1661

Kestral may be on to something here regarding some of the apparent problems. I was installing it to a i5 laptop with only 4G memory and experienced what Windows 7 reported as a “not responding” problem. Knowing that it installed to my definitely non-anemic main desktop slower than expected, I waited it out. 3 “not responding” pop-ups later it finished just fine. YMMV.

Runs great on the desktop, and as expected, it ran like a sick dog on the laptop. The laptop had no prior installation of any of the FE betas.

1662

Newbies Guide to Fallen Enchantress:

  1. Play the tutorial. Learn how to found a city, move yer dudes around, and fight. Wonder why it ends so abruptly.

  2. Start a real game. Wonder why it takes so long to train units, why direct damage spells seems so under powered, and why status effects are OP.

  3. Start another game with a different leader. Wow, I’ve got more units that I know what to do with! Direct damage spells are OP! And omg I’ve got a pet spider!

  4. (optional) try to figure out how the game works by reading tool tips and poking around in the heigermonopedia. What is the difference between food and grain? How to give my troops this new gear I unlocked in the tech tree? What the hell are crystal and wargs for?

  5. read the 70 page PDF manual which actually explains everything.

  6. Finally start to realize that this game might be something special. You can see the influences from all the other fantasy strategy games that you love, but this feels like its own game. A lot of people who actually grok what makes these kind of games compelling worked really hard to make up for the unmitigated disaster of the previous game.

Thumbs up guys, well done.

1663

This might be a strange (and hopeless) question, but is there a lower-quality version of the manual somewhere? It takes like 30 seconds for my ipad to load each page.

1664

This worked.

1665

There is! This was a common request so we released a ‘slim’ version today: http://stardock.cachefly.net/FE_slim.pdf

1666

Deleting the partially loaded stuff and reruning the installer installed the game without a redownload being needed.

I did think it was hanging on boot-up, but it just took a loooong time to get past the blackscreen and run.

1667

Oh the pain, the pain.

Here I am busy putting what I thought was a world class beatdown on Kraxis when Yithril decides he wants a piece of me as well. I told him to bring it on. And he brought it. My armies were shattered, my cities reduced to smoldering rubble, and my people were scattered across the lands.

Juggernauts. So painful.

1668

Oh, awesome! Thanks!

1669

A sub-division in the spell book by magic type (life, fire, water, etc) would be nice.

edit:

Also, I want to commend Stardock for doing at last a straightfoward number system. The relation between taxes, gold, and unrest is clear and direct. The same with food, popuation and growth (and Prestige), and the Production and Materials, Essence, City Enchaments and Mana, and the use of extra resources like Metal and Crystal.
The meaning of the unit stats is also fairly clear, once you hover the cursor over each one.

1670

Man, I can’t get anywhere in the game. Early on my dude just seems to die instantly. Later on, theres always someone thats god-like powerful and they want to kill me.

I can’t keep a champion alive for the life of me late game. Archers just kill them before they can even react.

Anyone got any tips? Cause I’m about to just give up. Game seems cool until you can’t win a single fight and your whole army is slaughtered in seconds.

1671

I haven’t played since Beta 4, so these may be a bit dated but:

Pick your fights carefully at the start of the game. I never let my champion roam around by themselves at the start. Focus on leveling up your champion and building up gear. Once your champion has leveled up a bit and has a few champions things get easier.

Even the “easy” quests are too difficult for a level 1 champion. So instead of trying to do quests, instead go to the goody huts and take on the really low level monsters. Once you get your champion up to level 3 or so, things get a lot better. I think a level 2 champion can probably do “easy” quests if they’ve got a companion or two, but you might want to wait until level 3 if you’re having problems. I’ve definitely gotten my champion slaughtered on “easy” quests.

Also don’t be afraid to use magic. It can make a huge difference in fights. Sometimes you have to just sit around after a fight either to heal or to replenish your mana supply.

The different champions play pretty differently in terms of how easy they are to use early game. Unfortunately I haven’t played in a while, so I can’t provide you with a lot of details. But for example, Magnar (or any fire mage you create) can do some serious blasting of enemies, but it will take a while to replenish mana. So if you’re playing the same sovereign over and over again, you might want to switch sovereigns, you might find another one that matches your early game play style better (or at least is more survivable).

I don’t remember having any issues with archers late game at all, but again I didn’t play the last beta, so things may have changed. One thing I did in one of my beta 1 games was designed some light cavalry with high initiative and movement. They were fast enough to cross the battlefield right at the start of the battle and take out enemy archers, so that’s a possible strategy. Also there are spells that provide a lot of defense against missiles. You might want to look into those.

1672

Crank down the difficulty a notch or two? I’m not being snarky. One of the best ways to learn the game is to play through it without the AI being too competitive.

For instance, do you know that there way to specifically raise your dodge against missiles or improve your armor against pierce damage? Both of those would help immensely against archers, but you might not realize they’re an option if you’re playing at a level where the AI is too aggressive.

Also, there’s often going to be a tipping point where the group sizes and army limits are going to mean you can’t use too many precious army limit slots with heroes who aren’t contributing substantially to the battle, usually as spellcasters.

And you probably already know this, but pay attention to the threat assessment (weak, medium, strong, etc.) as well as the specifics of enemy groups. You can freely examine your opponent’s traits, stats, and abilities before entering into battle.

-Tom
1673

Well I started on Challenging, but then went down to Normal. One faction was 2-3 times as powerful in every category as the rest of us according to the end game graph. I was competitive with the other two, but after about 50 turns green goes from being with everyone else and flys to the top of the chart in a near-vertical line.

Of course, who do you think decided to declare war on me? Her standard units had like 44+ health and shot across the map with their bows for 20+ damage. Not to mention the sovereign herself, who was basically a god. Hit for 44 damage, dodged everything and had about 100 health.

Edit: Tried again, same thing. I must be missing something fundamental, or maybe you just have to hardcore spam cities non-stop or something else I’m not doing as well as the computer.

1674

Nope. That didn’t work.

Lockup 6. This time, the game loaded the splash screen, then went to the main menu for a half-second, then locked up. Another manual reboot.

This is completely nuts to me. The beta worked fine.

1675

That is so weird. If you PM me the debug.err from the my games area, I can see if the guys can make heads or tails of it.

1676

Re AI,

Be careful about playing on challenging (or even normal). The AI doesn’t cheat but this was the first AI I got to write knowing that most people have multi-core systems. So while you are moving, I spin a thread out for every single computer player who then have ample time to simulate multiple turns into the future.

The AI also has the benefit of many many months of beta testers posting their strategies, build orders, tactical battle strategies, etc.

There is no shame in starting on easy until you get familiar with the game.

1677

I tried to install the 1.0 that I got from my stardock page, it says its corrupted, I’m redownloading it now just incase, but am I supposed to have elemental installed first, then iinstall FE over that?

I didn’t do that in the beta …and it worked fine

1678

I think I see you saying we suck?!

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

1679

Is there a resource new players can look into for such strategies, build orders, tactical battle strategies, etc.?

1680

I think the same sort of issue occurs when you change difficulty, and therefore probably other variables.