1741

I started a new game on the temperate map and have been enjoying it a little more. There are more and larger areas of fertility (although they still tend to be spread out quite a bit), but now at least I have some options as far as town placement goes.

I like how the extreme randomness of the start effects your strategies… sometimes you start next to a crystal mine and can immediately go into magic items for all your troops, sometimes you start near some horses and can get everyone equipped with them early, but sometimes it feels a little too random and the early to middle game can often be a little too dependent on how lucky your start was it seems.

1742

So what do people prefer as their starting locations? Seems squares are generally limited to 7 resources (I’ve seen the rare 4-4-0 but nothing higher). 3-4 with a forest nearby (for the immediate +1 materials) seems to be the ideal to go; I’m wondering whether 2-5 would be worth it or whether the lack of food cripples the city in the long run. The opposite scale seems much less attractive; 3 materials works OK (if there is a +1 materials resource to bump it up immediately), but 2 seems as if it would penalize your starting position badly.

High materials really seems to be the most optimal starting city, as it translates into an immediate advantage, whereas essence and food are more benefits in the long term. Thoughts?

1743

Death first.

1744

I find essence to be very powerful and flexible depending on what enchantments you have and usually make it a priority to build on if I can. I generally prefer material over food in the short term since that gets a city going faster and with a little research you can translate that production bonus into food increasing structures.

1745

I beat it on Normal and my issue was a bug. The Overlord’s Whatever is a “one per faction” thing. You need it to cast the Spell of Mastery. Had no issues this time, though I didn’t use the spell to win (went with the Quest).

Cool stuff. Now I have to debate what to increase as far as difficulty.

1746

Edge scrolling doesn’t work for me in the tactical battles. Arrow keys don’t either. I have to zoom in and out to pan the camera. Any idea how to fix this?

1747

It’s coming in a future patch according to a post over at OO from Island Dog.

1748

Left click and drag.

1749

Do this for all scrolling needs in FE, if possible. It’s a lot smoother/polished and seems to be the intended mechanism to scroll around.

1750

Yeah, they are looking at the tactical scrolling.

But for now, I give you 16-bit goodness.

1751

I did very much love the retro videos on the beta builds of WoM.

1752

The best part about WoM, in fact! :P

1753

I agree with the Game Informer review, a marked improvement over War of Magic but still rather bland. It is now a good but not great game. I really commend Stardock for giving me FE for free, as it has restored my faith in the company since I no longer feel ripped off.

1754

Bland is pretty harsh, there is a lot of cool stuff (spells, monsters, research, etc.) packed into here. It all takes a little longer to get to than I’d like (I wish we could be building units like spearman almost immediately, and building archers very shortly in, so that champsions your own character aren’t spending 100 turns walking around and leveling up so much first, but that might just be me).

1755

The review never says bland, but he’s probably characterizing this passage:

For all that Fallen Enchantress ticks off a long list of boxes that I’ve wanted in a 4X for years, it does so with little soul. I dig the setting’s post-apocalyptic vibe, but beyond that the world feels like a paint-by-numbers collection of post-Tolkien fantasy tropes. None of the races capture my imagination like Master of Magic’s insectoid klackons or cruel draconians. I applaud the attempt to include some role-playing flavor via lengthy text descriptions of quest stages, but their quality ranges from passable to awful – and they still have all the disadvantages of being simple walls of text. The included story campaign is not worth playing, as it almost entirely ditches the empire-building aspect of the game in favor of a linear tale told through the worst writing found in the whole package and a risk-free romp through easy monsters with a single overpowered hero stack.

I tend to agree that, in general, there’s a lot of interesting and imaginative units and ideas in the game, although I can’t really counter his point that a lot of the setting has a very Tolkien feel to it and the factions, beyond the clever mechanics that make them unique, don’t feel a lot different.

I think Kael did a great job considering most of the factions are just different flavors of humans, but I do wonder why they didn’t go for something a little more dramatically different for them.

1756

There are a lot of really cool and interesting spells here. One thing that concerns me is that they may be too high level- once I am able to cast any of them, I find that the game has been pretty much been decided.

1757

So, my Sovereign’s stack has attacked and killed a unit which description said “Allied with Empire”, but I don’t get any indication that I have had contact with Empire…

1758

Those are just champions that are for the Imperial factions. There’s a trait IIRC that lets you recruit champions of opposing alignment, but otherwise they basically just act as monster lairs if you aren’t of the right alignment to recruit them.

1759

“…it does so with little soul”, was what I was referring to.

1760

I don’t understand this whole “empire” thing. I see a creature on the map that’s sitting stationary like any other creature, but in it’s description it says it’s part of or allied with the empire.

What is the empire? If I attack this creature, am I declaring war on the empire?