Elemental: Fallen Enchantress Beta 4 Preview

Yes! Gimme gimme gimme.

Great stuff!

Looks good, but what's with always rushing into the enemies tactical attack zone. It's so much smarter to wait just outside it so you get first strike.

Yeah, especially with squishy but high damage units like wolves.  You might want to tweak the auto-AI code for that too (but it would probably still be a good idea for fights against Monsters and Ruffians to have them advance maximum number of spaces even though the human's auto-AI-controlled units wouldn't).

Also my pet peeve, the sound effect when you pick up treasure that sounds like breaking glass is still there. It's almost as annoying as the "creaking door" noise when you pick treasure. Neither of these make any sense and irritate me enough to make me hate picking up goodie huts.

If they were in context, sure. So if you have the creaking door noise when you find a goodie hut that's an abandoned wooden building, it's ok. But when you find an abandoned wagon and it sounds like you just dropped and expensive ming vase, it ruins the immersion.

double post

"Also my pet peeve, the sound effect when you pick up treasure that sounds like breaking glass is still there. It's almost as annoying as the "creaking door" noise when you pick treasure. Neither of these make any sense and irritate me enough to make me hate picking up goodie huts.

If they were in context, sure. So if you have the creaking door noise when you find a goodie hut that's an abandoned wooden building, it's ok. But when you find an abandoned wagon and it sounds like you just dropped and expensive ming vase, it ruins the immersion."

+1

Also the same old, repeating and annoying combat sounds are still there. That same "ugh!" every humanoid makes when it takes damage, from WoM.

But I guess that's what Beta 5 is for. Otherwise, looking very very good.

Some tactical notes:

-Don't send in Anna on the first turn. It is better to leave her out of range on the flank. Send in your Sov. 

-You then cast slow. Fine, but you followed up with killing that unit. A better choice would be to attack the one without a spell on him.

I guess you were more focused on the demo than efficiency, but I want you to get as good as possible for when multiplayer comes out. There should be a "Play the Frog Day" to celebrate MP opening. 

I see I was not the only one noticing the silly autocombat choices

Was I the only one who noticed the combat displacement of heroes on the small tiles visual bug? ^^

Looks decent, Would be really really awesome if you guys put in some extra sounds for different parts of the game! just a stray though.

now... Gimme gimme gimme

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

(heh, edited:)

"Also my pet peeve, the sound effect when you pick up treasure that sounds like breaking glass is still there. It's almost as annoying as the "creaking door" noise when you pick treasure. Neither of these make any sense and irritate me enough to make me hate picking up goodie huts.

If they were in context, sure. So if you have the creaking door noise when you find a goodie hut that's an abandoned wooden building, it's ok. But when you find an abandoned wagon and it sounds like you just dropped and expensive ming vase, it ruins the immersion."

+2

It's clearly the sound of you smashing barrels to reveal the treasure. Haven't you ever played Zelda?

But seriously, greater variety to the soundtrack (particularly in combat, the same sounds every time you strike get old quick) would be great, although I expect that's part of the beta 5 'polish'. Beta 4 is still about some pretty fundamental changes to the gameplay.

It looks great and i think it will be much more fun than beta 3.

The feedback in tactical combat should be reduced to four types in my opinion:

- Miss: The attacker misses the target

- Resisted: The attacker hits the target, but the weapon or spell has no effect

- x: The attacker hits the target and inflicts x points of damage

- Critical x: The attacker hits the target with a critical hit and inflicts x points of damage

Cool.

There is not a lot of strategy in tactical combat right now but what exists is totally ignored by the AI. If you have more movement then the enemy you should not be ending your turn within their strike zone, stay just outside of it so you get first strike next turn. High movement units can also run up the flanks to threaten their ranged units. Really damaged units that belong to actual players should avoid combat so that they have a chance to survive and grow levels. Brad has mentioned he doesn't like the AI retreating it's ranged units but I think it's fine as long as the AI still has some melee units. Maps are small enough that it's impossible to really pull with ranged units anyway. It's disappointing when every tactical fight is just the AI running up the middle in a disadvantageous headlong rush at me. The AI seems to like heavy damage but low armor units and since they always rush up the middle and give me first strike I can easily focus fire and wipe out those glass cannons in that first turn. That's a huge advantage when I'm facing the AI, huge. Even if the armored units stopped a tile ahead of the glass cannons it would prevent me from focusing on them.

Great stuff, you have really polished the visuals.

I especially like the new font in TC!

I notice that Frogboy builds an iron mine and crystal mine almost immediately. In Beta 3 that would be a bad idea if they went into the city build queues, because there's nothing to spend those resources on. I wonder if we will get new early-game items that actually use those resources now?

Also, doesn't the ogre use blunt damage? Stoneskin should not help you anything against an ogre because they do blunt damage only.

I liked how the icon for the city overlay on the strategic map changed after you selected "town" as upgrade. A neat detail.

The first time I really noticed this is while I watched the video. I thought "Wow, that sound is annoying, what sound can I replace it with.

BTW, the sound is called "Found_Jewels1" if anyone wants to replace it.

Awesome. Love the amount of official posts coming out at the moment. I have played beta 3 since I found that the pillar of fire breaks the game - I hope that has been fixed. Can't wait for beta 4 to come out.

It sounds like a bad sound effect from Windows 95.

Interesting, Brad.  I wonder if you can show us a diagram or help page on the ways cities can now exclusively develop.  I think we're all interested in how Essence will play out, too.

It's the same sound effect that's always been in there for that.  Feel free to suggest a different one and I'll pass it on to Derek.

Other odd choice I noticed was grouping champions. Isn't this something you *never* want to do until you're in a really tight spot because there is such a cost to xp? Or has that changed in Beta 4? Or was I always wrong?

Yay more videos! Also, the wolf didn't use its ability during auto-combat. Some neutral monsters also miss opportunities to use their ability as well, please look into this.

I think the sound effect is fine, it sounds like treasure to me.