Background: bought elemental, played a couple times, played FE once maybe a year+ ago, and again in February, and just started a new game this week (most recent beta). [I also greatly enjoyed MoM, HoMM1-4, Civ2-5 & FFH.]
Current Game: Altar/Relias, all world settings default but difficulties set to challenging. Get to play maybe 1hr every couple days so I'm only about 100 or 200 turns into the game.
In General: Very good! I'm getting the "just one more turn" feeling much more than in any previous incarnation. The main things that stand out, to me, are as follows: I get the feeling I'm only playing one of many possible ways--I'm trying to do the hero thing (of course) but I'm excited to try doing troops, magic, etc in future games. I was frustrated that I've only one Kingdom hero I could recruit (and another once I get the journals tech) but I've killed several empire ones; then I got the henchmen tech and even though I've only just now built one or two I'm happy. (I did also buy a slaver (ha ha) from that one quest; felt wrong, but I only had two heroes for a supposedly hero-focused faction so I felt I should... I'm sure after spending a year or two with honorable, upstanding Relias he will atone for his past sins.) Leveling heroes is good and fun; maybe it happens a bit fast, as I'm still a tech or two away from getting the level 7 hero and my sovereign and two other heroes are already a bit past that. The other side of the hero-coin is equipment, which has gone excellently: I've had a surfeit of weapons, which makes for fun choices (and switching the berserker's axe to a maul does seem a significant and fun change), and a deficit of armor, which makes for tough choices, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I do wish I had thought ahead and saved some weapons for my new henchmen rather than selling them; oh well, lesson learned.
The third side of the hero-coin (see what I did there?) is quests, and I find those to be fun as well. No special comments on those; the number and pacing seems good to me.
Generally I prefer smaller games--when I get to the end of a game of Civ, with a bunch of cities and tons of units, I kind of just end-turn to victory instead of playing best and optimizing things to truly crush the opposition. In that sense, I love that there are limited areas to settle, and in future games I will probably turn them down (I'm assuming that's a map option I skipped over): my neighbor, Kraxis, beat me to one spot I was hoping for (it was on the other side of some mountains from me, though) and in the course of my caravans exploring his territory I'm staring to think there are too many cities on this world for my liking. (Personal psychology note: There is always that Louisiana purchase moment when my empire doubles in size due to a, uh, "purchase" and I have this Jeffersonian regret for the small Kingdom I once had that is no more...)
I have been a bit unhappy with the pacing; or rather, I'm finding the build times to be too long for my tastes. I realize that later on I will probably be building armies too quickly for my "small world" likes, but it's not fun (there's that word again) to wait for, e.g., 10 turns for a dinky market and 25 for a spearman.
The AI seems good, to me, though I'm no expert. I'm pretty clearly out-classed by the AI on challenging; their power rating is better than mine and I only kept my border city by reloading (twice!), pumping out axemen with that spell (Call to Arms?), and getting lucky with a Shrink on their sovereign (maybe not lucky, as it failed the first time and stuck the second). Why Cersea is running around with a novelty-sized axe is beyond me, but she seemed to have a pretty good initiative so it worked (until shrink reduced her damage from 15-40 to 3). It is my own fault, however, for having my sovereign off questing when there are two larger Empires right over there to the west.
So, yes! Fix up the minor details below and I'll be happier than a [insert dumb analogy here].
Specifics:
- When you win a battle, move the victorious army onto the empty square (if attacking). Not only is that generally how one defines the winner of a battle (whoever holds the field after), but more to the point it unnecessarily slows down the game to win a battle one turn and then move onto the monster lair the next. I'm actually unreasonably bothered by this; go figure.
- Is there a faction-wide storage for weapons/items? If not, there should be, so my henchmen can pick up the weapons my heroes previously found and returned home. I understand it's an extra complication but I think if done in an analogous UI to the shop it will be fine. (2b) Is there a way to buy back from the shop? Sometimes I mis-click and sell something.
- When I shrink Cersea the AI should realize that 3 damage per attack is not cutting it and instead have her cast spells. I know y'all pride yourself on AI so maybe this will be a relatively quick change.
- Resoln/Cersea is on the other side of Kraxis from me. Was it worthwhile for her to attack me? Why didn't Kraxis (same power) attack me? (Though maybe I paid them off, I don't remember. So this isn't much help. Oh well.) [3 + 4 are really my only complaints for AI so far.]
- Should I report all the typos and such? E.g. all henchmen have the bard's text, I think there's an extra apostrophe in said text, I think I saw somewhere else there was also a possessive apostrophe where it should have been just plural, etc. I can make a list if y'all would use it.
- Is there a way I can find out if all the wolf pelts, something-or-other teeth, etc, will be used, or are they just for selling? In either case I like it for flavor but maybe it should be more obvious.
- Minor UI quibbles: generally all the information is there and helpful, but there are a couple places where pop-ups would be handy and there aren't any. I like, e.g., that when you hover over growth it tells you what the next level is and what the food limit is.
- Graphical glitches: Gilden's outposts weren't displaying for me (but I could click on them), so for a while I thought the pathfinding was just being really stupid. How can I report this in a helpful way? (I assume you need video drivers, etc.)
- Pathfinding: In at least one case it has been stupid: take the road, if possible, and go through cities. Generally units leaving cities don't do so on the most advantageous spot (the road).
- Roads! How do I build them? Can I only get them through diplomacy? That seems rather roundabout. It would be really nice for getting my sovereign's group back to the front lines from his silly questing dilly-dallying.
You'll notice I haven't said anything about balance. I don't really know about all that stuff; the AI is beating me, but it doesn't seem to be in a particularly unfair way, so I can't complain, nor have I come up on any obvious exploits. Maybe the heroes will get too powerful later on, we'll see. Great game, though! I'm sure I'll have more as I continue. Also: is this at all helpful?
