Legendary Heroes - Am I missing something ?

from Elemental Forums

Hi

Durning first few hours with the game I was charmed by it but now the more I play the more I am aware that this game is somehow half-finished.

- What is a point of creating an army? I did play all my games on chalanging diffcult level (really doesnt like diff level progression by giving opponents bonuses) and in all my games there were no need to produce a single unit. Was using mainly beasts at the beginning. On the top of that there is "one more warfare technology" syndrome - "I will wait with training units before tchnology X/bonus Y is unlocked";

- Diplomacy ... oh boy. Even old good Alpha Centauri have better one. No option to trade resources by gold per turn. No option to surrender/buy/sell city. Even when I am about 10 times stronger then all my oponents together and I am giving them plenty of gildars and other stuff I am unable to forge an alliance (and I have all technologies and all avaible treaties active with opponents). Because of my strenght they should beg me to forge  alliance with them;

- Terraforming. Another flaw in game design. When I choose Master Scouts trait for my faction I would like to be able to plant tress to use this trait to my adventage. Automatic road bulding with unlocked technology? To large shortcut in my opinion. In many games terraforimg is part of strategy but not in FE;

- What i a point of city management? There is no maintaince cost for bulding so in long run all get all bulding avaiable. I just spamm bulding query with new buldings until all are done and then switch to produce mana/wealth/growth/research;

- Tactical battle. No troops positioning by player. No flanking. Magic and mage characters are overkill in long run. In the beginning that part was fun and still this and hero development are the only things that keeps my playing.

- Champions. Because how EXP is divided after fight I see no point in using them. I did some testing with second chamipon used as a Commander with city traits but in the end I feel that it wasnt worth it. Also Adventures Guild bulding should give far more experience per turn or there should be another passive way to level champions when they are sitting in cities (there are two spells for this but this cuts off non-magic factions);

 

Minor stuff:

- No option to upgrade units by one piece of equipment. If I dont have all requaired crystal to upgrade to the best armor I would like to be able to upgrade only one or few pieces of equipment but I cant or I dont know how;

- No option to give existing troops trinkets and other equipment - only flat weapon/armor/size upgrade. If I know that I will be figthing a dragon I would like to switch to fire resistance stuff and after that tweak my army once again to be able to defeat enemy X with Y uniqe skill.

- "Wanderlust" is a must have perk because at some point there is nothing interesting to do. Also Ophidian related quest are overpowered source of crystals;

- If items like wolf's skin or demon's horn are intriduced they could have more use like ingriedient  for summoning or some spells to balance them out;

- Would be nice when champions choosing screen pops up to be able to see their traits tree and stats and above all their level;

- There could be "loop' option on reasearch. It is annoying to choose each turn same thing when all techonogies are discovered and player is forced to research those overpowered +x perm bonuses;

- There should be limit for +x perm bonuses form technology or each next discovery should have increased research points needed;

- I am unable to go on a square where friendly opponents troops are positioned on strategic map for example when friendly caravan is placed at my quest location I am unable to go there;

- I dont know is it faction specified by with some faction trading metal doesnt give any relations points;

- Annoying to see message pop up with equip question when hero gets item which have lower parametrs than equipped one;

- No cutscenes for wonders;

- Razing a well developed city in one turn isnt fair. When I raze a city would like to be frozen for few turn and give enemy a chance to take his city back;

- Shield bash on dragon. Really?

- Mage character is way to OP. "Stupid" Sunder spell can kill elemental lords in few cast. In my opinion some spells should use crystals as ingriedients;

- Summons. Air Elemental is the most usefull and can be summoned way to early. Grave Elemental have some uses. All others are trash. Have no freaking idea why that fire snake is near the end of summoning tree. Also Delin should be tweaked because he vanishes before he can do a single action and he isnt cheap to cast;

- No universal treasury where items could be stored;

- Magic is a part of this game so there is a problem with game balance. In my opinon creating non-mage classes was a big mistake. All starting heroes should be mages with different specialization at some point like fire/water/poison/battle mage/etc. There is no such thing at the moment and in the end mage just rox because have more tactical options than other classes.

 

In the end FE has lacking empire managment, tactical battles, diplomacy. Is it really a good strategy?

14,777 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I think you should play on higher difficulty level. AI gets really unfair advantage only on insane, where you have to choose and optimize your strategy a lot in order to be able to win. 

I played game on ridiculous using default nations (so no op combinations of perks) and I think that's where game really shines: you have to build armies, thus you have to carefully choose what you build in the cities and you have to specialize them, and you have to know how to run tactical battles. Some of your criticism comes from that - 'challenging' is just way too easy for someone who has experience in this kind of games. 

Regarding terraforming and diplomacy - just forget about it. 

Champions should not be stack together - it is to prevent a game to be reduced to death stack full of heroes. I never keep more than 2 at any given time. 

 

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Play with Children of Storm mod (plus some for better AI mod if game will be still to easy for you)

Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Ugh I was frustrated and said some things I didn't mean to say. The end. 

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Yes, this game has a lot of quirks. Some of them can be really annoying - allies blocking movement! - most are in the 'raise an eyebrow and move on' category.

Yes, some classes/traits/summons are better than others. Luckily, this is a single-player game, so balance isn't required. You don't need to create an army to beat the game on any level, but most people seem to enjoy creating custom units and armies.

Yes, FE:LH tries to do many things and all of those aspects could be fleshed out some/a lot more. But for every game with better Terraforming/Tactical battles/Whatever, there's also a game that offers no terraforming etc. whatsoever. In the end, it's up to your preference if a game offers 'enough'.

Like others said, you can try playing with mods, there are many. And with your skill you should definitely play on a higher difficulty level. My suggestion: Ridiculous with a default faction.

Or this game just isn't for you. It happens.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

I believe you claim that there is no point in building armies, and then further down that there is no point in building heroes.

Yes, you're missing something. Higher difficulty, keep playing.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Yeah I think that's one of the neat things about LH in that you can opt to focus on the champion / rpg side of things, build up some heroes and make them your primary combat force... or use your champions more in a support role and make trained units your strength.

@Ragnall - how many AI opponents are you playing against?  You could always team up several AI opponents from the start (against you) if you find it that easy.

 

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

AI bonuses are a must for people wanting to be challenged. That's true for any game, even GalCiv2 with its legendary AI. Choosing difficulty levels by the principle that you hate AI bonuses won't make you a happier gamer, just a more frustrated one.

I also heavily disagree that champions fighting together should not split the experience, because how it's done now is the only reasonable way to solve that issue. You should not be rewarded with more total "experience income" from Your total amount of targets just because you choose to have more heroes in your armies. That would be a very poor design decission indeed, and something that was actually done in one of the beta versions for FE. Good riddance to that decission.

 

That said, i agree in some points here, like for instance the importance of buildings costing maintainance for the overall strategy when it comes to city development. I'd also like to see some worker options for pioneers, like that they where the ones building the roads, and that roads had a tiny bit of maintainance per tile. Those changes would increase the strategical level/depth of the gameplay by a good margin, and in my opionion be suitable for the game.