[Suggestions][bugs?] Likes/dislikes/confusion in the land of Fallen Enchantress

January 25, 2012 9:02 AM from

My notes from playing 2.5 hours last night (between getting three kids to bed, regular clean-up, and having to sleep before work today, that's all I could manage... still stayed up later than I should have):

My biggest pet peeve (held over from WoM): sometimes notification messages appear in a very jumbled order, with some events (champ level-up, city level-up, completed research, etc.) taking odd precedence over others. For instance after a battle, level-ups intersperse/interfere with loot message, or when I stepped into enemy empire territory to do the wolf quest, I was interrupted by the “get off my lawn” message, then entered combat with wolves? Or when I got the “finished research” message, clicked on “change research”, and went straight to the “get off my lawn” message from the enemy empire.
I Really enjoy leveling up more than in WoM... back then, I always added points to strength, no reason not to. Now I feel like I have interesting choices.
Burning Hands says 8 damage, but Relias (level 2, with path of the mage) only did 6? Of course, with all these ways to increase spell damage, I wonder if I can ever trust the tooltips for spells.
I like how choosing to build next to a river is strategic - can build docks, for instance.
With rapid tooltips popping up over enemies in battle, the game doesn’t reliably register when I’m clicking to attack, I assume because I’m clicking on the tooltip and not the enemy. However, I LIKE having the tooltip come up instantly.
I like that retaliation is something your champions have to learn now.
I only train units for defense of towns, never feel like I need any offense aside from champions. Plus, they get wicked gear, possibly too much, though I really LIKE finding it. I hear that trained units become interesting with metal armor, but I haven’t tried that yet.
In combat, I like the series of available actions (spells, potions, etc.) at the bottom!
I like ability to switch from trade screen directly to shop screen. Also, I never click “equip” on a champion because on the “trade” screen I can switch between champions. It would be nice to be able to switch directly from equip to trade! Or, in equip screen, have arrows to go to next champ.
Would like stats of champs in trade screen to always line break at same place (right now fits as many as can on one line). It makes sense to have their stats (STR, etc) on top line, the rest (ATT, DEF, MOV) on the second line. That way I always know where to look. In other parts of the UI, these stats are separated and easy to follow.
I find it confusing that quest objectives have the same icon above (yellow scroll) as the huts/inns where I got the quest. Also, could the huts/inns lose their icon after the quest has been picked up? Kings Bounty (the new one) did a great job with visual cues over quest starts and quest objectives to show “new quest available here”, “quest objective”, “quest completed”. Also, it confuses me to see a “build” pickaxe icon (used to indicate that I have the tech to build that structure) over something I’ve already built on?
Fought an air elemental, and noticed two interesting things: it cast Titan’s breath first turn, there was a long pause, and before I had any turns at all, it took effect. I know when I cast it, there’s a turn delay, in which there is the option to counterspell! Also, the Air elemental spread its attacks out... maybe it was reevaluating who is the threat each turn (which is proper), but that resulted in it not killing anyone, and reducing number of threats is important!
Not seeing true strike option in combat for my champ who has that trait.
I appreciate that character stats (STR, etc) do more than affect combat stats (ATT, etc), such as encumbrance. Would be nice if encumbrance bar gave feedback re: status, e.g. turns yellow if over first limit and red over second.
I only had one crash last night, and that was loading a save from within a game. I’m in agreement with others who say that it’s OK if we’re forced to quit a game before loading a save, if it reduces crashes and saves Frogboy time figuring out a fix!

Thanks again to Brad, Derek, Jon, and everyone on the team. This game is fun! Shout out to my Michigan people (I work at the MSU cyclotron lab).

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Reply #1 January 25, 2012 1:30 PM from

Elemental Forums Top

I'll add to this list:

Tactical Battles

Would like to have a option to delay your attack
I think there should be bonuses for flanking and attacking from the rear. A unit that is surrounded on three sides should also get a defensive reduction.
Some terrian features should block line of site for ranged attack. On a couple of the tactical maps there was a tree line that I attempted to hide a injured hero behind - but it did not block any ranged attack.
Horse/Warg units should have a CHARGE ability as a special ability. As it is, I'm not finding Horse units to be all that effective.
Terrain needs to play a larger part in the battle. In one map there was a object that looked like a wooden barrier, but the Troll walked right through it.

General Gameplay

There may be a bug in the Tax system. I had to raise my taxes during a war from normal to high in order to limit my income loss. Later, my income had gone up to +74/turn, but every time I attempted to lower it back down to normal, the income was always negetive. Also, I noticed that the AI seems to operate on a negative income a lot.
Caravans need some work. Someone posted a suggestion that they should be removed from the game and replaced with something like a Trade building that automatically creates caravan routes between cities. I love the idea of caravans, but I don't want to manage them.
Research seems a bit too long. Also, I started to research something in the Magic tree and it forced me to research other technologies in other research trees first. This was very confusing at first - you might want to use a popup window and let the player know all the techs that need to be researched before the one they selected can be done (with estimated research times as well).
Clicking on a City Icon on the left side of the screen didn't center the screen on the city, but it did bring up the city details UI. Bug?
Shops are boring. I think some random items that can be bought should show up from time to time to make it more interesting.
None of the default combat units come with design traits - I think the default should be to use all the available traits in the design and let the player make units that don't have them instead of the other way around. JMO.
Heal spells are too limited - they need to scale better.
Cities still feel too much the same - other than a few buildings, you can build 90% of the same things at each. Maybe each time a city levels, the building choices depend on the selections that are made before it? Same thing for training, can some cities have combat traits that are tied to the buildings built there?
How about adding abandoned Portals - much like the wormholes from GalCiv? These could be guarded initially, but once you cleared it, it could be used to move your forces to a different area of the map.
Trespass shouldn't automatically move your units back to your or neutral territory. You should get a warning, but allowed to stay in place until the next turn where you could move your units again. This elimates the problem where you need to spend one turn in another territory to get to another area.
Diplomacy is very weak. I hope there is more features planned here.

Otherwise, I'm very happy with the way FE looks - it certainly is much more fun that WoM and I think the FE team is on the right track. Game looks pertty good at this point.