The Logical 981 Assessement for Devs

Organized + Easy To Read

from Elemental Forums

Just finished putting a number of hours into the recent beta. Below are the remaining issues with the game that require developer attention.

 

Critical Issues

  • AI is not interacting with players.

Come turn 270 of my game on a medium map with 5 AI opponents no one had been defeated, no wars had been declared and I had had no encounters with any of the AI players in anyway. I had to manually walk up to opponent cities and manually speak with the AI before they even registered the fact that I existed.

Upon talking with my neighboring AI which turned out to have a power rating of 230+ compared to my sad 50, they immediately declared war on me. The next turn, a massive wave of units came spewing out of their closest city and headed right for me. Clearly they had simply been building up units without actually putting them to use.

Before that, a Kingdom army marched right through an Empire territory without issue. I checked the AI profiles, and it turned out none of the had met any of the other AI players.

  • Better organization of equipment.

Amulets and rings are currently listed as equipment and cannot be used if for example, you have a character with a mount, a spider sac and a red egg thing. I realize this was probably done for balance reasons, but it's more than a bit absurd that we're unable to make use of equipment that has its own tech tree just because we picked some things up earlier in the game.

Rings and amulets should be organized under the armor category.

  • More options when in another's territory.

Getting kicked out of an enemy's territory is an incredibly disruptive and jarring event. Many times it's difficult to even determine just where your army has landed if you don't take the second option of declaring war.

This experience can be greatly improved with two additions: giving players the opportunity to discuss the open boarders treaty directly from the "get out of my territory" menu or selecting where players would like their army to end up if choosing to remove themselves from the territory in question.

  • First 3 tiers of Death Magic have no offensive spells.

Player's wanting to start the game off with a death-magic focused sovereign might have a hard time early in the game due to the fact that the death magic school has no directly offensive spells for the first 3 tiers. Anything would be better than nothing and would allow us to actually make use of our sovereign in combat instead of keep them hidden away.

  • Heroes and injuries.

Heroes are obviously an important aspect of the game and it's obvious why the developers chose to have them emerge from bad battles with injuries instead of permanently dying. It helps prevent the AI from losing heroes and it is a forgiving solution for players who have probably spent a lot of time improving their heroes. There however multiple issues with how heroes are currently being handled.

One of the biggest issues come from opponents relying on hero-heavy armies: beating down the same heroes again and again not only brings no sense of accomplishment to players but also causes an opponent's inevitable destruction to drag out far longer than it should (after all, if a player is relying on the same defeated heroes again and again there's a very good chance they're at death's door). This disruption to pacing and tedious repetition on the victor's part is doing the game no favors.

The other issue is after a number of defeats, heroes simply become lost causes. Dragging a hero with 4+ injuries into battle yet again brings no sense of danger and requires no tactical thinking. Their defeat will mean nothing to the player as it has already happened time and time again. Heroes with stacks of injuries are no longer character to customize or develop, but become pitiful punching bags and carry no sense of consequence.

There is happily a great compromise possible that keeps the developers original intentions while also eliminating all these issues. Give high-level life magic the opportunity to heal injuries and sell very expensive potions from shops that can do the same. Then make the alteration of having heroes die permanently if they ever come to have three injuries after a defeated battle. Maybe you could also give death magic the opportunity to create zombified versions of our heroes directly after a battle. With this compromise, everyone wins.

  • Upgrading existing units.

Imagine how frustrating it is to put time and effort into seeing one of your earliest units survive into the later game only to be forever limited to their starting gear. Please give us the much needed option of sending existing units back in for training so that we may replace their out-dated gear with more modern apparel. It would certainly make the accomplishment of retaining high level units a far more rewarding experience.

 

Minor Issues

  • The propaganda spell is currently dependent upon the tax rate. Should it be?
  • Don't render armor items such and greaves with robes as it simply causes clipping issues.
  • River border textures clash horribly with surroundings and definitely destroy any sense of atmosphere.
  • Units can become physically lost in some map improvement items like Crystal Quarries.
  • The Blind spell needs to affect defense/dodge in some way as well as accuracy.
  • There is an odd "You are dominating me" affect on AI relations even when their faction score is way above our own.
  • Quest locations shouldn't displaying the "you need a hero" message when a common unit runs through the tile without stopping.
  • The hotkey bar in tactical battles is from number 1 to 7. Why not make use of 8, 9 and 0?
  • A quest marker turned invisible after being defeated on my first attempt.
  • On the sovereign selection screen, some of the sovereigns are without those nice looking flourishes.
  • My sovereign was a warlock, but when the game started he had a mining background.
  • Give us a few more weakness and let us select up to two, pretty please?

 

Unit Appearance and Backgrounds

This is getting its own section due to it being more an icing-on-the-cake issue than anything else. The issue is basically this: the newer art, models and UI for Fallen Enchantress look far better than the older art assets and UI for the character visual customization, posture setting and background selection.

The posture setting and background selection can be greatly improved in terms of the UI and sooo many of the postures look so awkward and out of place that they really do need to be reworked.

The lack of faces (female Rosoln get 6 faces, but men only 3?) and is moderately annoying as is the clunky and limited selection of hair for our sovereigns and characters. Hoods look incredibly unsatisfying reminding me more of Kenny from South Park than any kind of magic lord.


Anyway, that's all the notes I have from my time with the latest beta. Hope you guys find the information useful.


16,286 views 17 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top





Upgrading existing units.

Imagine how frustrating it is to put time and effort into seeing one of your earliest units survive into the later game only to be forever limited to their starting gear. Please give us the much needed option of sending existing units back in for training so that we may replace their out-dated gear with more modern apparel. It would certainly make the accomplishment of retaining high level units a far more rewarding experience.


 
End of quote

 

Ummmm... we've been able to do this since Day 1.  Click on your unit and then click on the button that says Upgrade Weapon or Upgrade Armor.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

... I have never ever seen that. Thanks.

The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top
  • First 3 tiers of Death Magic have no offensive spells.

Player's wanting to start the game off with a death-magic focused sovereign might have a hard time early in the game due to the fact that the death magic school has no directly offensive spells for the first 3 tiers. Anything would be better than nothing and would allow us to actually make use of our sovereign in combat instead of keep them hidden away.

End of quote

 

Neither does Life, as I recall.  So it's both sides, and the attack spells are in other books.  Now everybody is entitled to their own opinion on this, but I'm perfectly happy with keeping direct damage spells out of Life and Death.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting TheProgress, reply 2
... I have never ever seen that. Thanks.
End of TheProgress's quote

That at least needed some eyes popping out.

:omg:

 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Amulets and rings are currently listed as equipment and cannot be used if for example, you have a character with a mount, a spider sac and a red egg thing. I realize this was probably done for balance reasons, but it's more than a bit absurd that we're unable to make use of equipment that has its own tech tree just because we picked some things up earlier in the game.

Rings and amulets should be organized under the armor category.
End of quote

First off rings are not armour, what you are not aware of is the very hidden rule of you only being able to equip 3 trinkets and 1 pony/kitty.

I don't know if you encountered a bug, but sounded a little like you just hit the maximum cap of trinkets to wear, try de-equipping some of the earlier ones (Click on it, your equip button will turn into a "De-equip" ish button... Ok my mind is toast ATM, so sorry for the poor explanations ^_^)

That said, the UI need to reflect the 3 trinket slots.

Don't render armor items such and greaves with robes as it simply causes clipping issues.
End of quote

Been annoying forever :thumbsup: - But think about how many games render these things on this scale, I think its fantastic to see all my rendered heroes and units.

That said, I don't usually like posts calling for the developers attention (they will see it if its important... I hope :))
But I kind of like what you typed down.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

The notion of injuries being curable is interesting.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Ok loving the beta so far just a few requests,

In cities add shift click ie select 1st and last unit you select all units in that city and control click for picking specific units for easy of grouping please. (points at Brad)

Also add casting multiple spells on a army and not having to repeatably reopen the spell book to cast spells on each and every SINGLE UNIT! (shift clicking and control click like in the example above for making our lives easier). (evil monkey points at Brad)

Also one weird thing when it comes to upgrading buildings with their newer versions, I have to click the build button to get the upgrade to be build and sometimes it also throws me out of build mode too. Make sure I can click the icon and then see the location in the city that will be upgraded (green flashing icon would do) and then click on the city to upgrade that building just like when it comes to placing new buildings. 

 

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top


Isn't there a quest that gives you a potion of restoration that cures any one hero of all their injuries. The tilda lady...

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Interesting stuff.

 

re the ai, the tricky thing here is that it's not scouting as much as it did. Or more to the point, our recent balance changes made scouts less valued by the ai. Scouts are how thneeding each other.

 

i think it's going to take a couple more beta updates to really nail that down, to be honest.  Next weeks beta update will include the ai response to ones player strategies from this week.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

The AI should also be scouting with spells and scout heroes. Takes some of the pressure off the AI to know what is going on. I would also think about a sight bonus for outposts. Something like Watchtower or Crow's Nest to give it +3 sight. Would really help AI strategy me thinks.

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting cardinaldirection, reply 7
The notion of injuries being curable is interesting.
End of cardinaldirection's quote

I think all magic paths should have a difficult way of curing injuries. I've posted some of these before but for example:

Life: Highish level (4?) spell costing a moderate amount of mana (150-300?) to heal one injury (probably random?). I think Life magic should by a small margin be the simplest and best of the schools at healing injuries.

Earth: A hero who spends 100 turns (not necessarily consecutively to not make it punishing if dispelled at 95) auto heals one random injury. Could make it a bit harder by making them then go to an earth shrine after the 100 turns and cast another spell or use an ability or whatever.

Death: A Rebuild as Undead spell (level 5) which costs moderate mana and turns the hero into undead, healing all injuries and giving them +20 strength but at a cost of and healing half as much each strategic turn. Subsequent casts on the hero still heal all injuries but reduce also permenantly reduce health by 1 (or similar) to reflect growing wear and tear to the undead heroes body.

Fire: A high level spell which costs moderate mana and can only be cast on a full HP hero standing on a friendly fire shrine, heals 1 random injury but drops them to 1 current HP, and reduces their movement to 1 for 5 turns while they recover from the fire purifying their body.

Water: A high level "floating meditation" spell which costs moderate mana. Heals 1 random injury after the hero spends 5 turns not moving and not casting any spells (would need the strategic spell selection screen to warn if you tried to get the hero to cast a spell during that time).

All numbers (ie spell levels/mana costs/bonuses/penalties) prob need tweaking but the point is to make it interesting

Maybe I should make a new post for this too?

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

It is really agravatting to defeat an enemy hero's army for it to come back 5 turns later.

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

I'd say a universal spell given to all magic schools at Mage level (3rd tier) sovereigns, heals injuries but costs the sovereign 1hp per injury, maybe 2.

 

Make it hurt.

 

 

 

 

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Alstein, reply 14
I'd say a universal spell given to all magic schools at Mage level (3rd tier) sovereigns, heals injuries but costs the sovereign 1hp per injury, maybe 2.
End of Alstein's quote

I think one universal injury would be better that reduces the HP of the hero by 1 and can stack. This injury should be applied to the Sovereign, too, and it should replace the mana loss, because your universal spell could cure one injury for 100 mana.

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

I would like to see something a little bit more aggressive than a boring mana cost. For example, the hero loses a random trait in addition to having one random injury removed. This means his/her essence is weakened, his/her potential diminished. Maybe they'll even lose a Spellbook, or even worse a Path. If possible it could always be the latest trait selected at level-up. These things, of course, have great impact on the hero's future development.

Other ways could be stuff like:

1) sacrificing an entire shard to rejuvenate someone (you can only use the shard type of magic your sovereign or that hero controls)

2) "blood magic", sacrificing hundreds of population in order to restore someone to life but this also makes you lose faction prestige

3) "retreats" that function like hospitals - special world resource locations that give a small chance for injuries to be removed when the hero is stationed in city x. This way you can still use the hero but you also face a trade-off - do you take him out of the wargames for now only to return stronger later on, or do you think your levelups are more worth?

4) high-level quests for the "fountain of youth" or whatever, where you gain items like potion of restoration. There's nothing wrong with giving such items out late in the game if the player faces strong resistance to obtaining them imho.

Reply #16 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting TheProgress, reply 2
... I have never ever seen that. Thanks.
End of TheProgress's quote

 

That's what happens when the tight **** don't provide a manual. :)

Reply #17 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Heavenfall, reply 16
I would like to see something a little bit more aggressive than a boring mana cost.

 



1) sacrificing an entire shard to rejuvenate someone (you can only use the shard type of magic your sovereign or that hero controls)

2) "blood magic", sacrificing hundreds of population in order to restore someone to life but this also makes you lose faction prestige

3) "retreats" that function like hospitals - special world resource locations that give a small chance for injuries to be removed when the hero is stationed in city x. This way you can still use the hero but you also face a trade-off - do you take him out of the wargames for now only to return stronger later on, or do you think your levelups are more worth?

4) high-level quests for the "fountain of youth" or whatever, where you gain items like potion of restoration. There's nothing wrong with giving such items out late in the game if the player faces strong resistance to obtaining them imho.

End of Heavenfall's quote

 

yes you cant tie the whole game to a passive resource because it favor too much passive playing and doing mistakes you can repair later

2) is particularly good, i dont think everytone should be albe though

maybe magnar could have this additional spell high lvl

3) doesnt look so good, it involves again too much passive playing

maybe just go to hospital and pay a price and a fixed amount of turns

like a surgery or so you stay in that city 5 turns, pay 100 gildar and then you have 1 injur cured

4) is good

anyway whatever should be something HARD to achieve and that cannot cure everythinng