Stardock's last chance... Elemental: Fallen Enchantress released

[DakaSha]

Wow... looks like I won't be bothering with FE then!

Eador all the way. Warlock is better than FE from my initial impression though.

Also whats with that taltamir person. Is it some fanboy or even wardell (wouldnt surprise me at all) missing the point and making an account for no reason other than to reply to my post?

 

[Zeriel]

ALL I FUCKN WANT IS MASTER OF MAGIC AND THESE DEVS KEEP BREAKING MY HEART

This. So fucking much. Age of Wonders 1 was a great remix of Master of Magic, but apparently we are not allowed to have any good games after the year 2000. All of these budget attempts at cloning Master of Magic would be a lot better if they used 2D instead of 3D, incidentally. Much of their lack of charm is the garbage low-res 3D, which is a problem whenever you go 3D without an AAA studio.

 

[Misconnected]

Personally, I'm enjoying FE more than Warlock. It's hard to put my finger on, but I get enough rpg elements that the game has more appeal. With Warlock, I finished one skirmish game and felt like I've done and seen everything. I also like the separate combat screen more than the Civ5 style world map hex combat.

I'm not saying it's awesome, but I do enjoy it more than Warlock.

They're not readily comparable games. Warlock, visually and interface-wise, looks like most 4X games. But it really isn't a 4X. It's the traditional elements of a RTS converted to play as a hex based TBS. Beyond the presentation it's about as much of a 4X as StarCraft. What Warlock does, it does exceptionally well pretty much across the board. The only real exception is the game's spell library has bloated beyond the limits of the research system.

Fallen Enchantress is a 4X, but it is also strongly inspired by Age of Wonders. Basically FE is AoW as a true 4X and with far more developed questing. In terms of top level design it's a very interesting game... But SD kind of failed to really run with the concept, so it's much more of a traditional 4X than you'd think reading about it. And sadly, the game has quite a few issues (nice techs sabotaged by badly organised tech trees, terribad AI, terribad GUI, lots of glitches, etc).

Eador is... Not a traditional 4X. Yet despite being almost entirely unlike traditional 4X games, I wouldn't know what else to call it. Explaining why would take waaay too long, but of the three it is definitely both the most ambitious and the most well-designed (game design, not tech-wise - Eador has a fair bit of bugs and technical problems, and is rather unpolished). It obviously won't be for everyone, but Eador is one of those rare games that any self respecting genre fan needs to check out.

Warlock I absolutely adore. FE I haven't written off yet - if it gets the same kind of post-release love as GalCiv2 it definitely could be great. Eador is one of the top 10 games I've ever played.

 

[Metro]

I keep watching videos and still find it appealing. Looks a lot deeper than Warlock to me which, while I enjoy, I find gets a bit tedious and uninteresting after awhile.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

It's definitely deeper than Warlock. I still say in the most important area (Combat) Warlock's a better game, but the questing nonsense, city management, research, and diplomacy has more depth in FE. Although now that I mention that, I also prefer Warlock's city management where you build cities toward specific unit production or resource gathering. You somewhat do the same in FE, but it's a bit more along the lines of a Civilization city where you also have to build the basics to make it function instead of just plopping down buildings so you can make trolls there. And as mentioned earlier my two stabs at FE AI didn't leave me as impressed as Warlock AI did, though I haven't played Warlock for a couple big patches now.

 

[Zeriel]

Warlock struck me as really cool for the first 50 turns, but after that I just couldn't keep playing it due to the overwhelming sameness it had, having played hours and hours of Civ V. It literally feels like a mod for that game.

 

[Malakal]

What I dislike about Warlock and what puts me off playing bigger maps is moving dozens and dozens of units each turn. And watching AI move its hundreds of units. Is it somewhat different in FE? Mainly can you create armies like in AoW?

 

[Misconnected]

Warlock struck me as really cool for the first 50 turns, but after that I just couldn't keep playing it due to the overwhelming sameness it had, having played hours and hours of Civ V. It literally feels like a mod for that game.

Uhm... It really doesn't. Civ5's macro is many more things than an engine that drives your armies and powers your spells. The opposite is true in Warlock. Civ5 is flexible enough that city spam is possible, but it obviously wasn't designed with city spam in mind. The opposite is true in Warlock, where city spam is the only means of resource control & generation. Civ5 lets you fight as much or as little as you desire (assuming you plan your match strat around it). Warlock is about one thing and one thing only; crushing everyone else on the field of battle. Civ5's diplomacy system is the primary means of player interaction. Warlock's diplomacy system is a support system for waging war. The AIs perform comparably on the macro level, but on the micro level Civ5 is about as deficient as hex based TBS gaming gets, while Warlock is far and away the best there ever has been...

Cosmetically Civ5 does look a hell of a lot like an InoCo TBS. So much so I really doubt it's a coincidence. But the actual gameplay is night & day. Civ5 is a 4X. Warlock is a TBS with a macro layer.

What I dislike about Warlock and what puts me off playing bigger maps is moving dozens and dozens of units each turn. And watching AI move its hundreds of units. Is it somewhat different in FE? Mainly can you create armies like in AoW?

FE is based on square tiles and uses unit stacks. Battles are fought on separate battle maps. So in a way yes, the world space is like Civ4 & earlier, while stacks, units & combat is like AoW - though maps are more similar to Eador or HoMM, but with even less features, the critter gallery is less diverse and are generally soft counters at most, and the tactical combat AI is fucking terrible (but being worked on, and SD can make great AI when they want to).

 

[Spectacle]

I wonder if Warlock would be better if you couldn't found cities, only capture neutral and enemy ones?

 

[lefthandblack]

While it could stand some improvement, I feel like I finally got the game that I paid for two years ago. It's kept me entertained.

I did a little dicking around in the map editor. I'm a turtler extraordinaire so I made a couple of maps geared toward that play style.

The first one was entirely made by hand. I didn't realize that the game engine would add it's own resources and manually placed some, so it's a Monty Haul map as far as that goes.
Lot's of gold and dangerous shit in the desert in the center. Yes, the maps name is retarded and cliche, but I had to call it something.
Pic:

Spoiler

The second one was generated in the random generator and then tweaked manually. I was going for continents separated by oceans but found out that boats are only available in the campaign so I had to add land bridges.

Spoiler

Download for anyone that wants to try:

http://www.lefthandblack.com/cdexstuff/LH_Efe_Testmaps.zip

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Patch today.

Balance

Reduced Wealthy from +800 Gildar to +500 Gildar​

Ancient Temples are more common and they give +1 Research per turn instead of +1 Mana​

Pastures gives +3% hit points to all your units instead of increasing the grains of the attached city​

Increased the default players on small, medium and large maps slightly​

Increased the labor costs of bows and ranged staves​

Fruit Groves, Twilight Bees, Wild Game and Whild Grain are now more common​

Increased the amount of resources spawned​

Monsters still raze city but it no longer salts the land​

Twilight Honey now provides a faction wide -2% to unrest​

Gold deposits are more common but produce less gildar​

Grain provies 25 food instead of 20 by default​

Modified rarity of different world resources and their availability to have more variety​

Goodie huts are slightly more common​

Shards are slightly rarer​

Default turn limit reduced to 800 (from 1000)​

Blizzard can be cast in an area will hit your units (and it will damage them)​

Pioneers cost 30 population when trained​

Fixes

Fixed a bug where the hit point bar wouldn't update when the crushing blow ability was used​

Fixed bug where AI units would sometimes get stuck (like watching while their city was taken over or not going out to get goodie huts or going after an easy kill unit)​

Fixed bug where AI knowledge trading didn't always reduce tradeable knowledge​

Fixed an issue keeping the Growth potion from increasing blunt damage​

Fixed an issue where the Paragon spell could be cast indefinitly​

Fixed an issue where units will now exit cities in the best way to reach their specified destination​

Fixed crashes​

AI

AI more intelligent about when and what it builds in its cities​

AI evaluates whether it should be training archers/catapults/mounted units more effectively​

Fixed but that caused AI to disproportionately choose the first level up perk (like Assassin)​

AI more aggressive about getting to goodie huts​

UI

Fixed glitch that caused the arrow cursor to show instead of the hour glass when the player dragged the map between turns​

Reduced ground cover on terrain with the exception of deserts​

Added an icon to all the Refined techs to indicate that they can be researched multiple times​

Fixed lots of typos​

Resource tooltip no longer lists the tech requirement if the player already has the tech​

Removed references to techs unlocking quests in the tech descriptions​

 

[hoverdog]

have they actually added sieges yet?

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

have they actually added sieges yet?

Nope. When you attack a city it's a regular combat, only the defender gets a few free militia units and (I think) some stat bonuses, which depend on what's built in the city.

 

[hoverdog]

jesus christ. the game really needed another year of development at least.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

That's why it's better to wait 2 years after a 4x game's release to play it, these games are too complex.

 

[Zeriel]

That's why it's better to wait 2 years after a 4x game's release to play it, these games are too complex.

Age of Wonders. Day 1 perfection.

 

[visions]

Age of Wonders. Day 1 perfection.

When it came out, it didn't have the two highest AI difficulty levels available, these were added in a patch.

 

[Misconnected]

Warlock is better than FE from my initial impression though.

Warlock is a much better game currently. But FE is sound. If it gets GalCiv2-like post release support (and why wouldn't it?), it will likely end up being just as great as Warlock. Again-again, though, Warlock & FE are radically different things. Warlock is a hex-based wargame - a TBS in the original sense of the term. That it & Civ5 look similar doesn't make Warlock any more of a 4X than the base building in StarCraft makes it a 4X.
FE, on the other hand, is a 4X. It just has a few elements 4X games don't usually have,

 

[DakaSha]

Warlock is a 4x with more focus on troop placement and with shitty diplomacy.
It has all the things that make a 4x a 4x. May as well say MoM isnt a 4x

edit: They ARE still very different however. And I would like to see it get the same support as galciv 2 (up until the point where they absolutely ruined the AI for it)

 

[Misconnected]

Warlock is a 4x with more focus on troop placement and with shitty diplomacy.
It has all the things that make a 4x a 4x.

Warlock is about killing the shit out of everyone & everything. It has shitty diplo for a 4X, but perfectly fine diplo for a wargame - which is what it is.

Warlock has just 1 kind of tech'ing: warfare. Expansion in Warlock is about 1 thing only: warfare. City building is about 1 thing: warfare. Seriously... Everything in the game is its combat system & its support systems. There's nothing else there.

 

[Malakal]

There is as much economy in Warlock as there is in other 4X titles. So its geared towards war, big deal, look at MoO2 - almost all techs, buildings are designed for better and bigger ships and ship building. I cant even recall a 4X with advanced enough economics (well ok, MoO3 had even tourism but it wasnt well received as a game). The same in all civ games - you build stuff to further your research but its all about getting better units, well mostly. The addition of culture has somewhat changed that, but earlier civs definitely centered on warfare.

 

[DakaSha]

Warlock is a 4x with more focus on troop placement and with shitty diplomacy.
It has all the things that make a 4x a 4x.

Warlock is about killing the shit out of everyone & everything. It has shitty diplo for a 4X, but perfectly fine diplo for a wargame - which is what it is.

Warlock has just 1 kind of tech'ing: warfare. Expansion in Warlock is about 1 thing only: warfare. City building is about 1 thing: warfare. Seriously... Everything in the game is its combat system & its support systems. There's nothing else there.

So mom isnt a 4x

Edit: Well or any other 4x that was worth anything.

 

[Frogboy]

FE is still kind of in its infancy. We just released 1.2. Derek (Kael) is working on the expansion pack which makes some pretty dramatic game mechanic changes (allong with a general visual refresh).

The biggest challenge Kael had with FE is that he had to start with the trainwreck that was WOM. While I'm listed as the "designer", the main problem with WOM is that we all "designed" it so it had no coherent vision. What started out as Master of Magic with updated graphics and multiplayer ended up as a weird monstrosity.

So the first year of FE was detangling itself from WOM with the second year putting together what amounts to a pretty good strategy game.

I like Warlock a lot btw. But I don't think it's an either/or thing. That would be like saying it's either GalCiv or MOO.

-Brad

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

LET HIM DO WHATEVER HE WANTS!
the background was crap anyway, let him work on a "fall from heaven 3", that's why you hired him.
you don't hire leonardo da vinci to cook or cristoforo colombo to design a building.

 

[Frogboy]

Derek already works on what he wants. He's effectively in charge of all our games projects, not just FE.