How heroes are recruited will definatly be one of the focuses in this expansion. I suspect they will be hired in the capital now under certain limiting rules, and that you will need a building before starting to hire the lowest level ones.

Benefits;

- This way it becomes one of the things you have to choose when to prioritize in the build queue, with the tradeoffs that gives the player. Ability to recruit heroes will depend on the development of your capital too.

- It may take longer to get many heroes up, and that makes armies more important in itself.

- You can not have a heavy Champion focused game without at the same time focus on growing and developing at least your capital City. (Founding alot of cities already makes a unit focused game easier, so this is a balancer. Growing tall earlier gives some benefits in Champion-recruitment). They can make better champion-classes reliant on better buildings that again need huger city levels. This will make for more importance on growing your capital (They may make these buildings buildable in capital only).

Growing capital early instead of building as many cities as possible becomes a slightly better strategy then today. (Combine it with stop in population growth while pioneers are getting built, and it becomes even better, because this way it will be possible to actually be able to get an edge in city level growth.)

- All players are garanteed a certain number of champions (if they do the investments needed and the effort to grow their capital).

- By limiting the amount of recruitable Champions more equally among the factions, a potential dynasty-system will be easier to balance off.

It could work something like this:

Capital:              Building:        Abilities:

City Level 1        Pub              Makes it possible to recruit one level 1 champion

City Level 2        Tavern         Makes it possible to recruit one level 1 champion   

City Level 3        Residence     Makes it possible to recruit two level 3 champions (or maybe just 1)

City Level 4        Estate           Makes it possible to recruit one level 5 champion 

City Level 5        Manor           Makes it possible to recruit one level 9 champion 

Also, one way to tie the two facets together is about how the items are sold. To equip properly your heroes, your should have the correct building built (which is also unlocked by a tech), this way either you totally rely on what you find in quests (and this is very random by nature) or you can equip your heroes with what your nation produce.

I wish someone would take FTL and combine it with XCOM game play... with some real persistent crew that you customize.... oh man, I'd literally throw money at that. If only someone would... *stares at Brad* ...

Actually it was exactly the other way round. I just looked up the recent (good) review from Gaming Nexus to make sure. Its resume ran as follows:

A collection of average mechanics combine to make a big, complicated, pretty good game.

I vaguely remember several similar ones.

Except for some pesky bugs, FE is a great game. All I want is a greater variety of content, especially magic items, so I don't end up with half a dozen of the same item during one game.

IMO, something like Stormworld is what you should "reach for".

Heck, take Stormworld, pay the creators for their efforts, polish it up (e.g. give the centaurs complete bodies in strategic combat), add content, and you've just made the game a lot better.

It better be a Galactic Civilization 3 in one of the upcoming announcements!

Galactic Civilizations + FTL = Galactic Civilizations 3

Funny I was just listening to Three Moves Ahead (http://www.idlethumbs.net/3ma) and they were talking about this.

Galactic Civilizations III: The Wrath of Jenna

Yeah I guess that's got a certain ring to it, especially since... well, don't want to spoil the plot for anyone who hasn't finished the GC2 campaign.

Think it might be early making an announcement about a sequel though.

I wonder if one the game announcements will be a true RPG game?

Personally, I would like to see one that uses the D&D Version 3 OGL mechanics (aka TOEE) in an Elemental world.

They have already talked about plans for an RPG in the elemental world. I hope it's an epic open-world style RPG like Elder Scrolls. That could be awesome!

Very glad to hear that improvements are planned for the roleplay aspect of the game. Hopefully we will now have our sovereign and a couple of champions exploring proper D&D style dungeons, instead of the rather odd "battle in a cave" that we have at the moment!

Chris

Oh sorry I hope I'm not being dense. I remember brad saying that customers who bought WoM prior to release would get the two planned expansions for free; so FE is the first of those 2. Is what brad is hinting here the second? Or did I misunderstand and by "free" is meant FE "basic" or "light" and everything else we must purchase?

thanks much

I think you are right, the upcoming expansion/DLC will be the last of the free stuff. Personally I'm happy to pay a reasonable price for future addons - the guys have to make a living don't they!

Chris

This all sounds great.

But I'm going to ask to please, at least consider, focusing on the civilization building aspect, rather than the hero-buiding, in the role playing.

By this I mean: if the civilization build mines and foundries and researches smelting steel, then the hero and the armies get the benefit of steel armor and swords.  If the civilization has a college that researches a lot of magic, then the sovereign gets enchanted swords and armor and spells.

But not this: the hero goes into a dungeon and after saying a troll he finds a wand of increased harvest +10%.  Or if the sovereign is level 10 he can produce blacksmith shops capable of making arrows.  Not that.  Please.

You might say it is kind of like how I want it already but no it isn't.  Well yeah kind of it is for the armies but not for the hero and champions.  While what is available in the shop does follow the technical advances of the civilization, most of the gear I end up wearing is found adventuring, and it ends up with a disconnect between how my sovereign and key champions are geared and what the focus is of my civilization.

Well I'm sure you guys have a bunch of great ideas and I'm happy to see the outcome, but making the fantasy-civilization-building more interesting with less of an emphasis on war would send elemental in an interesting and unique direction, rather than following well-trodden ground.