this is my main issue atm. research points scale too much, too fast ...
well main and main.. I would like if specializing in a tech wouldn't cost you the world... literally .

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

No. You don't get to say that. Those "insignificant bugs" aren't insignificant. The ZoC thing was listed DIRECTLY as "Little things". Did you skip right over the reproducable crashing? Did you glaze over the fact that saving a game doesn't save the game as it is and that reloading a saved game can alter many things such as unit moves, and even duplicating enemy AI trait acquisition or the 25 leather greaves on the opponent? Those aren't "The AI was too stupid to know that it didn't need 25 greaves" that was item duplication. Both of which are considered by any and all QA as game breaking bugs. Crashes being on the top of the list for any company that has QA that is worth it's weight in salt. Did you completely ignore the fact that those specific issues were issues that I reported during the beta TWO YEARS ago?

They were the first things that I checked. After all, they were the issues that I reported directly.

Frankly, screw their thin skin. They were told in the original Elemental beta 2 years agp about the myriad of issues. They were hashed and rehashed. Brad even apologized directly in a few posts about his complete and utter failure as a leader for the project due to his direct involvement (His own freaking words!). Those same issues are obviously present still today. Two years later. Nothing at all was learned.

FE is prettier than Elemental was, but nothing has changed about the internal structure of the company. Brad is still posting defensive posts. I don't see anything by him that shows that he is taking his OWN posted issues to heart. He is still doing the same thing that caused the failure of Elemental in the first place.

I personally would like nothing more than the free "Apology" game to be something that I would actually play, but when I log in to see what progress has occured since the two years have passed and the first thing I see is that all the major issues are thriving nicely, it leaves absolutely zero confidence. Especially since the "Release" is looming on the horizon. Personally, I can't see Fallen Enchantress surviving either.

Prove me wrong Brad. Please. The potential is there, I've seen it, get your head out of the sand of praise from the fans and look back to your apology posts to get a grip on the situation before it's too late. Remember the folly from your own perspective. Don't go back to your status quo...

I agree with Sean that pretty much all of the steps made from Beta 2 to Beta 3 were significant and in the right direction. The game feels overall more cohesive. The tactical combat is really very close to being perfect. You wouldn't know it by looking at my posts critiquing the game, but I do think you guys are doing a fantastic job getting FE tightened up.

I voted Fair because, despite the beautiful and significant changes to Tactical combat balancing and faction differentiation, the city segment still feels unwieldy (you know how much I hate dead queues), and in its current state caster magic may as well not be in the game at all. I know that cities and magic are on the docket for future scrutiny and I hold great hope for what comes of it based upon what we have seen with B3.

Thank you for all the hard work. I look forward to improving my vote in the next go round.

Units can be OP too. I took cities with a single 3-strong group of leather clad spearmen.

This beta is plagued by 2 issues which amplify each other: terrible balance, and poor AI (it builds lots of pioneers and naked pikemen, spams cities without regards for whether or not it can afford it in terms of popuplation growth and defense...).

There are lots of interesting new things in this game, and once the balance issues are modded out, it becomes interesting. Although the AI has a long way to go, because I'm tired of fighting pikemen all game long.

I voted good.  This is why I couldn't put excellent.

1) Lack of a random event system to add spice to the game.   It needs to be done well- as well as it was in FFH2 at least.  This would help replayability.   This is the one mechanic I want added.   The random event system needs to be designed in a such a way that it can change how I'd want to play based on what happens.

2) Not enough variety in promotions.  One thing I'd like to see is branching off from the paths.  For example- Krax's Diplomat ability should be earnable through lvl 8, luck, and Path of the Governor.  I see those abilities as character classes/prestige classes, and I'd like to see more of them.  These things also need to be rare to have some randomness, yet powerful enough to influence my choices. 

3) Unit design needs to be reworked somehow.  It's tedious in its current state.  I wouldn't mind seeing some of it scrapped or simplified because much of it seems to be insignificant choices to me.

4) Wildlands need to be integrated into the game as a way to win the game, not just an out-of-bounds area/endgame bonus boss.  The idea is sound, but needs balancing.

5) More factions.  You need 2 more, on top of bringing the 2 cut factions back.

I'm not counting the standard beta issues- those things tend to get solved over time- I'm trying to focus on elements of the design that I think need expanding or redefining. 

Can you pronounce that?

I'd like more bologna meat!

I loved the original Masters of Magic, I still play it!  I think Elemental is its own game, but I think it is also a very worthy successor.   I do miss Kali a little though!  I always hoped that given the new name... that a similar character would make an appearance.   Raising the dead of her opponents would give real teeth to death magic.    Plus, you already have so many cool pics of the "enchantress."  

Like I have logged 14+ hours on Beta 3 so far and I haven't seen one. Completed three games, too.

I voted Good, because I think the changes you have been making are definitely improving the game. And it is fun, at least when it is not crashing.

I did want to add one thing to the very interesting discussion going on about taxes and city building. A running theme seems to be that people don't need an army at the early stages of the game, so they can just travel around with their champions and level them up while their taxes are low. So, early game we need to make money more important and limit the number of cities/outposts built.

Wouldn't the easiest way to do this be to have monsters and bandits target player cities much more aggressively? This would have to scaled very carefully so you didn't have dragons destroying starting cities, but once that was handled it would force players to build defenders for each city they want. This would slow production, increase the value of gold (and raise taxes), force the player to be careful with their hero, and make an escort required for pilgrims so your cities were not immediately destroyed.

I remember in Fall From Heave 2 when the barbarian AI was changed to make them suddenly aggressively target cities, and how game changing that was. It seems like a simple solution here as well.

Naidrev is on the right track. More roaming bands of monsters would force us to need an army. Cities should have decent militia, maybe 2 squads of unarmored peasants. Capitals should get a little more defense. Then monsters should be abundant enough to overcome these militias so that the player needs to train more early game units for defense. Act I still needs work. I am sure there are other ways to solve the problem, but simply adding more lairs takes up too much RAM. I am going to try more roaming bands and see if that is more exciting. 

Frankly the one thing that's keeping the game back at this point, imho, is the devs dismissing negative feedback from our part.

Now I can't speak about Beta 3 since I haven't been able to update (see my post in the support forum). Anyway, I think it's happened at least once to everyone here: when we report about something that we feel off, we get told that maybe this isn't our kind of game. To which my reaction is, uh? Now I'm not saying the devs aren't working hard, as it appears to me that they are and I've seen A LOT of improvements pumped into the game, but still I'm not too surprised to see people complaining about the same things that have been reported as "off" since practically forever.

Still, it's possible that properly balancing will fix some of the major issues. But even to do that, you need to hear from people about where the game fails at the moment, and at least entertain the possibility that they may have a point. 

I voted 'good'. I definitely keep hitting 'end turn'. Some feedback I hope will help: 

• Load/save bugs. Sometimes when I load an autosave, the game state is inconsistent
• Units might be missing
• Some battles may have both happened and not happened (like I somehow move past a mob that attacked me or my heroes have injuries sustained from a game before the save but now I avoid the fight)
• Amnesia -- I get that injuries are supposed to be debilitating, but getting less xp is no fun, it'll me make immediately reload an autosave. I think a couple others are also really bad, like the % less hp injury. Also, having a way to fix injuries like resting in town or purchasing a potion, would help.
• Terrible auto-battle AI -- Whenever I auto fight, my weakest hero decides to tank all the damage, so I can easily get an injury on a hero from easy fights. Either the AI needs to improve or I should get the chance to manually play a fight if I don't like the outcome.
• I've had various pathing problems
• Units randomly go on explore mode
• Stepping onto a treasure tile but not picking it up, which forces me to back up and go back
• Sometimes when you attack a target you move to the square, sometimes you don't
• Better reminders -- sometimes I miss an idle unit, city, or resource because the regular idle reminder doesn't highlight it
• Slow early game
• Settling frustration -- grain markers should persist for explored squares in fog of war. Maybe tiles shouldn't have as much variance, sometimes I feel like I got screwed from some bad starting placement
• Annoying enemy pioneers -- enemy pioneers do the thing they do in many civ-style games -- they settle all over my region; they go through my territory to settle behind me, etc. I think its both unrealistic and frustrating; maybe pioneers shouldn't be able to enter other player's zones at all; even if the players are friendly; or there should be a massive diplomacy penalty so the AI tries to avoid doing it.
• Early game city enchantments. I feel like using city enchantments Inspiration and Enchanted Hammers vastly speeds up the early game. Enchanted Hammers in particular seems unfair because only Earth casters will have it.
• Hero trait upgrade confusion
• Rarity doesn't make sense -- the 'Fast' +2 initiative upgrade is uncommon, but the 'Quick' +1 initiative upgrade is Rare. Also, the rarer upgrades should be better, but ones like 'Graceful' really aren't that useful
• What traits unlock what?? There should be a tooltip during trait upgrade that lists (some of) the unlocked traits

Voted good. Really enjoying my current game. The flavour is really there now. I'm not playing brilliantly and that's what keeps it fun. The AI still needs work (but hey, we're in beta). Balance is a totally expected issue at this stage of beta too. Lot of interesting comments in this thread.

These three areas (besides constantly improving the AI) need most work in my book:

- City spam is still too beneficial (quite a few suggestions already in this thread to tighten the screws)
- Hero-romping the whole map is still too easy and troops still aren't viable enough to make sure you win the game. If I make troops and make more than 1 hero stack the game is great fun, but as long as I make a hero superstack it's becoming really boring. Now I don't want my game to be boring so I'm choosing the unit path, but a lot of people (understandably) play to win and therefore take the easy way. This still needs balancing so that troopbuilding is (almost) a necessity. This is a fine balance since heroes need to be able to BE heroes. I think devs can learn from people who play this to perfection (thus not from me
- Money is a no-brainer. Ever since raising the income from taxes during beta 2 it's been too easy to have a positive cashflow going.

I went with fair, definitely starting to be fairly decent in most areas, but still generally pretty lacking as a strategy game for many of the reasons that DragonRider862 provides in his post. But since apparently his suggestions don't fit "the direction you're going with the game", I'm suddenly way less enthusiastic about the future of this than I have been. If his post doesn't fit where this game is going, then what exactly is the direction of this game? Is cool spells and passable tactical battles in a shallow strategic environment the goal?

Everything in his post was specifically regarding what makes strategic elements of the game in it's current state unenjoyable, If you agree with his points but simply have a different solution to those problems in mind, that's great and I look forward to the changes, but don't make the mistake of thinking that those problem's do not exist because your goals are different.

So overall, spells are looking good, tactical combat is coming along nicely, but the empire building aspects are sorely lacking.

Well this is the way it should be if you ask me...
Of course you would have to change "*we*" with "Kongdej's" and it would be perfect!!

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Save integrity is great for me. When you push the RAM limits saves do seem to get messed up. That is why I keep a trail of 10 saves, so I am not saving a bugged game. I find it funny that this is someone's main complaint about the game. As far back as I can remember in my GalCiv days, this has been a problem. A minor, easily solved problem. Play smaller maps for shorter periods of time. Don't know the technical aspects to this, but it seems to be a common theme in TBS games. Not sure it has ever been a deal breaker though. Everyone is entitled to their opinions I guess. 

Fair

 - Units are still somewhat underwhelming.

 - Champions are still somewhat overwhelming

 - Research is still a tad... how can I put this? I see some interesting stuff in the trees, but since units are underwhelming, I do not find it very neccesary to rush up the trees to get at those things.

As for city management, empire complexity and all: Meh. I'm here to build massive armies and slaughter my opponents massive armies. Currently, I am here to level my sovereign and use him to smash my opponents army.Fix the units, as in, standardize em to start at size 5, or upgrade for free to bigger sizes, and most of the issues with units would be fixed. They just lack some oomph. Or Oompa-loompa.

Unit fix means I shift from Fair to Good. To get at excellent... Well... everything has to be perfect.

Overall though, I like this game. Had this been War of Magic I would have considered my money well-spent. But hey, I am getting the next installment of this franchise for free too, so I'm happy.

Currently the AI seems a bit too focused.

After doing a quest with my Sov (Magnar) and 2 units of slaves with spears I caused a dragon to begin chasing me. The dragon was quite persistent and the whole process of desperate fleeing ended up looking like the scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail when the knights are being chased by the Beast of Aaaaauuuugggggghhh.

I ended up running away from my empire and deep into Kraxis territory. Kraxis was a bit on a conquest march and demanded I give him… one triiiiiiiilion gilder (actually about 3400 but I had a total of 43 so it was as good as) or he would declare war… so he declared war and then… did nothing.

My little troop of misfits despite being completely underpowered in comparison to my enemy never felt threatened by anything other than the Beast of Aaaaauuuugggggghhh… sorry I mean the dragon, that was hot on our heels.

Kraxis troops were marching past us as if a red skinned lizard man leading a bunch of naked people with spears being closely followed by a dragon was something they saw on their way to work every day.

They were obviously on their way to go do something and absolutely nothing was going to stop them short of being beaten to death. While i envy their steely focus you think they might get a little concerned about the leader of their enemy sauntering around the middle of their empire especially when he is screaming, crying and running as fast as he can away from a ball of scale, claw and fire.

-Debe

PS: Eventually I shook off the dragon and made it home in time for tea, none the worse for my magical adventure!

PPS: I think the dragon ate a lot of Kraxis because their military started dropping quite heavily…

I'm sorry to say this but once I get this votign site working, I will have to vote "Fair" (I was always "good" on the previous polls).

Reason being simple, my personal feeling is that there are way more bugs in the game, at least for me, than in the previous betas (fewer crashes mostly though).

• my turn gets stuck and I have no way to end it
• my company always runs off to some location where they absolutely shouldn't go
• Notifications messed up on my laptop (i.e. not present)
• an epic drake and his army just sits near enemy outposts doing nothing, as do all other monsters allowing the enemy to expand via pioneer spamming while I was cautious cause I thought that they would kill me
• Hard difficulty is still too easy - despite my ridiculously bad start as I feared the monsters I still managed to overwhelm faction after faction to get a top of the list
• Performance has actually decreased for me

I really do like the improvements regarding faction differentiation, combat, spells etc. though. However fixing bugs should be more important than new features because those just introduce more bugs. I hope that a lot of this stuff gets fixed in the next release or we run straight into WOM all over again.

I voted good, because of the:

- improved stat system (no constitution, strength, ...)

- improved professions and traits

- improved factions

- new spells

- more weapon abilities (counterattack, backswing, ...)

But there is a lot of work to do:

- balance of the professions and traits (bandit lord too weak, impulsive too strong at the Sovereign creation, ...)

- balance of the spells (base damage too low, warlock / evoker too strong, spell resistance should work against all spells, ...)

- balance of the tech trees (civilization and magic too weak, warfare too strong)

- AI spams too many cities and low quality units

- AI uses not enough strategic spells

Sorry, but in the current build (0.91, medium map, hard difficulty) you do not need a complex infrastructure, because after you have researched the tier 1 and PERHAPS tier 2 techs in the civilization or magic tree and build the basic buildings you can concentrate on the warfare tree to upgrade your units or kill everything with your sovereign alone (mage with overpowered spells thanks to warlock, evoker and limited spell resistance or undamageable fighter thanks to stoneskin, evade and dodge without a cap) and raze every city you do not need without any consequences.

Hi One Lion,

I had a similar issue with no notifications and crashes with the diplomacy screen... check out this thread and see if this helps:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/422516

Debe2233: At least you weren't forced to eat your minstrels!

Brad:

A lot of the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) of this Beta have been nicely covered by everyone in this thread.

The game is on the right track, but you do yourself no favors by asking for opinions and then getting defensive.  I give DragonRider862 a lot of credit (and Karma +1) for taking the time to essentially write a 6 page essay (with headings, even!) to help you make an aspect of the game better.  He is trying to HELP you make your game better, not tear it down.  That would only take 6 words: "OMG, game sux, don't buy it!" 

People who take the time to sit and type that many words (and few, if any typos - Impressive, DragonRider862, impressive!) want your game to succeed as much as you do.  I want the game to be awesome, too, and it will be.  Right now, it is fair to good. 

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is the Knights of Asok (and other units) recruitment feature.  Nicely done, feels more like a bonus and it frees up a city build queue.

UI wise, once I visit a hero spot, I shouldn't have to move a unit back next to him to see his recruitment cost again. 

Also the game should notify me when a negative enchantment is placed on one of my cities.  And this mechanic needs some tweaking as there is little fun in casting Dispel Enchantment every turn to dispel the anonymous Incinerate City someone dropped on my city.

Looking forward to the next iteration of the game while taming Cave Bears and spiders for my Menagerie of World Domination!

I hope I am reading that wrongly. It sounds frighteningly close to the phrasing of some of your posts in June of 2010. That sort of thinking didn't turn out so well for you.

Then again, he cannot follow all the suggestions on this forum, since even the fans do not agree

Sincerely
~ Kongdej