Fallen Enchantress: BETA 2 Preview

Published on February 17, 2012 By Frogboy In Elemental Dev Journals

Greetings!

It’s hard to believe it was just under a month ago that Fallen Enchantress went into public beta. We’ve gotten a lot of great feedback, a lot of bug reports, crash reports, and suggestions.

Next Thursday, we plan to release BETA 2 which is intended to go out to everyone who purchased Elemental: War of Magic in 2010 plus anyone who has pre-ordered Fallen Enchantress.

Today, I’m going to walk you through some of the changes Derek and his team have implemented. Those of you who were Fall From Heaven Fans or Galactic Civilizations fans will hopefully see the combination of the two really starting to show in beta 2.

Character Creation

We have gotten a lot of feedback with regards to the “first impression” elements of Fallen Enchantress. Part of that goal is to make it clear to players what the distinctions are between each faction and each sovereign.

Visual Pass

Across the board the art team has started to put in the Fallen Enchantress specific art assets. This effectively means the world will look quite different. More punch, less blah when it comes to the scenery.

User Interface

Beta 2 is our first pass with displaying the path of a selected unit.

The main map UI has bee modified as well to place the often missed Govern button down with Spells and Turn in the bottom right. In addition, important events now pop out for a turn from the side to inform players of events without interrupting the action.

The new Kingdom Report screen helps players see where their kingdom stands as well as how far along they are towards achieving victory in one of the 4 victory conditions.

Music & Sound

Beta 2 includes the first set of new sound effects for Fallen Enchantress along with many new musical tracks to help bring the world to life. I suspect the sound will be something that has amongst the biggest impact since FE beta 1 barely had any.

Balance Changes

Balance changes will be both subtle and obvious to players. Fallen Enchantress provides 3 different technology paths to choose from. Beta 2 is designed to give each technology tree its own path to world domination.

The Warfare path is much the same as it was with Beta 1. The key resource for mundane warfare is metal, a resource that players pursuing this much live and die by.

The Civilization path has been altered to give more emphasis on building up your Empire through using diplomatic power. The resource of power here comes in the form of Diplomatic capital which is spent recruiting mercenaries, monsters and other factions to the war fighting for you.

The Magic path has gotten the most love. Between raw mana power and magical equipment that uses crystal in lieu of metal, you can end up with a very powerful force of magical units. Mages, Warlocks, and all manner of new units start to appear as the player goes up the magic tech tree.

Champions are automatically able to cast spells. What makes the sovereign special – as a channeler – is they’re the ones with the ability to derive mana from the shards. All spell casters use the global pool supplied, ultimately, through your channeler. The bottom line, lots more magic being thrown around.

Caravans are gone. They were a held over idea from GalCiv II that never made the sense in the Elemental universe. Roads now grow up somewhat more organically based on your civilization techs with corresponding economic benefits.

Pacing

Beta 2 is our first pass at nailing down the three distinct acts of Fallen Enchantress.

Act I has the player exploring the world, building up their kingdom and trying to keep the world from ruining them. (Explore, Expand).

Act II begins when players determine the strategy they’re going to use to achieve victory. Maybe they’ll do it by building lots mundane units, maybe they’ll focus on a handful of champions, maybe they’ll recruit their armies, maybe they’ll build a force of powerful, magical armies or maybe they’ll amass enough mana and spells to bring ruin to their enemies and glory to their friends. (Exploit)

Act III is the end game, it’s the execution of their strategy. And this is where a lot of thought and effort has been put in. Wrapping up the epic wars, quests, schemes, etc. For me, personally, I enjoy being able to do very horrible things to my enemies with mana. If I have enough mana, I should be able to bring down the pain to those who oppose me while making my kingdom a land of gods. This means expensive spells that can be stacked but don’t necessarily have upkeep.

In addition, the final quest and the spell of making are in the process of being made a lot more interesting and accessible.

I would be remiss to not talk about the computer players. The tactical battle AI has been written from scratch for Beta 2. Late game, there will be no mistaking that this is a game with magic. Watching players and AI setting things up with their spells, countering each other spells, etc. is very enjoyable. I have come to the point where I end up watching the battles on auto play instead of using auto-resolve because it’s fun to watch ala GalCiv II battles.

The AI is much improved when dealing with custom created factions. In my game, I have created all my favorite Tolkien races and put them up against me. The AI will use the attributes that go with them to make them play differently. So my "Orcs” play quite differently from my “Elves”. Modders, post-release will of course be able to take this to ridiculous level.

The AI is also much better strategically. It manages groups of armies now, this is something I never did get quite right in GalCiv II’s AI but the FE game engine makes it a snap for me to organize vast swaths of units and treat them as a single unit – and they don’t have to be on the same tile so it’s not some obnoxious death train.

As a result of the AI improvements, the harder difficulty levels, where the AI gets special bonuses, have been drastically turned down.

The AI will raze cities and will surrender rather than dragging the game on endlessly. How they play depends pretty heavily on the faction. So don’t expect them to train or

Misc

I’m only scratching the surface here and I’m forgetting lots of small and large balance tweaks to the game ranging from cost of upgrading units (much cheaper) to the pacing of the tech tree to the cost and maint of units. You’ll have have to wait and see for answers on all those things.

I will say Champions are still very powerful but they will level up much slower if you try to just create a stack up them. I had..ahem…a game last night where my “mega stack” of 5 champions got killed by a single AI champion because my stack was only level 5 and the AI champion was level 8 (and since the AI now makes great use of magic in tactical battles, it can do some horrific things to those who are unwary). On the bright side, trained units don’t count against you in terms of experience sharing. So put that champion with lots of trained units, it’s what the AI does.

When will the final version be released?

We still see months of work ahead of us. We don’t have a specific “gold” date yet. We intend to follow-up with a BETA 3 roughly a month from now. We’ll have a better idea where we are at that point to start thinking of release dates.

Cheers!

Comments (Page 3)

unacomn

on Feb 18, 2012

Champions are automatically able to cast spells. What makes the sovereign special – as a channeler – is they’re the ones with the ability to derive mana from the shards.

That's still not enough. Once you've got a champion, there really isn't any way to differentiate between him and your sovereign since the shard mana is collected trough shrines built by cities or outposts with no involvement from the sovereign, and strategic spells seem to be cast(from a player point of view) independent of character. I still say there needs to be something that really makes your ruler stand out, like in chapter 1 of this https://forums.elementalgame.com/417742

As for the rest, I like what I'm seeing.

Sarudak

on Feb 18, 2012

Yes. The sovereign definitely needs something to make him stand out from other heroes. Right now the only thing is that the sovereign never gets any injuries. Which as you all know just means that he's better cannon fodder. Really? It's a sad state of affairs when your sovereign becomes the MOST expendable unit in your army. Lol.

seanw3

on Feb 18, 2012

Sov could have special traits. But as far as connecting to the lore, he dies, so does the kingdom. That is pretty different from a champion.

cyril gunderlacken

on Feb 18, 2012

Tasunke

reply 28

The AI will raze cities and will surrender rather than dragging the game on endlessly. How they play depends pretty heavily on the faction. So don’t expect them to train or

Or what?

RogueCaptain

on Feb 18, 2012

If magic is channeled from sovereign to champions then shouldn't the flow stop when the sovereign is in the death penalty box?

Only comment since the beta started. Just sayin

AlLanMandragoran

on Feb 18, 2012

Caravan removal means the end is near... the end... is near.

Is it next Thursday yet?

Tasunke

on Feb 18, 2012

luketan

reply 29

I really like the idea of limiting mana usable in Tactical combat by intelligence and/or level, except Soveriegn would have higher limits or even none.

E.g

Mana that can be used per tactical combat per champion = INT + Level *2 (adjustable by abilities)

Channelers could have higher limits or even a special ability "Channeler" - No limit to mana use per tactical combat

IF we are going to have limits to mana usable during a tactical battle (although I don't see it necessary) then it should probably be level*intelligence

seanw3

on Feb 18, 2012

I want to make a point about level requirements changing. If it is decided that this has to go there are only a few options. The game currently doesn't allow for a system where a stat check can determine if an item can be equipped. The quickest change would be to balance items so that weapons that are powerful are only awarded from very difficult tasks. The harder, but more desirable option would be to allow for unit stat checks. An even better implementation would be to allow a hero to equip any weapon, but lack of experience or insufficient stats will cause a penalty to the quality of an attack, much like encumbrance does with weight. You might even have a random chance to strike a friend, as clumsiness would be a consequence of using a weapon beyond your ability. You might even hurt yourself.

The worst fix would be to remove all level requirements and call it good.

Wizard1200

on Feb 18, 2012

quoting post

The Warfare path is much the same as it was with Beta 1. The key resource for mundane warfare is metal, a resource that players pursuing this much live and die by.
The Civilization path has been altered to give more emphasis on building up your Empire through using diplomatic power. The resource of power here comes in the form of Diplomatic capital which is spent recruiting mercenaries, monsters and other factions to the war fighting for you.
The Magic path has gotten the most love. Between raw mana power and magical equipment that uses crystal in lieu of metal, you can end up with a very powerful force of magical units. Mages, Warlocks, and all manner of new units start to appear as the player goes up the magic tech tree.
Champions are automatically able to cast spells. What makes the sovereign special – as a channeler – is they’re the ones with the ability to derive mana from the shards. All spell casters use the global pool supplied, ultimately, through your channeler. The bottom line, lots more magic being thrown around.

I will say Champions are still very powerful but they will level up much slower if you try to just create a stack up them. I had..ahem…a game last night where my “mega stack” of 5 champions got killed by a single AI champion because my stack was only level 5 and the AI champion was level 8 (and since the AI now makes great use of magic in tactical battles, it can do some horrific things to those who are unwary). On the bright side, trained units don’t count against you in terms of experience sharing. So put that champion with lots of trained units, it’s what the AI does.

I think its great that the three paths have their own resources and that trained units share XP, but champions dont. I guess the shards affect only the spells of the sovereign and that would make the spells of champions very weak in act II and III. Is there anything to prevent a sovereign with high movement to kill everything alone and level very fast?

vieuxchat

on Feb 18, 2012

Very good news ! It really is taking shape !

A few things that made me tick while reading :

We have gotten a lot of feedback with regards to the “first impression” elements of Fallen Enchantress. Part of that goal is to make it clear to players what the distinctions are between each faction and each sovereign.
What I can see here still need me to "read" the descriptions like "fire apprentice". A visual feedback like a number of fire icons would let the player see at a glance how powerfull the sovereign is in a particuliar way of magic. So instead of "Fire apprentice" you would get 1 fire icon, instead of Fire disciple you would get 2 fire icons, etc.
The main map UI has bee modified as well to place the often missed Govern button down with Spells and Turn in the bottom right. In addition, important events now pop out for a turn from the side to inform players of events without interrupting the action.
From my point of view, the "spell" button is really easy to miss. There were some post that ask where you could cast your strategic spells. So putting the "govern" button next to a button that is hard to find doesn't seem a good choice. Maybe instead of a button you have to read, replace it with an iconic button, and with a shape that would differentiate it from the rectangular mini map (so a round shape would be good to create a visual contrast)
Balance changes will be both subtle and obvious to players. Fallen Enchantress provides 3 different technology paths to choose from. Beta 2 is designed to give each technology tree its own path to world domination.
The first thing that came to mind was : to research I need research points. I only get research points through cities, so I need the civic path. Even if I want to win with magic, I'll need some civic technologies because without them I won't be able to advance in other techs. Maybe, adding other ways to earn research points (for the magic, you could add a spell that let you transform mana to research – at the right cost. For the military path, you could earn some research points through battles : some units could have a "warfare study" trait. For the civic trait, there's already the "more buildings for research" but more things could be add like exchanging diplomatic capital with research)
Champions are automatically able to cast spells. What makes the sovereign special – as a channeler – is they’re the ones with the ability to derive mana from the shards. All spell casters use the global pool supplied, ultimately, through your channeler. The bottom line, lots more magic being thrown around.
Like others said, it looks like more a "fluff" thing than a gameplay thing. We'll have to play to know more about that. Maybe mana cap for champions, because they hardly generate mana, and no cap at all for the sov, after all he IS a "channeler".

Keep up the good work !

DeutschRitter

on Feb 18, 2012

Do I understand it right? When I pre-order FE today or maybe tomorrow (sunday the 19.2.2012) I will definetly get access to beta 2 next weak? If so I will starve this months and pre-order it

vieuxchat

on Feb 18, 2012

seanw3

reply 38

I, too, would really like to get rid of the level restrictions. What would be really really nice is multi-leveled weapons. A poison dagger could have, for instance, 3 levels : at first only 25% chances to poison, second 50%, thirs 50% but with a higher poison damage. A new champion that take the dagger can only use the first level of the weapon. Then you could have trait that would let the champions focus on higher levels weapons. So someone with the "Psychic bind with weapons" could use the 3rd level of weapons equipped. So you still get a restriction, but it's not tied to just level but player choice.

TheProgress

on Feb 18, 2012

I think I'll give the next beta my first serious play through on the 29th. Hopefully I won't be stricken with some foul disease!

flymar

on Feb 18, 2012

New art assets - yes dear sirs that's needed. New sounds, animations, cutscenes and music. I am waiting:D

Frogboy

on Feb 18, 2012

RogueCaptain

reply 35

If magic is channeled from sovereign to champions then shouldn't the flow stop when the sovereign is in the death penalty box?

Only comment since the beta started. Just sayin

That is a very interesting idea.

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