I must emphatically recommend that you do NOT drop "Elemental" from the title, for three main reasons:

1) It's disingenuous.  The game is Elemental.  You know it, we know it, everyone who's looked at a screenshot knows it, and the reviewers definitely know it.  Stardock pretending that War of Magic didn't exist will not inspire confidence in potential buyers.  Only good word of mouth will do that.  If anything, going out of your way to cover up the game's lineage is more likely to bring about additional distrust.

2) "Fallen Enchantress" isn't an apt title for the sandbox mode, which is pretty much always the main attraction for 4X games.  I'm sure she's in the campaign somewhere, but you will never once hear a Fallen Enchantress referenced anywhere in a randomly generated game.  If the eponymous enchantress turns out to be Procipenee or Ceresa then that's even worse, because then you have all these blinking neon signs pointing at a character and then they don't do anything out of the ordinary.  It would be like if Master of Magic was named Rjak: Mighty Wizard, or if Master of Orion didn't have the Orion system referenced anywhere.

3) Perhaps most importantly: it's shortsighted.  If you drop "Elemental" now to get away from the past, you also won't have anything to build on in the future.  What are you going to do when you get around to making the sequel?  Shoehorn it into being called "Fallen Enchantress 2"?  Give it some completely unrelated title and just hope people know which successful game it's based on (in spite of the fact that you are right now explicitly expecting that the absence of the Elemental name will ensure that people do NOT know what game it's based on)?  You'll be left with a bunch of games and expansions which are intimately related, but have no common branding to unify them.  Imagine trying to market every Sins title Stardock has ever published without having the "Sins of a Solar Empire" title to connect them.

It'll do more harm than good, believe me.  Besides, if you really thought that the merest whisper of War of Magic would kill Fallen Enchantress at market, you'd know that you were already doomed no matter what.

1) Depends on names you got for sequels.  like Fallen Enchantress: Return of the Titans (hints that it still resembles FE ) .  Personally I think E:WoM was such a bomb you should embrace the fallen enchantress. 

3)  Spells, I largely agree with Seanw3's suggestions.  In short each book should be viable to specialize in the way things are.  Say I choose water or air or whatever to be the main one - each should have levels of summons, enchantments, damage doers (how many is up to you, but there should be more all around, even if fire is king ) Some need balance and scaling (city enchantments/curses ) . 

4)  I want to see a quest where I have to save a dragon from a princess.  I'd like to see a quest give out a lightning bow be just as common as the ignys bow.  Also maybe one that gives out a decent sword as a reward.   Maybe another one where you have to save a paladin who has been severely wounded, like totally keep him alive throughout the battle (monsters will pretend he is more tasty than you or your units )  Whether you put your units in harms way, heal him or both it should be challenging  (I'm thinking Strong maybe, definitely not medium or weak )  and the rewards could be either a piece of plate armor (random ) , his weapon (magic mace or sword ) ,  or major bump in influence cause it was right thing to do.  

5)  Earthquake randomly destroys resource, can be anywhere on map. 

     Recent flooding left an area more fertile (area becomes settleable if it wasn't already, if it was settled the affected areas produce more grain )

     Drought causes opposite of the above

     Civil unrest doubles cause of misunderstanding of your latest policies.   Effect is worse if no governors to help smooth things over.

     Recent Diplomatic Blunder either causes good or ill will +10 (or enough to tip someone the edge either way towards love/hate )

     A wormhole opens up and Don Quixote attacks outposts of the player who has the most (thinking that they're windmills )  turns out he's a deadly boss (almost epic! ) 

     Rare travelling merchant allows for a mega book sale, where ANY book can be bought.  +XP, the +Attribute ones, even the spellbook ones.  Didn't say that it was cheap though. 

6) The AI already play better than I do.  [e digicons]:'([/e]

7) Fair - but given enough time to allow the team to work, I'm sure will be excellent when it's released. 

8) Must have map editor.  What would really be super awesome is a Campaign editor that would allow a modder to make their own campaigns, string maps together, allow for the choosing of rewards between maps.  Set caps on exp / level limits if desired or leave it open.  Would love actual mod tools instead of using notepad++ .  Spell editor / creator.  Artifact/ Item maker - ability to set value and have it added to lists (think appearing in shops or quest rewards ).  Monster editor, allow for the creation design and saving of new monsters to face, also whether or not they can be a summons.  I would also like to request more artwork for crests / logos.  The existing ones are soo limited bland.. c'mon.   Also if you could throw in a Altarian and Torian custom race since you already made Lord Kona of the Drengin. 

9) Just promise me I'll never have to dirty myself and install steam to play your game THEN I'll be fine.  Stardock Central / Impulse I have lived with.  No Steam - not like Civ 5. 

10) I hope you don't mind me busting your balls for things as they stood in any report card threads then.  Cause I did. 

11)   I can't believe it's really Markin. 

12)  I hope it's "more than 1 map"  and I am totally blown away.  It's usually like that quote from Jerry McGuire though,  "You had me at Hello! "  LOL!  Being able to create our own campaigns will be as awesome in a way. 

13)  See #9

14) I was going to crack another joke, but I'll take the time to thank and congratulate the dev team for their work.  FE will make up for what E:WoM was supposed to be.  Also goes to show how awesome Stardock is as a company for making games.

15) I am totally ready to pay for the 64bit DLC. 

Last but not least, a personal thanks to everyone at Stardock, my best wishes for your continued successes.

Hi Brad congrats to you and your team for getting the game to this stage. I'm thinking what the game needs most now is balance tweaking - some buildings and spells need attention such as destiny's gift and adventurer's guild these need buffing to make them worth building/casting.

I also think Yithril needs to be buffed as it's pretty weak relative to the other factions.

Also with regard to spells I'd like the restrictions lifted on air, water, fire and earth - both kingdoms and empires should be able to cast all the spells from these books - if I choose an empire and water magic, I want to be able to use mantle of oceans. With regard to life/death magic can we have a bit more utility spells for these 2?

Lastly single unit creatures need to gain more hp when they level up; squads gain loads of hp but monsters don't.

These are the things that jump out at me anyway

This is a great idea!  I don't agree that it should be the only way, but what if you gave those other stationary champions an area of influence?  If you got close they could tell you to move or attack you.  At least have them moving around a little beating up on wondering pioneers from apposing sides.  Maybe you could get an outpost when you kill or join up with one.

The graphics now for the higher level champs look like they are trying to protect something anyway.  What is it exactly?  At least from killing/hiring them you might get a seriously fortified tile to launch attacks from.

I think it only shows 2 units in those tiles but they can fit a whole army.

Again, Great Idea klaxton!

To respond to your first question, it might hurt your feelings but I would just call this Fallen Enchantress and move on from WoM. We don`t forget about WoM, it was part of the path that made the new game possible, but I`d just move on from it now and embrace the new game as it was always meant to be.

I would like to see a spell to enchant roads and a spell to teleport items between champions.

Quests, quests quests. That is an unfair question. Nobody in their right mind will say there are enough quests. We need more quests. I want more quests of the medium variety. I find that i mostly can do very easy quests and the rest is all late game.

The main feature I would want to see is a remake of the road and logistic system. It is lackluster right now.

More summons please, both low end and very high end.  Pretty tired of Fire Elemental as the best thing to summon most games.

It's been called Elemental: Fallen Enchantress all this time. I don't see any reason to change it.

1. What to call the game.

Elemental: Fallen Enchantress. That way the expansion would be called Elemental: something else.

3. Spells

I am always in favor of more summoning spells to offer that as an optional strategy. The most powerful summoning spells could be granted from quests.

4. Quests

I'm not sure how current quests function, but I would like to see quests with multiple choices to choose from, but the result of your choices is random with mostly favorable, and sometimes terrible, results. This way, quests cannot be memorized by players who would naturally select the choices with the best reward, or avoid a hard choice path.

I'd also like new quests to spawn automatically, without requiring to purchase the quest spawner item from the shop,

6. Strategy

Never build a scout/explorer. It's a waste of a city's queue. Instead, use the main army to scout with while killing monsters and doing quests at the same time.

Always attack other armies/cities with a full army size. Never fight with 3 units per army or less. Never fight with a pioneer in the army. In fact never include a pioneer in the army for the AI. Just make the AI protect its pioneers by moving the pioneer into the same tile as another army, but keeping them separate armies.

I personally favor the economic game: focus on building city improvements, and building units only when required.

As a general rule of thumb, a great way to start off the game is to research leather armor and spears. Fully equip the sovereign with leather armor, and give him a spearman or two for meatshields and extra damage. Then the sovereign is ready to go monster hunting and questing fairly safely.

Generally, always buy armor for champions/sovereigns to greatly increase survivability. With a good weapon, they become tanky damage dealers, even with lower initiative. Armor is sooooo important for survivability that its painful to see AI champons carrying only their initial armor. If the AI cannot purchase armor, or find some from quests and monsters, I wouldn't mind seeing the AI teach in regard by getting it all for free.

Personally, I've never used healing items on my champions: they are so tanky with armor I've never had to. But I suppose an AI could make good use of them with their champions if the healing done is about 30+ in a turn.

In my experience, the AI never won a tactical battle against me. The least the AI could do is to gather 3+ armies and wait for all of them to be within striking distance of target army or city. When they are in position, they should all attack in the same turn so that the defending army does not recover its health before the next battle.

7. Game Impressions

I voted good.

To make it good+, it could do with some balancing and pacing.
As an example for balancing, I feel that at the beginning of the game, I'm much better off using my champions to do physical damage. Magic damage spells just don't compare to a good weapon early on. Especially Burning Hands. It's 1 damage at level 1 is it?
As for pacing, units with armor take too long to build, and I usually prefer building an improvement instead. I would like to see unit train times capped at 15 turns for low production cities, and 10 turns for higher production.
There are more city improvements, but it feels like there are a third of them that mainly do -unrest. I tend to build everything else first and keep tax rate low.

To make it excellent, it needs some more features to flesh out the experience and to make it stand apart from comparable games. Of course this would be the expansion for the game.

I'm thinking special city siege tactical battles with unique game mechanics and city improvements to fully develop the idea.

Another thing would be dynasties. To bring out it's full potential, children should inherit the genes (traits) of its parents. The Total War series could be used for inspiration. In addition, marrying children to other factions would have real effect on relations, and rules of inheritance could determine the ownership of cities. It is just something to make Elemental to stand apart from other 4x games.

More Kingdoms vs Empires features would add to the lore. Having a type of UN council for Kingdoms, and a UN council for Empires with resolutions that affect both like factions and opposing factions. E.g. a vote on resolving intra-Kingdom disputes, or how to deal with a powerful faction on the opposing side, or how to deal with a threatening random event.

One feature I currently hate is diplomacy. It's just ordinary, and I'd compare it to Civ 5's diplomacy, which I also hate.
I think that currently there is nothing meaningful to trade. If I ignored diplomacy and only declared wars or signed peace treaties, what would I would be missing?

Treaties are rather dull. +% to guildar or research just are not interesting. Something more interesting would be a treaty that shares the ZoC for strategic spellcasting purposes, two factions sharing their mana pools for spellcasting, or two factions sharing their shards to power their spells. Useful treaties for allies  fighting stronger opponents.

I am completely against relation modifiers to determine relations.
I would rather see two factions discussing issues relating to them mostly, and also other players. Agreeing on issues, successfully fulfilling the goal of issues, increment the relation meter . Refusing issues decrements the relation meter. Going to war or killing someone's mother resets relations to 0.
The idea is to get factions to talk in the form of a conversation with proposals and counterproposals using words rather than balancing the perceived value of a trade with guildar and influence as it is now.

12. The Campaign

Makes good sense to separate the sandbox game from the campaign, It felt weird in GC2 to keep researching the same techs over and over again after every mission. All I'm really looking for is a good story, exposure to the Elemental lore. Maybe some in-joke references to how War of Magic was the worst war in the history of mankind. And of course an alternative tutorial that introduces various features used in the sandbox.

Great job on this game.  I am finding the more I play and learn the more fun the game gets.  Far as the name, I have to vote undecided.  I can see pro's and con's of both.  In the end, it comes down to how well it is marketed and what kind of reviews it gets.

I still wish that when moving a unit the dotted line would come up first to show their path and allowing the player to confirm the route the units takes.  I am still have my units take routes that I don't expect them to take.

Features:

- Making unit groups that don't dissolve in cities

- Already mentioned, but important: an interface to set starting positions of units in battle

- A possibility to view and maybe change upgrade paths. If i give my unit an upgradable weapon i wann know with what tech i can upgrade that.

- Generally needs more explanation of how stuff works. Though i guess once its released someone somewhere will make a wiki for that..

Since the last summer sale on steam I use it regularly, will there be a posibility to get my copy bought from you onto steam? And have it both on your service but also on steam? Eg. I use my code from your server and redeem it (if it is called that) on steam so I can see the game in the steam client?

Edit: Thanks poster #98 and I also agree with poster #96. If you can work out a discount then I won´t mind buying it on steam and I don´t mind giving you guys (stardock) a few more bucks since I got FE for free since I bought Elemental before launch. But I don´t want to pay full price for a game I already own and can play...

I wish more levels of magic gave a separate summon- AOW2 had 4 levels of summons per element.

Maybe there should be a quest that allows you to make shrills?

For me, in order of priority, the key issues are: 

1. Fix the slowdown in tactical battles

2. When a resource gets destroyed, give us an option to zoom to that resource

3. Add an indicator for units which still have movement points

4. Make it possible to garrison units in outposts like you do in cities

5A. Add a spell allowing the magical transfer of artifacts between heroes, OR 

5B. Add a vault building allowing the storage of artifacts in cities 

6. Give governor units exp for city growth or achievements

7. Re-activate the dynasty functionality (marriage, children etc.)

8. Fix the bug with wildlands not clearing after the quest is complete if you have saved/reloaded 

9. Add some more depth to tactical battles (flanking, shield protection, cover from ranged attacks etc.)

If the above improvements are implemented the game will be close to perfect for me!

Best, bendiwolf