification: allow storage of items in cities that could span the empire.
Gates: Allow gates in cities to teleport to other cities in your empire. Perhaps a significant mana investment would be required.
Summoning circles in cities, again significant mana investment. Perhaps these could be augmented with crystals or a on-map resource discovery. i.e. ancient summoning gate, etc.
Portals to the elemental planes, etc? Warlock has this.... and of course MOM had similar things going on as well. Along the same lines, some dungeons might have minimaps in them, which you have to work through multiple opponents to get to the 'big guy'. Dungeon crawls could be one potential DLC.
Mini epic quests: more quests with multiple parts, perhaps involving other planes.
Quests dealing with enemy factions.
The ability to build Barricades around your area. This would be GREAT. Similar to how the imperium wildlands work? Perhaps the walls could have HP on the overland map. Probably some mechanic would have to be devised here.
City unit placement, and terrain modifiers. Ranged units could go on ramparts. I've been in multiple city battles and started off within 2-4 tiles of the enemy. It wasn't benefiting to me, or my archer army.
Is there a way to upgrade your city garrison units with better gear? If not, why not?
-I've read the backstory of how Stardock arrived here with Legendary Enchantress.. so I realize ya'll probably aren't where you want to be at yet.
Keep up the good work.
After seeing the pre-release notes of what is in the making for 1.4, I'm quite worried. I do still have high hopes for 1.5!
Where can I see the 1.4 pre-release notes? Thanks in advance
N/A
With very few exceptions, most of the this thread is still highly applicable, but perhaps could be renamed Wishlist for 1.6, since 1.5 seems not to involve most of it.... How can you rename a thread title?
Along the same lines, some dungeons might have minimaps in them, which you have to work through multiple opponents to get to the 'big guy'. Dungeon crawls could be one potential DLC.
They aren't in the game, because they were purposefully cut from it. They were in the game and they were deemed bad for it.
There are already spells in the game that make archery hurt you less and they are pretty effective at that.
UI - The last thing I want is a clutter of buttons to have or need to press to get somewhere. I bought a mouse for a reason. Give me a list I can click on and one button to bring up that list, tabs are fine.
Tactical - the game isn't a wargame and doesn't need all that extra mess for accuracy at a distance and objects in the way. If anything it needs to be more beer and pretzelish.
Documentation - Who looks at the manual, spellbook or the enclycopedia anymore? It's good for a one time read but just like anything with text and software just read the log notes when you get a patch and that will be enough to know while playing.
AI - The ai will always need improving, it will always do things we don't like or agree with. The ai needs to be taught to learn how the player plays and ally better with other ai's and attack the human player that is all.
Spells: More is not better as the more you add the more the ai has problems dealing with. Get back to just basic spells and get rid of a lot of these mundane do the samething as other spells do. Make spells class specific. If you're a goddam healer class then only use and get godam healing spells.
that's as far as I'm going with this. everybody wants to change the game in their own image and who cares. What needs to be done will be done eventually anyways. None of this stuff is necessary though.
I completely agree. No changes needed.
Personally, I love documentation. I lurk the forums and read manuals at work
In any case, the current manual and spellbook are for FE and therefore full of incorrect info. This feels really sloppy and unprofessional.
Spells: I can't really think of any mundane and/or identical spells...? Spells are fine, imho.
There are "mouse" people, and there are "keyboard" people. A good UI tries to accommodate both.
I've been saying this since the beta started
But apparently noone cares.
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