On the topic of AoW vs FE:LH.
Now, I haven't played MoM more than two hours, and that was just a year or two ago, so I can't really bring that into the comparison, but I've seen people both here and on the AoW forums claim respective game is more "true to the roots"... Why that should ever be a goal in and of itself is beyond my comprehension though - I'd much rather prefer games evolve in their own direction.
Which both FE and AoW has done. They're very different games in gameplay to me. For me, fallen enchantress feels a fair bit 4x and a fair bit roguelike, and when playing FE flavor is important to me - I want to play a certain concept or theme or even character, not just "play the mechanics". It also somewhat fills the same kind of spot as Hinterlands for me - I tend to go with quite easy opponent teams (medium or challenging) and ramp up the difficulty of the monsters, because to me, FE is as much about conquering the wilds as it is about conquering your opponents.
It's a game with lots of story, and flavor. But it also feels quite clunky. It feels a bit "amateurish" - not as in bad, but as in a hobby project. There's quite a lot of bugs, it's quite unbalanced and a lot of things could be a lot less complex without losing depth. It's not as sleek and slender as we've come to appreciate modern games from big developers, and that I think unfortunately puts many people off from investing their time in giving it a chance, which as everyone here knows, it really deserves.
AoW on the other hand is very smooth and sleek, but it feels like a pure strategy title. I don't play a character or even a nation concept, I play the mechanics. Granted, I _like_ the mechanics (mostly), and I really like the tactical combat, but still, it's a very different feel. I can't say "oh, I want to play a nation based on ancient rome!" and design something. It's also much less likely to get good mods, as the system is much more closed; it's too early to definately tell, but FE's modfriendliness means that several of the kinks in the system that I don't like have been solved by me downloading mods and changing a few things myself.
AoW of course also has multiplayer, and that's a space where FE simply can't compete at all.
On the topic of "balance"
I kinda agree with both sides here. I do think that the type balance in AoW is to the detriment of the game - it's basically the same thing Dungeons & Dragons 4th did, balance via removing 99% of the differences and making everything just a different name and skin of the same ability. It's an easy, cheap way of enforcing balance, but it also makes the game feel bland and boring, and it also means that whatever unbalances remain from that last percentage will be much more noticable, because rather than one team being X and the other being Y, the other team is being X+1.
On the other hand, I think that FE is unbalanced enough for that to be a detriment to the game, because some options are just so much better than others it's really hard to motivate oneself to pick them for flavor reasons. Some options are just strictly better than others in nearly every imaginable circumstance, and that's bad balancing. Having something that's usually a bit better isn't a big deal, especially not in a single player game, but having things that are just better is again, the issue of X+1.
The best kind of balance is balance through diversity and counters rather than through sameness. And when it comes to that, I think the 4x genre (because as I see it this is kind of a recurring issue in the genre) has a lot to learn from the RTS genre - and a good tutor would probably be Warcraft 3. That was a game that both had varying, unique and flavorful teams and also maintained a basic level of balance. Granted, such a balance require a lot of work.
EDIT: I realized one thing more that makes a big difference, and that is that AoW actively works to give the same play experience every time - enemies should have nicely and gradually increasing difficulty so you can always beat them, resources should be evenly distributed so you don't ever lack access to what you want, etc. I find that AoW caters a lot to players, and though the game can be difficult, it's set up to always make you feel like your chance was as fair as everyone else's. Removing the undead dragons are part of that. I honestly don't like that at all. Compare to FE where you can start out really badly, and have a bone ogre kill of your team quite easily etc. I guess that's part of why FE feels a bit like a roguelike to me - the RNG is harsh, and I like that.
