Fallen Enchantress

[cman2010]

I just downloaded my free version of this game last night(I got emlemental around release) does anyone know how I can put that version on my steam account?

 

[Takhisis]

Do you have to put it on steam? It eats the souls of little gamers.

 

[Hawawaa]

Hey folks 1.1 is out! Go get it and enjoy. Here is the logs-
Fixes

Fixed Armor Piercing on all the Pikes, Shadow Broadsword, Druss Blade and the Ram’s Head Longbow

Fixed warg sweep animation

Fixed lots of crashes

Fixed the Heart of Stone ability

Fixed a bunch of clothes that had invalid color settings

Fixed a hang if you have Blood Sigil on a city

Fixed invalid color settings on the Bard and Shieldbearer henchmen

Big change to reduce memory usage in the late game

Fixed blue lines (they look like straight rivers) on the cloth map

Fixed an issue that could cause the AI to autocomplete all improvements when under threat.


Balance

Amethyst Vault provides 2 crystal/season (instead of 1)

Base city Gildar is reduced slightly

Guild Grocer bonus hit points reduced from +10% to +5%

Units trained in a city with an Infirmary start with the Endurance trait

Mining Guild provide 2 metal/season (instead of 1)

Pyre of Anniellum gives +2 fire power (instead of 1) but doesn’t give mana

Reduced the unrest penalty from slums from 10% to 5%

Guild Warehouse gives +4 gildar/season along with the existing bonus when the queue is empty

Watchtower gives units trained in the city the Charge trait (instead of bonus init to defending units)

Curgen’s Volcano has a 10 turn casting time and its casting cost is raised from 500 to 2000

Destiny’s Gift casting cost raised from 100 to 200 and the buffs were decreased

Earthquake casting cost raised from 100 to 300

Destiny’s Insight casting cost raised from 100 to 150

Pralius no longer has a sword that’s too high a level for him

Brutal Nature juggernaut trait reduced from +100% Attack to +50% and its training cost increased from 16 to 60

Frenzy juggernaut trait adds +1 Moves and its training cost increased from 10 to 50

Ignore Pain juggernaut trait reduced from +40 hp to +30 hp and its training cost increased from 35 to 50

Maul juggernaut trait training cost increased from 0 to 60

Uncontrolled Rage juggernaut trait training cost increased from 16 to 30

Juggernaut base hp increased from 40 to 50

Reduced the base cost of Juggernauts from 400 to 250

Reduced the Training Time on the Cook trait from 20 to 6

Heroic trait now gives +20 Influence when completing a quest (instead of 50)

Heroic trait gets +40 base Influence

Diplomat trait gives +40 base Influence (instead of +20)

Henchmen Influence cost reduced from 50 to 40

Bard henchmen starts with the best armor available

Shieldman henchman starts with the best shield and armor available

Torch Bearer henchmen starts with the Ring of Embers, Ring of Life, Belt of Speed and the best fire staff possible

Mercenaries dont have a Wage cost anymore

Tweaked the formula which determines the threat rating of units/armies

Modified the combat rating calcualtor to consider defense a bit more

Wraith race gains +20 Dodge

Amarian race loses the -1 hp per level

Quest scrolls now cost 100 gildar (instead of 50)



AI

AI trait weighting reduced from 1000 to 100 for researching techs purposes

AI checks to make sure a given unit isn't a city guardian unit before doing AI on it (to keep the AI from taking city defenders out of cities)

AI calculates the battle rank of its champions and sovereigns each turn afresh to accurately reflect how strong it is prior to operating on it

AI caps how much it will count crystal, influence and metal when factoring what it should research

AI vastly better at choosing technologies to research

AI is more protective of its cities

Fixed bug where AI pioneers couldn't build outposts if they were in an army with a champion or a sovereign (hence, armies of pioneers late game)

Fixed AI bug where sovereigns and champions, late game, would tend to lone wolf attack cities

AI pioneers better about staying put if there is an area threat around them (i.e. will stay inside a city)

AI values armor more than before when designing units

AI champions now care more about whether the city is defended well enough before leaving a city

Fixed bug that prevented AI from casting strategic attack spells on enemy units

AI interacts more with players

Fixed path finding bug that caused any AI units that intersected during movement to cancel their destinations. This prevented AI units from being able to effectively create armies or get around late game (basically crippled AI movement late game)

 

[Draginol]

Please look at the link before posting nonsense, Brad. The scenario I linked has DYNAMIC map generation during runtime. It's like a roguelike where you generate a new dungeon evrytime you go up or downstairs. Kael knows this scenario, check with him if Elemental allows a modder to do it. AFAIK, it can't.

I wasn't suggesting it could. Civ IV's modding potential is well beyond FE's IMO. But that doesn't change the fact that you can create your own maps and put in scenarios, triggers, etc. on maps. It's plenty powerful.

 

[LDiCesare]

I agree that it's possible to edit maps and you've worked a lot to make the game moddable. I still believe that the price for a map-pack is ridiculous, and that map-generation tools could have been better.
I still plan to give FE another chance when I'm bored with Skyrim, but the unit grouping user interface is really so painful I'm not sure I can get past it.

 

[GoodGame]

Unit grouping is pretty easy. It's not as easy as was in Civ3, but it's pretty much the same thing.

 

[LDiCesare]

Unit ungrouping is a PITA. Moving 2 units from different squares to join in another one is a pain.
It's simply way less easy than MoM. It's also very easy to make a mistake and move a single unit instead of a group into a square where there's a monster you intended to attack with everyone. I find the unit grouping UI extremely awkward. All the more so when it comes to full cities.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

true, grouping and movement is very bad at the moment.

 

[Draginol]

I agree that it's possible to edit maps and you've worked a lot to make the game moddable. I still believe that the price for a map-pack is ridiculous, and that map-generation tools could have been better.
I still plan to give FE another chance when I'm bored with Skyrim, but the unit grouping user interface is really so painful I'm not sure I can get past it.

I just move the units into the same tile and they group. I'm not sure what you're looking for here?

 

[LDiCesare]

Pick two groups of units. 6 units each. Move them into a single square. Now try to group two of one group with 5 of the other group and move them into another square.
I am unable to do this. AFAIK, one has to ungroup the units beforehand.

 

[CladInShadows]

I struggle to like the RPG aspects - I wish this was just a straight 4X like FFH was. I realize that's more of a personal preference though so I don't hold it against the game. The two things I do hold against FE are:

- Entirely unimaginative civs, world and lore. The different races are just so boring and predictable. It's sad because, this is where FFH really excelled, and I really hoped that with Kael's involvement there would have been a chance to scrap the existing races and start again, but it didn't happen. Things have improved greatly since his joining, but there's only so far you can polish a turd. This has always been a Stardock problem, GalCivII was no different. Hopefully Kael will be designing their next game's world from the start so it'll actually have the creativity it needs. Sadly, I'll need to keep waiting for a sucessor to FFH's amazing lore.

- Terrible graphics. Every time I see one of those character portraits I feel like I'm playing a Nintendo 64 again. Why is it that so many developers continue to feel that horrible 3D models are better than polished 2D images? If 3D is going to be done it needs to be done right. For a company like Stardock that can't afford detailed 3D models, then a creative, well drawn 2D image is almost as good anyway. Compare the FFH leader art for, say Dain and Fearyl, to anything in FE and it's just embarresing how much better they look.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

if you use this: http://forums.elementalgame.com/437209

plus the post_hdr file from this: http://forums.elementalgame.com/435723

the graphics should look a lot better.

quick comparison, before and after:

 

[Draginol]

Pick two groups of units. 6 units each. Move them into a single square. Now try to group two of one group with 5 of the other group and move them into another square.
I am unable to do this. AFAIK, one has to ungroup the units beforehand.

Ah, I see what you're saying. So sort of like the fleet manager in GalCiv where if two fleets were in a tile you can organize the fleets?

 

[Draginol]

I struggle to like the RPG aspects - I wish this was just a straight 4X like FFH was. I realize that's more of a personal preference though so I don't hold it against the game. The two things I do hold against FE are:

- Entirely unimaginative civs, world and lore. The different races are just so boring and predictable. It's sad because, this is where FFH really excelled, and I really hoped that with Kael's involvement there would have been a chance to scrap the existing races and start again, but it didn't happen. Things have improved greatly since his joining, but there's only so far you can polish a turd. This has always been a Stardock problem, GalCivII was no different. Hopefully Kael will be designing their next game's world from the start so it'll actually have the creativity it needs. Sadly, I'll need to keep waiting for a sucessor to FFH's amazing lore.

- Terrible graphics. Every time I see one of those character portraits I feel like I'm playing a Nintendo 64 again. Why is it that so many developers continue to feel that horrible 3D models are better than polished 2D images? If 3D is going to be done it needs to be done right. For a company like Stardock that can't afford detailed 3D models, then a creative, well drawn 2D image is almost as good anyway. Compare the FFH leader art for, say Dain and Fearyl, to anything in FE and it's just embarresing how much better they look.

With the first part, I understand what you're saying.

When I did the original design for War of Magic I had 3 requirements:
1. Master of Magic unique factions
2. Player designed units
3. Must fit in 2G of memory

The final result was I could have 2 of the 3. One might argue that in hindsight, we should have picked 1 and 3 instead of 2 and 3. Eventually, we'll ditch Windows XP support and be able to have all 3.

It's not a lore issue (the Quendar and Wraiths are radically different races in lore). It's the requirement that players are able to design and equip their own units.

In the long run, this will go away when we can fit more "stuff" in memory to let players have sufficient unique stuff to have very different body types, equipment, etc.

On the second part, the graphics, the idea was that they wanted to have the art style be simplified so that, again it would work on Windows XP machines (in WOM). It's a tricky thing to have thousands of unique units fit in 2GB of memory. That's why you don't have unit portraits and such in Civilization V. It's a memory thing.

Without going into too much detail the next few years are going to be a rebirth of strategy games. Stardock, Paradox, Firaxis, are all working on things that will take advantage of 64-bit systems. I don't think most gamers realize how much we've been held back by the 2GB limit on strategy games (try fitting 1000 high polygon, large texture units in memory at once).

The difference is going to be as big as going from VGA to what we have current. It's not GPU that holds us back from every unit in Civilization or FE or KC2 from looking as cool as what's in Far Cry 3. It's memory.

 

[LDiCesare]

Ah, I see what you're saying. So sort of like the fleet manager in GalCiv where if two fleets were in a tile you can organize the fleets?

Yes. That would help a lot.

 

[Aroddo]

Man, you can't blame bad game design on only having 2gigs of memory.
And while visually the art style is interesting, the race design was uninspired. Every single race was immediately recognizable as a human, even the one with stupid horns growing in their faces.
That is just lazy.

 

[Draginol]

Man, you can't blame bad game design on only having 2gigs of memory.
And while visually the art style is interesting, the race design was uninspired. Every single race was immediately recognizable as a human, even the one with stupid horns growing in their faces.
That is just lazy.

If you don't like FE, Aroddo, then why are you posting here?

The reason so many races appear similar visually is because of the aforementioned requirement to let players design their own units. We could only have a limited number of pieces of equipment (for memory reasons) which meant a limited number of skeleton models.

Or in other words, the limitation itself was a bad game design decision if you don't think unit design is trumps the limited number of skeletal models.

 

[Aroddo]

If you don't like FE, Aroddo, then why are you posting here?

Oh great, Frogboy is in critics-are-trolls mode again.
Moderator Action: And apparently Aroddo is in trolling mode again.
Which we disapprove.
Don't troll around.

The reason so many races appear similar visually is because of the aforementioned requirement to let players design their own units. We could only have a limited number of pieces of equipment (for memory reasons) which meant a limited number of skeleton models.

And you couldn't just load the models needed only for the moment? Or were you contemplating battles where every single model would appear at the same time?

Or in other words, the limitation itself was a bad game design decision if you don't think unit design is trumps the limited number of skeletal models.

Er.
Custom units are nice, I guess. I don't think the limitation in itself was a bad game design decision. You just didn't manage to get around the memory issue. Like using more of the same simple models in combat when zoomed out and setting a sensible zoom-in limit.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Custom units are nice, I guess. I don't think the limitation in itself was a bad game design decision. You just didn't manage to get around the memory issue. Like using more of the same simple models in combat when zoomed out and setting a sensible zoom-in limit.

I'm definitely looking forward to your game when it comes out. I'm sure it will be fantastic.

 

[Rub'Rum]

I'm definitely looking forward to your game when it comes out. I'm sure it will be fantastic.

I'm torn; on the one hand I want to smack Aroddo because of his poor attitude. On the other hand I find "why are you here if you don't like it" and "why don't you make your own game then" to be the most annoying arguments ever.