Thats just a matter of taste not a matter of skill. I really like the art style.

It won't be nice if they finally start to listen to posts like this around beta 4 or something. I hope to be proven wrong but I'm seeing a pattern here. Can't do more races because of the 3d models? Fine, then be A LOT more daring with flavour and differentiation. Sure, we can play Civ with just humans, but we know about Chinese, Mongols, Greeks... it's enough to fill in with our imagination. In FE... who are these guys? They're just plain humans. Come again, they're interesting because...?

The tech tree is a spreadsheet with some linear mechanics and little meaning. People Get bored. No surprise. Cities play all the same with no interaction. People get bored. No surprise.

To be fair, I haven't played Beta 2, so I haven't voted. But I've seen nothing in the changelog about these issues.  

I understand what you're saying. But ultimately, as a 4X game, it has a tech tree.  The tech tree in itself isn't supposed to be boring or interesting. Rather, it's supposed to be a tool that helps you plan our your strategy.

The problem with FE's tech tree, thus far, is that the tech tree is still too funnely. That is, no matter the map, no matter the conditions, you still go after the same few techs right off: Standing Army, Shard Harvesting, and a couple of others.  

What needs to happen is that the world conditions should force the player to adapt each game. That is, the player who tries to use the same tech pattern every game will suffer.

Unfortunately, the solution is non-trivial.  Right now, the factions are sufficiently similar that they're all "generalists".  And secondly, players can can be sufficiently effective without really controlling anything.  For example, I can wipe out the AI pretty well with just massive cheap spearmen and archers.    The AI has gotten pretty good at this too. But once you know "the trick" it's easy to roll over them. 

The fact that the player can be very effective without controlling anything special makes the tech tree less interesting, makes the game repetitive and puts too much pressure on the AI (And let's face it, a good human will always beat the AI in these kinds of games, the AI has to be more efficient but FE doesn't currently reward efficiency).

..

IF you needed specific resources to train those archers and spearmen and you didn't have those resoruces but instead had resources to train up mages and ice wraiths, THEN suddenly that tech tree is more interesting.

But frankly, I have a hard time coming up with the rationale of why it should require some special resource to give a guy a stick.

It's something Kael is very much aware of. But it's amazing how a "little thing" has such repricussions throughout the whole game experience.

My personal opinion is that the mundane stuff (things that don't require a special resource) should just be vastly wimpier than they currently are. Thus, you would then suddenly care an awful lot about having the political capital to recruit the Knights of Azok (not sure if they're in beta 2 or not) or be able to train Warlock Adepts or Summon a Dread Ithril.  But why bother in beta 2? I just crank out my cheese archers and my cheese spearmen and with a few champions roll over the world and insisting to my wife that this makes me a big man (she remains unconvinced).

This is something I have brought up too. But here's the thing: Do you WANT dwarves and lizards because you want to see different visuals? Or because you want races you relate to or because you want them to play differently? Don't say "all of the above" since that's a cop out.  But what specifically are you looking for?

The Empire of Yithril ARE elves. Even Tolkien hated using the term Elves. They were the Noldor and Sylvan. Elves are just what men called them.  The beings of Yithril are Quendar which are basically demon elves.  

I'm not sure how to respond to this.  It is a visual thing? The spells in FE are certainly as varied or more than your typical RPG let alone a fantasy strategy game.  I can only go by what MOM or HOMM or AOW does. FE's spells are easily as varied (We have a print out of MOM's spell list here which served as our source for a lot of spells). So maybe it's a visual thing.

 

That's reasonable.  On the other hand, I hope you understand that our focus is going to be on the people who voted Fair or above.  Someone who thinks Beta 2 is "poor" is likely looking for something so different than what we are envisioning that there's not a lot of incentive to put resources to winning them over. 

They're units in the game. In my game anyway. God knows what's in beta 2. That's like, 3 weeks ago.

Hm.  I can't pretend to speak for the masses but I want races/factions which PLAY differently.  I couldn't give two figs for what they look like.  (Yea, yea I know so much is driven by eye candy...)  And, although in the end it's irrelevant, I don't want stereotypes - dwarves, elves, orcs, etc. - because that will just cause artificial limitations on getting some interesting differences going in the factions.

Right now I know there are (some) differences but I don't feel it - meaning that they are all too trivial in most circumstances.

Brad, I hope that although you will listen to comments to glean good ideas and get a sense of where problems are, you will let Kael stick to his vision and make the game as he thinks it should be. I say this because E:WoM left me totally cold but FE has me in its grip so i think the man has a clue as to what he's doing. It's a thousand times better and more fun already than the previous game. Sure, there are some issues that need to be cleaned up and diplomacy needs serious work but overall its a blast to play already. Don't let the masses derail the vision with comments that half the masses wouldn't agree with anyway. If you do that you're chasing smoke.

For me the races are different enough visually where that's a total non issue. I think it would be enough differentiation to give each race a unique signature unit that the others don't have. You could extend this to a unique tech, a unique spell, a unique building for each race. That would differentiate each nicely and make for different play strategies for each. It might be too late for that now so consider it for the next expansion.

But even if you don't differentiate races any more than they are, I still think the game will still be a success as long as you don't take the fun elements out that have been added. Don't make it bland again for the sake of balance. Balance means nothing in single player. If one race is a little stronger then fine, it's a good race to play for those new to the game. One race a little weaker? That's great because then it's a challange to play for the experienced players. Some items and spells a little overpowered? Fine, those can be a blast if you're lucky enough to find or get one for that game. Look at MoM for your model. The key is to have enough diversity and content in items and quests where every game plays differently depending on what you're dealt. Part of the key to making it all fun is to have the AI use all those things when it finds them. That's kind of where you come in. God bless you in your holy work.   

P.S. I pray that the next patch will be a stability patch. 0.86 is really crashy right now.

I am finding the very linear path of tech progression a little not so flavorful as well.  Perhaps the tech tree can be expanded/branched so depending on what very early techs you pick (and their order) this rules out or includes some specific mid & high (end game) techs same should go for magic.  Maybe if I research one area it voids my ability to learn another.  That way your early choices are very impactful on late game play and strategy.  i.e. I spend the majority of my time learning weapons and armor techs early on, this pushes me into a war lord culture and thus I can never learn better research buildings then the initial library.  So my opponents who spend time early on building and learning later can out pace me with tech...??? something like that anyway.  Would definitely make me think a little harder when I want a big pointy stick but also would like to have a population that can read later on and make me a bazooka.

Aside from that I am liking the game so far but have not played too much yet.  Two thumbs up!  I give it a good.

Voted fair a while back.

Right now upon nearing completetion of my first game of .86 I have to wonder something.......

Is it me or are units way too lethal? Its almost all about "first-hit, first to victory".....everything instantly dies almost, even if you armor up.

Another thing is that the game is crash-a-holic on a massive scale. Seems to happen the most when I click on resources, such as mines, etc. Seems like a its a audio file issue I hope the auto report from the crash window are reaching you guys...I'd love the stability to go back to .75s relative awesomeness compared to crashing once every 20 turns that I have now.

This actually might work well. Have only 3 hugely differentiated factions, but keep a large selection of leaders, also with their own traits.

Empire of Yithril ARE elves

Idea: If so, allow elves to move through forest terrain in combat battles.  In tactical battles give the Yithril a dodge bonus when they are in a forest tile. When they emerge from the tactical forest tiles they lose that dodge bonus. Allow no ranged attacks from a tactical forest tile. I.e. Yithril Elves in light armor can move through forest tiles but can't make ranged attacks (magical or archer) while in a forest tile. Other races can't move through forest tiles in tactical battles.

I would find spells more satisfying if there were more spells that affected the battle in "dramatically" different ways and researchable spell branches (books) that open up new spell choices (yep, I liked that from WOM).

• Tactical Summoning Spells that summoned creatures to fight for you.
• Control Breaking Spells - that affect summoned creatures
• Terrain Altering Spells
• Vision Altering Spells

Example: Summon Spider Swarm, Turn Summoned (take control of summoned creature), Downpour (Sudden rainstorm reduces line of sight and attack range for all units to 2 tiles), Earth Wall - Temporary Wall of Earth, Earth Maze, Wall of Fire, Flood Land (armored units can't move through flooded tiles), Summon Bears, etc.

I'd agree; I think one of the things missing from decision making when building troops is a cheap and plentiful army vs smaller but elite/expensive.  Something like this could balance it out and insert that sort of dynamic.  I'd also long term like to see weapon and armor types feeling different and needing different strategies when used, but that's my wishlist.

On the visuals - I was thinking that one thing that might help is just a more dynamic tactical camera, like in HOMM, or Disciples.  When I zoom in close enough to actually see the art on an ogre, or watch the animations, or see that great new armor or sword my champ equipped, I think it looks pretty cool.  Spells also look neater up close.  But then the battle camera snaps around so much, and doesn't focus on the action well, so it doesn't feel useable at all with that level of zoom.  So I go to far overview, and miss all the art, but can play.  Which I think is unfortunate, since there is good stuff there.  I just don't see any of it because of the camera mechanics.

Thanks for your earlier post Devon v, excellent points...

Great idea, Edwin99! Also, tribute payments over time like ship leases in GC2. So I can buy some breathing room from those aggressive neighbors who might get distracted by gobbling up another player while I develop my forces.  The game needs more randomness in techs, spells and tactical battle maps. 

Let certain races start with water walking, mountaineering, pass w/o trace (Tarth?) past hostile monsters, are wraiths able to sneak into my capital and steal a tech or magic spell?  Let a race start with horseback riding and give them a nomadic feeling and great horse archers, but they must trade for metal...  as they rarely get the chance to research mining techs.

Spell research/mechanics:  I can't research fire magic past level 1 without at least one shard, more shards = faster fire spell research.  That would make them more valuable and mebbe if I take an enemy's fire shards, he can no longer use fireballs against my armies, just a flame dart at base power.

Let polearmed troops get an attack of opportunity on units that attack a unit adjacent to them.  Give us a reason to NEED a composite army of fast skirmishers and heavy footmen.

Combat magic should be about spells from different schools vying for battlefield superiority:

Let archers hide and snipe from forested squares, taking reduced damage from ordinary units, but let fire elementals and fire spells get critical damage modifiers for setting fire to said square.  Let my water mage counter by casting Downpour, quenching my archers and possibly destroying the fire elemental. 

The opposing life mage could then animate x number of trees based on number of life shards and have the squad of trees attack my archers, I cast earth spell Petrify and creat a National Park. 

Let the sites of some epic battles become diplo capital and prestige sites to build monuments on, solidifying their place in the lore of my awesome fantasy world.

Then let me start a new game and discover new combinations of spells and techs...