Ok, so this is not about a specific bug or problem of the game, but I thought I just write down my impressions of the game choices I am allowed to make in a typical match of FE, 0.76. They are not ordered according to preference or importance at all. Mostly chronologically within the game.
1. Choosing a Kingdom for your Custom Sovereign
When you start the game, picking your sovereign shows you the benefits you will get for your Sovereign and his Kingdom. But, if you choose to create a custom Sovereign, you get to choose his Kingdom by name only, without getting any direct information on this Kingdoms benefits. Minor problem for people with printed manuals I guess, but it is somewhat annoying for me.
2. Creating your own Kingdom/Empire
Let's be honest, the Kingdom/Empire Choices given in this game are not nearly as story-driven as they could be in a real-world history game or a Fantasy game based on a big license. That is just dandy for me, I prefer to create my own story anyways. So, I always love to go and create my own Kingdom/Race/Whatever. So, let's talk about my options:
20 Options on "Strengths" with 2 picks sounds like I get to create 190 different kingdoms, or even 3420 if I throw in one of the very acceptable weaknesses. But let's see if all of the options are really valid, and can coexist:
6 of the 20 are starting technologies. They kickstart you by putting you 10 turns ahead into the several-thousand-turns technology tree. That will stop making a difference about 100 turns in, which is about the time you can seriously expect to be in a war. So, let's face it, this is a serious waste of starting picks.
Quick, Lucky, Powerfull, Enduring: Improving Unit-Performance rather than Kingdom-Performance seems fair enough, but so far it seems that these "+3 of one Attribute" Boni seem to have so much less impact than putting one more technology or a few more production points into your unit design that they are not overly relevant.
Master Smiths & Endless Legion: So far, I always had Cities running out of production orders quickly enough. Maybe those become more usefull when I set research to "quick"?
Guile: So far it seems that everybody likes me on normal, and everybody hates me on harder modes. Maybe I am missing something, but so far diplomacy seems to be irrelevant.
Slave Lord: Worlds are small, so City Razing is not exactly everyday business. And 2 Food per Grain seems somewhat trivial compared to the 40 or 50 we will have halfway through the Tech-Tree. So this really seems like a good for nobody skill, too.
Heroic, Educated, Legacy of Serraine, Serpent's Pact, Defensive & Death Worship: Now, those are the options that make real sense to me. They strengthen different aspects of your game, they will impact you throughout the whole game, and they might make a real difference (I did not test lairs and caravans much, yet).
But, if you get to pick 2 out of 6 you are down to 30 different Kingdom Versions, and there are even some strong correlations there. If you want to build your legacy on big cities, you defend them and connect them with caravans; If you are hoping for your one big team of heroes, go with Serpent's Pact for nice Monsters and Death Worship for heavy magics? It might reduce the number of really different kingdom options to no more than half a dozen. And for all my testing, so far all options play very much the same.
In conclusion: More real options are required. What about military nations with an natural increase in army or party size, with relevant defense or attack boni for all units? Productive nations with a relevant material/grain/gildar/research etc bonus? Or even magical nations that allow you to create units with access to a minor group of spells (Heal, Haste, Low Level Elementals, Minor Fireballs)?
3. Creating your own Sovereign
When creating a Sovereign you are faced first and foremost with the option if you want to make him a great mage, a supporter of your cities, or a great warrior. Given the fact that you can train huge companies of warriors in your cities, but never create a mage or "Governor", there really is not much point in making your sovereign into a relevant warrior.
So, with an acceptable weakness present for everybody, you get to pick 7 points into your talents and equipment. So far, taking a bow for yourself seems to be a no-brainer for low levels, so I will only assume 6 points for talents and magic. 12 Talents and 10 Levels give you 22 potential targets for your 6 points, sounds good so far.
Now, Natural Leader, Scavenger and Wealthy all promise you to give you or save you some gildar. Since I have yet to run into a negative-income situation in the long run, and since these would be very controlable through your building/training order, the point of any of these skills seems to be to give you a little kick-start into your game. I may be a bit pessimistic here, but I fear that this will result in 95% of all games leaving you with either a "taking them was useless" or an "I should have taken them" feeling, thus they are not options that are likely to improve the playing experience in my opinion.
Discipline, Hardy, Might, Quick and Impulsive: As you do not want to base your fighting ability on your sovereign those are mostly useless. Yes, even impulsive. Getting your sovereign to act first might be nice, but he stands behind an army of meatshields anyways. He can afford to take his time and then Blizzard the enemy into oblivion. Still, Impulsive might be the only one in this group to be considered semi-usefull.
Tactician: The only kind of a "General" Skill in here. I would love to see more of these, giving Army-Wide Boni. Sadly, 1 Initiative seems to be rather small. How many rounds would it take before this translates into an extra-attack, about a dozen?
Attunement, Briliant, Evoker: Very cleary your most usefull choices if you go the path of magic, with Evoker being somewhat situational depending on the exact class of magic that you pick.
Throw in the 5 Magic classes, and you end up with the only usefull option for your sovereign being a mage of 2-4 schools, with 2-3 of the magic talents on top. Maybe Tactician and Impulsive can sway you away from your magic choices, but it is not very likely.
Professions seem much more balanced to me, with Assasin (you are not a Warrior) and Diplomat (No relevanty options of diplomacy) failing to prove usefull so far. Still, Adventurer, Bandit Lord and Scholar are once again "Kick-Start" Options that fall somewhat short due to the general pacing of the early stages of the game. But I might just miss a playing style here.
In conclusion: More real options, as in real paths, would be nice. Give us real Generals that improve their Army, and real Governors that improve their City.
4. Starting a Game
My main problem here is that "large" maps feel very small. I have not even tried any smaller option yet. Even on the "large" map, I run into enemies within very few turns, and find myself in my first war before I have cleared the map to the point where I could build my second city. I can never walk more than 5 steps without running into either mountains or oceans that cannot be crossed. There are dozens of epic lairs within 5 steps of each other. Overall, everything feels very compressed, even with the "large" map setting. As a player that always loved to build up my own empire first, and then start confrontation with other factions, I have a real problem with this.
Also, Map Options: Having the option to create different styles of worlds, like Big Continent, Many Islands (with or without connecting isthmus, either way), shores of a lake and so on, has always been very important for me and creates a lot of replay value in my opinion.
5. Finding Heroes
The fact that you need to hurry, or miss out on most heroes, really places a large randomness-factor in the game. Start good, go into the right direction, and you find yourself with a 4-Hero-Party in no time. Start badly, neglect to research recruiting in time, and you will forever run a team of 2 Heroes. Giving the potential power of magics, this really can make or break your game. I would very much prefer the option to get your heroes through an expensive "Tavern" Building or a big "Summon" Spell. Or make them unit with just an extremely high base unit cost? Anything that gives you a choice instead of forcing you to restart a game because you had bad luck with your starting position.
6. Gaining Levels
Basically, see above under "Creating your Sovereign". There are loads of "+3 Strength" options at level-up, that make no sense because your trained troops can fight just as well as your heroes anyways, so you want them to be either governors or mages. Staring at an option of 5 Skills, knowing that not one of them will improve your power the slightest bit, is very frustrating.
7. Designing Units
Don't get me wrong, designing units is getting to be a lot of fun now, with the new trait system. Still, there is a bit of an overload of traits, with not too many of them really making a difference. <- Ignore this, 0.76 did very much stramline it over 0.75. Will have to see how much real options the new set will give me.
Armor and Weapons are a bit troubling too. You research one level of Armor, throw all pieces of that level on your unit, done. If thats all there is to it, just replace the 5 pieces of Leather Armor by a single "Leather Armor" Item and clean up the UI by it. Annother option would be that the Leather Armor research only allows you to build a Crafter in your City, that fills your armory with random pieces, with which you can equip your units. Or make this some sort of repeatable research, that gives you access to each of the pieces each time? Better yet, make this research give us different Leather Armor versions? Or give us drawbacks to each piece, so equiping them becomes less of a no-brainer? (Neither wight nor cost seem relevant so far). Anything, but not this "One research, 5 Icons, 5 Clicks, 1 Effect".
8. Artificial Intelligence
(This comment is still based on 0.75, as I did not test 0.76 far enough yet.) This is a real, major problem still. Even on high difficulty settings, the enemies insist on sending all their units to you one by one, so they can be easily slaughtered by your group of archers. This is probably the most problematic area of the game right now. As long as the enemy kingdoms do not even manage to match the challenge of any random monster hordes, this is not much of a strategy game really.
A. User Interface
Ok, I am very much aware that this is an extremely personal feedback, rather then something I expect a majority of players to agree to, but I thought I throw it in here as well. The User Interface still feels somewhat slugish (as in responds slowly), and gives me less of an overview then it could. Reallym the fact that there is a 3D engine does absolutely nothing for me. Give me a nice, clean 2D-Board like Civ5 did, and I will be very happy. Having to rotate a camera before I can even select a unit surrounded by enemies is not helpfull. And the graphics will never give me a feeling of full immersion like it might in an RPG or Shooter game. So, from my point of view, I would be very happy if you would just drop the whole 3D-Engine alltogether.
Having said all of the above, just allow me to mention that I am still very impressed by the effort you decided to put into this project within the last 12 month, and the progress that Fallen Enchantress has made. Even with all the topics it still has in its current state, Elemental now clearly has an option to move into the standard library of every turn based strategy fan. Instead of trading strategic gameplay for a fancy finish like the latest Heroes of Might and Magic installment, or for a quick laugh like Grotesque Tactics, you seem to aim at really providing a mature gamplay experience with a significant replay value. Understanding fully how little comercial incentive there is to continue developing a title that is bought once and might be played for a decade (Or almost the two decades that Masters of Magic is approaching), I truly have to thank you for your devotion to this project. I hope that my feedback will encourage rather than disapoint you, and help you to further the development to turn this game into the masterpiece that it deserves to be, and that the turn-based community has been waiting for.
