Xadie

[quote who="seanw3" reply="1" id="3082756"]The stat reducing idea is better suited to special abilities for heroes.[/quote] Why should it be like that? Right now, all what standard units do is applying their standard attacks and that's it. No special attacks nor abilities of note. Pretty bland, pretty boring and tactically not very challenging to use. And it's not said that melee weapons should stay as they are. They're also in need of some extra love ;) &nbs

Well, then ramp up the difficulty settings. That's where you should get the challenge beyond the challenge you get from the skill of your opponent on equal footing.

The challenge should come by the chosen difficulty setting, the AI and the possible human adversary, should multiplayer be added it at a later stage. I'm definitely for adapting to the map you get. But there's a thin line beyond that you/the enemy are outright scammed by the random map generator. Sure now the AI is almost non existent and it might be a pleasant experience to have to fight the odds. But let's turn it around: You have all the fire shards

[quote who="Solam" reply="4" id="3082718"] I really can't see changing all the shards to air and gaining all the advantages of it. Too powerful.[/quote] I think this more of a numbers matter and depends of how spells scale. Also here there a lot of possibilities to limit any abuse. The main point of these spells is to lessen the impact of the starting position over the course of the game, so players aren't that often screwed by the map genera

It might be also worthwhile to think about escalating costs, depending of how many heroes the casting player already has. If the player has no heroes then the casting costs a fairly low. But when the casting has, let's say, 3 heroes already then the summon costs rise sharply. I agree that the spell(s) should only summon heroes of a specific tier but also of the faction the caster is of.

[quote who="Heavenfall" reply="1" id="3082709"]Summon Hero is too powerful with immortal champions[/quote] If there is a cap of how many champions you can have, there shouldn't be a problem. It would bring players disadvantaged by starting position on level with those who reach the cap naturally by recruiting heroes off the map. Mind, I argue also for payment of the gold fee as recruiting cost on top of the mana costs. So please see the spell suggestion in conjunction with

I'd like to see two new spells which would lessen the impact of bad starting positions that plaque me and the AI at times. 1. Summon hero: summons an hero to aid the sovereign. The caster still has to pay the recruitment fee otherwise the summoned hero vanishes. Depending how the early phase goes and the hero distribution is, especially regarding their faction membership, you can either get a full stuck easily or just one or two. But as important as heroes are, being

As I already pointed in several posts before, I think ranged combat is way underdeveloped in the current beta version. I'd like to elaborate my standpoint more in this post and hope people agree with me [e digicons]:grin:[/e] The available range weapons, not counting throwing knifes, are basically of one type (bow), which have a decent starting impact when the first bow-tech is researched. But with increasingly game length their efficiency drops dramatically as they don&#3

Just glancing on some screenshots of his recent games, they look like panzer general II on a grand scale.

[quote] Not entirely true about the MOM tactical battles. The bumps/hills would slow down non-flying units moving across them. Roads in the tactical battle would also allow for extra movement(cost 1/2 movemement point on roads), plus city walls, that force non-flying units to have to fight their way in to the city, or use spells/specific units to take out the walls. Wall of Darkness could also be used, to prevent ranged units from shooting over the walls.[/quote] Additional

I completely agree with Solam. The battlefields are way too small and movement boni too numerous, which makes the current (very simple) ZOC system pretty much redundant. On top of it, there are no stratagic considerations beyond the "What can I afford?"-think process when it comes down to the question of what to train. Basically higher attack value is better. End of story. No counter system in place (but pls don't transport the counter-system fr

I wouldn't mind the change of heroes into a captain-like role. Would fix a lot of current issues in one sweep. =)

[quote who="Wizard1200" reply="13" id="3075776"] but the initiative system should be used much more. All spells should have an initiative modifier to make spells like slow more powerful and spells like fireball less powerful.[/quote] Wasn't the casting time supposed to do that? Firball takes an additional turn, Battle Cry two turns (but I think it's currently bugged, I recall that it took me only one additional turn contrary to the description)

[quote who="malekith" reply="10" id="3075692"] I do tend to be of a mind that open initiative systems rely on counterattacks to balance out the large advantages generally associated with initiative. The rarity of counterattacks in FE will make initiative very difficult to balance.[/quote] Yeah, counterattacks as a general rule would be nice. Something like each unit equipped with a melee weapon has one counterattack between turns, with special traits they can raise the numb

[quote who="sweatyboatman" reply="4" id="3075450"] Have you played tactical battles in WoM? I would never advocate for a return to closed turns. [/quote] Well, sadly I played WoM, otherwise I wouldn't have access to the beta for the Elemental:FE Beta... WoM didn't had a real initiative system. At first it was pure random who starts and then you just move all your units then the enemy does the same and so on... I'm not sure how it is right now

[quote who="CrazyHarlequin" reply="2" id="3075415"]Currently initiative is just too easy for champions to get. While waiting for traits more applicable for the champion design I have in mind ("More dex based traits? I want this guy to be a huge axe wielder! Not an agile strutter! Oh well, I'll just grab the bonus to move and initiative") I usually end up with champions with ridiculously high initiatives. One game was pretty much over the moment my master-evoker fire mage had enough initia

Actually, I didn't intend to write about the beta just yet, as I'm still dive through all the existing exploits and balance issues I found. But I feel it is urgent to talk about the current initiative system, because as it stands it is flawed. Very much so. Before I go Elemental specific let me draw a analogy with another game, as I believe that designers can learn a lot from other game designs. As Nival was contracted to work on Heroes of Might an

Probably you go broke, because the market size wasn't sufficient large enough to generate the required revenue? Apart of the problem that higher budget doesn't equal higher quality.

The Middle Market is the hope and home for the hardcore strategy gamer crowd. While low budget caters for the casual market and those AAA productions are heavily oriented towards the "immersion-crowd" (willing to spend more time for a game than a casual gamer but presentation and atmosphere are of higher importance than game mechanics) the middle market has the budget to make many kinds of games / game mechanics work but is still flexible enough to leave the standard trail.

[quote who="TCores" reply="10" id="2895291"] And the more limited your options will be. Dozens of triple AAA titles use Lua without slowing down the game to accomplish mission scripting. A lot of people advance the "don't give fans X tool because they might shoot themselves in the foot and make a crappy mod," and I tend not to buy the games of people who make that claim.[/quote] I haven't said that one has to exclude the other. You can have both - easy to use tools and

Everyone needs a boob extender!

To keep it short: NO!

It's a good thing that Fallen Enchantress is concept wise made from scratch. I think Elemental: War of Magic has too many construction sites to ever reach the status of polished and fun. Though I still hope you guys aim to create a full blown 4X game.

With good support of a scripting language like Python oder LUA not that much of a problem. But it costs a lot of resources that way. So many mods in Civ 4 run so slow because of extensive loops via Phyton. The more is embedded straight into the code and accessed via XML as "switch flipper" - the faster and more stable will modifications be.

I say YES to ZOC-Rules! YES to Feats and Promotions! YES to more abilities in general!