FE- better than E:WoM

[Tasunke]

So with 1.5 playthroughs, Fallen Enchantress seems a lot better than Elemental: War of Magic

E:WoM will be stuck at 1.4, and likely never really good ...

but for those of you that bought E:WoM as either a pre-order or soon after it came out, you can get FE for free!

Its not really an Expansion or a Sequel ... its more like (imho) they are re-releasing the game under a different name, and with better Mechanics and a better Interface.

->Interface is still somewhat nebulous, but a vast improvement from E:WoM

-> Levelling up Champions is (imho), now more fun. Champions (and spells) in general are more fun

-> Terrain affects the potential for cities. (not to the extent of Civ, but placement matters more now than it did in E:WoM)

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

looking forward to fallen enchantress with Kael as lead designer

 

[Tasunke]

Very true

Yea, you can definitely tell Kael is at the lead.

Casters can learn Fire I, Fire II, etc ( I think up to V or VI, as 'Fire Archmage' iirc)


-> and fireball is still the best spell xD

(no more spectres tho) Death is all about Curses, Wither-> kill all enemy units slowly

 

[Aroddo]

lol, right.

Defender of the Crown for the C64 was better than E:WoM.
Anyone trusting Stardock to produce anything worthwhile must be mad.

They'd have to release a convincing demo ... but before that they'd have to convince people to even try their demo. Good luck with that! Outside of Civfanatics.com no one knows who Kael is, so there is even less incentive to give their product a try.

 

[Heathcliff]

I'll probably buy FE. I've looked at some youtube let's plays and it looks decent.
Galactic Civ 2 from Stardock is a masterpiece. So they can make good games, sometimes.
Anyone of you in the beta for FE?
What do you think about it?
And how does it differ from FFH2? What is better / worse?

 

[esvath]

Hmmm, I am attracted to FE too. I am more interested in the deepness of the game, not shiny sparking graphic but shallow game, though. Is FE a deep game with many strategic options (according to the beta, at least)?

 

[Tholal]

I bought the game back when it was in beta. Played a handful of times but never really got anywhere because it really wasn't very fun.

Played the FE beta once (maybe I'll give it another whirl this weekend). Definitely much improved, but still very confusing and awkward with too many systems within the game.

For example, equipment, particularly hero equipment. It's a pain to try and manage several inventories and trading items between characters takes a couple of extra steps. Units can also be equipped with particular armor and weapons. And when I say armor, I mean 7 different slots of armor (not to mention accessories)! Personally, I find detailed equipment systems in grand strategy games to be more of a burden than anything and I would dump it entirely. Or at the very least, axe about 80% of the options. I really don't want to worry about whether or not all of my spearmen have gloves or whether that staff for sale is 2% better than the one my mage currently has equipped.

Then there are just some strange design decisions. For instance, every time you create a building in a town, you have to decide where in the town's area of influence you want to place it. "Cool!" you might think, but it's not really. Building placement has zero effect on gameplay, so it's purely cosmetic. But usually I'm zoomed out to get a better overview, in which case the visual layout of each city is irrelevant and not overly noticeable. So what initially seems like a neat feature is actually just fluff that requires micromanagement. And it gets old pretty quickly.

The spell system is probably still to complex. Or maybe it's just that they throw too much at you to start. I played a warrior-type leader and I still have over a dozen available spells to cast from turn 1!

Citys and heroes gain levels, allowing you to given them new 'promotions' so to speak. Units also gain levels, but you get no input on how to make them better. There's just some inherent bonuses for being a higher level. So I find that kind of strange that I can customize my unit's equipment down to their underwear, but I cant customize their growth. You can customize units with special abilities and traits when you design them, but if you just want a couple of specialized troops, you have to make specific designs for each. You cant just build a warrior and then customize it as they gain experience.

Just a few annoyances off the top of my head. I still much prefer Civ. Civ4 did an excellent job of simplifying things while still keeping the game strategic and interesting. FE/WoM takes the opposite tact. In my current saved game I have a mana pool, a horse pool, a warg pool, a metal pool, shard pools (one for fire, one for air, one for and life), a diplomacy pool, a crystal pool, and probably more that I haven't yet discovered! Civ4 boiled this down to "do you have access to that material", which though seems overly simple at first glance, actually streamlines gameplay and makes it much more enjoyable, IMO.

Edit: And there seems to be no way to get updates/patches from within the game itself.

 

[esvath]

You cant just build a warrior and then customize it as they gain experience.

So, we can not choose promotions when a unit level up? That is strange design...

...I have a mana pool, a horse pool, a warg pool, a metal pool, shard pools (one for fire, one for air, one for and life), a diplomacy pool, a crystal pool, and probably more that I haven't yet discovered!

That will cause too much micro, won't it?

 

[Heathcliff]

What I hoped when I heard Stardock hired Kael would be that he would use his design philosophy from FFH. "Flavor over balance".

That all races don't need to be balanced but they need to be flavorful, to get more replayability. That's the strength of FFH that each race plays out very differently.

I havent tried FE, just watched it on youtube, but it seems like you can equip your soldiers the way you want them. And because of that every race would get the same type of soldiers.
That's also the worst part of Galactic Civilization 2, that once you reach a new technology, you have to upgrade your ships with the new weapons and that get easily tedious.
Instead I think it would be better that one races has it's predesigned units and you are forced to build them. Then the gameplay becomes more tactical, do I get these techs to get them available or not. The gamedesigners thinks it's good that you can design whatever you want, but I don't think so. Then of course you just get the best stuff you can always and if you go similar techpaths your units will be kinda similar.

However I like from what I have seen the heroes levelingpaths and that you get quests and such. The begining use to be the most fun part of these games anyway where you go out and explore. However like in FFH2, it seems to easy to build settlers, so it goes quick before all land is settled. Which isn't fantasystyleish. Where they use to be huges forrests and mountain and not densely populated.

The magic inside the minibattles seems nice too, an improvement from FFH.
I'm hoping from what I have seen that instead of settler spam, the best tactic will be to go out and level your heroes.

 

[White Elk]

Beta 0.85 is out! Everyone who bought E:WOM in 2010 gets in for free.
And now, anyone who pre-orders E:FE also gets Beta access.

FE 0.85: Gameplay Example

.

 

[Draginol]

I bought the game back when it was in beta. Played a handful of times but never really got anywhere because it really wasn't very fun.

Played the FE beta once (maybe I'll give it another whirl this weekend). Definitely much improved, but still very confusing and awkward with too many systems within the game.

For example, equipment, particularly hero equipment. It's a pain to try and manage several inventories and trading items between characters takes a couple of extra steps. Units can also be equipped with particular armor and weapons. And when I say armor, I mean 7 different slots of armor (not to mention accessories)! Personally, I find detailed equipment systems in grand strategy games to be more of a burden than anything and I would dump it entirely. Or at the very least, axe about 80% of the options. I really don't want to worry about whether or not all of my spearmen have gloves or whether that staff for sale is 2% better than the one my mage currently has equipped.

Then there are just some strange design decisions. For instance, every time you create a building in a town, you have to decide where in the town's area of influence you want to place it. "Cool!" you might think, but it's not really. Building placement has zero effect on gameplay, so it's purely cosmetic. But usually I'm zoomed out to get a better overview, in which case the visual layout of each city is irrelevant and not overly noticeable. So what initially seems like a neat feature is actually just fluff that requires micromanagement. And it gets old pretty quickly.

The spell system is probably still to complex. Or maybe it's just that they throw too much at you to start. I played a warrior-type leader and I still have over a dozen available spells to cast from turn 1!

Citys and heroes gain levels, allowing you to given them new 'promotions' so to speak. Units also gain levels, but you get no input on how to make them better. There's just some inherent bonuses for being a higher level. So I find that kind of strange that I can customize my unit's equipment down to their underwear, but I cant customize their growth. You can customize units with special abilities and traits when you design them, but if you just want a couple of specialized troops, you have to make specific designs for each. You cant just build a warrior and then customize it as they gain experience.

Just a few annoyances off the top of my head. I still much prefer Civ. Civ4 did an excellent job of simplifying things while still keeping the game strategic and interesting. FE/WoM takes the opposite tact. In my current saved game I have a mana pool, a horse pool, a warg pool, a metal pool, shard pools (one for fire, one for air, one for and life), a diplomacy pool, a crystal pool, and probably more that I haven't yet discovered! Civ4 boiled this down to "do you have access to that material", which though seems overly simple at first glance, actually streamlines gameplay and makes it much more enjoyable, IMO.

Edit: And there seems to be no way to get updates/patches from within the game itself.

Hi there!

A couple of things I wanted to clear up.

1. Champions are the only units where it's possible to give them better equipment. And typically, a player will only have a few of these so there's not that much to "manage". Heroes/Champions are a fairly common game mechanic in fantasy strategy games.

2. When building your town, you can *optionally* choose to place where the building goes but by default, players can just click the building and press build (or just double click on the building) and it'll just place it whereever. Some people do enjoy to layout their cities cosmetically much like in Galactic Civilizations players liked cosmetically designing their ships but it's not required or even the default behavior.

3. I'm not sure what you mean about leveling up. When a champion levels up, they are presented with a series of new perks to choose from that give them new abilities. Some perks are common, others are rare.

While I love Civilization, it is a very different type of game. Fallen Enchantress, as a fantasy strategy game (as opposed to historical) has naturally some different mechanics. Though in terms of resources, it is true that Civilization 4 was abstracted as "you have this resource", Fallen Enchantress takes the route of accumulating resources.

Obviously, no game can appeal to all players.

 

[Heathcliff]

Hi Brad,

Continue the great work you guys at Stardock do.
Fallen Enchantress seems like a mix of two of my favorite games Fall From Heaven 2 and Galactic Civilization 2, so it can only become great.

I like to have several resources that accumulate and that you can spend on stuff.
There is a modmod for Fall From Heaven called Master of Mana that uses that system and it works fine.

@Whiteelk Nice, thanks for the tip.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

actually that's Master of Mana

 

[Aroddo]

E:WoM sucked on many levels - no, I'm lying ... on every level, but what frustrated me most was the dreadful user interface. It took dozens of clicks to do something like selling old hero equipment and trade it for new stuff at a vendor. Provided you first found out how to do it. Master of Magic made equipment trading easier and had a clearer UI ... and it just had 300x200 pixels do do so.

and from what i read the clickpath to results didn't improve a bit.

some free basic advice: display shop and party member inventory on the same screen!

 

[Draginol]

It does.

 

[Verdian]

Instead I think it would be better that one races has it's predesigned units and you are forced to build them. Then the gameplay becomes more tactical, do I get these techs to get them available or not.

This is an important comment, and something I agree with. It is also a huge, basic design flaw with all of the Elemental series. Every game plays the same, regardless of race/leader, because all of the units and techs are the same. Even if my leader gives me 10% to research or whatever, the game still FEELS the same because I don't really care about that percentage; it doesn't change playstyle or the feel of the game.

Enchantress is a huge improvement over War of Magic, but it is still just not interesting enough to want to play more than a few games.

 

[Aroddo]

This is an important comment, and something I agree with. It is also a huge, basic design flaw with all of the Elemental series. Every game plays the same, regardless of race/leader, because all of the units and techs are the same. Even if my leader gives me 10% to research or whatever, the game still FEELS the same because I don't really care about that percentage; it doesn't change playstyle or the feel of the game.

Enchantress is a huge improvement over War of Magic, but it is still just not interesting enough to want to play more than a few games.

there were different races? I thought there were only humans and the negro races were evil. And one side of the conveniently split-in-two continent housed a good white racist king who banned all blacks or something.
Oh well, maybe they changed things for the better. After all they go out of their way to pander to the FFH crowd and I haven't seen brad call anyone a troll for critizising his work yet.
I'll give it a try if there's a demo or some buddy gets his free copy.

 

[ddd123]

E:WoM sucked on many levels - no, I'm lying ... on every level, but what frustrated me most was the dreadful user interface. It took dozens of clicks to do something like selling old hero equipment and trade it for new stuff at a vendor. Provided you first found out how to do it. Master of Magic made equipment trading easier and had a clearer UI ... and it just had 300x200 pixels do do so.

and from what i read the clickpath to results didn't improve a bit.

what?

heroes equip management and trading/selling items is now simply... PERFECT
you can do everything with few intuitive clicks and its also very fast
seriously if anyone find confusing a button named "sell" or "trade and equip" or the use of right left arrows to scroll between heroes well then how could they think a strategy game is their bread????

as for the rest its long but there are still problems and there are things improved and improving during the beta

we will see

 

[Verdian]

I also want to add that it is really nice to see Brad checking out Kael's old home and caring enough to read what we FFH fans think.

Looking forward to Beta 3, Stardock.

 

[esvath]

Looking forward the game