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Fallen Enchantress v1.3 fun

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Fallen Enchantress v1.3 fun

from JoeUser Forums

Lest you think Legendary Heroes is going to get all the fun, plain old Fallen Enchantress is getting a ton of love too.  We’re working on 1.3 and wow. I don’t want to oversell it but gameplay wise, this will be the biggest change since the pre-release builds IMO.

Where do I start? Let’s start with Diplomacy.

Diplomacy

IMO, the biggest weakness of Fallen Enchantress is the diplomacy system.  There’s still a lot of stuff that could be done here but my biggest beef has been the way the AIs interact with players and you.  One minute they’re your buddy and the next they’re declaring war.

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Now, the schizophrenic behavior of AI players is nothing new. Heck, multiplayer games are much worse in that regard.  But it’s one area that single player games can be much better at. 

I tinkered around the edges in 1.1 and 1.2 but ultimately decided it had to be tossed out.  Sometimes, you have to nuke the system from orbit.  And so the 1.3 diplomacy system won’t really seem different at first glance but under the covers it’s a whole new world.  First, the AI no longer “calculates” relations. Instead, it fills a bucket of love (or hate) that gradually changes over time.  Because it’s now a bucket (that means your history with them matters) there’s a lot of interesting behind the scenes “stuff” I can do. 

Unfortunately, most users won’t even be aware of these changes but I think the expert players will.  For instance, AI players will be more inclined to offer peace even if they’re stronger. That’s because it’s not calculation relations, it’s looking at your history together and the history of others.  So it’ll look at what is in its best interests overall.

Smarter

The AI is quite a bit smarter.  The problem with these games is that it’s hard to have the AI be “smart” if the designer isn’t that good at the game.  I’ve gotten a lot better at the game thanks to those players who post YouTube videos of their strategies. I incorporate those into the AI (and use them myself).  For example, you very well may get creamed by the AI getting the Forge of the Overlord (spell of mastery victory) as a lot of players win that way and the AI focused too much on conquest.

Balance

We’re also doing a lot on the balance front.  One of my pet peeves is how many “empty” turns there are.  It’s a habit we brought over from GalCiv II that we’re curing (or starting to cure) with v1.3 of FE.  Things will definite “move” a bit faster.

For instance, the differences between Towns, Conclaves, and Fortresses has been significantly increased.  Towns provide a lot more gold. Conclaves a lot more research. And Fortresses a lot more production.  The AI has the advantage here because it’s able to calculate the right balance based on looking at other players (you can look at other players too but most human players don’t – but it’s fair game to the AI since we let you look at the other player stats).

World Generation

1.3 is the first version with procedural tile yield support.   That basically means that the map generator will look at a lot of other factors when deciding the tile yield of a given tile is.  The result is a lot more variance.

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FUN!

Generally speaking, FE 1.3 is just a lot more fun.  That said, the best way to make the game more enjoyable is to get more units for each side.  The AI doesn’t design its own units. It uses what you create. The more units you give a faction, the smarter the AI gets.

Why?

So why are we putting so much effort (and hence $$$) into making Fallen Enchantress even better? Well first, it’s important that Legendary Heroes be distinct. Legendary Heroes is an expansion pack. It’s not supposed to make the game funner by “fixing” things in FE.  It’s about expanding on concepts already there and adding new ones. FE 1.3 is about taking an already fun game, taking feedback and what we’ve learned and polishing it. 

I’m pretty excited for 1.3 to get out. I don’t have a date yet. My guess is probably in 2 weeks.

Spell of Making: DEFEAT

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Ultimately in my test game, Pariden won by casting the spell of making.  I’m requesting some tweaks so that there’s more warning when the various factions are constructing the towers leading up to it since this caught me by surprise and I only had 10 moves to do something about it.

170,693 views 103 replies
Reply #101 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Mtn_Man, reply 98

Quoting Rhaegor, reply 91I want to play with an AI that has no ability nor desire to win.  I also like playing basketball with my 8'6" tall Nigerian team against a bunch of midgets in wheelchairs.  To each their own I say!

That is, of course, a straw man argument.  Nobody is asking for an AI that just rolls over and let's the player win.  All we're asking for is that the AI doesn't base its decisions on whether or not another player is a human.

 

I can agree with that.  They should play to win, and should not have a bias against any one player, AI or not.

Reply #102 from Elemental Forums Top

My one remaining gripe, besides diplomacy which is getting an overhaul here, is the instant city razing.  This is really preventing me from enjoying the game because I cannot allow a single city to fall or to make a single mistake or I lose hundreds of turns worth of buildings and upgrades.  I hope this will be looked at for this patch.

It should take a few turns to destroy the city or maybe only a few buildings can be destroyed per turn and when no buildings remain can a city be razed.  I also don't necessarily mind the loss of fertility, I think that could be an interesting feature.  A destroyed city of a certain size, maybe level two, should be replaced with a "city ruins" tile that prevents rebuilding and monsters can spawn from to represent the wild reclaiming the land.

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Reply #103 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 97
Quoting Nathan E, reply 94
quoting post
FUN!
Generally speaking, FE 1.3 is just a lot more fun.  That said, the best way to make the game more enjoyable is to get more units for each side.  The AI doesn’t design its own units. It uses what you create. The more units you give a faction, the smarter the AI gets.


Don't get this. I have to design units for a faction in one game and then later play against that faction in a new game. To have a better experience. I don't play that many FE games! Please improve the game for me by giving the AI additional useful unit designs.

 

The idea is that the AI will use what you've used in the past so that it ultimately plays the game in a manner similar to you.  It was a fairly non-trivial effort to make it do that and it's one of the best bang/buck features in FE (and something I think makes it stand out).

There are no "better" units objectively. There are only units that you find more effective and therefore, having the AI use those units too will make it more effective against you.

 

I usualyl make a new faction and sovereign for every game I play.  This means the ai tends to not have many new unit designs available to it for each faction, especially if I didn't play that game for too long.  Adding cross-faction unit designs would help; as woudl choosing optimal unit designs from the community on an ongoing basis.  This lets the ai pull from a wider pool for optimality.  Some of it also has to do with the fact that taking a base design; and upgrading it to more developed weapon/armor types may not be sensible; as it violates the point of some builds.

I'd say some units are "better" objectively.  While there's no BEST units; hill-climbing optimization indicates that some forms of a unit are markedly less efficient.  The AI also seems to not understand some of the objectives to be considered when designing units:  space-efficiency vs cost-efficiency for example.  The AI often seems to add things to cost-efficient units that make them no longer cost-efficient; and violate the original purpose of the other build choices; this is most notable when you see Slaves base units equipped with lots of expensive gear; if you're gonna add tons of gear and other cost-increasers, it's better to use the regular unit chassis than the slave chassis; unless you're doing it to make no maintenance garrison units.

Admittedly making a universal algorithm for designing units would be difficult due to the potentials of modding; so design copying is very useful; it's just be nice to increase the scope of copying to go beyond simply copying the units you previously used in that faction; but common unit designs in general.