[quote who="Trojasmic" reply="15" id="3241886"] Derek and QA Team please hold strong. Don't let Brad persuade you into releasing a buggy game. I know. I know. Developers don't write any bugs. Just trust us on this one. We're not ready yet. I know that games are never truly finished. Just a little longer please.[/quote] Ditto.
And I strongly second Malsqueek's comments.
No. You have not yet succeeded. This is a nice game. It has the potential to be a great game, but at the moment it is just OK. And as I get older (34) I find I'm becoming less and less interested in playing OK games. I'm sad that you've decided to lock down the features, as I think there are lots of as-yet-unimplemented ideas in the forums. Not that you need to include more features, but that you should modify what you have to make the game more fu
Could be. But I would hope that a believable living world would trump that concern.
Agreed. Others have made this same request. Hopefully, with continuing friendly reminders, this will happen in an upcoming release.
@Malsqueek I'm just generally discontent with the way units disappear into cities. But more specifically, suppose a city spans two tiles. To me, it would make sense that you could have two armies defending the city. One on each tile. So defensive ability scales with city size. At the moment, I'm not sure how it works. Can you have infinite units in a city? Or just 9?
Totally agree with OP. Stardock - please take heed.
On general principles, I heartily dislike the one-per-caster summon limit. It's artificial, and a kludge. If it feels like this is necessary, it means there are balance issues elsewhere. It also limits gameplay options. Why can't I focus on the magic path, and create a all summon army? Sure, there need to be limits, but those limits should be a natural part of the game, not artificially imposed from outside. If there are balance issues (and there are) it would be far more elegant to f
@harpo: I designed it that way. To give my sovereign the best protection, I built a full army, all slots taken, and parked it on top of him. I knew I had two armies there, but I naively assumed any attackers would have to fight the tough/defensive army, before having to fight the piddly, one-sovereign army. @LNQ: So you think there should be a one-army-per-square limit? Hmm. That could be a good fix. But then what about settlements that cover more than one square?<
If there are two armies on the same square, and that square is attacked, I think the defender should have the ability to choose which army fights in defense. My story: I began casting the Spell of Making when my sovereign was sitting in a border outpost. Unwise, but I hadn't read carefully, and didn't realize he'd be immobilized. So I parked a big army on that same square. Two turns before victory, an AI came in with two fast hero units, they each had 3 movement,
I'm good with the way it is. I see it as more an economic victory than a technological one. By the time I'd begun the towers, I had more production and money than anyone else, and I was tied for first in mana. Together, this means I'd won the game, it just happened that the other factions didn't know it yet. With all those resources, I could have conquered the world, but that would have been tedious. Instead, the game let me demonstrate my economic superiority by building the
I'd like to see population costs for units, but I still think the solution to pioneer spam is danger. This is supposed to be a dangerous world. Sending out pioneers willy-nilly just shouldn't be a viable strategy. Pioneers should require an escort, and outpost should require a guard. If there was a need to protect pioneers and outposts, then spam would become unworkable, and the game world would feel more lifelike.
Agreed. All three are good ideas.
I dislike the spam, but I think a better choice would be to make those outposts unholdable. This has to do with the monster-behavior issue. If you actually have to guard an outpost from monsters (absent a Warden), then they effectively become more costly to build and maintain, and that strategy becomes less useful.
Thumbs up for casting initiative!
The AI does some poor things with pioneers. But I think their strategy often works because the wandering baddies aren't as aware or aggressive as they ought to be. A pioneer is an easy target, and the baddies ought to just jump all over that. As an alternative solution to pioneer spam, I'd rather see baddies preferentially targeting weak units, like pioneers. But I agree that outposts are smaller than settlements, and that it ought to be cheaper to make outposts than settlemen
I also agree. It would be nice to look at, and also useful. Sometimes, in large cities, it actually takes me a couple clicks to hit the center square, and be able to do stuff with the city.
I agree!
@Kongdej Yeah. Smaller bits invites more discussion. I just felt like I would have been spamming the forums, if I'd made each issue a separate post. Maybe next time, I'll take your advice and break it down further. Or post on one of the existing threads. @Gaunauthor Thanks for the info about units and research. It may still be a bit of a UI issue, if it's hard for new players (e.g. me) to figure out how to get or interpret this info. But simply having that
P.S. Suppose that you really could buy equipment for non-hero units in the same way as you could for hero units. This means you could also sell that equipment. Say that I'm really short on cash. Well, if I really wanted to, I could sell the boots off my Militia. Perhaps not a smart game move, but the ability to do that would be cool.
Overall: I've put in another 5-10 hours of play. My feelings are much the same. Great potential and hope for the future, but significant work still needed on details. Where b4 focused on settlements, I suggest that b5 could focus on integrity. On making game mechanics internally consistent, so that they feel like a natural part of the FE world, so that the world feels believable, and gameplay is intuitive for all. On Big Monsters:</str
A general comment, and then a bunch of details: I think that FE has the *potential* to be a great game, but at this exact moment, it's on the borderline between poor and fair. Please read on before jumping on this comment too much. I hope that you-all (developers) will continue to work away on this, as you have been doing, until this game is not just good, but is instead, honestly great. The core seems solid, but there are a lot of detai
Kenata - Thanks for the thoughts. Please know that I wrote the above post because I was (and still am) really excited about Elemental. If I didn't care, I wouldn't have said anything. But I'll lighten up. I'm clearly a newbie, while you're clearly and old hand. You have a better picture of the future of things than I do. So if you and the other long-time folks think that my concerns are just 'wild fears', and that the connection between Stardock and the mod community has such potential, then
I have really mixed feelings about this expansion pack. It sounds like it will have lots of great stuff, and I really appreciate the thoughtful realism in Derek's post above. However, I'm a little confused and disappointed by the fact that this will be a separate product. I feel that the stuff which is planned for the expansion is all stuff which ought to have been in the original game. A living world? Heck yeah! But why is it coming in an expansion, instead of a patch/fix to t
I have really mixed feelings about this expansion pack. It sounds like it will have lots of great stuff, and I really appreciate the thoughtful realism in Derek's post above. However, I'm a little confused and disappointed by the fact that this will be a separate product. I feel that the stuff which is planned for the expansion is all stuff which ought to have been in the original game. A living world? Heck yeah! But why is it coming in an expansion, instead of a patch/fix to the orig