eobet

[1.02] My first experience with the game

▼

[1.02] My first experience with the game

from Elemental Forums
  1. There is seemingly no way to see which route a unit will take before you release the right mouse button. Similarly, I do now know how to see how many turns a movement order will take to complete (both before and after it has been issued). Also, I do not know how to see the range of my unit before moving (except in combat).
  2. The tutorial wanted me to lower the taxes. So I clicked on the first thing I could think of, which is the money symbol which got me to the economy screen where I was able to lower the tax rate. However, the tutorial didn't recognize this. Now I notice that there is a tax rate button on the main screen which I guess I was supposed to click. But really? You change taxes so often in this game that such a button is necessary to take up permanent space on the main screen?
  3. I picked up a tome which had a use, but I when I clicked there was no graphical effect or text explaining it to me. Now I know that I was supposed to hover over the image to get a tool-tip, but if that's the only place and only chance to get that information, why not just write it directly under the flavor text?
  4. I built a workshop. I know, because I see it in the city information screen. But if someone would look at my city on the map, they would only see a marketplace and an iron mine. I really hope this is a bug, because I don't know why some buildings would be visible while others are not.
  5. The "watch tutorial" text is sort of misleading. I haven't seen a movie yet, but I have seen text that was so short that it might as well have been displayed immediately without me having to click an extra time to see it.
  6. A hired NPC has a lot of strategic bonuses affecting cities. But is that in effect at all times or just when he is in the city? The game is unclear on this point.
  7. Sometimes there is a small white shield floating above units in tactical battle. I see no explanation for this anywhere.
  8. Someone named Ythril, with a pale blue color declared war on me. However, I don't know where he is on the map. There are two different blue faction borders and I see colored symbols with names within those borders, but no tool tip or any amount of clicking will let me know who whatever it is that is in there belongs to. When the colors are so similar, yet don't match the name, and no owner name is given on the settlements on the map, how am I supposed to know where the threat is coming from?
  9. Why doesn't the built-in help have a search? Essence is sporadically mentioned and I saw it in a loading screen (which went away too quickly) but I cannot find the explanation for it in the help!
  10. The expanded area of influence from building a monument doesn't appear immediately. For me, it first appeared only after I chose to build something else. I've seen similar delayed effects both in battle (monster health seemingly staying in place for an extended period) and during multiple pop ups (the first effect doesn't kick in until after you've closed the second and third popups... very confusing with trades, for example).
  11. Again, someone out of the blue says hello. How come, 20 years later, that no game still highlights where on the map the bloody guy who just spoke is
  12. The button for which to switch cities with will move depending on how many different types of buildings a city can produce. Having a button move from beneath your cursor is bad usability design.
  13. Regardless of if I right click or left click the event badge which tells me that a city has completed its task, I do not get transported to the city for selection of a new task. Why not add that convenience?
  14. I have a trade agreement with another ruler, which I can see in the diplomacy screen, but I cannot seem to find the economic benefits anywhere?
  15. When a settlement has grown, it would be nice if the options I have for improvement selection didn't cover the entire city, so that I could see more clearly which city I'm selecting an improvement for.
  16. On my third game, this Ythril character once again declared war on me and once again, I don't even see him on the map.
  17. This is an aesthetic thing, but the roads are very, very straight and the 45 degree sharp turns and roundabouts doesn't fit in with the setting of the game...
  18. Suddenly, I've encountered the opposite of having a ruler saying "hello" without appearing on the map... now I see a dark green border and I have no idea who it belongs to. There is no corresponding dark green name in the ruler list either.
  19. A lair converted to a mercenary producing camp did now show up on the strategic map. After loading an auto save it did show up.
  20. The fact that you cannot walk past an enemy unit in combat, though quite common in tactical games, isn't actually explicitly visually represented in any way here. Again this ties back to item 1 in which you might want to choose to take a wider route around an enemy in order to get into flanking position (something other games usually show before you click to seal the orders).
  21. The "auto select next unit" option does not work well. There are several instances where I've moved and no new unit was selected and yet no city was idle. It was not apparent what the game wanted me to do and the "turn" button was not green.
  22. Why do I care if another sovereign has declared war on me and then bothers to tell me that we have a mutual foe? So offer me peace instead and we'll take him on! I mean, if you don't, I might as well ally with that one against you.
  23. I managed to save a game at a point where I did a stupid thing and yes, re-loaded. This enabled me to notice that an AI offered me an economic treaty, where if I accepted he ALWAYS declares war the very next turn, but if I don't accept, another AI always declares war the next turn (and blames me for "betrayal", even though it's the same AI as in point 22 which earlier in the game told me she hated the other guy).
  24. Again, this probably has to do with item number 10, but when I defeated two armies that occupied the same tile, the floating "2" badge didn't disappear until (I think) the next turn. I hope this can be fixed, because I'm finding it in more and more places and it's a seriously deep flaw with the game!
  25. I have one city which refuses to show green text for grain increase.
  26. City ruins disappear after a while, but you can never settle on the same place again...
  27. Related to number 10 and 15 I just completed a quest battle and had a black screen saying that I need to choose an upgrade for a city... BUT WHICH CITY IS IT???
  28. Several times now I have no idea why my Turn indicator isn't turning green...
  29. Similar as to number 19, a quest location I was to return to didn't show up on the strategic map, but was visible when zoomed in. Also, a location got destroyed by a wandering creature, and disappeared from the strategic map, but still displays on the 3D zoom level.

 

Just a short session so I might continue later, but wow, so far it's basically nitpicking, so a huge improvement over Elemental (where the list became quite long).

My first playthrough was not fun, though. I just clicked "new game" and set the difficulty and AI to normal instead of easy, but I began cornered against a mountain, surrounded by other players with no chance of expansion. Also to the south of me was level 5 NPCs which I wasn't able to hire yet, but there was seemingly no chance of getting my sovereign up to level 5 within that small area. A much stronger AI built an outpost right outside of my city quite early on, and then I built  a few outposts to the south to get some prestige objects but that was it. When an AI for some reason declared war on me from beyond a mountain range, I tried to get there but got steamrolled by a strong monster. I didn't feel like there was any point in continuing after that. If this was a random map, I'd be OK with it, but apparently these maps are actually designed? If so, piss poor design, imo. Feels like whoever did this never played Heroes of Might & Magic, Age of Wonders or Master of Magic. I know that cities are supposed to be rare in this game, but to have the first map of the game block you in? Frogboy is always talking about fun, and this was the opposite.

 

My second playthrough wasn't fun either in the end, but I discovered that there are indeed random maps! (Why on earth would they want to try to sell you map packs then???) This time, I didn't chose a melee sovereign but a ranged one and wow, talk about difference! No other kingdoms blocking me in at the start so I was free to kill all monsters roaming the land myself, and apparently you can move and shoot in the same turn so basically nothing could touch me. Also, I received a lot of healing items from quests and caches this time. But then I attacked an army that had a weak rating standing on a cache of some sort, and somebody named Nikonus was amongst the units. And I got steamrolled again.

 

My third playthrough repeated the same pattern, sadly. Lovely map in the beginning with a crazy amount of spots for cities, so I quite quickly threw out five or six of them! Had fun battling through weak armies and avoiding the strong larger ones, until there weren't anything but those left. So what am I missing, how do you level up your sovereigns to beat the stronger monsters when there are no weak or mid left? Anyway, just one other ruler on the map for a very long time and we had lots of trade pacts and economic pacts going on. Then other rulers appeared and immediately declared war, despite me not seeing them on the map. This then caused every subsequent ruler who introduced themselves to also automatically declare war on me (and then ask for trade pacts... though I think that's a bug related to number 10 above). So I begin fighting back the invading armies and it goes well. Until a lone hero walks by my city where I'm resting. He is weak so I think no problem, he is alone, so let's slay him. Aaaaand steamrolled.

 

My conclusion is that even though it's 100 times better than Elemental, it is still many times worse than Master of Magic, Age of Wonders, Heroes of Might & Magic or even Civilization V. The polish and balancing just isn't on the same level as those other titles. But although it may be unfair to compare this to titles with a lot bigger teams and budgets, on the other hand Fallen still wants to compete with those games, right?

 

Well, I've waited for a number of years, I guess I can wait a bit longer... if I had to rate the game on a scale... 3/5 (with all other titles mentioned above being 5/5, except for Civilization V which gets a 4/5 because of their utterly stupid AI).

 

EDIT: I just have to add, in case if it wasn't clear, if they just fix the difficulty going from 0 to 100 all of a sudden, this game can easily become 4/5 without any other adjustments. It's the insanely unbalanced units which still are labeled as "weak", yet soaks up all damage and basically one hits my sovereign which ruined my experience three times, as you saw above.

157,608 views 47 replies
Reply #26 from Elemental Forums Top

My first experience was that I forgot to sleep :D!

Reply #27 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting stax77, reply 26

Quoting Kongdej, reply 25 (never build any unit wearing the "Club", or Gilden's special version of it, its really really useless)

I do build those sometimes.

When playing a magic/civ based faction I might never research any military technology, and I might not even bother researching magical weapons (since I cannot afford the crystal to manufacture them).  You have to make tradeoffs somewhere... And, since my sovereign and champions can't be everywhere, a few solid units of club users can help keep my cities alive... 

Hypothetically speaking, the first tier of military is easy to research, and I probably should, but I often enough put no priority on it. (Then again, I have yet to play above expert and I do not know if this would work on the higher difficulty levels, and some starting situations demand military technology... )

Quoting HaaS76, reply 26
My first experience was that I forgot to sleep !

I have had the same problem. Maybe they can fix this issue in the next release?   :D

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #28 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Kongdej, reply 25
For your starting city, Essence is nice, But materials is king. It doesn't matter how few Grains you get, just grab that 3-5 Material spot asap, slow production kills your early game.

Quoted for truthery. In my first game, I made the mistake of prioritizing Grain and Food over Material. (And a bunch of other mistakes that led me to restart by turn 100.) Grain is nice, because getting your cirites to level 2 is key, but Material is far more important. I always try to plant my city on a spot with at least 3 Grain and 4 Material. These are usually easy to find near your starting spot.

Essence is also important if you have Earth magic. If I see a 3/3/2 near a Forest, I'd take it over a 3/4/0 in a heartbeat.

Essence is also great for fortresses, since you can stack auras that improve the units trained there. 3/3/3s exist, and when I find one, I usually turn it into my primary fortress. Bonus points if it's near a clay pit and next to a forest.

I usually forgo armor in the early game, but I leave the slots upgradeable. For me, the key is spears. When played correctly, a spearmen or two with a champion or two can easy dominate most of the early game monsters. And even naked spearmen will survive decently if you play smart. Don't worry too much about survivability. They just need to survive until you unlock horses. At that point, replace them with horsemen and leave the spearmen as part of your defensive garrison, or just delete them outright. By the time you get to horsemen, you should have a pretty decent economy going.

Rushing out units is important, because waiting 28 turns will get you killed. But you'll need gold. I generally prefer to build a market or cast Propaganda (sometimes both) and raise taxes to Low. Others might disagree with me and recommend that you do a bunch of low level quests and kill low level mobs, guys that your sov and first champ can take care of easily, to earn some gold.

Reply #29 from Elemental Forums Top

Thank you all for the tips, but it still feels like if I'm to do everything you say, the AI will have already built Outposts right up to my borders...

Game five now (I think) and I was just steamrolled by the AI again. I simply have no idea how he can get such incredibly strong armies while everything I do seems to be slow motion. And I still have only been able to ever defeat a "strong" labeled army once (three heroes, one with healing, ganging up). My units are usually nowhere near being able to beat them when I get steamrolled.

If I'm able to do a video capture of a playthrough (I just quit when my Sovereign dies for the first time) I will.

Reply #30 from Elemental Forums Top

You're not supposed to take down Strong armies with just 3 heroes. You'll definitely need some supporting generics, preferably archers.

What difficulty are you playing on?

Can you give us the turn by turn description of what you're doing?

My gut feeling is that you're leaving your sov just sit there at your capital waiting for things to happen (which means you aren't earning experience, loot, or gold), or you're not rushing out your production (which means things will take forever to build). Or maybe you're trying to rush out everything instead of just focusing on the mission critical stuff.

Reply #31 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting viltris, reply 31
You're not supposed to take down Strong armies with just 3 heroes. You'll definitely need some supporting generics, preferably archers.

 

Archers with something in front to stop them from being stomped is indeed the traditional approach, but the game does offer a variety of other alternatives, especially if you research heavily into magic and have the resources (typically mana and/or crystal, though the crystal-heavy approaches are in many ways similar to the classic approach with archers and a shield wall) to use what you have researched.

Reply #32 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting eobet, reply 30
If I'm able to do a video capture of a playthrough (I just quit when my Sovereign dies for the first time) I will.

My computer is sadly not powerful enough to do "Lets Play" in any but the most crude resolution.

Also you shouldn't be afraid to let your sovereign die, the sovereign is the unit that your empire can really afford to let die again and again, he just drains some of your mana and reappear in the nearest city, with a few turns to heal up.
(I'm sure he is doing naughty stuff without telling you ;))

But it is true, no matter how many advice I give, it will always be hard until you figure out the game mechanics, and FE doesn't have the friendliest interface for new players.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Reply #33 from Elemental Forums Top

Youtube wants me to give them my mobile phone number for me to be allowed to upload the 2 hour video I made, and there's just no chance that's going to happen... so I guess I'll continue to suck at this game for a while longer. :)

It's odd, because it feels as if you need to be fast, yet to me it feels far, far, faaaaaar slower than MoM, AoW, HoMM or Civ 5...

 

Also, as I think I've mentioned, I never gotten deep enough into the game to ever cast an enchantment on a city or even take on a strong army, but already number 10 on my list in the OP is driving me absolutely crazy! How the heck is it that this item wasn't the first thing they fixed in the beta? Popups keep appearing in the wrong order and interrupting my current actions (ie, building pops up research, or research interrupts quest popups, and so on).

Reply #34 from Elemental Forums Top

"Also, as I think I've mentioned, I never gotten deep enough into the game to ever cast an enchantment on a city..."


Just a thought - you should be able to do that on turn 1, if you settle on a site with essence.

Prioritise settling a spot with high materials if you can - and depending on your magic type cast: (in order of priority)

enchanted hammers, inspiration or mediation or propaganda

Pick up your second hero on turn 1 or 2 - and then start exploring in opposite directions with each hero.

Build or rush a support unit (e.g. militia) and send that with your sov.

Then rush pioneers (or let them build for a few then rush); then do another pioneer. Go settle the sites you have found with your exploring heroes ASAP.

At this point - do not stop exploring and do not stop expanding. Build a single extra support unit then more pioneers. Only stop for workshops and other buildings (granaries and studies) if you haven't found more sites to settle.

 

It really ought to accelerate your pace this way.

Reply #35 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting eobet, reply 34
Youtube wants me to give them my mobile phone number for me to be allowed to upload the 2 hour video I made, and there's just no chance that's going to happen... so I guess I'll continue to suck at this game for a while longer.

Then I strongly recommend doing a turn-by-turn description of everything you are doing in-game. Not just an abstract general idea, but the specific things you are doing in a specific game.

It sounds to me like you are doing *something* wrong, and we need to find out what that something is in order to fix it.

Reply #36 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting eobet, reply 34
but already number 10 on my list in the OP is driving me absolutely crazy! How the heck is it that this item wasn't the first thing they fixed in the beta? Popups keep appearing in the wrong order and interrupting my current actions (ie, building pops up research, or research interrupts quest popups, and so on).

I'm not entirely sure what this means, and I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like this before. For me, research popups always show up at the start of a turn, which is when research happens, and quest popups always happen when I activate or finish a quest. Can you clarify what you mean by this?

Are you sure you don't have a corrupt installation that's causing the game to do really wonky things?

Reply #37 from Elemental Forums Top

I have noticed, when a village becomes a town, that the expanded zone of control works like this:

On the turn when it expands, the visibility provided by the town extends 1 unit, and if there are enemies in that region I will be notified.

On the subsequent turn the border which marks my zone of control expands and if there were any monster lairs in the newly influenced tiles they become goody huts instead.

Reply #38 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting dihir, reply 38
On the subsequent turn the border which marks my zone of control expands and if there were any monster lairs in the newly influenced tiles they become goody huts instead.

When the ZoC expands over a lair, it provokes the monster to roam. It seems there are some kind of lairs. One of them (usually mites or darkilngs) require to have a monster attached to it, so when the monster is killed, it becomes a goodie hut. It seems that if the monster goes away because the ZoC, the lair "thinks" the monster is killed, and become a hut.

Is it a bug? I think so.

Reply #39 from Elemental Forums Top

The key to staying alive in a game against the AI is to have a high empire rating.  You must stay within 20 rating of your competition or they will get very angry at you.  To accomplish this, as many have pointed out, you need to build as many towns as you can as early as you can.

What I typically do is establish my first town on a tile with 3 or more Material.  Then build logging camp/tower of dom.  Then make a pioneer.  By this point your Sov and champion should have explored enough to find a location to settle.  

When settling a new spot, you should look for 3 or more material yields.  For example 3/3/x or 2/4/x are ideal, but if you have earth magic you can get away with x/2/1.  The idea is you want 3 or more material, or building your town up is going to be too slow and you will too quickly be out-paced by the other factions.  

During this time you should be researching the first four Civ techs before anything else.  In particular if you have lots of gold you want to be able to RUSH units.  After that first pioneer I usually RUSH another if I have enough money, or start building a library/merchant.  

Once your sov finds another yield spot, make another pioneer ASAP at either town.  3 towns by turn 30-50 should put you in good standing relative with the other factions.   As soon as Administration is finished move on to the first 2 war techs.  

At this point it is easy to get blocked in by other factions / wildlands and not have any more peaceful expansion choices so you must build an army.  If there is a faction you hate particularly and they aren't too far ahead of you in faction power (meaning they might have something particularly nasty at their disposal) take your Sov and 3 or 4 armies of leather spear men and wipe out 2-4 of their towns.  You should be doing this around turn 100 or they will have armies of their own.  If you have time you can build up your highest material city to a fortress and give it the unit improvement buildings before making your army, but set a time limit for yourself or the enemy will get too powerful.

Once you have these, you will stay in very good standing with the other empires except maybe the one that got lucky and is at 150+ faction power and hates everyone.  With 5-7 towns you are ready to begin plans for whatever type of victory you want to accomplish, and have enough power to stay in the game.

I recommend trying to conquer a wild land, fun stuff.  In my last game I managed to take out a boss monster by turn 150 using a multiple army strategy.  3 armies of 5-6 hammer units each, armor doesn't matter as the boss killed all my units in 1 hit.  Got the boss down 1/3rd with my army before it was decimated, then threw my next at it for another 1/3rd then last my Sov with best units to take him down.  I have to say I did get lucky with some dodges though ;)

Reply #40 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting SOLOSOL, reply 39

Quoting dihir, reply 38On the subsequent turn the border which marks my zone of control expands and if there were any monster lairs in the newly influenced tiles they become goody huts instead.

When the ZoC expands over a lair, it provokes the monster to roam. It seems there are some kind of lairs. One of them (usually mites or darkilngs) require to have a monster attached to it, so when the monster is killed, it becomes a goodie hut. It seems that if the monster goes away because the ZoC, the lair "thinks" the monster is killed, and become a hut.

Is it a bug? I think so.

This circumstance is documented in the official game docs and I think there is a load message which mentions this issue, so I think it is intended.

Reply #41 from Elemental Forums Top

Ok, so the AI is no longer at twice the faction power as myself when I discover them. I guess I'm learning.

 

Added items 27 and 28 to the list.

Reply #42 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting eobet, reply 42
Ok, so the AI is no longer at twice the faction power as myself when I discover them. I guess I'm learning.

 

Added items 27 and 28 to the list.

Good to hear, and yea, 27 and 28 are rather relevant... well 27 you learn to live with after some long nights with elemental, I did no-matter even with a less descriptive popup (during beta)

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Reply #43 from Elemental Forums Top

27. The name of the city will appear in the popup, and you can use the arrow keys to move the map so you can see the city behind the popup.

28. What is a green turn indicator? (serious question -- I guess I need to go look...)

Reply #44 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting dihir, reply 44
27. The name of the city will appear in the popup, and you can use the arrow keys to move the map so you can see the city behind the popup.

28. What is a green turn indicator? (serious question -- I guess I need to go look...)

 

I should not have to use the arrow keys, imo, the game should position the popup so as to not obscure the thing it's actually talking about. Besides, your workaround doesn't work in that particular spot anyway unfortunately, since the screen was black.

The button that says "Turn" will glow green when all units and cities have orders issued to them. If the button is black, there might be a unit or city that will idle and waste a turn (and no, I checked, my conclave was no doing research).

Reply #45 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting eobet, reply 45

I should not have to use the arrow keys, imo, the game should position the popup so as to not obscure the thing it's actually talking about. Besides, your workaround doesn't work in that particular spot anyway unfortunately, since the screen was black.

The button that says "Turn" will glow green when all units and cities have orders issued to them. If the button is black, there might be a unit or city that will idle and waste a turn (and no, I checked, my conclave was no doing research).

 

I agree with you, that the arrow keys is a workaround thing and that we should have a better UI here.

I do not know how you could have had a black screen it was positioned incorrectly or the city's territory was completely hidden by the popup. But the popup does give a few bits of information about the city including it's name.

And, thank you for the tip about the button.

Reply #46 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting dihir, reply 44
28. What is a green turn indicator? (serious question -- I guess I need to go look...)

 

The OP means the bar that says Turn on the bottom right of the screen.  It's highlighted in green when you've made all your possible moves for the current turn.  But it won't highlight if you have cities that lack training or building.  I suspect that's what he means.

Reply #47 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting dihir, reply 46

I do not know how you could have had a black screen it was positioned incorrectly or the city's territory was completely hidden by the popup. But the popup does give a few bits of information about the city including it's name.

 

I got the black screen because of number 10 in my list (visual results of events are delayed and popups appear in the wrong order). I was in a quest battle and finished it which made the screen fade to black after the battle was finished, but instead of having the dialog with the next step of the quest pop up, the city upgrade popped up before the quest dialog and before the map faded in again.