Q: What kind of computer do I need to run Fallen Enchantress?
A: You need to be running either Windows 8, Windows 7 or Windows Vista. If you are running Windows XP, you should make sure you have at least 2GB of memory and a video card with at least 512MB of video memory.
Q: Do I need War of Magic?
A: No. Elemental: Fallen Enchantress is a new game in the Elemental universe. But it is not directly related to War of Magic game-wise.
Q: How do I maximize performance for Fallen Enchantress?
A: If you are looking for the absolute best performance, you should disable outlines and pedestrians and lower anti-aliasing in the options menu.
Q: Does Fallen Enchantress have copy protection?
A: No. We do have a serial number system so that if you buy the game from a third-party store (Steam, GameStop, GamersGate, etc.) you are able to re-download it directly from us into the future. But you may put Fallen Enchantress on as many machines as you would like that you own.
Q: I’m having a problem with FE, what should I do?
A: All of your FE specific data is in My Documents\My games\Stardock\Fallen Enchantress folder. There is a file called debug.err. The first few pages tell us everything about your computer. If you give us that along with the last few lines of that file, we might be able to find out what the issue is. Any time the game crashes, Windows sends up a report so we can look into that.
Q: What else can do I do to make sure I get the best performance and experience?
A: First, make sure you have the latest video drivers. We can’t stress this enough. You’d be surprised how many problems disappear if you just keep your video drivers up to date. Second, if you can, run a 64-bit version of Windows. FE will be able to see more memory which will improve its performance further.
Q: I have heard the FE AI is really smart compared to other games, why is that?
A: Fallen Enchantress’s AI is multi-core. That is, while you’re taking your turns, the AI spins up on every CPU core you have to do a lot of additional analysis of what’s going on in the world. Moreover, the game gets smarter the more you play it. The units you create it will make use of, the sovereigns you make it will use against you in future games.
Q: I just saw the AI do something stupid, why is that?
A: AI’s try to be generally intelligent but can still be specifically stupid. In the case of FE, because it’s a non-cheating AI, it can make mistakes. It may not “see” what you see. So it has to go out and send scouts and then do a lot of calculated guessing. Sometimes it may value something differently than you would (such as city placement – it might decide it’s worth giving up on a 4/3/1 city and instead settle a 4/2/1 city because it wants to be one tile closer to something else (like a river or a shard) to get its area of influence on those things sooner.
Similarly, in tactical battles, the AI may not have the mana available to cast a particular spell or you may make a move it was not expecting and thus disrupt its strategy (which is a good thing, you should do that).
At the highest difficulty levels, we give the AI money. But as you know, money can only go so far. It can’t conjure up for itself metal or crystal or other resources, doing that would make the higher levels absurd and unfun.
Q: How do I use player mods?
A: First, in the options menu, select “use Mods”. This will enable the game to look at the \documents\my games\fallenenchantress directory to look for the Mods. Inside that directory you can add quests, maps, items, and other types of mods.
Q: Are there any other tricks to maximize performance just a bit..bit further?
A: Yes, but this is absolutely unsupported. You can go to the \documents\my games\fallenenchantress directory and change the resolution to this:
DisplayWidth=1024
DisplayHeight=768
UseDesktopResolution=0
Fullscreen=1
We don’t recommend this but you will get the absolute best performance this way at the cost of visual quality.
If you’re a techie, you can go nuts with that file. If you mess it up, simply delete it and the game will recreate it at its defaults.
This whole directory structure should be thought of as your play ground to do surgery on the game as you see fit. At any time you can always delete it and the game will recreate it if you get into trouble.
