Fallen Enchantress - March BETA FAQ

Published on March 6, 2012 By Frogboy In Elemental Dev Journals

Greetings! We haven’t done a FAQ in awhile so here we go:

Q: Is Elemental: Fallen Enchantress an expansion pack to Elemental: War of Magic?

A: No. Elemental: Fallen Enchantress is a stand-alone game. It exists in the same world and is a 4X strategy game, but beyond that, they are very different.

Q: How much does Elemental: Fallen Enchantress cost?

A: It’s $39.95. You can pre-order it now and join the BETA. We plan to provide some additional goodies for those who own a copy of it prior to release.

Q: What kind of goodies?

A: Additional quests, monsters, and items.

Q: I have Elemental: War of Magic already, is there a discount for Fallen Enchantress?

A: Yes, if you registered War of Magic in 2010, you get Fallen Enchantress for free. If you bought it in 2011, there is a discount.

Q: When will Fallen Enchantress be released?

A: When it’s done.

Q: No, seriously, I hate when people say that. Do you have any sort of time line?

A: This Spring we plan to release a BETA 3, in Summer we expect to release BETA 4. During Beta 4 we’ll evaluate where things stand. But we still view the game as being in a good place but still months away from release.

Q: How much will the final game be different from the current game?

A: Probably quite a bit. We get into a lot of debates on this subject with beta testers because there is often a disconnect between what is part of Fallen Enchantress’s design principles versus what a user thinks “needs” to be in the game.

Q: Ok, that was pretty vague. What do you mean by design principles?

A: This would require a separate journal entry but broadly speaking, we mean that Derek Paxton (Kael) has a specific vision for Elemental: Fallen Enchantress which falls under a number of broad design principles. A common request is that the tactical battles be much more complex than they currently are. But one of the design principles of FE is that tactical battles should not decide the outcome of the strategic game. That is, no matter how good someone has mastered the tactical part of the game, it shouldn’t enable them to turn what would normally be a loss strategically into a win. This is an intentionally vague concept since we want tactical battles to be meaningful but we don’t want someone to be able to win against 10 to 1 odds because they’ve mastered that aspect of the game.

Q: Does this mean tactical battles won’t be changing?

A: We have a number of changes planned. We just can’t commit to anything specific until we’ve had time to play through it via iteration.

Q: What areas of the game do you consider furthest along?

A: The general flow of the game is fairly far along in terms of having a solid core. It’s not any particular feature. We are in BETA 2 presently, Beta 1 was to make sure the game was compatible (hardware wise). Beta 2 is designed to allow us to create a very tight core from which we can expand upon.

Q: What areas should we expect to see the game expand on?

A: Our recent poll confirmed that our beta group seems to be on the same page as us. Making each faction be very different matters a lot to us. Secondly, the city management is an area with a great deal of work ahead for it. Not on the poll but diplomacy is an area we want to expand on.

Q: What is the future of multiplayer and why isn’t it planned for initial release?

A: 90% of the multiplayer features are in. The issue is that we don’t want to split our resources between supporting multiplayer (from a bug testing / stability point of view) while also trying to do the same for the single player game.

Q: What can you tell us about the campaign?

A: It’s been designed and created by Jon Shafer (designer of Civilization V as well as having worked on the Beyond the Sword expansion for Civilization IV) and written by fantasy author, Dave Stern. Voice overs are being done by some of the people involved with Fall From Heaven and music provided by a team up musicians who worked on Civilization V and Galactic Civilizations II.

Q: I have heard that Fallen Enchantress is a different development team than War of Magic?

A: Yes. After the sale of Impulse, developers who had previously worked on Galactic Civilizations II were brought back from the Impulse team to the Games group to work on Fallen Enchantress. It is led by Derek Paxton (Kael) who had previously worked on the Civilization IV mod, Fall from Heaven and as previously mentioned the campaign was designed by Jon Shafer formerly of Civilization V fame.

Q: What is your role on Fallen Enchantress vs. War of Magic?

A: On both projects I am the Executive Producer. I wrote some of the strategic AI for War of Magic. In Fallen Enchantress I am the lead developer and am writing both the strategic and tactical AI. This is only possible because we sold Impulse so I have more time to devote to our individual projects. Kael has the final word on design. It’s his baby.

Q: When will we see a trailer?

A: It’s being worked on. Since Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion is coming out sooner, its trailer got the art team’s attention first. Now they’re onto the Elemental related work.

Update #1:

Q: How much will tactical battles change between now and release?

A: It’s too early to say. We have the broad requirement that someone should not be able to turn a clear strategic defeat into victory through “massive skillz” at tactical battles. But there are a lot of areas we are looking to expand on and enhance. We’re more inclined to find ways to make them more fun without them becoming more complex. Think MOO or MOM for what we’re looking for.

Q: Do you plan to use Steamworks in FE?

A: There are no plans to use Steamworks with Fallen Enchantress.

Q: When is the next beta?

A: We expect to release Beta 2-B this month.

Comments (Page 9)

121

Bingjack

on Mar 13, 2012

quoting post

This would require a separate journal entry but broadly speaking, we mean that Derek Paxton (Kael) has a specific vision for Elemental: Fallen Enchantress which falls under a number of broad design principles. A common request is that the tactical battles be much more complex than they currently are. But one of the design principles of FE is that tactical battles should not decide the outcome of the strategic game.

...

For example, the people who want really involved tactical battles. They're not going to happen. Not because we don't have time or budget but because we don't want the game to revolve around tactical battles. That doesn't mean we won't add other elements to tactical battles, but it'll be carefully evaluated as to whether it's causing tactical battles to deviate from their relative place in the game experience.

I'd find this argument more compelling if I thought there really were much of a "strategic" game to speak of in FE. There's just so little there of the things I look for in a good strategic game, but maybe I'm spoiled coming off of Crusader Kings 2.

City management is non existent, and not likely to turn into anything with casual tweaks. City Building is a vestigial function of some other game, and could be amputated without the game missing a beat. Diplomacy, even if the ai were smarter there than it is now, seems shallow and pointless. Empire management consists of moving a single global tax slider, if one bothers. Tech trees are interesting only as a means to be able to field more powerful troops on the tactical grid. I cant even build roads exactly where I want to build them. Most of the strategic depth that even something like Gal Civ 2 had, has been "streamlined" out. There is no pulse to speak of in this part of the game at present, in my opinion of course.

However, there *Is* a solid core forming around adventuring, fielding different troops and champions on the tactical grid against foes with unique abilities, and leveling up troops with new loot and abilities. That part of the game, while not home yet, has signs of life and a genuine hook. You've got to build a game around a hook, and there is at present a stronger base there to build on. Any time your troops are not adventuring, this game suffers because there's little else to do other than click the "end turn" button, and the tactical combat is central to the act of adventuring.

It just seems to me the road to making FE a successful "strategically" focused game, is far, far longer than making it an appealing tactical/adventuring-focused game. Sure, ideally I wish that the game would be the best of both worlds, but I don't see any way FE becomes a game I play for the strategic side of things, any time in the next year. If your development timeframe for the game extends beyond the next year, I'd say go for it, but I get the impression you were thinking this game would be release ready earlier than that.

It's possible you have a whole new game under wraps that I'm not aware of, that will breathe life into the strategic side of the game, and make it worthy of taking the focus away from the parts of the game that are working right now. But I really hope there's not the same denial at work here that was evident in War of Magic. I hope you're able to step back and soberly judge the game you actually have, or are likely to have in the upcoming months, rather than the game you wish it was. It seems to me, you have a game where light strategic elements support a tactical adventuring gameplay focus with RPG-like progression mechanics. If your goal is otherwise, you have a lot more work ahead of you than you seem to be indicating.

I say these things out of best wishes for you and your team, and a sincere desire to see the game succeed. As ever, this is only my opinion, and it's possible other people may find hidden appeals in the game that I don't. If it's a matter of me misunderstanding what the game is supposed to be, and it turns out the game isn't for me, I will be disappointed, but I understand. As long as the game is for someone.

122

Bellack

on Mar 13, 2012

seanw3

reply 107

You can have 50 units in one army, Bellack. Apparently the 9 slots will fill up and a little arrow appears that will let you scroll right to the next set of 9 slots. The problem is that there is a bug somewhere that is preventing us from doing it. You can also mod things so that any number of soldiers can be in one unit. The limiting factor here is computer quality.

Really? All I've been able to get is 9 units per stack. Well then I hope this bug gets fixed because I love large battles.

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums.
Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
It's simple, and FREE!