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FE: Promises, promises

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FE: Promises, promises

from JoeUser Forums

For those of you new to Stardock’s games, let me say, welcome! We’re glad you’re here!

For those of you who are veterans, thanks for hanging out with us.

I want to make sure users are fully aware, because it comes up sometimes, that we have intentions/plans for many things and on the other hand we have promises/requirements/obligations.

The former means, we intend to do something but it is not a guarantee. The latter means, yes, it’ll be in there.

Let’s start for the promises for FE:

  1. It won’t be released until we are happy with it.  Now, truth be told, I was pretty happy with WOM.  I was, as many may recall, working 100+ hours per week for the entire Summer before it was released.  With Derek in charge, I can go back to my traditional Executive producer role (ala GalCiv and Sins of a Solar Empire and to a lesser extent Demigod) which usually involves me pooping on the game for months prior to release and telling everyone internally how terrible the game is. I much prefer to distribute the insults rather than aborb them.
  2. The campaign will be good and engaging.
  3. The randomly generated maps will include randomly generated continents. WOM had randomly generated maps on pre-built continents.
  4. There will be a lot of spells. I don’t know what the final count will be. But they will be interesting, important, and exciting.
  5. There will be a lot of soul to the game. The players will talk to you in interesting ways. There is a lot of backstory for pretty much everything.
  6. There will be a lot more quests. There’s a ton of quests in FE. And unlike in WOM, where the quests were virtually all written by me in the middle of the night in the final several weeks (don’t ask me why I had to write these…) these quests are a collaboration between fantasy author David Stern and Toby (associate producer).
  7. Tactical Battles are totally different than WOM. It’s all initiative based now. No more “rounds”. Eliminates a ton of potential cheese and makes magic and tactics matter more.
  8. EVERYONE who bought Elemental: War of Magic in 2010 will get FE for free. Automatically.

Now, let’s talk about intentions for FE:

  1. We intend for there to be spells with a casting time that can then be countered.  This is almost certain to make it in but we have not made it a “Requirement”.  It’ll be based on how “fun” they play out.
  2. We intend there to be multiplayer of up to 16 people. However, it is not a requirement. If it would result in a lot of resources being siphoned off from the single player experience or would, on its own, result in delaying the release, it’ll get cut.
  3. We intend to have vastly more modding abilities in than any game we’ve ever made.  Actually, this is more close to a promise because the game is almost exclusively XML driven because of the project management system (coders don’t implement game design, the producers do and it’s XML driven via spread sheets and such). The AI makes heavy use of this. 
  4. We intend to have a almost completely new sound track. This isn’t a promise. We’ve gotten a lot of new music and effects in and have put them in but we wouldn’t delay the game over making sure all the music and sound is new.
  5. We intend to have Fallen Enchantress at retail. But because we won’t commit to a release date, we can’t promise this.
  6. We intend to have significant faction differentiation. In War of Magic, the Empires all shared the same tech tree and the Kingdoms had their own. Other than that, each faction only had minor differences.  Now, all of the factions are humanoids (we don’t have a spider race, for instance) but we intend for each faction to look and play very differently. How successful we are on this will be in the eye of the beholder.  But we will be making a best effort here to make them as different as we can as budget allows (i.e. we’re not willing to push the date back so that we can have an insectoid race.
338,764 views 169 replies
Reply #151 from Elemental Forums Top

Back in the 80's, 1UPT was just about all there was.  All the Avalon Hill and SSI wargames were 1UPT--and these were on 5 1/4" disks, CPU's were measured in megahertz and memory in kilobytes.   I don't particularly remember the AI being any worse than it is today.   I think it was easier to deal with the AI than it was how to design the UI to handle stacks.   They didn't have a mouse and 3-D engines back then.

Reply #152 from Elemental Forums Top

Ah the 80s, a fine decade for strategy gaming... Anyway, everything scales, a lot of the early SSI games were done by 1 person, no team involved. Also, if you recall they released Wargame Construction kit eventually, which was essentially the engine they used to make more than a dozen games.

I think, since the artwork was minimal (back then, relative to today) a lot more emphasis was put on the AI.

Its nice to reminisce, I used to love the SSI game manuals, which contained all of the games combat algorithms.

Don't get me wrong, in actuality PC war/strategy gaming has never been better, since the large companies have moved on to greener pastures.

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #153 from Elemental Forums Top

IMHO wargaming at the tactical level has never been better than now, but it's because of RTS.  I remember for the longest time there was talk of putting Advanced Squad Leader to a computer game.  That was never going to happen--the rules for ASL were soooo complex, no one was ever seriously going to code that.  So some people looked into it (Atomic Games, I think?), and they just said to heck with it all, just do a squad-level RTS.  And along came Close Combat.  Totally awesome series.

At the strategic level, though, I tend to think the 80's were the golden age for battalion-level and up wargames.  No one's really come up with a better formula than good old counters, ZOC, and stuff.  Thus I think 1UPT's golden age was back then, too.

It's just surprising that nobody has seemed to just borrow the old 1UPT AI's and adapted it to their own games.  Maybe Ubisoft owns the rights to it?

Reply #154 from Elemental Forums Top

I dont know, I mean Steel Panthers basically is ASL. I beta tested an SSI game years ago (Soldiers at War, I think was the title). It was turn based tactical (think XCOM with better graphics and WWII equipment). I thought it was good, but it was a commercail failure. It was near the end of SSI, I thnk right around when they were bought out by Mindscape.

Anyway, Matrixgames alone has tons of good wargames, TB and RTS, add shrapnel, and battlefront and other lesser known developers and you can find just about anything.

I'm happy to see things like WOM and FE get made as there is such a market misconception when it comes to TB vs RTS (i.e. its TB, it must be slow and boring)

Of course for me it may be perception vs reality, I simply dont have enough time to try, much less actually get into and play all of the games I would like to. So, for me anyway, tons of choices.

Reply #155 from Elemental Forums Top

Wait guys so because I waited and bought Elemental War of Magic later, hoping that it would finally be a finished product (and still encountering such graphical bugs that made me spend several hours just to get the thing running) won't even get a discount because the game wasn't bought pre-2010? :(

 

I mean the game I bought wasn't very expensive at all considering it was a digital download. But then again it is still a game that I don't consider has left Beta. And I think you guys would agree with me on this one.

I sure hope that FE won't cost 50 dollars because then it's just plain unfair.


Regardless I wish you good luck and I'm sure it will be a nice piece of gaminghistory now that you have a technical base to stand on and can concentrate on the details, AI and fixing bugs.

Reply #156 from Elemental Forums Top

Hey you bought WoM knowing that it got terrible reviews by the fans and professionals. The 1.4 version is definitely worth what you paid and you were expecting more, then that was you own personal delusion. How is that unfair? The discounts and free copies are for people who were promised something else and got what we got. 

FE is a much larger project, and it will be a much better game, but you will still probably want to wait till it comes out to buy it. You might even want to wait till a discount is offered in a year. 

Reply #157 from Elemental Forums Top

https://forums.elementalgame.com/403846

Elemental: Fallen Enchantress is expected to be released in the Summer of 2011. It will be free to those who purchased Elemental: War of Magic in 2010 and be available at a significant discount for those who purchase War of Magic.

If you buy E:wom before FE is released, you'll get a discount for FE.

and here https://forums.elementalgame.com/412178

Fallen Enchantress will be free to all players who purchased War of Magic in 2010 and available for only $29.95 for users who purchased War of Magic this year.

Reply #158 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting seanw3, reply 130
I made a really sweet mod for GalCiv2:TA that featured 10 classic scifi races with nonlinear tech trees in that sense. I would say, with the mod, it is still the best TBS game I have ever played. Now if the 3rd one has tactical battles on par with FE, that all may change. It was just so easy to fine tune the game to my liking. 

The key to making GalCiv better turned out to be limiting the weapons to very low numbers, only giving two of the three to any given race, increasing ship hp by 1000%, and making defenses twice as strong as weapons. Doesn't have anything to do with this thread other than that it got me started on modding and will benefit all of you that buy the game. 

Wow I'm tempted to give GalCiv:TA another run.  Can you post a link to your mod please seanw3?

Reply #159 from Elemental Forums Top


I've been away from Elemental for quite some time now.  I pre-purchased the original game and waited oh-so-impatiently for it to be released.  It seemed to be everything I ever wanted in a game of this genre, and it was being made by STARDOCK--creators of the Galactic Civ and Sins series... some of the best PC games *ever* IMHO.  Of course, like most, I was completely dumbfounded when I began playing the game.  It just seemed completely disjointed... nothing flowed together at all.  I truly wondered if someone had accidentally sent an early, early beta version to the guys burning the DVDs instead of the final version.

I'm a big believer in Stardock, however, and followed along as they rushed to make things right.  I tried a few updates, but the whole game still seemed disjointed.  I was so disappointed with the whole experience that I wiped the game off of my drive and put the DVD on the shelf where it's been collecting dust ever since.

Fast-forward to today.  This is the first time I've signed in in a loooong time, and I see talk of Fallen Enchantress.  This begs a few questions, and I cannot seem to find the answers to them in the short amount of time I have to "goof off".  If someone could give me some input it would be greatly appreciated!

1) I did see the post on a Summer '11 release for FE, but this obviously did not happen.  To my surprise I can't seem to find an updated schedule, but did see the developer's post that it wouldn't be done until they're happy with it.  With that said, is there an estimated release date at this point, or do we have a typical Blizzard hype about a game that shows up 5 years later? (Are we looking at a Summer '12 release, or is it going to be a year or more from today?)

2) As a pre-purchaser of the original game, will I be able to play the beta of FE?  For that matter, is it out now?  I'm waaaay behind.

3) It sounds like FE is going to be almost a complete re-write in game mechanics.  If so, is it even worth reinstalling EWOM to get "warmed up" for FE?

4) This really doesn't fit this post, but I've got to ask... with the recent 1.4 update, is EWOM finally worth installing?  (I only ask because I have limited drive space on my SSD, and would likely have to uninstall something for it to fit).

Getting guardedly excited here, but it's hard to shake the monkey of EWOM off of my back. 

Reply #160 from Elemental Forums Top

A lot of things have changed since WOM.  FE Beta was postponed (but not indefinitely) because Stardock wanted it to be more ready to be received by testers and players.  A lot is riding on FE, even its first betas.  WOM 1.4 is a good play with Heavenfall's After the War mod and Expanded Factions and Artifacts sub-mods.  They make the game quite fun and add a good deal of polish, balance, variety and extra features.  The mods can be found in the WOM Mods Forum.

Reply #161 from Elemental Forums Top


Thanks so much!  I installed the game last night as well as all three mods.  I simply unzipped each mod into the root directory of the game, made sure the "use mods" box was checked in the "options" tab, but how do I know they are being used?  I played for several hours last night... very enjoyable, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around the game economics and especially the building portions of each city.  I never took the time to try to figure this out before, but I think this time around I'll delve into it and see what I can do.  For instance, I'm playing it on the easiest setting (so I could worry less about getting destryoed and more on game mechanics), and although I'm the highest-rated kingdon, I barely have enough money, population capacity or materials to make units, while my "opponents" are walking around with *huge* armies and could easily take each one of my cities one-by-one without stopping, if they chose.  I'm doing something wrong!  :-)

Reply #162 from Elemental Forums Top

For After the War, the files go into the install directory, over-writing any files that are there.  You might have extracted files there but not overwritten files.  If you have to pay Materials to build farms the After the War mod is not installed correctly.  The After the War mod changes the cost to build a Farm/Imperial Farm from Materials to Gildar, for starters. =)

For Expanded Factions and Artifacts sub-mods, extract each entire archive to:

Windows 7 and Vista-  "C:\Users\*YourUsernameHere*\My Documents\My Games\Elemental\Mods\"  (replace *YourUsernameHere* with your username)

Windows XP-  "C:\Documents and Settings\*YourUsernameHere*\My Documents\My Games\Elemental\Mods\"  (replace *YourUsernameHere* with your username)

They have to be installed in the operating system partition (as above) for them to be recognized by the game.  If they are they in the install directory they won't be read.

Try these suggestions out, and tell me how they went! =)  If you have the mods installed correctly (as above) and are still finding it hard, I can give you some gameplay tips.  But I don't think the mods are installed correctly on your computer currently.  If they are correctly installed, for starters, Farms will cost Gildar (After the War mod), there should be extra factions and Sovereigns to choose from when you start a game (Expanded Factions sub-mod) and there should be artifacts and mounts notable pickup locations (Artifacts sub-mod), and Dungeons, ie. single or multi-level tactical battle sequences, with rewards and difficulty based on tier (Artifacts sub-mod).

Reply #163 from Elemental Forums Top
  • I preordered E:WoM. I knew the risk I was taking and were still sore from Black and White(still am). Still, I decided to vote with my wallet, that there *is* a market for fantasy TBS. I will never lose hope of one day playing Forgotten Realms Total War or Sid Meier's Middle Earth.
  • In my opinion, WoM still isn't a very good game. It is choke full of unrealized potential and other design problems that Frogboy already mentioned. I'm very happy to receive FE for free, as I expect it those design problems to be addressed.
  • There should be more trolls on the forum. Frogboy still care what people are saying, and he shouldn't. People who post on the forums can probably find mods to fix their problems, the developer should aim to please the unheard masses.
Reply #164 from Elemental Forums Top

Well, I agree that base WOM could still be a lot better.

Don't worry.  The trolls will come out when the beta does.  But hopefully there will be some constructive criticism too.

Cheers,
Steven.

Reply #165 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting StevenAus, reply 164
Well, I agree that base WOM could still be a lot better.

Don't worry.  The trolls will come out when the beta does.  But hopefully there will be some constructive criticism too.

Cheers,
Steven.

FTFY.

Reply #167 from Elemental Forums Top

<Anxiously awaiting trolls> I have popcorn.

Reply #169 from Elemental Forums Top

The trolls will go hungry this Christmas.    :troll: