Fallen Enchantress: Beta 4A scheduled for today

Just as we did with Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, the late stage betas of Elemental: Fallen Enchantress will be appearing on third-party digital distribution channels such as Steam and Impulse (GameStop PC Downloads).

We anticipate (but don’t promise) that the betas should go live on those services by this evening, EST.

For those of you just joining us, here’s  a video walkthrough:

For those of you in the beta already, here’s what’s new over Beta 4:

Features

• Added the Road Building unit design ability (Mancer only, Mancer Pioneer's start with it)
• Added the Road Building champion ability (requires Path of the Governor)
• Cities get 10% Unrest penalty if they aren't connected to the capital's ZoC
• New spell display when you mouseover spell perks on the levelup screen
• New Tactical Combat screen
• Auto-turn will no longer activate if you have an idle city
• Added the Arcane Veil spell (strategic, unit enchantment, the unit resists all spells)
• Added the Diamondskin spell (tactical, makes the unit immune to all physical damage for 5 turns)
• Added the Glory spell (raises faction prestige by 1, can be cast multiple times)
• Added the Heart of Fire spell (city enchantment, all units traied in this city get bonus fire attack)
• Added the Kill spell (high casting cost and casting time, victim has to save or die)

Fixes

• Memory fixes/optomization
• Fixed an issue with the Haunter quest
• Fixed an issue with Arneson not having a weapon
• Fixed an issue causing Alchemy Labs to give extra materials
• Fixed an issue where Slave Pens didn't have the benefits of earlier improvements
• Fixed an issue where melee attack effects (like poison) were applied even if the attack missed
• Fixed a 0 labor cost on Ereog's Tower
• Fixed the Guild Gorcer
• Added a default skin color to the monster faction so units spawned on quests aren't white
• Fixed an issue causing improvement auto-placement to sprawl out in a single direction instead of wrapping around the city
• Fixed an issue allowing players to skip movement costs if they right clicked in the tile during movement
• Fixed deadlock issues
• Fixed stuck turn problem caused by animation not syncing with moveable status
• Fixed bug where units would be running in place at the end of a turn
• Fixed bug where AI units would just be standing there running in place
• Fixed bug where a monster would be running to another tile when the player attacked
• Fixed the crash bug in tactical battles where the opposing unit had no defense
• Fixed path finding bug where a unit would move through a resource improvement (destroying it) to get to what was on the other side
• Re-did turns so that AI players move 1 player at a time (instead of all at once) which improves frame rate and eliminates weird chasing
• Fixed bug that caused a unit to think it was done moving before its animation was complete
• Fixed an issue where ruffians lair upgraded to umberdroth lairs
• Fixed some missing category issues on some spells
• Fixed an issue causing Ai only units to show up in the tech tree
• Fixed a crash in the tutorial
• Fixed crash related to the build queue being updated from multiple threads
• Fixed lockup due to multiple threads hogging the resource semaphore too long
• Fixed crash due to multiple threads looking at the resource improvement costs at the same time
• Fixed crash due to multiple threads counting the # of outposts for a given player.
• Units of the same player will pass through one another in path finding rather than try to go around
• Units will pass through friendly foreign player caravans.
• Path finding generally improved
• General performance improvements (update processes moved to twice a second instead of every frame)
• Fixed an issue with corrupted saves
• Path finding fixes
• Fixed an issue where Inspiration and Meditation wouldn’t update if the city gained more Essence

Balance

• Removed maintenance from some improvements
• Reduced the labor cost on the Towers of Sorcery
• Increased the Archivist to +50% research when the city is idle instead of +20%
• Guild Lendinghouse gives 200 Gildar when it is constructed instead of interest
• Added a 2nd level upgrade to warg kennels and stables that provides more wargs/horses
• Increased the Scroll Scribe research bonus form +10% to +20%
• Added a reward to the Diseased Livestock quest
• Reduce the mana cost of the Avarice spell
• Increased the effect of the Destiny's Gift spell
• Sweep now does the units full attack in damage instead of half (and the cooldown is increased form 3 to 5)
• Aliiance tech doesn't require Economics anymore
• Reduced the research cost of Education, King of the Wastes and Literacy
• Administration tech requires Knowledge
• Lombard Desert wildland now requires Torax to be killed instead of clearing the goodie huts
• Increased the free defenders on Villages
• Limited the Theater of the Wind to 1 per faction (and fixed the icon on it)
• Sovereign's Call is now available form the beginning (instead of requiring Sorcery)
• Nature's Bounty now requires Sorcery
• Default difficulty is Easy instead of Normal
• Occupation Unrest will drop to 0 if it's given enough time
• Increased distance from starting location requirement on more powerful monster lairs
• Increased damage on Blizzard
• Burning Hands does 8 (+4 per fire shard) damage instead of the casters level (+4 per fire shard)
• Increased damage on Touch of Entropy
• Increased the level 1 spell rank abilities form 1 to 2 cost in sovereign customization
• Inspiration does 2 research per essence instead of 1
• Reduced the value of influence during wartime from 100X normal to 10X normal
• Wage Mulitplier now affects the turns required to train a unit for different group sizes
• Rebalanced metal costs on weapons (generally down)
• Takes less XP to go up levels
• XP from monsters is now relatively greater than the XP players get from other players
• Frostborn trait gives -3 init to units that are struck instead of -1
• Ice Elementals lose the ability to cast Slow and gain the Frostborn trait instead
• Darkling and Wilding camps give 3 units instead of 5
• Reduced the init of the Elemental lords
• Horses increase init by 3, dodge vs ranged by 25 (instead of 15) and gives 2 moves (instead of 1)
• Wargs give +6 init (instead of +3, and +10 dodge (instead of +5)
• Reduced the casting cost of Antipathy and Wall of Fire
• Sacrifice gives 1 mana per pop sacrificed (instead of 1 mana per 2 pop sacrificed)
• Increased the attack on the Shadow Dagger and the Sharp Dagger

AI

• AI less likely to build pioneers and instead focus on improving cities
• AI less likely to declare war on player after peace is made
• AI now takes into account essence when deciding where to build a city
• AI is less likely to offer a non-aggression pact to a player of a different alignment
• AI more likely to upgrade their equipment
• AI more aggressive about building research improving city improvements
• AI fixed bug that caused AI to build pioneers instead of city defenders
• AI a bit less likely to declare war on player
• AI more likely to pay others to declare war on those at war with them
• AI more likely to surrender
• AI now razes city when they surrender (scorched earth)
• AI will value player influence more when evaluating relations
• Wargs cost more to trade
• AI values its money more when it has less of it when it is trading
• AI values influence more during trading
• Influence now greatly affects the overall value of things in trading (the more you have, the better the deal you can cut)
• Horses valued a lot more in trading
• Knowledge now valued significantly more during trading
• AI a bit smarter regarding expansion
• AI hooked up to new city enchantment system
• AI a LOT smarter about determining what spells it should cast and when

Cosmetic

• Fixed the provides tag on Earth Mage
• Lots of new sfx when discovering goodie huts
• Improved the quest desc on the Dragongate quest
• Fixed lots of spell descs to have + in the bonus
• Fixed lots of typos
• Added sage hints for the Henchmen, Juggernauts, Spellsbooks and Immortal Codex techs
• Updated the Siege Weapons tech desc
• New tile design added
• New Drake textures
• Added V/O to the intro for all the default sovereigns
• Defending units don't move between an attack and a backswing
• Main menu displays total play time
• Save games display the total tiem that game was played
• Victory screen shows the total play time of that game
• Clicking on a resource shows a line to the attached city
• Unit dots on Empire tree now color coded (purple = sovereign, green = pioneer, red = normal unit, yellow = champion)
• Glow color of cities on empire tree color coded. Green means city is growing. Dark means it has reached its max population.
• Glow color of units on empire tree color coded. Green means they have moves left. Dark means they don't.
• When foreign cities are conquered, the player is notified
• Opposing player explains why they won't accept tribute
• Fixed bug that caused mouse clicks to be lost when a player clicked an item on the empire tree or unit in a city
• Edge scrolling made smoother
• Empire tree colors brighter
• Fixed that annoying double click sound when opening the train unit window
• Changed and reprioritized some actions (attack isnt in the unit list anymore, rename comes before raze in the city list)

Screenshots

We’ve improved the overall visual performance (plus lots of bug fixes from beta 4)

We’ve tweaked the pioneering system to encourage more thoughtful expansion (beta 4B will do more in this area)

Started implementation of more tool tips on level up screens.

New tactical battle screen provides hot key support, context sensitive attack analysis.