OK, I voted good because the fun factor was greater compared to the last beta. I like how the game is shaping up as it goes.

I read only the first 2 pages, but I have to agree with those that said they haven't noticed decisions empire-wise to have much weight. I'll go as far as to say that for me, there was no need to make those decisions. I blame this to how strong your sovereign and champions quickly become.

I played a normal and a challenging game on large maps. In both cases, I focused on giving my sovereign and champions all the +exp traits as I could, as early as I could, while taking as many goody huts and killing as many mobs as I could. So after a short time, they were far above anything the AI could manage to stop. In the meantime, I didn't have to worry about teching up (I went for whatever I thought was cool, but never had a real impact on the game), choosing what to build in my cities (I built whatever was available, but never a unit other than maybe a pioneer, given that my army of heroes was all I needed), or the economy/mana... I had excess in all those areas (I enchanted my heroes and cities but my empire had many, many shards and since I had lots cities and resources and no units to maintain, my treasury was more than wealthy).

I think this problem overshadows those mentioned like expansion having no drawbacks (which I also belive to be true), because they really don't emerge playing that way.

That said, and even though I enjoy going for the champion route and would probably do it anyway, that the units you can build seem bland to me doesn't help disuading me to do otherwise. They appear too unidimensional as opposed to how versatile and interesting heroes are. Take, for example, how AoW or Civ treats units. They gain levels like in this game, but as they do, they also gain traits and become not only more powerful, but also more interesting and versatile. In Civ, you can even "upgrade" them so they don't become obsolete later in the game (which is something I think this game direly needs). Now, you could argue that this is a strategy game and not a role playing game and you don't want to treat units as pseudo-champions, and that's fine. But so long as units are not perceived as a necessity (or you impose it somehow), then heroes will continue to dominate.

I have not played it yet... After reading posts on this forum seems to little has change and that makes me not want to quit the game I am playing right now to try this one out. I have so little time to play with three kids at homeand a full time job that if Ia game is to attract my attention a few things must be present or rather evident.

In Gal Civ in each game you always had to analyse the game to see which techs you should learn. In this game it's always the same dang thing.

Tech 1 tech 2 tech 3...

Build tons of cities... and you don't need to defend them because once you clear the area nothing ever comes back to haunt you. And unless you are careless no opponents will cme back from your behind. Therefore all you need is 2 good armies and in this game that means you soveright and an hero and boom game over nothing can kill you. Why is the main char so over powered? Is it just balancing or intent?

Like so many other people said before, if your decision always equal the same answer then the questions become meaningless. Why pose the question at all. If on the other hand you are posing a questions than the answer should always be different in everygame that you play. IN twilight of Arnor every questions had a diffrenty answer from one game to the other. Not so in this game.

Build city train a hero and go for it. 90% chance  of winning the game. This could be the walkthrough.

I could tell you your game as many nice things in it it does... but if When I play the game all I have to do is this simple I prefer twilight of arnor IT'S much harder more enternaining and why more diversified.  each game is different. This game needs this flavor.

Good luck

Very simple solution to city spam.

Increase the cost of pioneers 10 fold. If you have to take a city out of production 20-50 turns to increase your resources, then those resources better be well worth getting. It would make building (and protecting) pioneers an actual choice with definate downsides. The effect would be even more obvious at the beginning of the game, when you have very little lee-way with what you can produce. Also it might have the knock on effect of stopping the AI spamming them in all their armies.

Voted Good:  Overall liking direction of the beta

What I really like

• factions are starting to feel different from eachother - this should be continued
• The Fire/Earth/Ice books that are randomly available each game - consider a late game version based on what you had ie, book two of the 'ice' series if you had the first one?  Is there a way to make it so there are these types of unique research projects but you don't know if they'll be available until later in the game?
• Stability.  I know I'm speaking for myself - but I've got 20 hours in on Beta 3 and only one crash.
• Graphics, getting better
• Speed, game seems faster for the most part. 

What I feel needs improving

• Incentive/Disincentive for city spam.  I still don't see why I wouldn't pump out a throng of cities.. maybe we start tieing units to specific buildings?  Maybe a blacksmith is needed for building my mid or high level units?  Not sure. 
• Kind of feels like playing chess except instead of having the normal chess set, I have two or three 'queens' and the only other pieces are pawns.  My heroes are roaming death dispensers and most of the buildable units suck, but are training wheels for getting the heroes high enough exp that they can go it on their own.
• Customization of existing troops.  A unit is made and is on foot, once I discover horse riding can I put those units on horse?  Or how about add another member to their squad?
• Each spell level should offer one more additional spell.  What I mean is for arch mage of fire magic I would like something better than two very situational spells.  Where's meteor swarm again? 
• AI seems relaxed - but I haven't tried harder settings yet.
• After the wildlands bosses are dead I would like it to be settleable.  If I can kill the great big guy in the cutscene, I'd like to avoid chasing all over hells half acre for one or two shrills who are keeping the entire area unsettled.  At the very least their lairs should stop spawning after the boss is gone.
• Enemies shouldn't be so eager to cross my land.  I hate seeing other races pioneers just ripping by... "Oh don't mind Magnar, he's cool with us going to build a city on the other side of his boundaries... I'm told he actually has to see us crossing, then schedule a meeting with the leader, then request we leave.."

For the most part though, I am enjoying the game's progress and I think it's on the right track.

As a BETA I voted Good, if it were a finished game I would have voted fair to poor. Considering how much great work you have done over these past months and that we still have several months to go before launch of the game I´m very happy with this game

Not considering the changes you already have planed for, my only concern is that I never see any need for training armies for the first 100 rounds or so (not considering pioneers or scouts). Your war tech are not high enough to produce anything but cannon fodder and your heroes are way way better in the early stages. And you can´t really focus on war tech in the beginning since you don´t have a big population (= slow research).
For me this tends to make early to mid game a game without armies and only heroes until my tech is high enough, and by then my heroes are very high level...

Maybe early war tech should be cheaper to research? Any thoughts?

I thinks it's very very good, and by far the best fun i've had playing elemental in any guise. I'm particularly looking forward to the end of city snaking. But I think this poll is pretty meaningless. More useful feedback can be had on the forums.

The main problem with the AI is that it simply cannot deal with an army moving from your city to theirs and conquering it in 5 turns, which in a game as long as this, is basically no time at all. And to be honest I think the player would struggle with this as well if the AI was good enough to do it themselves. This has been the biggest problem since the WoM beta. The game rules need some basic adjustment so that this simply no longer happens.

I've made a thread

Voted Fair.

The AI seems to have gotten its IQ decreased since last beta. It's not attacking anymore.

I can wipe out everyone and everything with my sov and some champs. There's very little point in training units, which is kind of sad because the unit design is a very unique feature that this game has.

City building and tech tree are just in the game because they have to be. They add little, if any, entertainment.

My suggestion is, take the boring and underdeveloped parts of the game (city building and tech tree) and make them have more impact on the fun parts (quesing, combat, exploration, wildlands). Examples: Buildings that lets you recruit monsters = fun. Buildings that give +0.5% in some stat = boring. Techs that gives you access to higher level heroes and quests = fun. Techs that enable alliances = wtf.

Sovereigns are super-powered.  Played a game last night where Ceresa got so strong she pretty much walked through armies single-handedly.  Dirge of Ceresa+ Spell Resistance so counterspells won't work= GGPO.

 I really don't know how to or if heroes can be fixed without nerfing them into boredom though.

I voted good.

It's fun to explore, build and eventually conquer in a fantasy world filled with life. Thats cool.

I think though that the discussion Frogboy had about the decisions and how they should matter is important. City/outpost spamming in peace time, whilst leveling your sovereign to godlike status, is really the only way to go right now. And then later game I don't need all the fancy units any more because my heroes are that tough.

Steamrolling with your hero has always been a problem with this type of game. MOM had the same problem, however it only happened near the end of the game because it took a long time to level him to god like.

In this game it can be done by turn 100 or so. After that the other 400 turns are just moping up.

I voted fair. While I understand it is still a beta I feel like BETA 3 is not a big improvement over BETA 2. There are still lots of bugs and balancing issues. A lot of the obvious bugs remained from BETA 2 so to me that doesn't bode well. You guys might be saving the polishing for last but I work in software development myself and I know very well that even so it means things will never be as polished as you want them to be when it comes to down to crunch time.

After playing CIV V and HOMM VI extensively the past year, their UI's just seem to have so much more polish. Everything seems to just work. In FE we have lots of UI and grapphics issues still. My biggest one being multiple events/pop-ups firing off at the beginning of the turn and the UI just going crazy trying to keep up. Often times zooming in on the wrong thing.

But hey it is unfair comparing finished products to a beta so I will be following things extensively and am hoping for the best! I know the finished product is a long ways away. This is just one of the dangers of such an open and long beta phase--us vocal complainers! ;) Keep up the awsome work guys!

Again nobody reacted to what I said *sigh* maybe if I scream E:FE stinks ! Someone will react ?

Spells are the main part of the game and what should get the most attention ! And right now there are a lot of spells that just don't give that fun feeling even if getting better ! Earth doesn't give me any kind of fun and dont tell me that playing with the raise/lower land is fun because you get tired of it quickly ! 

I think the AI works well, even if not perfect it's not a human so for an AI it's pretty good the rest excluding the crash works wonder IMHO. I don't see why the city building and the settlers system should change, it was like that in MOM and worked well, you built even more in MOM IMHO. 

I just didn't see/try road system, if there's not, one is really needed !

Im happy with most of what poeple complain about !

But races and spells needs more work ! Please keep most of what you have in game or continue to go with your views, I like it a lot ! (please read previous post)

To get roads between cities you need to research "trading", roads to outposts are a little further out in the tree, forget which tech specifically.

Played the beta for the first time ever last night expecting a souped-up version of E:WoM that might kill a half-hour or so till I got bored. Stopped playing 7 hours later. Only the lack of enemy faction aggression when at war stood out as a major weakness (They were happy to throw spells at my city tho). Lair monsters seem to be oddly passive towards other factions also especially when cities built near them. Attackers having a chance to retreat (based on move and initiative maybe) would perhaps make them more likely to chance it.

The problem is that the effects scale too much:

- High level character with 150+ accuracy hits most enemies

- High level character with 80+ spell resistance is immune to many spells

- High level character with warlock and evoker traits inflicts too much damage

Solution: Reduce the scaling and the power of some traits in Fallen Enchantress

Just a reminder to some people: Default AI difficulty is now Easy instead of Normal.

That might be what I missed too... let me see what the AI is on...

But I don't think the Champions need to be reduced in power the AI just needs to be able to level them better and equip them with the top gear they can faster so when you fight them they have some teeth.  I do like the changes so far though.  I voted fun.

At higher levels the AI does a lot more with champions and and sovereigns.  But at easy, which again, is the new default, they don't do nearly as much since it'd designed to be easy.

My verdict: Ripe for abandonment.

Still a total lack of immersion. (just read 80% of the posts in this thread to see I am not alone with this)
And I fear it will be so at release.

I see no difference in this title compared to the last one when i comes to gameplay and immersion.
You might have sprused up graphics and added a few variables, but you are still using the same concept, the same engine and above all, the same people.
How on earth would the product be any better?

Yes there has been "big" names involved like Schafer, Blibber, Blasker and Blobb.
But it seems to me that they have added nothing but their names and expenses to the project.

------

It must be what Frogboy stated earlier - this is obviously not a game for me.
And here is why:

I wish games to be an escape from everyday boredom.
Not another boring Element(al).

Hmmm, i have played two games on hard and one game on ridiculous. On hard i noticed no difference, but on ridiculous the AI improves the troops, but i guess it has enough ressources on that setting to compensate for the city and unit spam.

Okay, I just turned up the AI and the former strategy did not work out so well. So I guess the Sov is OP, but the decisions DO matter more as the game gets more difficult.

Then why not do both yourself and us a favorite and go away?  

I would just like to say that most posters here who post constructive criticism stick around because they like Elemental. You on the other hand are a troll.

Brad relax, the game is coming along fine. Still tons of time until release to iron out the issues. I think you are letting the criticism get to you, but mostly that criticism is just to make the game even better.

I am playing dense monsters and challenging. Seems like the AI is doing no real warring. Mayhaps I have not played enough yet, but when the AI declare war they dont seem to back it up with units anymore. In previous versions they spammed me with armies.

I have never understood why game forums seem to draw so much vitriol... I think the game is coming along nicely. Although I haven't played it enough to give it a rating...