kilijan

Join Date 02/2008

Feedback on Legendary Heroes

I've now started playing for about 1/2 an hour and I know I wont touch it again until the next round of changes. Let me provide feedback about how bad things are getting.

Alpha Striking is completely and utterly OUT OF CONTROL! This is why I won't be playing this version of the beta again.

The first move by the cpu in every encounter is to alpha strike one or two of my units. It has been doing this for a long time however its about 10 x worse now. Because you thrust my guys into combat immediately and I am 99% ensured to go after the enemy does, they run right over and pick off whomever is mathematically the weakest. Normally my guy can take one hit or two in the first half an hour of the game, but oh no. Now i'll for sure be alpha struck by the entire team. Throw into this the HORRIBLE idea of "additional strikes" adjacent teammates. I'm not sure if you guys have ever played your game but the first couple hours of enchantress are basically life and death battles because we start with nothing that gives characters any survivability.

What used to help with this was NOT being in melee combat immediately. Then I could protect my weakest person so they could survive and level up. Now this whole concept is completely trashed. You've removed any notion of strategy by movement and defense with this horrible change. That is definately NOT a step in the right direction. Combat is already lasting one to three turns at most in enchantress. The damage is so lethal I can almost one shot a dragon with an infantry squad of 7 guys weilding long swords. The damage in this game is too high to encourage any meaningful mechanics that might revolve around damaging or defending from damage. I don't think that is a good game design anyway.

Familiars.... just remove those guys from teh game. They die in almost every single combat because of the computer always mathematically targeting the easiest kill. They are worthless with their survivability.

The extra units I started with today, you might as well just remove them also. They manage to stick around for all of one combat before they've been anihilated. Why even bother giving me them. So I can maybe win my first combat? This is a 50/50 crapshoot anyway.

What you absolutely need to give the players is a way to line up their army the way they want it to be. If i want to put my warrior sovereign in the back row, then I need to have the ability to do it. Your automatic placement is a source of extreme frustration for me (and always has been since elemental) as the people who can't take the alpha strike are placed in the front row. Now, directly into melee. Also, you liked to put my warrior sovereign in the back row so i'm ensured I will not ever make it into combat before its over. Not good.

If you wanted to speed up combat you should have looked at increasing manuverability in battlefield, Not making the battlefield 2 squares. What a waste of a battle map and the complete disregard of manuvering as a strategic decision.

Damage in general is too high and this aditional strike every time someone strikes next to them only exascerbates the situation. It has made it extremely not fun. If you have ever even gotten to end game in this it consists of a unit of mine running accross the field and hitting another until for rediculous amounts of damage and killing them about twice to three times over. Healing spells are pathetic and chugging potions are way too effective.

I'd like to talk about some of the things I see that are a problem with this game in general that make it not so fun. I realize some of this may not be directly related to the new expansion.

Limited magical summoning capability. One whole fire elemental per caster who got to that leavel? Not fun. If i want an entire army of fire elementals, then I should be able to do that. If it costs me 90 mana a turn then I should be allowed to do it.

Soldier units are by far the most powerful unit in the game. This seems... wrong. Hands down they are the most powerful unit in the game. If you don't believe me, play a game to the end of your tech tree. One unit of soldiers puts out and takes more damage than any champion in the game and dragons are a joke. If they don't kill me first I kill them. This also goes back to my point of damage being out of control. This is also predictable and boring.

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Hmm, I don't have the problems. Odd.

Edit:

I should clarify. I run on dense monsters, so I fight a lot. I also run on challenging monsters, so they are all +1 levels.

I mean it, I don't run into these problems. Here is why:

I highly value initiative in my troops. When I design them, when I add them to my army.

Speaking of army, I create an army with the close starting positions in mind. Burly troops, losts of troops, high initiative, even creat some crazy champs that are armored casters. The new tree style allows this, and they are awesome...lol

I choose my fights wisely. I understand what wolves are. They rape with initiative and bonus to swarm. I won't go in without a plan and an army to counter or match them. That dynamic made this game better, as before it didn't matter what was in the army, as long as I had my assassin sov archer and a couple spiders...

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For the most part, I agree with the OP. I want to like this latest version of Fallen Enchantress very, very badly, but the tactical battles are making it just plain hard.

Vanilla Fallen Enchantress' combat wasn't perfect, but I at least found it enjoyable. Now, tactical combat just isn't any fun at all. I'm not convinced all these "special moves" add anything, and spawning 1 square apart from each other in nonsensical formations on tiny battle maps isn't helping.

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Hmm, examples of special skills on weapon use:

Shield bash: whan I attack a swordsman to negate his counter attack; to break a line/formation so I can get my defender into the middle ot them

Impale: Used in conjunction with shield bash and especially the axe wide attack (sorry, forgot its name), just not fair sometimes...lol Check it:

Key: W = Axe user with the Wide Attack I = Spearman that will Impale x= enemy

Here is something you want to get into position to do:

I x x x

This works too:

W x

I x x

Playing with Resolyn? Use spiders to root them into place.

I know not every fight will end up this way, but there is real strategy in fights now, including the actual design and makeup of your army. Seriously, there did not used to be this level of tactical manuevering in FE. I also like how some fights you are in each others faces immediately on a small map, other times, it is on a much large map and there is more space to manuever. It changes up each tactical battle experience, keeps it from getting stale.

I am not saying all is perfect, I can validate that sometimes your caster seems to start out in the front, especially if he has a staff. Or a mounted unit or wolf passes up your tougher guys to gang up on your weakling.

However, you CAN make changes. If you want the best CHANCE to protect your familiar (which I LOOOVE), then you need to have a lot of melee units in the makeup of the army. This rewards those who put time and research into the combat tree, as they open up more slots for a larger army, which will protect your wealkings better.

You have a lot of control of things, and I htink many of us are playing in the same robotic manner as FE rewarded.

A half hour of playing and giving up is not enough to get to know the many, many changed dynamics LH has within it. I see people calling this a PATCH, but I don't see it. The base systems have changed pretty radically, and 30 mere minutes will not do it, sorry OP.

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Sorry for the diarrhea of the mouth, but I wanted to add that I am now, finally, ok with losing units. By using units, I will lose some units, and that is all part of the game now. I don't load up a game anymore, even if I lose half my army. I find I am able to rebuild at a reasonable rate. This is refreshing to me.

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I partially disagree up to the part where you say we should be able to arrange our units the way we want to before combat. I agree with that.

I think it's good that the AI targets the weakest units. It makes more sense for it to do that. The problem is that the AI gets to arrange your units, and it'll often put the low-initiative weak units in front, which is why they get killed before you even get to move.

Heroes of Might & Magic has the Tactics trait, allowing you to rearrange your units before the battle starts (although you do get some degree of control over this even without that). Maybe have something like that in here?

Or, have zones designated: Front, Middle, Back, and you can designate where you want your units to be in relation to each other. That way I can put my caster unit with the melee staff in the back instead of front and center like the AI keeps doing with him.

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for everyone complaining that the AI gangs up on your weak units....when you fight the AI what strategy do you use. Do you try and kill the enemy who has the highest defense and HP first, do you spread your attack agianst all of their units, or do you try and hurt the one you can kill fastest that does significant dmg? I'm guessing most people go for the enemy unit that is relativly high offense and weak defense / HP. if so then the AI is really playing the same way.

Also if your weak unit with low inititive is up front maybe you need to advance with a stronger/higher inititiave unit to stop them getting to your guy.

I think as for arranging units you should be able to set a flag that says you want to engage up close or far away. Then on each engagement a random number based on your army's average inititive versus their army's average initiative would determine whose approach wins.

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Trained units are certainly powerful the real problem is how underpowered heroes are. They level slowly and they just don't wield the same power as trained units. As far as swarm as concerned i think that swarm should recieve a penalty for adjacent enemy units, to cancel out swarms effect and make defending more effective.

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Playing with Dense and challenging monsters, created my own tarth faction with luck. Basically i make spearmen in my fort and have 1 hero in each stack impaling/double striking everything to death. With luck i almost never miss on the double strike, kinda op compared to other abilities tbh. Research is on epic so i have only got the base techs so far

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I've put in about 20 hours so far into Legendary Heroes... It's not that bad - sometimes I just have to quit out and reload the game - maybe once every hour or so. It's quite good for a beta I'd say.

I never really played the Wildlands map in normal FE, but it is hella fun in LH. I have the Darkling Hero (Ned Ratcatcher) who kinda sucks and Ascian this weird purple cat.

In addition to the new heroes, I like tactical combat a lot more. It's a lot more interesting now.

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Agree with wanting a prearranged battle setup since you have no control over it which seems strange in a tactical battle heavy game.

Damage is high on both sides, maps can go big or small, a split mid size ones as well. I like the tact battles more now, the AI seems more ruthless/capable. Losing units left and right, having armies wiped out by poor tactical moves/saving mana and items for "tougher" battles when I should have treated every battle like the OP said life or death. No playing around anymore, you have to take most battles like they could wipe you out/weaken you seriously. Love the game so far.

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