Just finished putting a number of hours into the recent beta. Below are the remaining issues with the game that require developer attention.
Critical Issues
- AI is not interacting with players.
Come turn 270 of my game on a medium map with 5 AI opponents no one had been defeated, no wars had been declared and I had had no encounters with any of the AI players in anyway. I had to manually walk up to opponent cities and manually speak with the AI before they even registered the fact that I existed.
Upon talking with my neighboring AI which turned out to have a power rating of 230+ compared to my sad 50, they immediately declared war on me. The next turn, a massive wave of units came spewing out of their closest city and headed right for me. Clearly they had simply been building up units without actually putting them to use.
Before that, a Kingdom army marched right through an Empire territory without issue. I checked the AI profiles, and it turned out none of the had met any of the other AI players.
- Better organization of equipment.
Amulets and rings are currently listed as equipment and cannot be used if for example, you have a character with a mount, a spider sac and a red egg thing. I realize this was probably done for balance reasons, but it's more than a bit absurd that we're unable to make use of equipment that has its own tech tree just because we picked some things up earlier in the game.
Rings and amulets should be organized under the armor category.
- More options when in another's territory.
Getting kicked out of an enemy's territory is an incredibly disruptive and jarring event. Many times it's difficult to even determine just where your army has landed if you don't take the second option of declaring war.
This experience can be greatly improved with two additions: giving players the opportunity to discuss the open boarders treaty directly from the "get out of my territory" menu or selecting where players would like their army to end up if choosing to remove themselves from the territory in question.
- First 3 tiers of Death Magic have no offensive spells.
Player's wanting to start the game off with a death-magic focused sovereign might have a hard time early in the game due to the fact that the death magic school has no directly offensive spells for the first 3 tiers. Anything would be better than nothing and would allow us to actually make use of our sovereign in combat instead of keep them hidden away.
Heroes are obviously an important aspect of the game and it's obvious why the developers chose to have them emerge from bad battles with injuries instead of permanently dying. It helps prevent the AI from losing heroes and it is a forgiving solution for players who have probably spent a lot of time improving their heroes. There however multiple issues with how heroes are currently being handled.
One of the biggest issues come from opponents relying on hero-heavy armies: beating down the same heroes again and again not only brings no sense of accomplishment to players but also causes an opponent's inevitable destruction to drag out far longer than it should (after all, if a player is relying on the same defeated heroes again and again there's a very good chance they're at death's door). This disruption to pacing and tedious repetition on the victor's part is doing the game no favors.
The other issue is after a number of defeats, heroes simply become lost causes. Dragging a hero with 4+ injuries into battle yet again brings no sense of danger and requires no tactical thinking. Their defeat will mean nothing to the player as it has already happened time and time again. Heroes with stacks of injuries are no longer character to customize or develop, but become pitiful punching bags and carry no sense of consequence.
There is happily a great compromise possible that keeps the developers original intentions while also eliminating all these issues. Give high-level life magic the opportunity to heal injuries and sell very expensive potions from shops that can do the same. Then make the alteration of having heroes die permanently if they ever come to have three injuries after a defeated battle. Maybe you could also give death magic the opportunity to create zombified versions of our heroes directly after a battle. With this compromise, everyone wins.
- Upgrading existing units.
Imagine how frustrating it is to put time and effort into seeing one of your earliest units survive into the later game only to be forever limited to their starting gear. Please give us the much needed option of sending existing units back in for training so that we may replace their out-dated gear with more modern apparel. It would certainly make the accomplishment of retaining high level units a far more rewarding experience.
Minor Issues
- The propaganda spell is currently dependent upon the tax rate. Should it be?
- Don't render armor items such and greaves with robes as it simply causes clipping issues.
- River border textures clash horribly with surroundings and definitely destroy any sense of atmosphere.
- Units can become physically lost in some map improvement items like Crystal Quarries.
- The Blind spell needs to affect defense/dodge in some way as well as accuracy.
- There is an odd "You are dominating me" affect on AI relations even when their faction score is way above our own.
- Quest locations shouldn't displaying the "you need a hero" message when a common unit runs through the tile without stopping.
- The hotkey bar in tactical battles is from number 1 to 7. Why not make use of 8, 9 and 0?
- A quest marker turned invisible after being defeated on my first attempt.
- On the sovereign selection screen, some of the sovereigns are without those nice looking flourishes.
- My sovereign was a warlock, but when the game started he had a mining background.
- Give us a few more weakness and let us select up to two, pretty please?
Unit Appearance and Backgrounds
This is getting its own section due to it being more an icing-on-the-cake issue than anything else. The issue is basically this: the newer art, models and UI for Fallen Enchantress look far better than the older art assets and UI for the character visual customization, posture setting and background selection.
The posture setting and background selection can be greatly improved in terms of the UI and sooo many of the postures look so awkward and out of place that they really do need to be reworked.
The lack of faces (female Rosoln get 6 faces, but men only 3?) and is moderately annoying as is the clunky and limited selection of hair for our sovereigns and characters. Hoods look incredibly unsatisfying reminding me more of Kenny from South Park than any kind of magic lord.
Anyway, that's all the notes I have from my time with the latest beta. Hope you guys find the information useful.
