1861

Ouch. Well at least it’s sort of positive and not an E:WoM disaster.

1862

Well on the other hand, SS has their review up too:

http://www.spacesector.com/blog/2012/10/elemental-fallen-enchantress-review/

I think it really depends on what you’re looking to get out of it. It’s supposed to be pretty sandboxish.

1863

Oopsie?

1864

Well, I like it just fine.

And that’s all that matters.

1865

I attempted to play on larger maps to see if more AI’s would give them time to present more of a challenge and more different gameplay and the mid and late-game slowdown make it almost impossible to play. I never noticed it on Small maps, but even Medium it slows to a crawl after about 150+ turns with 8 cities. (Dynamic lighting and pedestrians turned off)

And this is with a AMD 6100 Six-Core Processor, 12 GB RAM, Win7 and Radeon card. It plays everything else smooth as glass. It’s like 150 people killing the dragon in Frostgorge Sound slow.

1866

Have you tried quitting and then reloading? I ran into an issue in Beta where it wouldn’t crash, but about 150 turns in it would bog down. Saving, quitting, and reloading solved the problem for me.

1867

Its a shame that the game isn’t more about Empire Building - It quickly becomes a matter of spamming pioneers early or be left behind. Its a faster game than MoM in that respect, and I must admit, too fast for me.

Thats not necessarily a fault of the game, its just not the game I thought it was.

1868

I do think high-level cities are underpowered right now.

I’d love to see buildings provide a bonus per city level, or have additional buildings that unlock at city levels 3-5 (not counting the bonus buildings, which aren’t that balanced)

1869

So no one knows how defense works in this game, other than more is better? I figured one of the beta testers would have long ago reverse-engineered the formula, but I am having trouble finding it.

1870

I totally agree. Given a choice between food and production for city placement, I always choose production – it gives tangible bonuses immediately. Food OTOH gives unknown benefits a sizable amount of time in the future.

This is also why the city enhancements which give production (vs. the enhancements that give food or growth) seem wickedly powerful. Or why clay is great and wheat is MEH.

If my starting city has only 2 production, I restart (unless maybe if it had 3 essence, but I’ve never seen that). If it only had 2 food (which to be honest has never happened) I would be OK with that.

1871

4 production and nearby clay is ideal; even better if it has essence (though that is rare). I’ll also go far for some forest (to get the production boosting improvements specific to forests).

The production boost makes Earth magic I (with enchanted hammers) so much better than all other starting magical setups. Haste (Air) is cool and can win you battles. Death … meh. Fire can be useful, but the really useful spells don’t come until Lvl 3 (Fireball is a battle winner). Water is the second best starting skill, I think (slow + research bonus).

1872

The problem isn’t the wheat, it’s growth. It’s too easy to reach the cap. On top of that, the benefits for city-level up are mostly just one building- it’s not enough.

I think 2nd-tier improvements like schools, markets, masons should give benefit per city level.

Either that, or my preferred choice is to make more buildings that unlock at city levels 3-5. Also, I’d make wonders require a lvl 3 city, and limit lvl 3 cities to one wonder.

1873

Woo 4 production and clay. That would be awesome. I haven’t played enough games to get such a sweet setup.

Oh yeah, Earth is where it is at. Getting one earth is awesome, easily the best starting spell, IMO.

1874

So what technologies do you try to get, in which order? And what buildings do you produce?

1875

I just finished the game on Large/Hard, and I didn’t see any major issues with slowing down (though I did encounter a fair share of oddities in terms of tiling where it was very hard to select the correct tile, and the occasional crash. Also had my savegame seem to get corrupted at one point). Got slower, but still playable.

Went for both the Spellcasting and Dragonlord victories, just to check them out - I didn’t have the stamina to run through the last dozen or so cities required for military victory. The Champion was… disappointing, especially compared to the Elemental Lords (had the Earth and Water guys in this game). King Frost wiped out all 3 knights and 3 horse archers that accompanied my heroes against him… (I was able to slow and then fireball him to death, fortunately, because if he had gotten into contact with any of those heroes, they would have been goners. Good thing they were all three fire mages…). The Dragon Champion managed to kill a single Knight from one of my Knight units, before he became a pincushion. Not very Epic.

I think my main beef with the game right now is that the AI isn’t playing the same game - at least not in the beginning. Monsters don’t seem to attack the AI (except if they randomly wander into them), and I’ve never seen the AI attack a monster. It either never quests/explores goodie huts or abandons doing so very early - there are always lots of untouched locations inside its borders.

In general, though, it was pretty fun while building up - and especially tense before one gets the muscle to be able to clean out the monsters. I lost/abandoned a couple/handful of games early on, when I got a bit too risky. Once I reached the point of having an effective stack, though (essentially, being able to build archers/mounted archers), it was smooth sailing and the game began to drag a bit (though - to be fair, this is not uncommon with 4X games). But it doesn’t help that the higher level you are, the less exploration opportunities one has - in addition to which the loot one finds is mostly pretty poor. There is actually one thing that I feel Elemental:WOM did better - even though the way new locations popped up was … odd (oh - never noticed that huge black tower outside your capital?)… I very much liked that you could research to seed the land with more advanced quests.

1876

Restoration has been my first pick in every game so far (+1 production). After that, it really depends on the game. On Hard, you suffer from so much starting unrest that Civics is needed as soon as possible.

If there are Lvl 5 heroes in the vicinity, I think getting Heroes from the magic tree as soon as possible is vital - the AI doesn’t chase goodie huts/quests, but they will hire any Lvl 5 heroes they find. The same applies to Lvl 7, though that’s more long term. I’ve never seen the AI recruit Lvl 9 heroes. Apart from that, I pretty much don’t bother with the Magic tree. Poor cost/benefit, IMO.

On a game on Challenging that I didn’t finish, I actually went pretty hard on the Civilization tree, and succeeded in building all the wonders before the AI. On Hard, I was distanced so easily and badly on tech that I never had a chance (most of the wonders got built before I even got the tech to build them), so I went fairly easy on Civics and worked on Warfare a lot more. IMO, the critical Civilization techs are Restoration, Civics, Mining (+1 Prod), Trading (Roads… so critical for fast response) and Cooperation (4 man units - a 33% power increase + you can then research economics for that army size increase).

On warfare, I just beeline for Longbows as fast as is at all possible. And if I can avoid it, I don’t build any non-missile units other than scouts before I can complete the Armor/Weaponsmithing/Longbow line. Though in my case, I need war colleges too (for Athican longsword - which is just such a superior weapon to what comes before it that it’s ridiculous). Boar-spear armed light cavalry with Charge can be used to good effect, though. Most of the early units one can build suck terribly compared to what is available just a little later, which is why getting that early unit of archers from a refugee camp is worth its weight in gold.

Building wise, I simply calculate whatever building is going to generate the most production (i.e., by adding production bonuses or removing unrest) and go for that. Production is all important. My starting city build a lumber mill, and then pretty much spams Pioneers after that for at least the first 30 turns. Since spamming cities is such an effective tactic, growth is extremely slow, and consequently food is not much of an issue. And since I’m running with no taxes for much of the early game (except to keep solvent), financial building are completely pointless (doesn’t matter whether you’re getting 0% of 1 gildar or 5 gildar).

1877

Derek addresses some of this on the TMA podcast this week, but specifically about the AI not playing the same game as you:
It’s intentional that the AI doesn’t collect all the goodie huts/quests/monsters in their lands because it makes the play experience less fun for the players. Originally they did just like the player, and before long the whole map would be cleared of anything interesting for the player to interact with. It actually ties directly into your 2nd note.

Also, if you are looking for end game loot you should be able to find a ton in wildlands. They should still be around at mid-end game and filled with goodies to collect. Or try Altar and you can spawn quests whenever you want (with quest maps)

1878

Yeah - I can see the point of that, but it makes the game pretty weird when all of the monsters are really only interacting with the player. I’m also not really sure it makes for much of a difference, because exploring a place to find yet another set of leather boots isn’t really very interesting when your heroes are suited up in master chain/plate.

Also, if you are looking for end game loot you should be able to find a ton in wildlands. They should still be around at mid-end game and filled with goodies to collect. Or try Altar and you can spawn quests whenever you want (with quest maps)

I actually played a custom race with the quest map ability, so I did that a bit. There just didn’t seem to be much point to it, though; the missions did not seem significantly different from the regular quests.

I liked the wildlands a lot, though; generally quite fun to explore and take out the denizens. I do suspect, though, that the game is effectively over by the time one has heroes capable of successfully braving most of those (that was certainly the case with 2 of the 3 I saw on the Large map of my last game) - making them more something one does because one can, rather than as a part of the game strategy.

1879

WOuldn’t it be better for more items/quests to spawn in-game as it goes on instead- though I remember that being massively buggy in War of Magic?

Either that or you should have to go to the Wildlands for that sort of thing.
This would also make levelling up heroes more difficult, which might be a good thing and might increase the value of other things.

1880

The issue I personally have with spawning things like quests later on in gameplay is what it does to exploration and the world as a whole. I think a big part of the progression of the game, and the strength of the world as a concrete place, comes from seeing content you cant engage in yet but will come back to later. Also, if quests are spawning later in the game it makes exploring seem somewhat cheap, making you re-explore continuously to check if a quest happens to have spawned. That’s my two cents on it, I prefer having random events as quests ‘spawned’ later in the game.

I also think that sometimes people under estimate how early they can venture into a wild land for loot. I know I will pop in and kill some stuff as I go, just may not be able to fully clear it until later.