City Management, then Faction Differentiation

City Management needs some kind of a point to it, as it is now it seems like a relic from WoM with pointless features like the tile placement system.

I find that booting the game is very slow and when I turned anti-aliasing on performance dropped like a rock.  It feels like there are some things that can be cleaned up somewhere.

Incidentally, I find launching the installer also strangely slow.  Installing the game in the first place was dicey and although its been better for patching I still find I have to click the .exe then :wait:.

Thank you for making such a poll, I love it when companies do that.

As for my vote, it went to the AI as challenging still bores me and I see lots of irresponsible behaviour by the AI ("Sure we can build an outpost right in the early game with nearly no troops next to this bone oger").

I'm amazed though that so many people want so much faction differentiation, I don't really care about it to be honest - imo it just becomes a balancing nightmare.

For my personal point of view, Elemental seems to not fit my taste of game at all even if master of magic is one of my favorite video game. Elemental has none of the elements that makes MOM addictive and that cannot be changed without changing the core game play. So this is why it's not appealing to me anymore, but other people might like. One of the reason why it does not hook me up is the pacing. The gameplay is so slooow. It takes 6 turns to build a spearmen ... Seriously!? I can't imagine the knight

Since the game progress is so slow, the players receives little feedback from the game which makes him drop off the game. The idea behind CIV, MOM and MOO is that there is always something new that happens to hook you up and make you dream about what you could do with this new feature. In elemental, it's wait, wait and wait again then Oh! something happened ... but who cares because I need to wait even more before it gets meaningful.

On my point of view, it's not a matter of adding more quest, races, equipment, etc. This can be easily done afterward by fans. It's the core of the game that does not work. The economics system is still way much better than war of magic. It is possible that reducing all time variables, especially production, could improve the level of feedback the game gives to the player and might hook the player more easily. That would be on my point of view that fastest way to patch the problem. So a basic spearmen should take only 1 turn to build even near the beginning of the game.

Else, the only thing that matters for me right now is the flexibility of the XML to make a MOM mod. So I am basically waiting for the release to be able to hack the XML since it is impossible to do right now due to the downloaded binary blob. But I don't think I will ever play the original game besides for testing features.

u want the workshop in front of your city or in the back? it doesn't matter either way but you still have to choose were to place it!.

Actually, larienna has a point. Allowing for faster production allows for larger unit battles and more tactical options/configurations for the player to use and take into account.

Re: larienna

Things are slow, but it's not the city pace that bothers me. It's the Sov and lack of starting units. Sovs have steadily changed from Essence wielding badasses to infantile weaklings. The start of the game is slow because Sovs can't go out and fight. The building and training pace is fine as long as There is something to do while we wait. Act I is very lacking.

I don't mind the researching for technologies, it makes me feel like a fletchling nation.  I also don't mind waiting a while for new recruits. If you want quick fodder, then you should make some weak and untrained troops. Do you want faster research, just set the research settings to quick. I personaly make the world a lot harsher, by setting the monsters to wide spread and strong and setting the shards and resources to sparse. I just mis a roaming monster button to make my cities a lot less secure and monster lairs that can "reproduce" other lairs.

P.S. I see the game as a war against "nature". The other factions are secondary for me.

On the factions, I wonder if they've thought of starting each faction with a tech that would differentiate it from the others. Tarth for example, could start with longbows and archers unlocked (are there crossbows in the game?). Another 'magic' faction might start with mages unlocked and another with defensive tech unlocked. Yet another could start with diplomacy tech unlocked and yet another could start with economy tech unlocked. There's enough tech to do this with all the factions, I think. Especially if you had one faction of fallen and one faction of empire with each type of unlock.

This would make playing each one of the factions very different from the start without having to do a whole lot otherwise to the mechanics of the game. That way if you wanted to play a "magic" race, then you'd play one of the ones with mages/magic unlocked from the start. If you like ranged units, play the archer race, and so on. The other thing this does is make the start of the game faster since some techs are unlocked right from the beginning. Meaning you have certain buildings, units and equipment available right away to produce.

If you chose the "diplomatic" race to play, you'd be at a disadvantage from a military standpoint so you'd have to use diplomacy to fend off your neighbors. Same thing for playing the "economy" faction. You'd have to outproduce your rivals to gain an edge in power. It would make for very different play styles. Of course balance is another issue there and I'm not sure how much that matters or how hard it would be to address.

On another note, I really have to wonder why they included "stability" at all as one of the poll choices. It seems to me that stability is a given 'must have' and should not even be up for a vote by users. They have no choice but to concentrate resources heavily on stability. Not to do so would be disaster. If they release an unstable FE after how the first game was received, they will be crucified by the gaming press and gamers alike. It doesn't matter how great your game is if it will not run or crashes constantly. It would really hurt Statdock's reputation for putting out quality products. Just a bit disturbing that they might be thinking otherwise. For that reason I did not vote for stability. Even though it is the most important item on the list.

I voted for stability, if you can't play the game the other factors aren't important!

If stability was not an issue though, then I would have voted for AI improvement. g

The game that I compare FE most to is FFH2 (which I thought was great - better than the game it modded, Civ4).

One of the best things about it was how the factions were differentiated:
- custom units
- custom spells
- custom buildings
- custom heroes

Each faction played very differently, and they didn't feel like clones of each other.  The factions themselves were very different (vampires, golems, centaurs, etc); combine the factions with different religions (which themselves provided different units/spells/buildings/technology and different goals), then there was a wide range of variability and replayability.  

Each enemy faction had to be fought differently, as one tactic wouldn't work against each opponent; it kept the game from becoming stale.  The faction-specific tech and units each faction had complemented that faction, and helped add color and depth.

If FE can achieve the same level of faction differentiation, it would be a great game-

User Interface is definitely a key point.

I didn't think about that last time I made my points breakdown because none of the options screamed out "User Interface"

still, I think Faction Differentiation and AI is more important.

New and Improved priority scoring by Tasunke:

Faction Differentiation: 98

  Artificial Intelligence: 97

            User Interface: 60

          Tactical Battles: 45

           Everything Else: 20 and below