Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes--is this going to be worth $32?

Interesting!

OK, Island Dog posted that while I was typing, but I have to say that looks like exactly the type of DLC I want for LH. For me, the map pack was uninteresting and the loot pack too small, but the quest pack was good. This looks great! I’ll have to see how it plays.

This is the sort of thing LH needs. Please continue this kind of content DLC!

This is DLC that gets me excited.

So am I correct that it’s hard as hell for this faction to actually grow its cities? You have to raid like crazy in the early turns and even then, you’re only going to be able to afford a couple of pioneers until you luck out and grab a few death shards. I guess that’s the whole angle for these guys, right? Am I missing something?

-Tom

It’s tough, yeah. Early on, Tower of Dominion is your friend. Remember you can convert any shard into a death shard too.

What’s the good side? In exchange of that tough start, are their troops or spells cheaper or stronger than average?

Ignoring food seems like it could be a very nice benefit.

Female units getting 50% physical resistance (they’re ghosts) doesn’t suck. Does add 20 labor to the cost though so it’s not totally absurd early on.

Ignoring food is I think a bigger deal than it seems. All those two-grain spots that are marginal are now potentially amazing city sites. Once you hit critical mass and you’re getting 2-3 growth from death shards per city, plus slain enemies, plus the amusing undead spells, you’re doing okay.

Mostly I like this DLC personally because it’s finally a faction that pushes you to play differently on the strategic map. You really have to be aggressive early on and prioritize shards and do some things differently, or you’ll fall badly behind the vanilla factions. I like LH and not just because it’s my job to now, but this is exactly the kind of thing I’ve been pining for since beta.

(Feel free to yell at me about how it should have been in the base game and not a $5 DLC. I’m a big boy, I can take it!)

This seems like a perfectly reasonable DLC. It’s not like games can ship with an infinite amount of content.

Rob, this is the Internet. All DLC is a ploy by greedy publishers to milk the poor fans, and should have always been included in the base game. Didn’t you get the memo?

Yeah, I know. I just wanted to show reasonable people exist too. The way I look at it is that either the base version of a game was worth the money I paid, or it wasn’t. Even day 1 DLC doesn’t bother me if the base game feels complete. It’s not like game devs are obligated to cram as much stuff as they can into a release.

Definitely agree. This looks like a good size DLC and a likely purchase. I wasn’t that excited about the others.

Honestly, if Stardock hadn’t made good for my pre-purchase of WoM I might feel differently. And $5 isn’t too much. Put it this way: if I had paid for WoM and LH, and it was $10, I’d be pretty unhappy. This is also the kind of DLC that (for me) extends the life of the game, unlike the map and loot packs.

What, you can? That’s going to make all the difference!

-Tom

Yeah, it’s one of the spells you get as an undead player.

Ahahaha, my mistake. You in fact get to change shards into death shards with one of the other sovereign specials (the one Ceresa starts with). So you can do what I suggested, but you have to make a custom sovereign – Morrigan doesn’t have the right ability.

I played maybe 50 or 75 turns as Morrigan (on challenging) and I have to say that it’s a lot of fun. The population thing definitely leads to a new way of playing–I started an early war against Yithril and given that I don’t have to build food buildings (the cemetery/mausoleum line is much cheaper than all of the food buildings combined) and that the troops have no upkeep I really got that hordes-of-undead thing going on. Also the male/female <=> ghost/skeleton thing is awesome. If anything I’d add more differences

The terror ability (single adjacent opponent misses next turn unless it resists) is a lot of fun but might be overpowered. As soon as you outnumber the enemy you can essentially terror-lock them and the battle is over. Perhaps in the late game when units have higher resist it will even out. As a matter of fact, I had a unit of pioneers in an army once and they just stood on the side and held one unit down with terror (and absorbed some hits with their 50% physical resistance). Also some things can be terror-ed that shouldn’t (e.g. undead from the wilds).

There are various reports of bugs or “oversights” (not sure what to call them) on the forums but there are only a couple of them have bugged (ha) me:

  1. Morrigan should probably come with the convert-to-death-shard spell, as Adam B mentioned.
  2. The “race” of “dead” or “undead” is confusing to me. My units all have the undead racial abilities, but the undead in the wilds don’t (e.g. those created by that event that gives the blessed hammer). Recruited champions have the drain-ally-for-life spell (faction power, I guess?).
  3. The increase-squad-size-when-killing-a-unit ability is awesome but a bit wonky. If my units is damaged and kills a unit it gets +10 hp and another figure, but when it’s hit for -2 the guy goes down again. And when my unit is at full size but damaged so that some figures are down, killing another unit does nothing. What’s going on, I guess, is that the “total squad size” is different from “current squad size” (dependent on current hit points) but it’s a bit counterintuitive, nonetheless.
  4. Adding population to the cities should be a bit more clearly explained. I like that after a battle population shows up as loot. But where does it go? When I raze a city the population seems to go to the capital. There should be a popup for this (maybe even give you a choice). When you go over the number of graves in the city, the population stays there, until one day it disappears. When you conquer a city the population stays with what the previous owner had, but since no grave improvements are built it then plummets after a couple (?) of turns.

Anyway I think it’s great, but maybe give it one more pass on integration into existing game systems.

With the 1.4 patch I decided to check out the LH forum. Usually when a new patch drops there is some activity there. That forum seems kind of quiet and not many people responded to the 1.4 patch thread. Have people given up on the game? Is it because of the AI? I was thinking about picking up the Undead expansion but I’m not so sure anymore, even at $2.50. I don’t need to add to the list of things I might not play.

1.4 is old news, man. We’re all talking about 1.5 now. :)

That’s where the action is at. ;)