Fallen Enchantress 1.1 Changelog

Yeah... a changelog. I like fixes.

Neat. Can't wait for the inevitable growth as things are added.

I'm digging the changes to the infirmary and watch tower. I wish the grocer change wasn't a nerf, but I understand how stacking grocers can get out of hand. I'm glad attention is being paid to balancing all the city level up bonuses.

These are jokes right?  You're not actually listening to stupid suggestions from forum users are you?  If so, then how about implementing a couple of my stupid suggestions.

1.  UI : Show the pathway movement (and how many turns to get there) before I click to move.

2.  UI : Highlight the currently selected unit or city in the empire tree down the left side of the screen because it's too easy for us micro-managers to get lost when you have 30 things in the empire tree and you're trying to go through them one at a time every turn.

P.S.  Instead of nerfing juggernauts, just let me give a class on how to beat them.

P.S.S.  You can't get to 2000 mana unless you play really slow or play a really large map.  Why ruin that spell for people playing small and medium maps or who can win in less than 200 turns?

This https://forums.elementalgame.com/434355 and this https://forums.elementalgame.com/434017

I think the changes to Jugs are pretty interesting.  Now I think I will make all types of variants.  

I would like something added so Diplomats and Betrayers could actually use their influence abilities.  They have silver tongue and broken loyalties, but don't get a lot of use out of silver tongue and probably can't try Broken Loyalties more than once and that would be very late game.

I'd love to see some improvements in Influence and Prestige like Xia mentions, too. Those mechanics could be simplified to be made more useful and understandable (by combining or eliminating them in some fashion).

Of course, we could work to give all races something as viable as Jug's too.

Anything in the Content area?

I pretty much like all of the changes, and the Jugs overhaul seems reasonable. It isn't beating them that's the problem, it's the using them. Won't know for sure until I try, but this seems good.

Silver tongue is pretty good! VVhen attacking enemy cities, you can instantly turn a 4v4 into a 5v3. And novv your conquered city has a guard to help defend it. It isn't useful early game (no influence), but late game it's good and it lets you counter missing things in your army, like no ranged vveapons. I've never used broken loyalties, too expensive, but looks like a great option to take a really fortified city.

Maybe instead of taking over an enemy city, it should just put it into revolt, hostile to everyone.  Since you still have to capture it to make it yours, the influence cost to do that would be a lot less.

Yea, i am waiting for an expansion/fix myself, before i return to play. Too many rage-quits after random moves ruins the game for me at the moment.

Good call on the Destiny's Gift nerf. I've never really played with it before, when I tried in the betas it didn't work properly. However, in my current game with a high mana income early I gave it a shot and was stunned how big the improvements were. Since then I'm prety much spending all my mana buffing my sovereign with it and it is insanely overpowering (given a big mana income). My sovereign is just waltzing through empires and wildlands on expert.

While giving a free trait to units trained in a fortress with a watchtower is a good idea, I have to question giving the Charge trait. For two reasons:

1- Since it clashes with a trait that can be given to designed units (I assume you can't get it twice), players will have to design a Charge-less copy of any unit to which they gave the Charge trait to avoid losing the free trait. The same would apply to all traits available to designed units.

2- The Charge trait is quite situational, as only a few units (cavalry) can use both the extra movement and the extra damage. Archers only use the extra damage, and footmen only the extra movement. But Impulsive is the same, so I guess that's not as big of a deal as the first issue.

Anyway, wouldn't it be better to have Watchtower grant a new trait instead? Like a "Watchman" trait (+1 sight range) or an "Anti-Charge" trait (+5 defense, +5 spell resistance on the first turn of combat)?

In quite a few tactical maps foot troops can strike with charge on first round, it is very advantageous. And in a large tactical map it is still useful as it lets them close the gap faster. Also, by the mid game most troops tend to be mounted - I find mounts are rarely my limiting resource for troops.

Excellent! 

Don't be fooled, it's really not that big of a nerf, as I explained here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/437525

The idea is to make the traits more interesting so that you'd have more varied Jugs designs (which is a good thing). They are only slightly weaker primarily due to brutal nature, but it barely changes anything. Also of note, it takes like 5 minutes to do these changes in xml, to do what you want, it takes a lot more coding. I wonder why one gets in, and one doesn't?

I feel like Pyre went the wrong way on this, I already choose it all the time for the fire power, 2? Dear god the fire spell spam.

Slums unrest penalty isn't the problem, the problem is the bonus isn't really worth it to pick when you can use governors to grow cities.

Curgen's Volcano's cast time might be okay, but the cost is pretty painful. This one might have went overboard.

Wow... and here I thought this was intentional to give them flavor... *cries*

Like the changes to city level up- should make things a little harder to decide.

Does this mean that the shieldman requires the training tech? Namely the wooden shield tech and no longer auto-creates a wooden shield for inventory?

Checked it out, its a bug.  You shouldn't be able to train units with an equipment type you cant make, but you are able to with henchmen.

I'll have to think about this a bit more.

Nerd detail:

There is a difference between champion equipment and trained unit equipment.  There actually is no such thing as trained unit equipment, that's just a unit type that has a sword graphic.  Making true equipment is a more expensive process (so equipment can be removed, traded, etc) so we only use it for champions.  (for modders if you see <AutoCreateEquipment> thats the champion version as compared to <Equipment> which is the trained unit version)

Henchmen are the weird middle ground where they are using a bit of both.  The wood shield is always available (even if you haven't researched it) because the prereq requirements are only placed on the trained unit versions of equipment.  Since the Shieldman had the champion version, he could be trained with the shield even if you hadn't researched the tech for the shield.  (the bug only ignores tech reqs, resource reqs are applied correctly).

The "use the best" code uses trained unit equipment (since, except for henchmen and sions that's all that can even use it) so doing it that way means that they inherit those advantaged and disadvantages.

Hard core nerd detail:

You are probably wondering how you can upgrade trained units if their equipment isnt real.  That took some clever coding by someone smarter than me, in effect what happens is we create an entirely new unit type and convert them to that, it isnt really just switching the weapons or armor.

Um... that merc from the letter of Mark (Wallace)... is he really suppose to be worth 50 gold? Unless you changed something... he's so useless that I always sell the letter for the 18 gold instead. So basically, you'd be losing out on 68 gold for a really crappy unit. Maybe change him into a champion without DividesBattleExp (basically a henchmen) and use UnitJoinArmy instead?

Agree.  For it costing 50 gold?  Um why?  Isn't it a found treasure item?  Not like I'm going to produce hundreds of these guys.  And they are pretty crappy.  Wallace is mildly useful in the early game, but not worth 50 gold ever.

Thanks for the info... hope you can squash the bug.

FYI if you just make the unit with a woodshield it will upgrade unit design per usual, but it will require the training tech appropriately. Plus, any champion equipment overrides the currently equipped trained version. I've done this with the henchmen female mod in anticipation of what I thought you proposed as a fix to this problem. Namely, change <AutoCreateEquipment>WoodShield</AutoCreateEquipment> to <Equipment>WoodShield</Equipment>.

Thematically it makes a lot more sense to pay a mercenary a wage, as well, over a one-time fee.

I would hate to create a thematic choice that prevents me from wanting to make a game choice in actually using it.  Thematically costing money to use a merc is a good idea, but game wise, it better be a good choice or his mark is getting sold and unused.