A general comment, and then a bunch of details:
I think that FE has the *potential* to be a great game, but at this exact moment, it's on the borderline between poor and fair. Please read on before jumping on this comment too much.
I hope that you-all (developers) will continue to work away on this, as you have been doing, until this game is not just good, but is instead, honestly great. The core seems solid, but there are a lot of details that lay in between here and greatness: UI issues, gameplay issues, and world-building issues. All are fixable, but fixes will take time.
I've written a lot of comments here, which took quite a bit of my time. Please take this as a vote of confidence in the possibilities of FE. I could have invested this time other places, but I chose to put it here. I believe this game could become great, and I want to support that greatness, for the simple reason that I'd like to play a great game of Fallen Enchantress.
Details:
Big baddies: I'm not the first to comment on this issue. I like that there are big, scary monsters present in the world from the start, but the current mechanic is awkward. If these monsters were fully active, they'd clobber all the young kingdoms. If they didn't appear till later in the game ... well ... I wouldn't buy it. Monsters appearing from nowhere wouldn't make sense in the world of FE. Right now, the game takes a middle ground. Big baddies are physically present (units visible on the world landscape), but often inactive. For example, I've found several big dragons, just sitting in one place. I suggest that big baddies be modeled as forces of nature. Each would be a unit, fixed in place, but would have a zone of control, in which bad stuff would randomly happen to nearby units, outposts, and settlements. E.g. trolls might steal a harvest (settlement loses food), dragons might eat some population, a drunken giant might flatten a building. In this way, these big-bad units are active, so the game feels alive and believable, and there's an incentive to make players want to deal with the problem in the future. At the same time, these baddies are not so active that they crush young kingdoms.
Battle portraits: The portraits on the left side of the screen are generally too dark and too similar. When I look to the left, to check out the initiative schedule, it takes me some thought to puzzle out which hero is which, and which enemy is which. Consider using brighter, more solid, more varied colors. Also consider more zoomed-in views with more varied shapes. Some sort of perspective that would help emphasize whatever is unique about a unit, so that it would be more obviously and intuitively recognizable.
Scroll bars: I really like having scroll bars where the width of the scroll-thingy is proportional to {visible area}/{total area}. For example, I was reading some text in FE, and there was a scroll bar on the right. The square-thingy in the middle of the scroll bar was quite short (top-to-bottom) so I figured there was a whole lot more text. But when I clicked downwards, I found that there was really just one line that was hidden from my view. I was surprised. It was a little bit jarring. If the square-thingy had been taller, such that the height was an indicator of the proportion of the total text that I could see at any one time, then I would have known this was coming. Lots of applications do this (e.g. MS Word '07).
Heirgamemnon videos: These are annoying to me. I respect the effort and intention, and I'm sure that some people will like them, but they're not for me. For myself, and others like me, could you put a mute or pause button on the videos? I'd prefer to be able to read the text in peace.
City Details: A settlement's progress towards leveling up is shown in the lower-left corner summary area, but not on the city details screen. I feel like the details screen should have everything in the summary, and more, meaning it should have level-up progress. Could you add this to the details screen?
Unit member permadeath: Say I have a unit with 3 members, a 'party.' When I go into battle, when it comes time for that unit's turn, and I mouse over an enemy, I get a damage number, multiplied by 3. Cool. When that unit is injured, and I lose a member, the multiplier goes down to 2. Cool. Reasonable. After battle, given time, that 2-member unit will heal, and become a 3 member unit. Not cool. It's like spontaneous generation of human beings. I wish that member-death would be permanent, and you'd have to walk to a settlement to replace the dead member. The King's Bounty games use this system. It's reasonable, intuitive, and fits with the world of FE. If a unit *says* is has 3 individuals, then it should act like is has 3 individuals. If that doesn't happen, then I don't believe the unit has 3 individuals, and it becomes hard to suspend my disbelief, and invest myself in the game-world.
Terrain bonuses for combat: Suppose my units are in a forest, and they're attacked. The tactical battlefield will have trees. Fine. I'd like a flat defensive bonus for all my units. e.g. if attacked, and in a forest, all defending units get +10% defense for the duration of the tactical battle. Or maybe archers get +10% to attack if attacking from a hill. Similarly for other terrain features.
Mountain texture: Mountains look smooth, not craggy or mountainous. I get that you want to have deformable terrain so that spells can change the landscape. Actually, I love that idea. But I think the current visual cost is a bit high. At the least, it would be nice if you could bump-map the mountains, so that they have a wrinkled texture. This is one of the quality-of-life features. It's hard for me to believe this is a world with mountains, when the "mountains" in the game look so unlike real mountains.
Upgrade unit button: It took me a long time to figure out how to upgrade equipment on units. I have to click 'more actions' then 'upgrade armor'. Please put some careful thought into the UI/buttons/words on those lower-left corner unit summary areas. They're awkward, and make the learning curve steeper than it needs to be. Consider replacing some of the large buttons, the ones with whole words, with medium-sized icons, albeit with tooltips to explain what the buttons do. Also, I don't feel that I need to see unit items (e.g. healing potions) and special abilities in that corner area. The items, in particular, seem redundant. If I want to use an item, it's more intuitive to go to the equip screen, though I admit it takes an extra mouse-click to do that.
Administrator heroes: There are some hero perks that give bonuses to heroes in towns. I love this idea. There are also some buildings that give exp to heroes in towns. But I haven't made much of that mechanic yet. Perhaps it comes later in the game? The point is I'd like to have more ability to create settlement-leader type heroes, and more ability to see them advance in level, which requires having more buildings/abilities that let settlement-type heroes gain experience. e.g. a settlement-type hero might gain 1 exp for each building constructed in a settlement. A scholar-specialized hero might gain 1 exp per 5 research points produced by a settlement. etc.
Limits on raising/lowering land: The restrictions on the raise/lower land spells seem artificial. I get that dropping land into the ocean can have big consequences, but there should be a more elegant way of preventing damaging gameplay. Again, it's about suspension of disbelief. Magically speaking, I'd think turning a hill into a plain is just as hard as a plain into an ocean. So having the rule that plains can't be turned into ocean feels artificial. It feels like something imposed on the game world from outside, rather than a part of this world. I don't have an easy answer here, but I hope that you will think on this some.
More info when settlement grows: At the moment, I get a message that says, "Your settlement has grown a level." This is so uninformative that it actually makes things a bit difficult. True, the settlement that grew is pictured in the lower-left, but it would be even better to have the name of the settlement in the message, "ZZ has grown a level". Also, I'd like to be able to look at the settlement details before choosing a perk, and at the moment, I can't. Could you add a 'examine settlement' button to that dialog box, so that I could do this?
More info when finding an item: Similar to the previous comment. When a hero finds an item, I get a dialog with a bit of flavor-text. That's a good start, but in terms of gameplay, it's not useful. It would be nice to have a two panel-display: Left has flavor text, right describes the effect of the item. Then, when I'm offered the chance to equip the item, I'd like to be able to look at my hero's equipment, before deciding what I want to do. So on that particular dialog, it would be nice to have a button that says 'examine hero'.
Multiple armies on the same square: Awkward. If I have multiple armies on the same square, I'd like to be able to reorganize them at will, moving units among armies, without having to physically move the units across the landscape. I'd also like to be able to get a list of armies on a square. At the moment, I don't know how to do either of these.
Rename settlements: I can't figure out how to do this. If it is possible, it's at least nonintuitive. Speaking for myself, I'd like to be able to double-click on a settlement name to change it. Further, when I first found a settlement, I'd like an immediate opportunity to rename it.
Tactical cooldown: The 'tactical cooldown' requirements don't seem to be listed in the spell tooltips. And honestly, I'd rather this feature didn't exist. It feels like an external rule, imposed from outside the game world. I can't cast Flame-Dart twice in a row, but I can cast Flame-Dart followed by Chaos? That doesn't seem right. If spells feel overpowered, to where balance seems to require a cooldown, I think it would be better to either increase the mana cost or reduce the power/effect of the spell.
Units inside cities: Just weird. I can see that there could be a problem with trying to display lots of units in one place, but making them disappear seems worse. For example, if I have a city that covers two full squares, and I try to walk a unit from a central square to the other square, there is an animation showing walking, but then the unit disappears when it gets to that second square. How about a restriction that the number of units in any one city-type square is limited to the number that you can have in an army? Then you could use the style same army/unit management, and the same sorts of animations, for units both inside of cities and outside of cities. Further, as a city grows, it could hold more units. A two-square city could hold two armies of units. That seems reasonable in a world like FE. And perhaps then, if one wanted to conquer a city, one would have to conquer each square of the city, fighting each one-square-sized-army, one at a time. There are probably other solutions, but the current mechanic is poor UI, and nonintuitive. Please think on this, and try to find something that feels more in-tune with the FE world.
Foreign Relations and Kingdom Report: It's hard to compare my kingdom to another. When looking at the Foreign Relations screen for another player, I'd like the ability to pull up the same type of screen for my kingdom, and put it alongside the other player's info, so that I can do an easy comparision.
That's all for now. I'll keep playing, and if it seems useful, I may post another set of comments in another week. Please keep up the hard work!
