I agree a flat priority is pointless. For the AI to ever be competitive without cheating it needs to understand the attributes of the spell/building/unit and choose according to those attributes rather than a pre-defined and static priority.
I think adding a dynasty system to FE would just be a distraction at this point, there is still a lot of work that can be done to tighten up the core mechanics and continue to add more interesting fluff. And even once everything else is finished I question whether FE should be about children when your main starting character is so central to the story. BTW, for those of you who who like the idea of building up a dynasty you really, really should try Crusader Kings 2 if you haven't
Diablo 3 is targetting the masses, and in particular they seem to be trying quite hard to attract World of Warcraft players (including offering free Diablo 3 for people who buy WoW quite a few months in advance). Everything I have seen indicates that Blizzard are doing this to a much greater extent than Diablo 2. And as a result they have also in some ways made the game simpler and more accessible. Certainly they don't care about a lot of what the hardcore Diablo 2 players wanted hence th
Some very good points. I'm fairly happy with how shards work because I think there should be some luck and having to adapt to the map BUT I agree that not being able to control which magic elements you level up in makes it a bit of a problem. Back to the general points, I agree with many of them. Stepping back and thinking about it I feel the Master of Magic spell system is more cohesive and better thought out - in MoM the sovereign determines spells available but spell casting he
Very interesting read, thank you. You did pick Dense Monsters so I'm not sure whether it should be regarded as a bug that there were tough monster groups scattered all over the place. I imagine some players will want to play games where they start with serious monster problems, although perhaps the start game screen should make it clearer that Dense Monsters may make the early game rather hard!
I don't believe they are mutually exclusive goals. And in some ways they are complementary in that having a competitive AI enhances and makes the gameplay better (in the same way that playing solitaire chess isn't nearly as much fun as playing against a competitive opponent). However I do agree that achieving both goals is much harder than just achieving one of them and in some places Stardock have deliberately taken the easy way out by removing things that the player finds fu
[quote who="FrenziedFan" reply="26" id="3147875"]Dont get me wrong here, A LOT of stuff is actually redundant, uninteresting and pointless. Some buildings are too similar, some quests are boring, some sov level choices are no brainers for example. But what you suggest, Keith, is really removing many of the reasons we want to play this game.[/quote] Agreed. For most of us the problem isn't that FE is too complex. The problem right now is that much of the complexity is meaningless i
Yeah, its funny. I read the first few paragraphs of Keith's post and was thinking this should be interesting I imagine I will agree with most of what this guy writes... And yet as I read your post I found myself thinking "no, nup, nah, don't want that", most of the time. As a few others also posted the overriding thought that came to me was that I'm not sure FE is the right game for Keith! Which is strange since from the first few paragraphs it certainly sounded like it sh
Stupidity10, Malqueaks and Glowing_Ember are all correct. Ausland, if monsters can be provoked to leave their lairs then it becomes very easy to bait them off and take the loot. Just use a pioneer (I still don't get why pioneers are the cheapest units, it is bizarre), usually a good exchange to get the loot. Hence the comments that monsters need to refuse to leave their lairs. However anything they can attack while still finishing the turn on their lair could be fair game.
[quote who="Ausland" reply="9" id="3144489"]I apologize for my OCD, but its "too", Derek. "TOO"! arggggggggghhhhhh! [/quote] I must say it was very nice of you too tell Derek about that! I will also take advantage of it too improve my spelling ;-).
Well gee. It appears on the surface that DragonRider's problems with the lack of strategic empire building depth in FE led to the temper-tantrum that the Beta 3 Verdict thread became. Certainly Frogboy's comment about FE not being the game for you was in direct reply to this thread which puzzles me. Anyway, since the Beta 3 Verdict thread is now locked (and had long since gone sour anyway) I want to bump this thread. It seems like StarDock have at least partially closed their
[quote who="BlackRainZ" reply="260" id="3137886"]Well Mistwraithe, it is true that we don't have extensive numbers but lets use the poll that was recently done for E FE, where Brad asked us how we thought the game was progressing. There were 360 votes of which 64% voted Excellent, or good. 32% voted fair, with 3% voting poor and 1% voting terrible. So, yeah, I would say you are in the minority in regards to E:FE.[/quote] You mean this poll: <a href="https://www.elementalgame.com/j
[quote who="GaelicVigil" reply="227" id="3137369"]Again, like I stated above, you represent a tiny vocal (and angry) minority and your opinion doesn't count for much in the grand scheme of things. The casual gamer such as myself (who represent 80% of the players) have a lot of fun with both FE and WoM.[/quote]Nostalgia aside, comparing Elemental side-by-side with a game like HoMM or even AoW there is no comparison. Elemental (WoM or FA) is leaps and bounds better with fully dy
[quote who="Rishkith" reply="175" id="3136822"]As an additional aside I see a lot of people agreeing with me that cities need more specialization and uniqueness while Stardock keeps saying cities need to be smaller and look more the same. Why the big disconnect?[/quote] I don't think there is a big disconnect there. Many (most?) of the people saying that cities need more specialization are talking about the mechanics and gameplay involved with cities, while Stardock's plans to
DragonRider has hit the nail on the head with the lack of depth in the empire building part of FE. [quote who="Kantok" reply="13" id="3136361"]There is a giant difference between "you don't know what you're talking about, everything is fine", which is what dismissed means in this context and "our solution to the problem will be different than the one you suggest", which is what Brad said. [/quote] The problem is that Brad said that the issues DragonRider pointed
[quote who="DragonRider862" reply="57" id="3135800"]Many, many well articulated comments on why FE currently lacks strategic depth[/quote] I totally agree with everything DragonRider862 said. +1 Karma was a no brainer. The second post (reply #57) is the most important of these because it explains exactly why the things that Frogboy seems to be believe are strategic decisions really are NOT. At least not in the current version of the game. The strategic choices that exist eithe
Now that's just silly talk Jansious! [There has been at least one thread requesting an item vault or some such, I'm hoping SD will take notice to help reduce the tedium of ferrying magic items around. A mana cost for magically moving items around seems appropriate.]
Ah. So the optimum strategy to level your units and get good loot is actually to BUFF your enemies! Thanks, I see the light now ;-) (Also definitely a bug IMO, the original poster should change the title to have [BUG] in the title)
[quote who="Poko8" reply="6" id="3116976"]Colbert30, I agree that it's because they lack personality, but that begs the question what gives them personality? I'd argue that personality comes from the player, not a paragraph or two of backstory and a handful of unique spells or abilities.[/quote] I disagree. If I level up a hero then I can be pretty sure they will be useful but they will probably also be similar to my other heroes (within archetype). Eg if I get a new war
Agreed entirely. It feels to me like the big guys (and EA are a prime example) are trying so hard to squeeze profits out at all costs, with short release cycles and incessant DLC amongst other things, that they are continually causing long term damage to their company image and reputation which ultimately DOES have an effect on sales, even if it isn't enough to drive them out of business (so far anyway - hard to know the future). Stardock haven't always got it right, i
I'm very strongly against a hard cap on number of buildings in a city. If I want to build a super city which is much bigger than my others and I have the time/money/production/tech to do it then let me - limiting the player doesn't add to fun in this case. Only being able to initially build in the tiles immediately around the city could still work so long as if they ever get filled up you can then choose to build in the next ring (either just in one direction at a time or anyw
[quote who="Frogboy" reply="30" id="3113562"]It's not a joke. I'm almost positive Kael had blogged on this at some point. About the city specialization? That a city on the main map would be 1 tile and would "grow" a little bit based on what level and specialization it was but the improvements would be built on a separate screen ala Civ. You could look at your pretty city in the city build window but on the main map it'll basically be 1 tile with each faction having thei
Tricky. Variety in starting positions is nice because as they say variety is the spice of life (and you can always Ctrl-N to respawn). But at the same time a new player won't be able to cope with a bad start, possibly won't recognise it is a bad start, and probably won't know about Ctrl-N! Probably should be linked to game difficulty. If you start an easy game then the start generator should try to make sure the starting position is nice in terms of both food/material and
[quote who="seanw3" reply="33" id="3111997"]Dev solution: Why the frak is everyone so concerned about the damn shop? It works fine, while many other parts of the game are seriously broken. I wish I could respond, but this is just too silly to waste my time on. I still need to fix all those real issues before next fall...[/quote] And the winner is... the DEVELOPER!!! Thanks for playing ;-).
[quote who="Aerion Istari" reply="16" id="3111379"]I'll say this about the Tax Rates. I pretty much do NOT build any buildings that require any maintenance. That's the only way I've found I can afford an army to defend my homeland and bring the word of Gaia to those unwashed Empire masses with the loving strokes of my sword. Actually, that's slight a lie. I do build some Unit upgrade buildings in one of my cities for producing my holy warriors.&nbs