I would strongly recommend just waiting for FE.
Sarkus
6542
What holds me back is that everytime a new update is released, we then hear about all the things that are going to change in the next update. Why bother learing 1.2 now if 1.3 is going to be notably different? Other then to get some use out of the game I paid for, of course. Whatever WOM is going to end up being in the long run, 1.2 isn’t it.
And of course there is FE coming (at some point) as well.
Learning by doing, my favourite…
Tempted to take a tentative step and try this new version…
I’m not going to touch Elemental until the 1.3 betas start coming out. Elemental just stopped holding my interest due to some flaws in the 1.2 betas, and I just stopped playing. Brad’s 1.3 beta notes look like they address the big problems with WOM at least somewhat.
I just hope the betas come out soon, as I have a TBS hole in my game lineup right now, and I finish the game I’m using to fill in the gaps this weekend.
FWIW, I’ve been enjoying 1.2. I have kept up with the game all along, and it has been getting better by bits and pieces. At some point recently, it took a pretty sizeable leap up the fun scale.
I really cannot agree. The content is still an incoherent mess.
I do look forward to v1.3, but IMO there are a lot of problems with EWoM not mentioned in the v1.3 info we’ve seen so far.
Disconnected, I’ve only started a few games and haven’t gotten very far, but I’m surprised to hear you say this. All the systems in 1.2 seem to be in place and relatively simple to grasp. But maybe I just haven’t played far enough into the game yet. Can you elaborate a bit on what you think is an incoherent mess?
-Tom
To quote myself on the previous page:
[…] Half the game’s mechanics are so disconnected from the rest that they simply aren’t a part of any gameplay strategies. The rest are so badly paced/wildly imbalanced that the only viable gameplay strategies consists of doing the same thing over and over and over and… until you’ve won. And of course, the AI is so bad it’s barely there at all.
The tactical AI is one of the worst I’ve seen, and auto-resolve is almost as pitiful.
The dynasty mechanics are so badly balanced and so disconnected from the rest of the systems, that they’re essentially pointless.
The AI, at all levels, suck at using magic, and the majority of the spells are both badly balanced (comparatively), designed to be spammed (unlike, for example, AD&D where you’d use a wide selection) & dull.
… And the list goes on, and on, and on…
Admittedly I’ve only played a single v1.2 match, but I promise you I’m not complaining because I’m an EWoM newbie or can’t grog X, Y or Z. Trust me, once you get a good grip on the game you’ll find out for yourself that any & all strategies you come up with only incorporates 10-20% of the stuff that’s there to, supposedly, be used. And it’ll mostly be the same 10-20% too.
As I said on the previous page, it simply isn’t a very good 4X. IMO it’s not even a mediocre one - no offence, Brad.
I have to agree with Disconnected here. Especially the dynasty mechanics are so disconnected (!) from the rest of the game that I never really bothered finding out what I can actually do there apart from getting some heroes for free.
The tactical battles are still the most blandest of all ever, because it is almost impossible to use any tactics whatsoever. Cover system like in AoW2? Morale and panic effects? Elemental damage and specific resistances? It is simply impossible to have nice surprise moments where you attack some unknown encounter which looks to be some little harmless fairy but turns out to be something so powerful you don’t even find out what it was that just killed a medium-sized stack of yours. Or how it did it.
Those areas are still a weakness of the game. The tactical weaknesses are especially glaring, as the AI doesn’t do a good job in quick combat either (the AI never learned how to handle the magic pool changes introduced in 1.1). It’s said that those beings are being addressed, though I think that’s more FE.
Dynasty is disconnected, but mostly ignorable. It’s more wasted opportunity then game-breaking.
Rats, that’s disappointing to hear. Thanks for the replies. I was kind of digging the city building, research trees, and exploration, but those were already kind of a strong point. If the combat and magic system are still underdone, I’ll hold off. Although I have to say that at least there is a magic system in 1.2. It’s a darn sight better than the way the spells were just dumped in your lap in the original release!
-Tom
This is true as well. But it is still impossible to play let’s say a character who just holes up in his wizards tower and concocts ever more powerful items and once he reaches ultimate master starts rampaging through the game world beating everything and everyone because of his neigh-invincible armor and weapons. It would be nice if such radically different playing styles were all possible and at least somewhat balanced. Like if you go for this mad itemcrafting guy you are significantly weaker mid-game, but if you manage to survive to the end-game you start to roll seriously. (If I were the designer, I’d draw up at least a dozen such different play styles and make sure that they are all possible. Through this many more will become possible I won’t have thought of yet.)
Or this goblin-type of guy who zerg-rushes everyone and hence is strong in the beginning, but if he doesn’t manage to kill off his immediate neighbours quickly is hampered later by slow research and weak end-game units.
The gear system just isn’t well balanced, unless they drastically changed it. I looked into some stuff to mod it, and posted the stats that I’d run through the formulas and found to be well balanced. Didn’t bother implementing it because of all the irritating end game weapons that have no purpose other than to really really break things. Even setting them to merch (and therefore hero) only wouldn’t fix things entirely.
I’d have gone through with it (like I did for WB, despite it being a similarly irritating game to mod) if the payoff of fun gameplay was there.
Maybe it is now, but it sure wasn’t then.
Also they’re apparently holding out on releasing a handy Excel tool for modding the XML, which massively pisses me off.
If you can’t handle that, don’t play Earth Maps. They don’t make sense not because Civ5 got scale wrong, but because the map is the wrong scale for Civ5. Duh?
KevinC
6555
Call the lake, gulf, or lagoon whatever you want, it still looks silly firing bows that far. Or a longbow that can fire almost from one city to another!
Blips
6556
I’m surprised I haven’t heard any complaints about the pacing, which, ignoring the gear and AI issues is the most broken part of the whole game. Everything takes far, far too many turns to accomplish.
I agree, except for research. Techs just run by and grow obsolete insanely fast. The “one tech at a time” just doesn’t fit to the huge breakthrough and ingame advantage most techs represent.
I like how each time someone mentions something that is broken, another pops up and says “wait wait, this is even more broken”.
Are you still able to have an infinite number of incoming caravans in a city? Because that was a really easy way to utterly eliminate gold worries. Yay multiplication.
Well, Tom went all the way and reviewed 1.2a (as we all know from the front page), and sums it up like so:
PROS: A far, far better game than it would have been if it had been released eight months ago! Great magic system, great tech tree, great city building.
CONS: A few glaring interface problems, unstable, poorly documented, inadequate AI.
So, still not enough to get me off the fence and actually playing it. (I was a preorderer…) Gonna wait until FE, I think. Knock wood they nail that one out of the gate!
I was a “oh look I have a coupon and Brad just told everyone two free games if you buy now” customer. Otherwise I’d still not own the game.
