In other words, just think of War of Magic as an extended beta for Fallen Enchantress.

I could probably care less, but I am not, and why should I? 

Don't you mean 'I couldn't care less'?

What is all this patch nonsense and expansion gibberish i keep hearing about. This game was awesome when it was released and doesn't need improvements at all!

He eh u gotta love sarcasm.

right now tho all primary AI factions outright go for the throat on high dif lvls. and if an alliance did pan out with a main faction the human player will always exploit it to its own detriment.  but yea theres some nice ideas i think in my post with the minor factions that could be implemented to an extent and made the game more intresting.

Is Mason Fisher going to do the music for Fallen Enchantress?  I really enjoyed his work in War of Magic and often found myself tapping along to the drums heh.

You know what would be awesome to have in FE?

multiplayer.

I'm just surprised no one has mentioned it before.

I do REALLY hope that this is not step to simplification and casuality. Food and Housing are the significant parts of gameplay, and I rather like the current system than not. There are definitely issues with Food resource - so only fertile lands can be the natural source and they are pretty rare. I think the ability to "fertilize" land for pioneers(?) and spellcasters. Also the ability to build some agricultural upgrades like irrigation will be great.

Prestige is not required to my mind as it duplicates city size in most cases.

It's the first comment of the thread.

It's a loaded poll.  Of course most of us still lurking on this forum are nursing some degree of hope.

Most of us are cautiously optimistic.

First time was "cautious optimisim" this time around, just "simple caution."

Disappointing really.

The food/housing/prestige mechanic was the change that made Elemental a game that was actually fun to play.  Why change the unique game mechanic that worked well already?  You aren't the government, so your motto shouldn't be "If it ain't broke, fix it till it is."  There are plenty of issues with Elemental that can be fixed, but I am surprised to say the least that you are going after that mechanic when it was finally balanced to the point of being interesting and fun.

Agreed.

It would have saved me wasting my time here.

The frustrating thing is, every post i see about multiplayer are people saying that arent that bothered about balance they just want a mode they can play with friends thats the same as single player. It just seems to fall on deaf ears.

But alteast now i know its never coming, as it's 'not doable'. Time to get over it and move on! Im sure ive wasted more money on other things in the past.

I just want to add my voice to the others in saying that you should either leaves quests in (and all the other multiplayer features), or ditch multiplayer entirely. Far too many times I've seen developers get so paranoid about having "balanced" multiplayer, that it ends up being a stale, shallow shadow it's single-player counterpart. Furthermore, I don't see any other reason that quests wouldn't be workable in multiplayer - the Europa Universalis games have similar features (in the form of events) and they work exceedingly well in the both single and multiplayer.

And I'd also like to point out that my friends and myself play cooperatively 99.9% of the time - with the occassional end-game backstab to make things interesting. There is no reason to sweat bullets about whether features are "balanced" when the question ought to be "are they fun"? And frankly, if they're not fun, they shouldn't be in the game at all. As it happens, they are fun, and pulling them from multiplayer will make multiplayer considerably less so.

Just sounds like a lot of the things that the forum community loved in the early design and beta stages of WOM that got gutted as you chased after making the game more like a RTS wanna-be in stop motion.

This time when you finalize your game vision, please don't change it unless it is actually popular with the customers.

As for multiplayer, for all TBS games I love to play them cooperatively when I can and only super rarely play them competitively against other players. Some of the most fun in games like Alpha Centauri was being able to play cooperatively and then cranking up the AI competition to the max. You really think that doesn't appeal to a lot of potential customers?

I'm not entirely sure what the purpose of the poll is. 2 answers are for people who have either left these forums, will not visit the poll anyway, or are trolling ("will be bad", "what is it" & "care less"). That leaves "Very Excited!" and "Cautiously Optimistic". I suppose if I must, "cautious" would come closest, but after more than half a year of beta EWoM, I do not identify enough with the optimistic part to want to vote.

Actually I don't think it tried to be everything for all people. In order to be that It should have had a map made of hexes (to be a wargame) instead than semplyfing things with tiles and then just say it was because "Brad doesn't like hexes", then it should have had a city simulation tech tree that made sense with buildings that were actually useful, and it should have had better RPG elements.

Instead everything was in it, yes, but nothing was tuned for gameplay. EWOM is just a beautiful paperdoll game, where you get to dress up your units with beautiful weapons and clothes, and also build pretty cities. But nothing in it makes sense or is balanced for a game experience. In fact I think the game concept comes from a series of misconceptions about what players want. Tedious and slow don't make map feel bigger and epic!

Gameplay is everything, hopefully the mistakes that are hard coded won't prevent the Fallen Enchanteress team to make their game work.

My only request is that you get the magic system right this time, and add more creature special abilities.

For a good start just google spells from Master of Magic then Age of wonders and double that for elemental and possibly throw in a few from dominions. Or if you really need inspiration open up a good d&d players hand book or a few decks of magic the gathering and get inspiration there.

Seriously though my biggest gripe with elemental has always been about the lack of magic in the game, the lack of balance and difference between each magic school, and the small variety of monsters and special abilities in the game.

I'm giving Black-Knight karma for his brilliant analysis of the shortcomings of War of Magic. That's exactly what it is: War of Magic was designed as a large mix of elements that were often oriented towards customization but ended up not working together and making a consistent game experience. 

onomastikon also gets karma for pointing out the shortcomings of this poll: it's lacking a neutral, "wait and see" option. I'm cautious, but not optimistic. From where I stand, it could go either way. On one hand, the dev' team is now a real dedicated professional video game dev' team creating a video game with customization added to it, not a customization software with a layer of video game added to it. On the other hand, it'll depend on how much of the basic mechanics of War of Magic they'll decide to ditch and many things could go wrong. 

Actually point 8 is interesting. Also from the video I kind of guess that if you have one of those flame swords with a specific kind of unit you won't be able to cut through a specific kind of armor... Makes sense to me. Maybe finally it won't be possible anymore to make a uberhero that by turn 150 is able to conquer an entire empire alone. Unless he has a few different weapoins that is...

Mmmh...

All I really hope for EF is to see heroes tuned down (experience given only to unit that inlicts lethal blows, experience lost when retreating, max level capped and maye experience randomly assigned to any of the unit's skills)... Also it would be good if buildings and techs made more sense. Having certain armies more rersistent to specific kinds of damage would certainly help in forcing players to make strategies instead than attacking with their sovreign and autoresolve every time.

Agreed. This was already asked on Page 1, but there was no response, even though the developer continued to say it will be more MoM-Like.

Don't get me wrong, I like the initative based system and different damage types/resistance types, it's almost criminal they weren't in the first time around. The irony of course is that MoM tactical combat was not initative based! Not sure if MoM really had different damage types/resistances ,depends on how you define that but I don't remember MoM tracking elemental damage types either!

Anyway I don't think FE will fix the problem of spells not being magical. That might be the next expansion or more likely next game.

Honestly, this whole debate on MP... I don't know.. I was always under the impression that very very few people played MP on TBS, there are bigger fish to fry. I suppose could have a poll on this. 

I read someone complaining about weak spells in the game. I want to emphasize how much the MAGIC SYSTEM is important. This iwas imho one of the reasons why MoM was such a great title. In particular:

1) there was a nice VARIETY of spells. Some to cast in combat (and interestingly some affecting all units in combat, some on single units only) some on cities, some for war, some for movement, healing, protection, productivity, happiness, some to create permanent mutations on units, some to teleport... and most of all, I liked Global Enchantments : at high levels a mage should be able to affect a whole reign with a spell.

2) spells were POWERFUL. You could not afford ignoring spells in MoM. Mastering the right spells was a big advantage in combat (maybe at times even too big, remember Tauron casting Flame Strike on all your units every turn at Impossible level?). I think in FE one should have the option to develop magic more than might, or conquest, or tech, and this option should be worth. If you make Magic just as "something nice to add", this would be a BIG delusion. I was highly disappointed by Age of Wonder, for instance, where the ice-storm global spell was quite weak and ineffective against enemy troops. While in MoM... causing permanent Meteor Storm on the whole world, or stopping time  - these were the things that made the game incredibly fun to play. Obviously, these spells should be hard to research and costly to cast, but there should be such spells in the game.

3) spell realms were quite DIFFERENT: only some of them could heal (and in different ways, one through regeneration, the other through direct heal) only some of them could boost units (and again in different ways: permanent mutations, armor, absorption, flight, invisibility, different immunities, extra attacks (gaze, stoning..)), only some could counter spells, or increase movement. Choosing different spell realms meant changing your playing style and strategy.

I think in a poll before the release of H:WoM the magic system ranked very high among players' priorities: please do not underestimate how important it is to have a diversified, powerful, balanced spell system - with cool graphic effects I'd add

Good work guys! Live up to our expectations!

Actually the poll on what needs to improve, magic/spells was ranked first.

For what's it worth, i think they know, it's just hardest to do.

They are making the right noises about other things including

* Initative based system

* resistances/damage types

* traits randomisation of champions and there was a hint about spells in FE not limited by INT (by traits maybe?)

* Some stuff about bringing back essence...for god know what...

even little stuff like death of soverign

My guess is they want to not only have a large variety of spells but also to make everything moddable which is harder. It's possible once all the above changes are in play, then they can add spells that affect all these new factors... But that is going to be in the next expansion or next game maybe...

Sounds like this memory problem for 32-bit systems has dropped walls for Stardock plans.  I blame Microsoft for not moving the world into 64-bit operating systems. Eventually 99% of gamers will all be using 64-bit systems.

I only wish Elemental could move forward without the 32-bit dead weight which limits the games potential.

Amazing what old school games could do back then with even more limited resources.....