maniakos

Join Date 03/2006

+15

[.76-.77] FE Beta Feedback and thoughts about the game.

After playing 3 games since the launch of the beta (2 of them were on .76 .77) I wish to give this project some feedback.

Also I would like to address Das123 issues regarding:

The champion stack of doom

City spam micromanagement hell.

The reason why FE is facing trouble is not due to 1 or 2 reasons IMHO. There are many reasons that contribute.

0. Winning and losing.

There's a thought constantly going on as I play a 4x game: Am I winning? This is important because it affects my level of enjoyment. If I’m way back behind the AI I’m not having any fun. If I’m way ahead the AI with 2x score points and territory, I have already won and I’m bored. The AI currently can’t expand as much as the player can. Why? He can’t deal with the wilderness as the player can, so the player empire always gets bigger faster, and we end up with many small opponents even on big maps.

1. Limit the city count?

Limiting my empire size doesn’t solve anything. You’re just delaying my eventual victory artificially and yet again I’m bored. If anything else, razing cities will become the standard thing to do after I reach my cap. The game is just telling me that I will win with less cities. A similar approach was attempted with empire population growth in WoM (growth would stagnate if you had too many cities) and it sucked. If I am limited in my number of cities there’s another tactic I could use which is even more boring: I would find and capture the best spots on the map, raze the rest of my cities and claim the rest of the land with outposts. Also, limiting the city count would also affect the AI.

As far as micro is concerned, play small maps. If you select a big map you’re responsible for your choice. Also the cities have build queues, you can line up 3-4 buildings and let it crunch for 50 turns. I am definitely requesting more building choices. The current selection is poor.

2. Can I take over a city?

In the current build of FE if you can take over 1 city, you can take over ALL cities, and if you can’t, you can’t take over ANY city. You’re stuck with what you got from the start plus any new settlements. It’s not important how big your empire is, all that is important is if you can take over one city. The player will exploit the game mechanics to no end to win a battle. Army size of both sides seems irrelevant.

3. Peace & War is free in the temporal sense

The AI will accept peace anytime. In fact if you’re stronger that an AI you can repeatedly declare war and make peace to drain his/her coffers. There is no consequence in your standing with other factions when you declare war.

4. Diplomatic capital is useless.

Why would I exchange 1 gold per turn for 1 capital if 1 capital is worth much less that 1 gold and is less flexible? And even if their value is the same, why then spend the production time of cities to build the improvements? There’s a diplomatic model that tries to show itself but it’s lost. Where’s the Fun diplomacy from Galciv 2? Perhaps later in the beta?

5. There isn’t a stack of doom problem there’s a champion of doom problem.

My champion can kill almost anything on the map (with the exception of some epic stacks) SOLO by turn 200-250. Limiting the size of the stack solves nothing. There are many mechanics that are at fault for this. The most important is that all character/item/enchant bonuses stack together, and this leads to uber stats in no time.

Armies can’t keep up because as you unlock new gear for trained units, champions become even more uber with said gear as well (let alone the super epic gear they can find in 1/1000 of the time it takes to research weaker gear). Look into DnD 3.5 ed for lists of non stacking bonus categories like defection, enhancement, natural, inherent, luck, etc.

Also limit total jewelry on a champion to 4 or 5. Walking around with the full kitchen sink suite equipped is just silly. This is the reason why almost all games have specific slots for items on heroes.

6. Units move way too far in tactical and strategic combat.

Compass is IMBA. You need to separate strategic and tactical movement bonuses to add variety.

Since units move way too far in combat I can’t protect archers, and there’s no point in using single target damage spells (a waste of mana in most cases). Where are the tactical maps that would offer narrow passages and tactical choice? (rivers, mountain passages, hills)

7. Shops dress champions way too fast! It’s like they wait for you to finish the tech and they have infinite stock of the new items on day 1!!!

You must place caps on the items bought from the store per season. Make the store accessible only from within towns. And have a cooldown on using the store on newly conquered cities. Make the categories of items separate shop buildings: alchemist shop , arms master shop, armor store etc. make those buildings expend resources per turn and add other benefits (perhaps gold income?). Don’t have iron? No chain mail items for heroes. I wrote about this in WoM as well.

8. Flank, Flank FLANK!!!

Champions don’t face penalties when facing a unit with multiple figures. Beyond the first figure of a unit each figure should add +1Attack, +1 Defense, +1 dodge to all figures, because the figures will surround the champion. The bonus is also increased for other units adjacent to the champion. Also the champion receives penalties when flanked perhaps 1/2 or 1/3 of the bonus the flanker receive. This makes armies useful vs bosses big monsters and champions. This bonus is smaller depending on the numbers involved (3 vs 7 figures, 5 vs 10 figures and so on). Remember: numbers matter.

9. AI settles lands poorly.

They make suboptimal settle decisions. If you raze the city and re-settle you can usually turn a 3/3 town into a 3/4 or a 4/4 or a 4/3. I see this very often.

10. You slow down my expansion-by-conquest by killing all of the population of a town and hurt the AI in the process.

Slave master doesn’t work. (my capital never got any pop even if they have 200-300 food left. And if it did it’s IMBA) You are just overheating my economy by giving me an empty city, and you’re just delaying me and kill the AI in the process( If the AI could get the city back, it would mark a big loss for his economy – he might never recover)

11. I rebel therefore I am, but there’s nobody around to rebel.

Cities should rebel if left unguarded. But:

I just conquered a city with just my champion (which is bad) and on the same turn I move on to get another city. The city I conquered this turn remains empty with no ‘garrison’ of mine and no population. A bear attacks it and there’s a garrison generated to defend. If you’re abstracting garrisons with city buildings and city levels you need to have the city rebel if it’s left without any of my units enforcing the new regime (on the non existing (0) population).

What a mess…. I wonder which side the poor animated guardian statue would choose…. (Perhaps random? 50%)

12. Where’s my Kraken????

Where are the end game gargantuan summons you promised us? I won. Please help me clean up the rest of the map with cool spells. Armageddon? Summon death? Plague?

13. Group spell icons and item icons in tactical combat by element/skill/item categories (one group per line).

The spell Icons need a color coded background to note their elemental affinity and on each line for the elements you need the number of shards.

14. Where are my mage troops? And my fantastic creatures?

The stuff you unlock and recruit from the lairs are just useless and a waste of time. Units costing food? Not in my lifetime…

15. Tech costs are unreal.

I never reached the end of any tree on my 600 turn games. Not to say anything about the repeated techs that I was soo looking forward to.

16. The game is still slow.

I don’t know if you still have debug code in there that will be removed.

17. The number of things the devs could do with outposts are mind boggling.

18. Need more special resources on the map or add more upgrades to the existing ones ala galciv2.

19. Taking materials out was a mistake

Now I can flood the map with units dressed in leather armor and t1 weapons non-stop from all of my cities.

20. Need more tiers of materials

Steel, Obsidian, Adamantium, titanium, selenium, unobtanium, uberium. The game and gear progression is currently just flat.

21. Removing Spell research was a bad choice.

Choosing the next level of spells instead of new stats or character perks is too meh.

22. I’m still searching for that Fallen enchantress. There’s no mention for her ANYWHERE in the sandbox games not even in a quest. Is she a campaign exclusive? Can you play with her in the campaign? It’s too weird when a game takes its name from a character yet there’s no mention of a fallen enchantress other than the title. LOL

Enjoy!

[edit] fixed numbers

[edit2] fixed numbers yet again!

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A big YES! to 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15 and 17.

Meh and Nah to the rest

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6. Too mmuch movement in tactical combat. I agree here. I don't think the strategic movement should be changed though.

Perhaps making the default tactical movement base 1, and anything that upgrades tactical movement only does so by 1. I agree with keeping bonuses to strategic and tactical movement seperate.

8. This ties in with the champion of doom problem. There's a good post https://forums.elementalgame.com/416243 which I think is an elegant solution to the problem. basically, a champion can only kill one thing at a time in a stack (feats/abilities being available to increase the number to maybe 2? ie cleave, great cleave). Also has some good balance ideas for spells. Overall makes a good paper/scissors/rock scenario between magic/armis/melee champion.

12. Hell's yeah!! Even before the end of the game with long enough cast time, and cost

13. Good UI suggestion.

14. Mage troops doesn't fit in with the lore of elemental I do see your point though. The lore can be worked around by creating techs that have items that make units attack a fireball only or something. This would add the variety of "Mage troops" without breaking the lore.

15. I don't want tech costs nerfed. I like not being able to research the whole tree. Means I am forced to make choices every game based on the needs of my starting position, what resources I end up having access to, etc. Each game will play differently if you can't research everything in the tech tree.

19. To be honest, I'm actually a fan of having the very first gear not require a material. However, I am a big fan of the way Civ 5 has handled strategic resources like metal, crystal etc. You actually only get a limited number of the strategic resource per the resources on the map you control. This limit means you can only build a certain number of units that require that resource. Unfortunately this doesn not work into the core mechanics of FE. I would suggest that there should be a good spread through the tech levels of upgrades that require a resource, and upgrades that don't. This way there is always a base level of equipment you can get that is almost on par with equipment that does need a resource.

20. See my comment at 19. I don't think more resources are necessary, just good balance between items that need strategic resources, and those that don't.

21. where is 21?

22. I don't mind this. There's enough spells in the base categories from levelling up. And you can't cast the spells unless you are high enough mage level in the discipline, so there is no point in splitting spell acquisition from spell mastery level. I don't think however there should be more quests/loot/champions that give you spells outside the base discipline spells. Especially some more early on spells to add variety in magic early game.

23. I agree there should be a chance of her being in the sandbox game as an uber badlands enemy.

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Quoting StillSingle,

reply 2

I feel it is currently a waste of picks. I loved when learning new spells was a different mechanic, and you had a choice and had to prioritize. I would be partially happy if the spell perks gave more bonuses say +2 int or spell mastery or something else.

Also there is an issue with unlocking end game spells too fast. Imagine 1 champion each for each element leveling up at the same time and all picking the new spell masteries.

I would also be happy if all spells ended up in the magic research tree. Although the concept of spell research along perhaps with bonuses on a limit of spells per turn in tactical and strategic combat should also fix issues of end game magic being too strong, (ala MoM)

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Quoting maniakos,

reply 3

I think if the balance of Spells vs Melee is fixed, upgrading spell disciplnes will become less of a waste of picks. Then there would be a good choice between a spellcaster champion and a melee champion. It also wouldn't need to add other bonuses because the spells gained by increasing discipline level would be adequate.

Currently as it is, I agree with you that it is generally more viable to choose other perks than the spell disciplines.

The end spells unlocking too fast isn't really an issue, I got to the level 3 fire spells, but struggled to cast any early on due to their much increased mana cost vs the lower level spells. Basically you need to have quite a few shards to produce enough mana per turn to be able to cast the late level spells often enough to break the game.

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I would like to see other sources of mana being added to the game. So I'm concerned. I would like to see 2 way alchemy for instance.

I would also like to see finding new rare spells in ruins. The current system is "all spells come from picks"

That being said, with the current balance of the game as it is, a single end game spell can ruin the AI's day. I tend to conserve my mana always for those early big casts. Try saving mana for an early double crusade cast with 2 stacks of 7x7 troops. they go from level 5-6 to 7-8 and can take a huge punishment.

I'm also very bored when my spells aren't unlocked globally. Getting a new champion and having him/her take the picks b4 becoming useful is a chore. Same can be said for the AI.

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Quoting maniakos,

reply 5

I would like to see other sources of mana being added to the game. So I'm concerned. I would like to see 2 way alchemy for instance.

I would also like to see finding new rare spells in ruins. The current system is "all spells come from picks"

That being said, with the current balance of the game as it is, a single end game spell can ruin the AI's day. I tend to conserve my mana always for those early big casts. Try saving mana for an early double crusade cast with 2 stacks of 7x7 troops. they go from level 5-6 to 7-8 and can take a huge punishment.

I'm on the fence about mana from other sources. The way it works now is fine, however, I haven't heard of a better idea.

Definately agree with finding spells in ruins. But I though the current system wasn't wholly from "picks". I thought there were spells only available through quests and the like?

Conserving mana for a big cast is a strategy. The question of whether it is balanced is, if you are attacked early by a similar power who is willing to cast cheaper spells earlier, will win or not? Or is there another tactic which will foil your current strategy of saving mana to do one or two "big" casts?

The spells are global. But a caster has to be proficient enough in the school to be able to cast the level and type of spell. Otherwise a full on melee champion could be impued, and then start casting mega spells as well as hit melee with mega damage. That would be a broken mechanic IMO.

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This falls along the lines of the need to cap spell casting with a channeling mechanic ala MoM, to avoid having the ability to spend 1000's of mana on a single turn.

It isn't a matter if the spell being global or not. A character must have the right skill level to use/learn it, regardless of what has transpired in the game. What I'm talking about would be allowing skill 1 fire mage to cast fireball (a skill 3 spell) because you have another master fire mage who has already "unlocked" the spell or you found the spell in the ruins or you unlocked the spell from fire spell research.

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Quoting maniakos,

reply 7

This falls along the lines of the need to cap spell casting with a channeling mechanic ala MoM, to avoid having the ability to spend 1000's of mana on a single turn.

It isn't a matter if the spell being global or not. A character must have the right skill level to use/learn it, regardless of what has transpired in the game. What I'm talking about would be allowing skill 1 fire mage to cast fireball (a skill 3 spell) because you have another master fire mage who has already "unlocked" the spell or you found the spell in the ruins or you unlocked the spell from fire spell research.

If you can save a that much mana, why should you not be able to spend it all on one turn? I think that is a good thing to be able to do. Strategic choices again.

I understand what you mean, and I think it would break the game. If you only need the first level in a discipline to be able to cast any tier spell from that discipline then you have extra trait picks to use on make the champion uber in other ways beside magic. IMO this would lead to completely imbalanced champions, as a melee designed champion would be able to cast uber spells AND hit and tank for uber fighting damage. However the converse would NOT be true, an uber mage could only cast uber spells, but would not be able to tank or hit for massive "normal" damage. This disproportionate approach would lead to there being only ONE choice when it comes to champions. 1. create one champion that maxes out magic. Sit said champion in a huge city in the middle of your territory. Make EVERY OTHER CHAMPION heavily melee based with just the base level skill in the magic fields of your choice. Deviation from that path would result in sub-optimal champions.

The current system is also good in that low level champions force you to choose between that really rare trait and leveling up their spell prowess to give access to those higher tier spells (ie fireball). Note this is assuming that melee becomes more balanced against magic, see my very first response to the good discussion already happening in regards to that.

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4. Diplomatic capital is useless.

14. Where are my mage troops? And my fantastic creatures?

These two statements answer each other as you use diplomatic capital to hire fantastic creatures But.. the current state of fantastic creatures is indeed useless, which I guess does make diplomatic capital useless. The limit on hiring is also abysmally low.

5. There isn’t a stack of doom problem there’s a champion of doom problem.

This couldn't be more true, and is largely tied to the ability to find any level of weapon/armor irespective of empire management. The same is true for spellcasting, implying there should be some limitation to both of these only bypassed by research.

6. Units move way too far in tactical and strategic combat.

Indeed they do. Strategic lets far roaming armies rush with absurd speed to new locations, especially when using enemy roads.. Tactical combat with charge can get pretty unreasonable. There need to be better balanced numbers to properly create choke points and utilize the zone of control mechanic. Also some barriers on the tactical map would help a great deal.

8. Flank, Flank FLANK!!!

I don't really agree with this, or at least your numbers seem a bit off. It really goes against the grain of heroes being super powerful. Plus once (hopefully) something gets done about the runaway train mechanic that is uber gear gets addressed we may find that army units are already formidable

@Stillsingle I wouldn't wish the one-unit-kill mechanic on anyone. It is a -terrible- method of balancing unit strength and it makes me cry in my sleep just thinking about it.

15. Tech costs are unreal.

You can blame this one on derek! Fall from heaven had some pretty absurd tech costs, and made for really long games. Actually just remembering this makdes me want to play RIFE. In any case I think some calculation errors were made that need to be addressed. Perhaps there was an assumption that a greater number of cities/population would be accrued before the end of the game.

19. Taking materials out was a mistake

20. Need more tiers of materials

I disagree with both of these. The number of units you can support is limited by your economy, which is fine. Late game this gets absurd, but.. meh. As far as new tiers of materials are concerned, I don't want my resource listing any more cluttered than it is currently. Having both wargs and horses already annoys me. (Uberium was really funny though). Applying an upkeep cost, or some sort of total unit limitation based on the resource is a good idea, since it can make you choose where to place your 'super units' in defense or offense.

Pretty much all of your other points I am on board with, and don't feel they need any more commentary

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Quoting CdrRogdan,

reply 9

@Stillsingle I wouldn't wish the one-unit-kill mechanic on anyone. It is a -terrible- method of balancing unit strength and it makes me cry in my sleep just thinking about it.

Now that I think of it in isolation and taking it to the extreme, yeah it sounds bad. However in the spirit in which I discussed it, becomes balanced and causes the rock papper scissors scenario, per the thread I mentioned. Melee Champ/Dragon > Mage Champion > Army > Melee Champ/Dragon.

However it wuold take the fun out a little bit about being able to nurture a super hero Champion and take on an army.....

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