Thoughts on the game after a 3 day Labor Day binge

from Elemental Forums

First off, my significant other is about to kill me. Secondly, although I played the beta, and the a little when 1.0 first came out, I haven't had a chance to mass play until now. So I had both 1.3 and the DLC to tide me over.

 

The good

I started playing back in the fallen enchantress beta. Back then the game had potential, but wasn't anything impressive. Now, this game is finally there, where it is a solid fantasy game. Maybe not the seconding coming of MoM, but it has interwoven the strategic, adventuring, and tactical portions pretty well. Heros are useful, but still need troop back up. The AI isn't brain dead. It certainly isn't an evil genius, but it can put up a bit of a challenge. I played 30 hours before calling it quits and doing the spell of making. I really think this game has a good niche in the fantasy genre, and I hope for further support. If this is it, it will be very disappointing. The most amazing thing is that This game has finally seemed to register high on the immersion factor for me. I can imagine my units and cities being part of a living fantasy world.

The bad

I was only playing on challenging, so eventually, I went from a snowball to a steam roller. I probably reached the point of no return after 10 hours, and the other 20 hours was just consolidating, building up, and then trying my damnedest to bring Cerces back from the brink. I gave her tens of thousands of gildars, some wargs, shared half the tech tree with her, gave her maybe a thousand crystal and two thousand metal. Yet, after attempting to expand once, and having that taken away by the ironeers, she refused to expand. I would have loved to have brad looking over my shoulder at the AI as I played. I mean why would an AI with more than 10,000 gold, not rush everything, or nearly everything? Also, while the ironeers had a couple of 4 and 5 unit groups, she would never build more than 3 unit groups. I don't get it. I think the AI should almost always build more than 3 units groups when they can.

Also, although I had random events on the highest setting, about half way through the game, they simply stopped. This is about where the game went from the struggle to establish a small set of holdings, to the battle against the AI players. Once I had the AI on the ropes, I should have ended the game, because I was out of quests and out of random events.

The ugly

The most annoying bug I encountered, and it happened over and over again, is that it would snap to an overhead view instead of an isometric one, and I would have to restart to fix it. Also monsters, and especially the AI wouldn't take any action against my frontier outposts. The monsters are almost too passive in 1.3. I could play alot sloppier without losing anything than I should be able to. The AI, especially the opposing AI, should actively capture outposts. Also, if it doesn't think it has a good chance of taking nearby cities, then it should raze the outposts, and should try to aggressively pillage my resources. The monster AI needs just a bit more aggression is razing encroaching structures. I realize there is a balance between fun and difficulty. Right now, it balanced too much towards fun. Also the AI, would have 4 nearly full armies going toward the same objectives, instead of 3 completely full armies. The AI would come at a city, and since none of these armies were individually strong enough to take them, they would just mull about. If they aren't strong enough, then they need to raze and pillage, while either moving on to an easier city, or building up enough to take the main city, even if it takes to or three armies coming in waves. If it's not powerful enough to do that, then It needs to hang back in its territory, or then focus on expanding. Also, the AI is workable, but the entire spell book and and city management is too much clicking. It would be nice if the next city arrows were available from the main map screen without having to open any city menus at all. Also, the spells seem unbalanced and deserve another look

What I want to see next in patches

For diplomacy, what would really improve the game for me would be:

A screen to coordinate attacks or assaults on a city (like in SMAC)

The ability to trade or at the very least, gift troops or pioneers to allies

The ability to trade or at least gift cities to other players

I either wouldn't mind seeing caravans go, or make them more useful/important

The ability to get things done with fewer clicks, and fewer menus

 

What I would like to see from DLC

More monsters, especially "special" ones like the banshee with something that makes them unique

More allies or neutrals to discover in the wastes. Something between the Knights of Asok/trolls or ogre lairs and a minor civ. Maybe a tile feature, that your character could go into and have a choice of different units to recruit/hire. Also, inns/camps that didn't go away. You could get a new quest from them once every 5-10 turns.

Each champion coming with a tough multipart quest. These quests would help to flesh out their back story, and the world in general. Stuff like chasing down the bandits that killed their parents, to recovering a lost artifact important to them, etc. Something similar to loyalty quests in Mass Effect 2.

More items/quests/adventures.

 

That's all for now.

15,976 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Binge, not bing. Sorry my bad

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

You can edit the title of your thread if you want to.

If you want more monsters, check out Children of Storm mod. It has a part with 18 new monsters, 5 of which are recruitable by the players once their lair is defeated and the right technology researched.

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Nice post.

I haven't had time to play in ages but managed to find a half a dozen hours for a game last weekend. Overall my thoughts were similar to yours, LH is a pretty good game but there is plenty of scope for it to become even better with more polishing and refinement.

One thing which really annoyed me was that by half way through the game AI scouts had just stopped moving. Maybe they had scouted the whole map? (seems unlikely, there was still plenty I hadn't seen). I suspect a bug. What was particularly galling was twice the AI scouts stopped in choke points in front of me. On one of these occasions it was moving, it reached the choke point, I moved my unit beside the choke point and then the AI scout never moved again (all game so far). There was room for the AI scout to move past my unit (ie I wasn't in the choke point) but it never moved.  Perhaps it wanted to move into the square I was in but even after I left the square it just stayed there. I really don't think blocking the choke point was part of any strategic master plan either, the land beyond it was very barren plus there was another way to get there (albeit a long way). So unless the AI was griefing me (I needed to escort the noblewoman to a point just the otherside of where the scout stopped, I had to take the long away around for 40 odd turns instead of the short 5 turn route) I'm pretty sure there are some bugs to be ironed out with the AI moving its units.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

The ability to trade or at least gift cities to other players

Outposts too!  This would add a much needed layer of territorial strategy to the diplomacy system.

k1

Also, inns/camps that didn't go away. You could get a new quest from them once every 5-10 turns.

k2   ^This would also go a long way towards breathing life into the somewhat statistical feeling world.

Each champion coming with a tough multipart quest. These quests would help to flesh out their back story, and the world in general. Stuff like chasing down the bandits that killed their parents, to recovering a lost artifact important to them, etc. Something similar to loyalty quests in Mass Effect 2.

k3

Decisions made in faction/character creation, technologies researched, and completed buildings should all spawn quest lines as well.

..The game could use more dynamism and less randomness in general.  Instead of each play-through feeling like a randomly generated rpg, it would be more of a choose-your-own-adventure strategy.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting cardinaldirection, reply 4


The ability to trade or at least gift cities to other players

Outposts too!  This would add a much needed layer of territorial strategy to the diplomacy system.




Also, inns/camps that didn't go away. You could get a new quest from them once every 5-10 turns.

  ^This would also go a long way towards breathing life into the somewhat statistical feeling world.


Each champion coming with a tough multipart quest. These quests would help to flesh out their back story, and the world in general. Stuff like chasing down the bandits that killed their parents, to recovering a lost artifact important to them, etc. Something similar to loyalty quests in Mass Effect 2.



Decisions made in faction/character creation, technologies researched, and completed buildings should all spawn quest lines as well.

..The game could use more dynamism and less randomness in general.  Instead of each play-through feeling like a randomly generated rpg, it would be more of a choose-your-own-adventure strategy.

 

I would love to also be able to trade outposts. I like the idea about buildings and tech spawning quests too.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

There also doesn't seem to be any "world awareness" going on.  If I'm at war with Kraxis, his buddies don't seem to care a whole lot.   There doesn't seem to be any war weariness for my civ or theirs.   Randomly, after a bunch of turns they may decide to end the war but there doesn't seem to be any tie in to events in game.