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The three biggest annoyances left in FE

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The three biggest annoyances left in FE

from Elemental Forums

I've written about these before but there remain for me three glaring issues with Fallen Enchantress that either add micromanagement unnecessarily or are just plain annoying:

1. Option to show popup when a city goes to sleep.

By the time the mid game rolls around your city list in the HUD has scrolled off the screen. It is annoying enough needing to look to the left of the screen each and every turn before you click the end-turn button on the right of the screen to see if any of your cities are sleeping; but this is doubly compounded when you need to look to the left, scroll through your cities looking for the 'Zzzz' indicator, then end your turn on the right. And this needs to be done each and every turn because forgetting to produce anything in your cities is a big opportunity loss in FE.

Now if a city finishes construction of a building or finishes training of a unit then there is also a small indicator on the right that something has happened so this helps a little (and I mean a little because this isn't an area of the screen you focus on much). But when you build on a resource away from your city you get no indicator at all. The city just goes to sleep.

This is a real problem and requires the player to micromanage the city list each turn. There has to be a better way of handling this annoying micromanagement.

2. Start units in Tactical Battles in defence mode

I feel this will help the AI some-what because a player can design troops that can close the gap with high initiative and get a lot of easy strikes in. Units should start in defensive posture when entering tactical battles. Perhaps there could be an assassin ambush mechanic added later where an army gets a negative modifier to first turn initiative and doesn't start in defensive posture but over-all I feel this would help the game.

3. Place the units that go first in the front rank in Tactical Battles

The game places the troops that move first in the rear of the army where they get blocked and the slow units at the front where they are in the way. If we can't manually place our units please fix this so the fast troops can move without hindrance. If the fast troops shouldn't be in the front then they still move fist and they can move out of the way. This is such a frustrating issue with the game.

 

This video highlights the tactical battle issues...

at 7minutes 7 seconds there is the extra damage done on first turn

at 17 minutes 5 seconds is the units stuck in the rear ranks

37,287 views 48 replies
Reply #26 from Elemental Forums Top

Is there anyway we can get 0 attack units and path of the mage characters added to the secondary area with the ranged units.

Often with 4 units forming a T shape formation I end up with a no armour, low hp and even 0 attack path of the mage champion in the front rank while a heavy armoured, high HP and high attack path of the defender or warrior champion stands directly behind them.

 

Nakisisa

Reply #27 from Elemental Forums Top

One of my biggest frustrations is not knowing how the paths evolve.  It would seem to be better to me if there was a "tech tree" like presentation for all the champion pathways, showing what leads to what, so I can figure out how to plan my hero development.

Elemental: Reforged
Reply #28 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting dangerlinto, reply 6

Quoting GaelicVigil, reply 2Somewhat related to #1 is how annoying the popup is for city leveling.  Often I don't even know what city is getting leveled because the name isn't on there and I can't move the popup or the map to see what's underneath it.  I can't tell you how many times I've accidentally turned a planned Fortress into a City, and vice versa because I couldn't tell what I was leveling.

Oh god, I'd forgetten about that part.

Yes, this is frustrating.  I love that it gives you all those calculated city details but not the name. And really as dumb as that is, it would be mitigated if it told me how much Grain, Material and Essence are in the city, but it sadly omits those too!

 

If you hover the mouse over the food stat in this window you'll get the number of grain in the tool-tip; Same for the materials in the production tool-tip.

Reply #29 from LittleTinyFrogs Forums Top

Custom tactical deployment is the only way to go with this game.  If someone doesn't have the patience for it, they can just auto-resolve, (have fun with that).

Reply #30 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Cymsdale, reply 20
Gee, I dunno, maybe have an option to explicitly research in a city like units can have an option to explicitly guard? These aren't exactly brand new 4x conventions here. I just don't want to have to scan through my city list every single turn.

I do like the idea of actively having a city research.

The quick glance to the left just doesn't bother me I guess.  7 Pop ups late in the game would get annoying though.

Reply #31 from Elemental Forums Top

I think rather there should be a key/button that rotates through idle towns, as well as an active research thing for conclaves and towns that takes the place of those "while inactive" bonuses. That way you can just hit the key to find which towns are not being productive, and with the settlements that are working on economy and research not inactive you wouldn't have to scroll through them too.

 

Also on team formations, please stop putting my low level mages in the front row just cause they have staffs, I'm sick of them dieing to plaguestalkers/wolves before they get a turn.

 

[Third Edit :P]

Thought of another idea, how about sort buttons, Just put three bottons for sorting the towns in certain order, one for chronological(which is current), one for city type (click multiple times to change which is town type is sorted to top) and inactive (which of course puts inactive towns on top.

Reply #32 from Elemental Forums Top

Crashes-still

cities and towns fall far too easily

Balance is nonexistant

 

It still,far too much about steamrolling your foes.

 

Reply #33 from Elemental Forums Top

#1. A very simple suggestion would be to put the Cities that are sleeping on top of the list so players could always see them. I haven`t run into a situation yet where i had more than 5 cities sleeping simultaneously.

Cities that provide bonuses while asleep should be placed on the bottom of these sleeping cities (right on top of the normal cities).

 

#2. What is this defence stance? A shield icon over the units in tactical? What it provides and how to activate it? I`m quite new to the game, so i`m unaware of some things.

 

#3. Got myself into such situation. Had my chargers being put behind the first line units. The whole strategy of quick strike was blown apart because they had to circle around the units before them. Though i`m against putting high ini units on the first line. Normally i have a few high ini archers and a champs who`s primarily goal is to heal and buff units. I don`t want them on the first line even if i can move them behind on their turn.

My suggestion would be to check if a unit has charge trait or some other traits allowing it to cross the entire battlefield in one turn. If it does - his place is on the front. If his ini is high and he can`t move that fast - don`t place him in the first line if there are more suitable units in the army.

Reply #34 from Elemental Forums Top

I agree with Okimosy on Point 1. Having them at the top is more than enough to point out cities with no construction. But all those cities with bonuses on empty ques could clog up the top of the list later in the game. There could always be a second row for Armies/Cities/Quests so you can fit more on screen at once, negating the whole issue. I don't know if you can but I would sure like to be able to drag the icons in the list around to re-arrange them, I'll have to try later tonight.

2: Starting in defense mode would be a definite buff to units who have defensive perks. Specially when they have very low initiative (probably due to armour).

3: Not sure on this, I haven't really noticed it myself. I find that my ranged units start at the back regardless so far, and most of the time all my melee units are mounted or none of them. With the Charge perk it doesn't usually matter when melee mounted units are clustered). Wargs still have this problem some times but I don't think that's a tactical combat problem. It seems to be a problem with trying to use Wargs like Horses. Having more Weight allowance and Moves allow horses to be much much more effective at closing the distance.

Reply #35 from Elemental Forums Top

Similar to #1, I'd like a similar notification of when a city has open enchantment slots.

Reply #36 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Okimosy, reply 34
#2. What is this defence stance? A shield icon over the units in tactical? What it provides and how to activate it? I`m quite new to the game, so i`m unaware of some things.

If your units does nothing but move during its turn, it is considered to be defending. This grants it a +5 bonus to defense. You can increase the bonus further by using shields and getting certain traits. 

Reply #37 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Gaunathor, reply 37

Quoting Okimosy, reply 34#2. What is this defence stance? A shield icon over the units in tactical? What it provides and how to activate it? I`m quite new to the game, so i`m unaware of some things.

If your units does nothing but move during its turn, it is considered to be defending. This grants it a +5 bonus to defense. You can increase the bonus further by using shields and getting certain traits. 

An easy fix for this would be to have a status effect "Defending" that floated from the unit anytime it applied, like all the other status affects that can happen due to magic & abilities.

Reply #38 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Kantok, reply 38
An easy fix for this would be to have a status effect "Defending" that floated from the unit anytime it applied, like all the other status affects that can happen due to magic & abilities.

I don't think it is a problem. A shield icon appears on the unit as soon as the defense bonus gets applied, and stays until the next turn. This should be enough of an indicator. At least in my opinion. However, I don't think the Defending mechanic is mentioned anywhere in the manual or the Hiergamenon. This should definitely be rectified. 

Reply #39 from Elemental Forums Top

In tactical combat (maybe not in higher difficulty) the AI units tend to stay very bunched up until they decide to start moving across the board.  This is quite disastrous because there are a number of spells and abilities that can be catastrophic in that case.

A dragon breathing fire can easily decimate a defending force that stays in one spot.  A water archmage casting Blizzard?  Oh yeah, the casting time is two turns, but the area of effect is so wide that the safest place on the board to be is right next to the enemy.  Then there's fireballs and catapults.

Better yet, expand the tactical map sideways so there is actually some chance of escaping these AoE attacks.

Reply #40 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting rvgr, reply 7



Quoting Emperor_Nero,
reply 3
I remember there being some discussion about this if I remember correctly and it came down to the fact that the devs wanted the tactical battles to be a fairly minor part of the game. I think their rationale was it's a strategy game, not a tactical wargame. 


Can't say that I'm too pleased with that rationale. Lack of tactical battles is one reason why I don't own any Galciv games. 

Yea I'm not to keen on that rational either.  I loved the Galciv games but they would have been so much more awsome with a good tactical battle system.

Imagine being able to actully command the ships you just designed and built in a Tactical Battle,  that would have been truly awsome. Oh well

Reply #41 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Wizaerd, reply 12



Quoting Cymsdale,
reply 11

Quoting KingHobbit, reply 9=

I think adding yet another pop up breaks the smoothness of the game.


So have an option to toggle it on/off...

It's great that Zzz works for you, but it doesn't work for everyone.


So your option is to toggle it on/off, and lose the Zzz's altogether?  I don't want another popup either, which means I would toggle it off, but then I'd never get any notification.  

I like the Zzz's just the way they are, and the unit/city list along the right works just fine for me too.

Have the option where you turn off and on the pop up and the ZZZZZ's.  So if you want ZZZZZ and not pop up like now you have it.  If you want pop up but no ZZZ you have that too. And if you want ZZZZZ and pop ups (which I would choose) then you would have that to.

Reply #42 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Bellack, reply 42

Quoting Wizaerd, reply 12


Quoting Cymsdale,
reply 11

Quoting KingHobbit, reply 9=

I think adding yet another pop up breaks the smoothness of the game.


So have an option to toggle it on/off...

It's great that Zzz works for you, but it doesn't work for everyone.


So your option is to toggle it on/off, and lose the Zzz's altogether?  I don't want another popup either, which means I would toggle it off, but then I'd never get any notification.  

I like the Zzz's just the way they are, and the unit/city list along the right works just fine for me too.


Have the option where you turn off and on the pop up and the ZZZZZ's.  So if you want ZZZZZ and not pop up like now you have it.  If you want pop up but no ZZZ you have that too. And if you want ZZZZZ and pop ups (which I would choose) then you would have that to.

I don't think anyone is suggesting getting rid of the ZZZZZ's. 

Reply #43 from Stardock Forums Top

As far as unit placement, units with greater overall combat power (taking into account defense, attack, init, etc.) should be placed in front, but perhaps every so awesome, they get caught in ambush or a pincer attack like in final fantasy 6.  Perhaps even a level up perk where fights you start surprise the other unit.

Reply #44 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting enoeraew37, reply 21


Naa this is a good thing. It represents non combat units poor tactical awareness

 

Even a child knows to crawl behind his or her father when an axe murderer comes through the door.

Reply #45 from Stardock Forums Top

Could the issues with tactical combat be solved simply by having armies start farther away.  Of course, then people complain about them taking longer.  Can't please everyone.

 

Reply #46 from Elemental Forums Top

Overall, I like the idea of specifying my own formation if it were possible, with a default setting on each unit to denote whether it was a backline or frontline unit.

Reply #47 from Elemental Forums Top

I don't want any pop-ups I have to click off. Maybe someone ca write a mod for those who want a pop-up asking "Do you really want to wake up your city?"

And I am all for option 3.

I have also a 4th one: I do not want my army to dissolve when entering a city but stay together.

Reply #48 from Elemental Forums Top


Well i have made my own adaptation: i am not setling more than 5 - 6 cities, - then they all fits in one window line. And i am razing cities i am conquering, replacing them with outposts.

But yes id like the game could reorder sleeping ones to top of list and if i am keeping them on sleep for purpose then there should be a button which alows me to note this and then they could not apear in that list at all or being shown as a one icon with expansion meniu same as armies can be spreaded to single unit. I also would like my units icons to be somwhere else then cities, not in same line, bacause ussualy thats a different sort of interest.

Never had issues with formations, i consider it as a part of randomness and as an aditional twist in battle, in real life you also cant plan everything, there are always few things you cant forsee.

I do support defence bonuss in begining. Because defenders ussualy lack of iniciative and enemies can take them out with ranged units while they cant even use their defenders perk, its not fair i think.