[Thoughts and Impressions] Troubles

A Study in Contrast

from Elemental Forums

Recently I started replaying E:WoM, just to compare it to E:FE.  I came away with a list of advantages that the first game had over the new one.

War of Magic's advantages:

 - Clear delineation of racial differences.  In FE, especially when designing a custom kingdom/empire, racial selection doesn't come with any sort of indication of whether or not that decision is important, or how it might be important.

 - Spell Research.  Sure it's convenient to just get all the spells as soon as one's hero advances to the right level, but it's also boring.  Additionally, it takes away a play choice: in WoM I could decide that my kingdom/empire was going to focus on spell development, which gave it a very different flavor than if I decided not to.  Also, I could then have my wizards grow more powerful without having to send them into fights.  (More on that later.)

 - 5 types of academic research, instead of three.  I'm from the school that says more is always better, but even if all of the technology from the five categories is just rearranged into three categories, the loss of categories is a problem.  Suddenly there are only three avenues of development instead of five, which means I have fewer ways of playing the game.  I want more ways to play the game, not fewer.

 - Independent Unit/Building construction.  Not only is this convenient, because nothing is more annoying than needing an unit but being in the middle of a big project, it also just makes sense.  Why in the world are my builders leaving their construction jobs to train soldiers?  

 - Closer cities.  The city radius in Elemental has always been a bit extreme, although that follows pretty naturally from the intriguing way that cities are built.  However, the increased restriction in FE makes it difficult to found cities at all, and then leaves them all incredibly vulnerable.  While this might be intentional, for added flavor, it's cumbersome when my capital is in a vast stretch of fertile land, but positioned so as to exclude the use of most of that land.

 - No roaming dragons.  I can't tell you the number of times that I've started a game of FE only to discover that there's a hulking deadly army not far away, an army that will pursue anyone that comes too close.  It's just annoying to start a game and not even be able to explore.

 

5,404 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I disagree with all of these.  I do wish that we could tell the racial differences when selecting them in creation, but WoM didn't have that.  The races had no differences.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

I wouldn't mark any of these as advantages. Most of the listed advantages were problematic in WoM. The thing about spells is just the opposite of the way I see it. Previously we had an entire research tree that contained too few spells. This caused the research time for spells to be ridiculously long. There was very little magic going on in Wom because of this. For that matter, you had to guess which shards you would find, causing randomness to potentially cripple your game. In the current system there is much more room to make strategic decisions with magic based on one's available resources. Each elemental book has five levels that are spaced out over 10 hero levels. Spells can still be researched in the Magic Tree. Not sure how this bores you. The excitement of leveling up a mage is one of my favorite moments in the game. 

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

I disagree on all points as well, but I do wish they would include more spells to be researched (or unlocked, if you will) in the magic technology tree, especially for the more powerful spells in the game (rank III and greater.)

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

There are apparently 175 tactical spells right now in the internal build. That indicates some serious additions to the Magic Tree.

 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

We shall see... *_*

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting seanw3, reply 4
There are apparently 175 tactical spells right now in the internal build. That indicates some serious additions to the Magic Tree.

 
End of seanw3's quote

 

In the internal build? Where have I heard that before?

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Seeing is believing. 

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

- Clear delineation of racial differences. In FE, especially when designing a custom kingdom/empire, racial selection doesn't come with any sort of indication of whether or not that decision is important, or how it might be important.
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Of course

- Spell Research. Sure it's convenient to just get all the spells as soon as one's hero advances to the right level, but it's also boring. Additionally, it takes away a play choice: in WoM I could decide that my kingdom/empire was going to focus on spell development, which gave it a very different flavor than if I decided not to. Also, I could then have my wizards grow more powerful without having to send them into fights. (More on that later.)
End of quote

Terrible idea for already stated reasons.

- Independent Unit/Building construction. Not only is this convenient, because nothing is more annoying than needing an unit but being in the middle of a big project, it also just makes sense. Why in the world are my builders leaving their construction jobs to train soldiers?
End of quote

Could work, its hard to tell without trying it.

- No roaming dragons. I can't tell you the number of times that I've started a game of FE only to discover that there's a hulking deadly army not far away, an army that will pursue anyone that comes too close. It's just annoying to start a game and not even be able to explore.
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No early game roaming dragons, no bone ogres/slag/drake gaurding my only expansion. Early game start is way too random, starting position can be anything from a 2/3 plains with no recruitable champions to a 6/4 with forest and river and 3 recruitable champions. Game really lacks smooth progression from a single city struggling for survival to a world conquering nation.

All points I didn't mention are terrible as well.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

 - No roaming dragons.  I can't tell you the number of times that I've started a game of FE only to discover that there's a hulking deadly army not far away, an army that will pursue anyone that comes too close.  It's just annoying to start a game and not even be able to explore.
End of quote

When I have this issue then it's time for some spearmen.  I find that a L4ish hero or two plus 3-4 spearmen can kill just about anything that will be nearby early on.  This includes ogres, Slags, Harridans etc.  If you're having problems then build some spearmen, researching that is always the second or third thing I do.  Civics / Shard Harvesting / Spearmen are the top three that get done right away every time.  A few spells can really help out as well, such as SLOW, CURSE, and any of the fire nukes just to mention a few.  If it takes 50 mana it takes 50 mana, but you killed them and now can expand.

I will admit that some stuff is just too big.  Hoarding Spiders, Drakes, things like that.  But even an Umberdroth will fall to the almighty Spearmen.

And I can almost always sneak past the monster to explore regardless of how threatening it is.  Set up your moves so you will never end up adjacent to it and you're golden.

- Manii Names

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

With any game of this nature that uses randomly generated maps, starting positions will vary considerably.  This is the nature of the beast.  If my starting position is too crappy, I just start a new game or accept it as an additional challenge.

That having been said, having huge pieces of the map uninhabitable due to terrain then to have huge tracts of land occupied by a Deadly monster makes it that much harder to get a decent starting position.

I like the current spell research system.  My biggest gripe is there is no way to add additional schools (fire/air etc) to your sovereign or champion beyond what they started with. 

I would like to see the city radius reduced to 6.