So much potential........ feedback thread

I agree. The archers need some sort of limiter. Late game they are unbeatable.

I like your post Ereius, good points, although I can find even more problems...

anyways,

That said, archers are only good because the AI is dumb...
The balance is bad yes, but archer's is not the worst IMO, just the easiest. Do consider (and state next time) which faction you are playing, if you are playing the Archer-based faction and is saying archers are really good.... Well you get the idea.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Five things I'd like to see:

1. Arrow keys work on tactical combat map the way they do on strategic map.

2. A much improved automatic-end-of-turn logic.

3. A vastly improved auto-combat resolution.

4. The AI stop webbing my archers at the start of combat.

5. When the fight is hopeless and the AI can't retreat from the battlefield, it shouldn't retreat units away from battle (unless it's going to heal them).

For this game to ever reach its potential (which is a lol phrase imo) the AI needs to play better and the bugs need to be fixed.

I don't mind the dumb AI so much - although Coyote raises 2 good points about it -. The AI is not a human, that's why you can give it all sorts of bonuses playing on higher levels.

I do mind all the bugs. Or not so much bugs, but all those tings that don't seem to work as intended:

- Pathfinding doesn't always work. Units ignore roads when calculating fastest route

- Select next unit 'u' often skips units

- When your sov dies in battle, you don't lose the amount of mana listed. That's the amount of mana left. You lose all the rest

- Research trading

- Zones of control don't always get updated

- 'Oracle' Conclave improvement does not improve spell effects like 'Meditation'

You lose 50% of your mana, when your sov dies, so the amount shown is correct.

I found that it skips a unit that has leftover movement from the previous turn. I have gotten into the habit of making sure a unit has no leftover movement unless I'm sure I don't want to change its path next turn.

Well, limit yourself. Unless you are playing multiplayer, it's you, using Archers.

There are things that could be improved. Probably more than any other game genre, 4x games suffer from an ability for the gamers to see where improvements should or could be. This is a game all laid out on a table for you, not in discreet chunks like an FPS or RPG.

So, be a little patient, constructive feedback is great. The Stardock team seem to be working really hard on this game, and I am looking forward to seeing where it goes.

I know I am not good at this game but I fell inlove when I realised it is the kind of 4x that I have been looking for. I have a couple of problems though, playing on medium map with 5 (I guess I am the sixth player?) opponents and I encountered 2 crashes so far (one on turn 196 when I ended a turn and the other is elemental stopped working and closed). Hoping they could iron out the bugs and fix the crashes and stuff. I fell in love with the game and it is the kind of 4x I want where I feel like I am playing fire emblem with the option to conquer the world my way. The game also feels so personal because you start with a party of heroes and end up commanding large armies.

As for imbalances, I could not comment at this point for I am still confused about how to equip units properly for the situation and what are the pros and cons of weapon x and armour y and what units must my army comprise of. Great game and cross my fingers they will iron out stuff and squish the remaining bugs. Would not think twice of supporting stardock if they ever release a proper Expansion and not just DLCs and hopefully it gets its own "beyond the sword" or "Gods and Kings" kind of expansion (where a lot of stuff would be added).

I just finished my first game on NORMAL, and won via Spell of Making.  A few things in this regard...  Spell of Making is dirt cheap - only 500 mana and 10 turns to cast.  The prerequisites required for it do not compensate.  Further, the AI made no attempt to stop me whatsoever.  In the legendary MOM, the moment you started casting the Spell of Mastery, all the other players turned immediately against you, and focused all their strength to take you down.

Further, I'd like to see certain spells, that can be acquired only through treasure, or quests - some rare, powerful spells.

I have been fortunate not to have any crashes since 1.1. However, under Options, I still have autosave set to save after 1 turn. When I have had the occasional crash in the past, I would lose almost nothing.

Ya, I have disabled Spell of Making and Uber Quest, though, to be fair, if you can complete Uber Quest you can roll over the AI, so I may re-enable that one. The more I think about it though, I think these victory conditions are for you. Don't want to go through the slog fest of taking out all the AI's? Cast the Spell of Making. Feels cheap though.

The biggest failing of large 4x games is the ending, generally you know whether you have won the game at the half way mark, if not before. This game has some ways around that, some of the strategic spells can basically destroy a city and it's environs.

The Spell of Making is an interesting one. 10 Turns is the major problem, though maybe it could be 1000 mana. Isn't Volcano 500 now? 10 Turns is not enough time for anyone to respond to you. Make it 20 and it will be more difficult to cast in a contested map. Maybe the # turns should change based on map size, to maybe 25 on Huge or whatever it's called.

I've generally found archers to be effective against AI opponents but they often suffer against monsters.  That said, a mixed force of archers and mages wielding a mix of fire and ice staves is flat-out nasty.

Spell of Mastery is WAY too easy.  I generally save it until I get bored with a game.  

Definitely some AI improvements would help.  Web+Beguile on an archer unit amuses me to no end.

They will do this when the road is blocked by something hostile.  Unfortunately, they will even do this if you have an epic army and the unit blocking the road is a small pack of mites.  And, we get no chance to adjust priorities.  And ... yes, this needs improvement, but there's a crazy sort of useless sense to it also.

I turn off the spell of mastery ending option and the master quest ending option.  I wish their descriptions made sense when they are not winning options (or maybe they could be replace something else).

But I do not mind spiders being dumb -- they are spiders.

Firstly I'd just like to say that the gaming experience is much better than E:WoM.
It is actually a pleasure to play. There are various ways to progress to win and that always makes a game enjoyable & replayable.

However it is currently hamstrung by the AI. The AI problems/concepts are not that dissimilar to GalCiv so it really has had a long time to evolve, but yet hasn't.

The factions should be more tuned to their strengths rather than all appearing quite bland and often chosing paths which have little or no cohesion.
Whilst that may remove some of the randomness/replayability it would provide a better challenge than the rather aimless activity that it currently undertakes.

I would expect the AI to
a) maximise dodge with Resoln - it should be spamming warg riding, shield carrying, lithe, acrobatic units   
b ) have fun with henchmen leveling with Altar - should be improving the henchmen to maximise bonuses so that they level quickly coving all magic schools, hitting quest huts etc.
c) fortify a dodging meat shield with ranged unit support with Kraxis. It needs to realise that fortify only works if the enemy is forced to come to it so it needs a ranged punch or its advantage is useless
d) spam ranged units in small stacks with Tarth.
e) grab mana production with Pariden, looking to capture shards and magically build outposts all over the map. However Pariden needs to level its spell casters to be able to use this. (The AI really struggles with this faction as it needs to have lots of combined actions to make it work).
f) maximise defence techs and grab iron mines with Gilden so that its units are even harder to destroy(this is about the only one I seem to see done)
g) Slave spam, hunting down human troops/bandits + sacking cities with Magnar + converting population to mana for fire magic

A decent human player can counter each of these. So eventually it would be nice if the AI could adapt and branch from their main strategy
but right now the AI doesn't act with any recognition of what strengths it has against the norm.  It therefore doesn't seem to know how to maximise those strengths.
It also should look to coalesce its strength, with its strongest units looking to form stronger stacks or at least acting in unison.
It should be able to assess weak points and judge relative strengths before throwing weak troups at strong stacks that just become stronger through gobbling up cannon fodder.
The AI should be able to calculate regular moves from its opponents to cover its resources/cities/units. (It is fair enough for it not to understand wind walk but right now it seems to ignore which targets you can reach in a number of moves)
In general it allows itself to be out manovered far to easily.

Having said that, E:FE is a real game, E:WoM was a collection of nice ideas. With some AI improvements I really think this could be the best 4x game ever.

Another path for resoln involves optimizing for death shards and mana and sacrificing (and perhaps razing, if the opponent is high risk and the city has improvements that would significantly increase that danager -- but this involves some kind of risk estimation feature that may be hard to implement) threatened cities which have no essences for mana.

dihir

I agree, there are other viable strategies, I just rattled off some ideas and by no means did I mean to make it an exhaustive list.  It would be nice if some factions had alternate plans, but a single plan would be a huge step forward. It would be nice if it was apparent how each faction was playing to win. (Economic long game, rush military, spell of making, quest, accumulated military might, overwhelming magic). Right now it appears that they are playing a game without any plan (or real desire) to end the game.

I suppose a problem is that they do not have any victory condition (except beating the player, and the best strategy there would be all AI sovereigns team up to defeat the player).

Yes, archers could be improved.

As an Xpyre said, the Tarth fraction should have a an archer oriented research and build strategy.

The AI needs better archer counter tactical strategies.  For me its usually a choice of do I target enemy archers first with a ranged attack or cast Gust of Wind to protect my units. If the human player is using archers then counter with mounted units or ranged units. Just once, I wish that the AI would use a ranged based attack strategy against my Kingdom (i.e. archers + fire staffs + catapult + ranged attacks from champtions).

I would like to see a greater variety of bows - short bow with a limited range, long bow with a longer training time, compound bow and a variety of bow related traits (accuracy +10%, Rapid Fire +2 initiative), Crossbow with a longer reload time and a shorter training time.

Perhaps, a trait called: Arrow Shield, that gives units with shields the option to use a tactical strategy (like fortify) that provides a bonus to their ranged defense at the cost of losing a movement point (you move slower with a shield raised above your head).