That wasn’t quite hat I meant by strategic. I was referring to your civilations’s ability to expand and exploit the world resources and territory to prodduce an economic, technological and military advantage that expresses itself when you get into actual combat.
Horrific Wail is awesome as well. This is how magic in the game should be. Hilarious! Not quite as hilarious as shrink, which is also awesome.
A mechanism that I do not like is that your Heroes/Units disappear both from cycling and the icon list on the left when in a town.
I lost a Hero for 10 turns because I did not realize she hadn’t traveled on out of the town in a stack.
I think it should only happen if you set them to Guard as on the rest of the map…
Alstein
1844
Swarming- I think it should be a trait given to militia, and can be given to troops, perhaps give it an init penalty vs single units based on how many troops are in the unit.
Ranged attacks do need a max range to encourage variety in ranged units,and mounted archers need an additional penalty unless you pick a trait to cover it (champs would have this penalty- though path of the warrior would have a promotion to get rid of it, and maybe Tarth or Capitar would get the trait as part of their blood traits)
One thing an expansion for FE needs is more combo spells, and maybe 2nd sovereigns for the factions (as well as 4 more factions- 8 is too low, 12 is just right)
RichVR
1845
OTOH should magical attacks have a range penalty? I mean, magic, right?
Direct damage spells are so damn weak already and have a built in limiter with the mana cost. Bows out damage them in almost every case except for AOE damage and in that case you can just use catapults.
Bows need some kind of nerf, but I’d also like to see direct damage spells buffed into something more useful. Having to blow 24 mana to use the basic fire nuke makes it pretty worthless.
There are 2 more factions that are in the game they just didn’t decide to create default soverigns for (why? who knows).
The Capitar: though they use “Mancer Blood” but have their own traits like invulnerable caravans and using Influence to buy things.
The Umber: a lazy mirror of Tarth? Scouts, can buy a venom accessory only for units (not champs for some reason) and have the opposite of Tarth in they gain bonuses if they are in a stack of 5+.
The funny thing the random heroes can be of those factions too.
Aceris
1848
Direct damage magic only works if you build the character around it. A warlock on path of the mage with evoker pays 18 mana for that nuke and get +125% damage. And when you really need to kill 4-6 units at once, there is fireball. Overpriced, slow and useless on a normal champion, amazing on a magic built sovereign.
It is a bit harder to start levelling up your sov with this build of course.
Stealth is useful early on, but I don’t really feel it is a major deal. At least on Hard, I still get attacked fairly often, and monsters still try to pursue my units. In either case, all it does is give you something similar to the advantage that the AI already has.
And actually, kiting monsters can be a pretty useful thing to do. Better for that bone ogre or slag to be running after your scout, than for him to be wandering into your city or outpost.
Aceris
1850
I do miss the FfH distinction between barbarians, which aggressively target your cities and require you to be able to defend them, and beasts, which can be scarier but avoid areas within your territory.
I also miss the FfH invisible spiders.
Alstein
1851
This is another area I’d like to see improvement: I’d like to see the monsters have different tendencies, bandits doing one thing, spiders another, dragons another.
Dragons should leave you alone unless you influence their turf, then they should go for you hard.
On the other hand, the Dragon’s (typically) high defense will usually mean that ranged attacks won’t really be doing a lot of damage.
Still, my favored stack at the moment is 3 heroes + horse archers (with Quick for initiative + Precise for accuracy). The horses are really not crucial, but they are nice to have since it allows them to keep up with mounted heroes and make them more useful for point defense. Warg archers are even better (another +2 initiative), but I prefer the extra strategic mobility. For the heroes, my ideal stack is one with slow (used to neutralize the most dangerous enemy), one with haste (which I mostly cast on the archers) - guardian wind is also great if facing a lot of enemy ranged, and one with shrink if going up against a really nasty big unit. That dragon isn’t quite as fearsome once reduced to half size. There isn’t a lot that this combination can’t handle.
I like Lancers - mounted unit with boar spear (ignores 50% defence, no counterattack) + charge (+3 move and +3 attack in first turn) also as an early, relatively cheap unit; they can be pretty devastating if one can get enough of them into the fight. They’re a lot more fragile, though; and in my latest game (with the bow racial trait), I’ve only used horse archers.
I’m not really bothered with the effectiveness of archers; I don’t really think they are all that good as units - ranged units always rule systems like this, unless the AI has built in effective counter-ranged strategies (which this one doesn’t at the moment).
And “super-stacks” are pretty much a staple of the genre anyway - if you give players the power to build their own units, they will create combos that exploit the weaknesses of the AI. A lot of the fun in this type of game is in finding new and creative ways to break the game based on different unit/magic combinations; e.g., flying, invisible/guardian wind charm of life paladins, early-game wraiths (the 11 death book combo), adamantium armed heroism/lion-heart halfling slingers, etc.
If anything, I am slightly disappointed in that respect so far. Since all races can build pretty much the same units in FE (apart from the few race-specific uniques), there’s just not as much apparent variety to be had here.
MikeJ
1853
How do the mechanics of defense work? I get that it’s a general damage reduction (sometimes to zero), but what’s the formula?
I have not gotten to any really high end stuff, but my Asok Knights seem like nice units so far!
Still without reviews in Gamespot, Gamespy or RPS… That’s not ideal.
Teiman
1856
HE!.
I have received this email from Brad Wardell titled “A letter from Brad Wardell”. He say I can download the full version of Fallen Enchantress. Thats really nice!. Thanks!.
–Tei.
The GameSpy review is up.
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/elemental-fallen-enchantress/1226525p1.html
It is a fantasy strategy RPG that, by its conclusion, does feel fantastical. Magic is devastating (where it was once puny), heroes are demigods, and your forces do battle across the blasted landscape with huge armies and towering dragons. The world doesn’t feel tamed or conquered by the end, but more magical and more dangerous. It takes some getting used to, but in the end, Fallen Enchantress largely fulfills the promise of its genre-blending premise.
The review score doesn’t seem to match the text (it’s currently listed at 3.5 out of 5, not sure if that was the intent or not since the review is so positive).
It’s tough in a game with so many game setup options to find a single good one. In XCOM, there’s basically 4 levels of difficulty. In FE, you have levels of difficulty for the monsters and then one for the opponents and then settings to control how many monsters and such.
I think if I were to recommend a future UI, I’d have a “simple” setting and then let the strategy purists be able to customize that.
It sounds like Gamespy didn’t much care for the early exploration phase of the game. I actually like this part a lot.
RPS has put up a “Wot I Think” on Fallen Enchantress.
It jibes pretty well with my own feelings about the game in its current state.
Derbain
1860
The exploration phase is the best phase!
