1.5 has only one issue for me - as a Beastlord, many of my animal troops get vacuumed up by the local militia when I stop by one of my cities (including one I just conquered). They are then no longer considered normal troops, although they appear if the city gets attacked in the same way that the town guard does. I understand it’s already been reported, but I really miss my Beastlords.
I haven’t played since the original release but talk of diplomatic AI improvements has me interested. In my original games they offered peace and 2 turns later declared war on me again. Repeat ad infinitum every time peace was made. Is this still the case after expansion/diplo updates?
Oh, no - it’s gotten a lot better. I still wouldn’t say that diplomacy is the strong suit of the game, but it’s somewhat reasonable.
In other news- another DLC is planned for I think this month (more leaders), and a new game this fall that sounds like it’s pretty heavily AOW-influenced/different and more asymmetric.
Let’s see:
Without giving too much away about the new game, which we expect to formally announce this Spring, its planned feature set includes:
Radically different races (players won’t design units ala WOM/FE but in exchange each unit is custom crafted and visually stunning) Crafting (the player STARTS with the Forge of the Overlord and getting recipes and loot now mean being able to craft some really cool stuff) The player starts by choosing their sovereign and deciding what spell book he or she has. The more spell books of a particular type, the more likely the player will be able to use their lore to research rarer spells in that category. No tech tree. Instead, the available units are based on how you construct your cities. Each hero has his or her own unique talent tree (there won’t be a “Defender” class for instance) that players can then use to customize their heroes. Because of the stronger emphasis on magic, vastly more spells will be available strategically and tactically. Sovereign spells are available in every battle as your sovereign, thanks to the Forge of the Overlord, can “see” anything in the world that his/her units can see (as a result, your sovereign interacts with the world indirectly from the capital and doesn’t appear as a playable unit).
Abstracted leader that can use spells in all the battles?
unique non-cutomizable races?
No mundane tech trees?
emphasis on magic?
Choosing the amount of magic books at start to unlock later rarer spells?
They are finally doing a Master of Magic game!
Sounds good to me. Can’t wait to play it! :D
I am SO excited for a new game by Kael with that feature set! I will preorder to support its development.
Brad came into my office the other day and asked me if I played Master of Magic. The stinkeye I gave him must have been a pretty serious one, because he literally jerked his head back and apologized.
I’m in. Now for the long wait…
I still fire up FE when I have a hankering for a 4x fantasy game. Looking forward to the next evolution
Agreed, guys. Legendary Heroes has been great, and this will hopefully turn it all the way up to 11.
That would’ve been the perfect opportunity to sass him: “Did YOU?”
I’m so glad I always have the Warlock fiasco here on QT3 to fall back on when it comes to sassing Brad ;)
When Fallen Enchantress came out, I really enjoyed it. When I first started playing Legendary Heroes, I definitely thought it was a positive refinement of FE. For some reason though after the honeymoon period with LH, I just can’t get into it. I’m not even sure why. I was never a big fan of the quest part of the game. I wish the tactical battles had a couple more rules to it, such as the terrain providing cover so archers can’t magically shoot behind an obstruction. But these are complaints I had with FE, so I’m not sure what my problem is with LH. I’m sure I would like FE less than LH if I went back to it.
I just completed a game with the difficulty set to challenging, large map, 6 AI players. Even though a bunch of the AIs went hostile on me I was never really threatened. I was able to just have my 1 super stack and put of fires where needed. I played the entire game with 1 stack. Occasionally the AI would take a city, but once I got my stack there I could take it back. I do like that they moved the spell of making tech late in the tree. I used it to win when there was only 1 AI left and I didn’t feel like mopping them up.
While I think LH has one of the best unit customization implementations I have used, I never really FEEL like making custom units, but I do because I feel like I have to.
I just don’t know what my problem is with this when I really liked FE in the beginning. Maybe I just have the difficulty level set too low?
Anyone else have any problems like this with LH?
Kinda feel the same, robc04. Regardless of difficulty, if you can survive initially and get your sovereign up the first 5-6 levels, you’ve pretty much won the game. The only true threat comes from the monsters at the start of the game.
I too have never created my own units either. Although I did download a huge unit mod because I heard the A.I. was much harder once it had better units to use.
That does seem to be a problem with these kind of games. Once you get past the “startup” phase of the game, the challenge is over. All the difficulty is in the beginning while you are getting established. Once you reach that point, it is a foregone conclusion that you have won the game.
I find this to be true also…on Challenging and below. But once I kick the AI up to Hard, it just destroys me. Last Hard level game I played, the AI came after me with two level 12 heroes supported by 4 additional full stacks of non-hero units when my lone stack was still led by my level 5 sovereign.
I found the custom unit creator to be useful when I ran into monsters of a particular type…for instance, the fire monster area where the Pyre of Man dude lives. I had no default units that had cold attacks, but I created a ranged unit with the ice staff weapon and just destroyed them.
So far I’m doing OK in my game on Hard difficulty. I wiped out one AI and am close to wiping out another. There is an AI or 2 with a higher power rating than me, but the guy I’m wiping out now had a higher power rating.
I don’t think my problems with the game are purely ones regarding challenge, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe things feel a bit disjointed? That’s kind of vague, but might describe my feeling. I don’t know if this is accurate, but there definitely seems to be some obvious choices much of the time. Spears seems to be a very safe choice, because so often enemies are armored as the game goes on. A bash with a hammer is quite useful too, but it’s hard to go wrong with a spear. How about the unit perk to do 25% more attack to an injured unit? That boost seems like a no brainer. Maybe not for the very first units who’s attack isn’t that high, but definitely as the attack values go up. Seems much better than the perk for +3 HP.
Disclaimer: I work for Stardock now. In no small part because I’m a fan of Derek’s work on FE and LH, though, so my LH nerdery predates my employment here.
I still demolish Challenging, yeah. Part of the issue is some of the abusive things you can do once you know your way around hero and unit customization, which the AI simply can’t match. Water Master + Prodigy means one-turn Blizzards that do absurd damage; I don’t think I’ve ever lost once I’ve gotten there. Stacking a fortress with 2-3 unit-buffing enchantments and cranking out super-elites of whatever the flavor of the day is generally means you can 4:1 or better on the AI on Challenging or easier.
OTOH, finding and using those overpowered combinations is a huge draw for me and I suspect for a lot of people in a game like this, so I don’t know that nerfing or removing them is a great answer.
On Hard+, the AI starts to get enough bonuses to production and combat (it gets free unit promotions) that things get interesting. You’re basically forced into being the Gondor to their Mordor, since they get to build so damn many units, but I’ve never been one to mind AI cheats in strategy games all that much. I haven’t beaten Ridiculous, but Hard is a fun time for me.
I’ve had my best games by turning Spell of Mastery off, Monsters to “tough” or whatever that setting is called, tech to “slow,” world to “ravaged,” and the AI to Hard. Tweaking the difficulty by messing around with suboptimal but amusing sovereigns/factions has extended my enjoyment of the game as well.
Same as always, then.
That’s both the main selling point and the Achilles’ heel of fantasy strategy games.
The selling point is having tons of different spells, units, items, heroes and combine them in creative, synergistic ways to min-max and do incredible things (with a combo of spells that destroy entire armies, or make a hero into a little god of death, or finding a super effective unit for their cost, etc).
The Achilles’ heel because AI systems are weak in that gameplay that humans are so good at, AI is usually good only in simple, abstracted, mechanist games, not in “messy” ones.
Master of Magic, Age of Wonders, Dominions, and now FE/LH.
Pretty much, yeah. Unit creators are amazing things to play around with, but absolute hell for AI and balance. Though MoM didn’t so much have that as really stupid combat math that was easy to exploit and AI so bad it had to have crazy cheats just to not die to wandering monsters. Amazing game, one of my all-time favorites, but the AI is barely there.