1821

The last part, I suppose we will have to wait for FE 2, but the first part…
I don’t think it would be impossible to put some new rules to the tactical combat in a 1.2? version of the game.
Let’s see what Brad and Kael say.

1822

Well, that’s a lot of new mechanics to tactical combat that would need to be playtested and balanced, especially in a game in which custom units exist! And then the AI would need to be able to understand how to use it effectively based on what units it has and what you’re fighting it with. Positioning becomes more important, like spears taking the base of a hill while the archers shoot down from it, or understanding to use cover to approach ranged units, etc. Sounds like a lot of work, but I’m a layman. I’d love to see Brad or Kael disagree. :)

1823

Custom units exists, but it’s not that important. I was thinking of basic rules like “flanking gives 20% attack” or “accuracy penalties from range”, that applies to every unit in the same universal way. Of course what’s left it’s the AI coding for that, but the amount of work it’s something relative, depending of the desired level. You can code something very complex for the 2nd rule (accuracy penalties) or just code "archers gives more priority to closer target than distant targets). I’m not talking of totally re-do the tactical combat, it’s a bit too late now, but we agree that a pair of tactical rules would improve the actual system. But this is wishful thinking? I suppose some guys at Stardock had to think the same as us, if they didn’t do is because they couldn’t.

1824

Probably as long as those bonuses are just based on your position the AI can handle them just fine. Tactical battles are mostly a search tree so it just changes the value of certain positions.

1825

I know there are a couple of things we’ve talked about that are on the general wish list which include:

  1. Swarming. Defense penalty for a unit that has more than 2 adjacent units.

  2. Accuracy penalty for range (like archers).

The flanking thing we talked about a lot and ultimately that’s a tough one because at that point, you really are starting to get into tactical battle game details.

XCOM has flanking and there’s entire charts and articles on those mechanics. But I don’t think the general FE player base would want each battle to start to be similar to an XCOM battle.

The same is true for other things like Line of Sight and obstacles and cover bonuses and that. Very quickly, the tactical game becomes the game with the strategic game really just a layer for getting to the next battle. And that’s not what FE is about. It’s about the clash of fantasy civilizations.

Edit: Just want to emphasize that I"m giving my own opinion here. Not that of the FE team.

1826

It need not be global, could be only particular units have a special ability that gets bonuses the more that attack one unit, defense on hills, zone-of-control opportunity attacks, etc.

1827

I’m really glad we have the graphic controls for the game, but I find the default settings very, dark. So much so that I had trouble seeing details.

What are most people setting ambient-light/brightness/contrast numbers to?

1828

The battlefield are just not big enough to allow for true complex tactics, nor the movement and damage mechanics would allow for long games where develop said complex tactics. A flanking rule would add just a little more of thinking, it wouldn’t turn the game magically in Xcom.

1829

Try disabling Stylized Lightning (advanced options). It was the most effective change I made (for the darkness problem) compared to all the brightness/contrast tweaking I tried.

Also try raising model size (advanced options). I use Large and it works much better than the default for seeing units, especially those in the forest etc.

1830

Weird Quest result: I rescued some prisoners from a camp and was told “The grateful prisoners join your army as a Pioneer unit”. But they didn’t.

There is a Pioneer unit in an non owned adjacent army, I don’t know if they joined them by accident or it was just a coincidence…

1831

This has happened to me a few times, and every time it’s happened my quest party was full at the time of quest completion. I never found the missing pioneers though, in another realm’s party or otherwise, they just seemed to poof without being awarded. I recently submitted a bug report for it at the SD forums simply because it irks me not to get my just rewards.

1832

So, I had my first victory yesterday on a small map with 2 opponents. I was mostly trying to get a good grasp of the rules (was my 3rd longer game or so) and set up a faction/avatar with heavy bonuses for production etc. I was questing with my 2 guys and building my industry up. Then a few hours into the game one of the AIs, with 3x the official strength of my empire, attacked. I decided, good game AI and went on what I thought was a suicide run with my main guy who by the time was 10 attack and 30ish defense, 70ish hp.

As you’ve guessed I then proceeded to completely obliterate both the original attacker and the other AI after that - with that single unit. Not sure how I feel about that. While overpowered heroes are a kind of a staple of MoM like games, in this case I didn’t even take any hero specific traits that would help with being overpowered much - I tried to focus on the industry. Then promptly discovered that I actually didn’t need the industry to begin with. Either armor is seriously overpowered or the AI doesn’t do a very good job of countering it. I certainly notice that the various magical summons that helped balance that in MoM are missing here and it’s harder to kill a heavily armored guy in this game.

I was playing on challenging/challenging. Fundamental lack of game balance, AI shortcoming or maybe I just got lucky in this one game?

1833

Just wanted to say: the stealth perk seems great to me. I had a hard time on Easy without it, with I am rolling on Normal, maybe this perk starts to break down on more difficult levels?

1834

The quote above is what may keep me from purchasing FE. This is the reason MoM wasn’t a good game, this single way to overwhelm the AI (or single-focus in multi-player with the MoM multi hack) ruined the game for me. Allowing The “Stack Of Doom” (Superstack) to dominate as it did in MoM crushes my interest in this game.

Was the reviewer correct?

1835

At the moment, yes, this is a stack of doom game. Although I’m a fan of such games (the delightful Warlords III: Darklords Rising is a perfect example), I wasn’t exactly expecting this type of gameplay from FE (though it makes sense given its roaming Sovereign/Champion focus). I’m not disappointed because of this, but it certainly changes the way I planned to approach the game.

1836

I’ll go as far as saying a stack with two champions and the rest ranged, considered ‘strong’, can beat anything on the map. At least on easy. Because that’s what I’m doing now. I’m just guessing it will scale up in harder games. Correct me if I’m wrong here. But once you get a stack with a powerful attack number, like in the 200+ range, a dragon considered strong will still have a much lower attack value.

How does the game decide what is ‘strong’ and what is ‘medium’?

Is it a set value that doesn’t change regardless of a value comparison? In other words, is a strong enemy always considered strong even is my stack is way stronger than the enemy? Is it variable or a constant?

1837

In the Tech tree under Leatherworking, it has a bunch of leather armor as well as the Defender unit.

When I researched Leatherworking, I could desing units with leather armor, but I couldn’t train a Defender unit. I didn’t see the Defender unit in my Train list.

Does anyone know why?

thanks

1838

Go to the unit design screen and click “Show Hidden Units”, if the defender appears you’ll want to click Unhide for it.

Other than that I got nothing.

1839

So I just finally sat down to play the tutorial and a few turns of a new game. VERY nice, so far it feels much more solid, and actually like a GAME, this time around. Well done guys. :) Can’t wait to dive in and see more.

1840

While there is obviously a point at which you can tip this balance most of the time the tactical game can give reason for the strategic. Currently FE whether you like it or not has no emphasis on the strategic because the tactical nearly identical to an autoresolve once you learn the weakness in the design.

There is certainly a few ground rules that apply to every combat that will give the tactical legs so that the strategic actually has meaning. I don’t want to say that you are creating a smoke screen here but in the terrain example it adds to both aspects of the gameplay (tactical and strategic) but was left out which further reduces BOTH. If it doesn’t matter how I position my units in the over world map and it doesn’t provide an advantage or disadvantage in the tactical they both feel watered down.