No, it is not because of magic stuffs, users do not care whether the game is fair or not.... This is singleplayer game. There was some multiplayer-related discussion on recent dev post, but I bet less than 1% of buyers of Galactic Civilizations 3 would ever play multiplayer; 4X Games, by time-consuming nature, gives the most unsuitable multiplayer experience. Heck, remember Demigod, a multiplayer-oriented game, only 25% of people ever played multiplayer?
What this game desperately needs is, polish. Nothing else.
Seriously, as I said in previous posts; LH's diplomacy is bad, but it is far better than any other 4X games recently released. Eador, Warlock, AOW(not just 3, all previous ones) and now Endless Legends... it's all simple, warmongering conquests except some oddly win conditions such as technology victory such as sending people to galaxy in Civilization series.
Elemental:Legendary Heroes is already overwhelmingly complex; we have different kinds of monsters with various abilities (and hell, if you add CoS, the complexity skyrockets) Then we have well-specialized cities (far better than any other 4X games provided sans some space 4X games) to build, with all of environment interactions such as river, forest, and road. Technology tree is tedious, but so does other 4X games (there are ALWAYS 'must research' stuffs. 'Choice' is simply delusion and people should not expect it). People complain about race diversity, but I think it is enough; if we go even further, it goes Warlock where everything else is simplified to make race diversity, or we still see even more blend game called AOW3.
One friend called playing LH 'frustrating experience'. How, when the game has so many interesting contents available, yet why is it so painful to play?
Because most of features are half-implemented. So I started the game, with 13x10 map. A gigantic map. Only to realize there is an AI literally next to my settlement? Why, I just played super-melee 10 player rampage on 'Huge' (read: med-size) Where I had on war with all 9 players. I wanted to play some rpg element this time.
Unfortunately I painfully acknowledge that, even if I played with 100x100 map, there still will be a chance to be placed next to AI. Well, because the game has no option to intelligently distribute starting locations for each players.
So I was against with Expert AI, and despite his uber armies, I actually took out his two cities with some causalities. Now I attack his next city, and boom! suddenly I literally walked into the city and city defenders are gracefully moved themselves out of the city. Yes, this infamous city defender bug. Stardock claimed they never could reproduce this bug. My god, I can't recall a single game when I have not experienced this bug.
Well, now I cleaned up AI, I decided to clear some monsters. I attacked a spider nest, victory.... and what? Why my guys do not listen to my order? Why they have to move themselves to the lair despite I did not order to move? Funny thing is, in this case, lair is not cleared. I wasted another turn to actually clear the lair.
Whoops, game crashed.... Oh well, good thing I have auto-save function.... wait, where is my pioneers? They are gone? All I have is population-empty city, no pioneers sighted! (This is the bug that forced me to give up my detailed playthrough of this game, remember?)
Gah! at least I could clear this icy wildland with good 2-hand ice sword... Hmmm, I gotta defend this new town, a monster is coming! Wait, why Cloud Walk is not working? It is MY area now! WHY it keeps saying it is not my area? Hmm, not even Call of Titan works, either (I can't wait to see people's reaction when they cannot use Call of Titan and/or Cloud Walk on 90% of the map when monster zone is introduced in 2.0)
Sigh, I ordered my army to go back to the town. My god, they can move only two tiles once. At least they are not walking through forest, where they can move only 1 tile.
Sure, very last one is not a bug, but pretty much every single balance mods of this game boosts worldmap movement points, for a good reason.
I bought Galciv3, but by seeing how Galciv 3 development and LH development, I probably won't buy a new Elemental game (at least at full-price. Anyway, it seems you guys have removed custom troops and tactical battles. Kinda funny since those two things are actually most completed and most fun aspects of the game. I guess I won't miss much).
I am not even asking much. I listed 6 problems. I will feel glad if you guys just fix three of them, at least. While those problems seem small (wait, small? really?), when added up, they became what my friend called 'frustrating experience'.
Hey, I am not even listing potentially far more serious issues like percentage-chance not working bug, AI pathing bug, wondering Wildland boss bug (heh, I can track them down, lure them back to their area, and then kill them), I only listed bugs that existed since very first verison of Elemental:Fallen Enchantress.