So, I just completed my first "real" game of Fallen Enchantress and figured I'd write up my thoughts.
Details
I played a random, small map on normal difficulty and had two other races in the game: Relias and Kraxis. I won in about 350 turns with a conquest victory. My character was a paladin-type champion, focusing on melee damage and Life magic.
Early Game
Having learned a hard lesson about fighting with bears in what I call my "warmup" game, I avoided them until I was lv 5 this time.
Overall, I had a blast in the early game. I recruited a nearby melee champion and the two of us did a lot of exploring by ourselves, killing monsters, acquiring loot, and doing some quests. The whole world felt really dangerous and I was constantly on guard. Plus, it always felt like something cool was just waiting for me beyond the fog of war.
I tried to build some troops to accompany us, but every set of soldiers I built died almost immediately in fights with monsters so I abandoned that idea and the two of us continued on our noble quest of killing things and taking their stuff.
During one of these expeditions, I found a magical axe and a magical mace that boosted our damage obscenely high compared to everything we encountered. I kind of felt like I was cheating due to the vast before/after damage difference (I was playing on Normal, though, so I'm guessing this doesn't happen as much on the higher difficulty levels).
I researched warfare tech in the hope that I could make worthwhile soldiers, but throughout the early game they served as little more than meat shields.
I met Kraxis and found a wild land called Imperium, which promised vast wealth if I could conquer it and settle near a demonic temple... Seeing the Death Demon waiting beyond the walls, I decided that I'd explored enough and headed home to prepare myself to do battle with Kraxis.
Mid Game
I hadn't had time (or I just didn't know what I was doing well enough) to build any settlements of my own (apart from the capital) by the time I ran into Kraxis so I figured it was time to annex his empire. I built some basic troops (I had leather armor and the second tier of weapons researched by this time) and headed off to war.
Once again, the troops felt more like meat shields than an army of crazed, sword-wielding killers so I threw them in first to soak up some damage while my sov and champion dispatched all of the opposing army.
We repeated this process a couple of times until Kraxis was dead. This was at around turn 150 or 175.
During the war with Kraxis, I discovered the magic of outposts! O.M.G. Although I didn't know it, my heart of hearts wanted this sooooo badly in WoM. I built outposts all over the place, wherever there was a patch of a few resources... I was so relieved that I didn't have to manage another town but could still reap the benefits of extra gold, mana, and wargs.
Late Game
Having secured so many resources that I had no hope of spending them all, I turned my eyes toward Imperium. By this time, those meat shields I had built to fight against Kraxis had become lvs 6-8 and had a ton of hit points due to levelling. I wanted to go into Imperium with the newly trained, wonderfully equipped, and impressive army I had created but I couldn't... The new troops had only 30-50 hp for a set of 5 (compared to 150 hp on my poorly equipped veterans).
So, I went north with my two obscenely-powerful champions (who were lv 13 or 14), one pretty weak champion I'd just picked up recently, and a few 5-man squads of veteran soldiers.
My champ & sov easily defeated everything in Imperium (with a little help from the rest of the team)... And then I explored the Demon Tower (or The Dark Tower, can't remember what it was called) there and I got a spell called Blood Curse that let me sacrifice half the population of a town and acquire that many max hp for my sov. A few hundred citizen sacrifices later and my sov went from 80 to 1,050 hp.
End Game
Having conquered the rest of my small world, it was time to face Relias. But there are some battles that must be fought alone so I took my sov in by herself and wiped out everyone and everything in Relias's little three-town kingdom.
She had some pretty sweet stuff by this point: Sculla's Mace (24 blunt damage, Shrinks anyone it hits), an Impenetratable Tower Shield (16 defense, 8 dodge), Double Attack (skill), and the previously mentioned 1,050 hp.
Thoughts
I really prefered the early game to the later parts of the game due to how easy the game became as time went on... I felt like I was constantly in trouble early on but felt like I was slowly marching toward an inevitable and unimeded victory by the time Kraxis had fallen. My next game will be on a much harder difficulty so maybe that'll fix the mid & late game malaise.
Likes - I loved the addition of outposts, the change to a global mana system, and the world's danger and mystery. I really like the "traits" you can put on your troops, I just wish the troops were more useful. I like special abilities on champs (e.g., double strike, stun, etc.). I like how the new UI is so clear about almost everything, there was only one time I wanted to know something that I couldn't find quickly but I can't remember what it was now (I'll edit the post if I remember).
Dislikes - I didn't like how weak the troops feel in relation to the champs. I didn't like that I couldn't distinguish any play differences between the NPC factions (Kraxis and Relias)... It seems like two races that different should feel really different to fight / interact with.
Bugs - I only had one crash and didn't notice any other bugs throughout the playthrough.
