To me, and I've odd tastes, the Normal pacing gives it up too fast and the slow tech setting is a little too slow.  Somewhere between the two would be sweet.  I haven't had the chance to play too far yet, so I haven't experienced how long the upper techs take.  The early ones seem to fly by.

Haha, on the other hand, I LOVED the particle forge. I spent hours and hours messing around with that thing.

I was just suggesting that this game might never become the game he's looking for, based on his post and almost exact wording. Calm down there, champ. 

I've only seen Brad say that once and I was simply offering a suggestion. No need to get defensive on someone else's behalf. It wasn't necessarily a helpful post as much as it was someone complaining generically about a couple parts. I don't know why he doesn't like those parts, he just says "I don't like X or Y". And asking about modding tools isn't helpful. It's a question that's been asked a dozen times if once. Can we get back to leaving feedback now, please?

Would you mind explaining a little further? Have you already done so? If so, where can I find your suggestions?

I agree that we're not completely out of the woods yet, but I can't think of a single game that does this genre as well as FE does it now. Not even MOM...

Just taking a piss. I always wanted to say that to someone that used that line to break up with me. 

I am going to hold back on voting until you make quests actually work. I had Breon's letters researched (the one that allows you to do epic quests) and it wouldn't let me do anything past the beginner quests...

Edit: The drops also seem awful this patch. These 2 things are killing the fun I have with this game which was adventuring and questing by making it incredibly hard to kill monsters with the bad equipment I get and no quests because the system is bugged and won't allow me to do them after the research.

Edit2: My Gildar also became bugged after I had to reload after crashing. I go in to my city and it says I am gaining near 190 gildar a season, but then I mouse over my gildar and it says I only gain 22 a season...so somewhere I am losing 168 gildar a turn and I really doubt I have anything that costs that much considering I have 0 units as of yet.

Hi !

Just tried a game. It's quite enjoyable. I will vote excellent this time (good last time IIRC). There are enough choices (I have still to try somethign else than Resoln to see how factions are different).

Like most people, I want to praise the new changes in the interface. Book and the lot of new graphics assets, fx.

I could not complete my game though because of a bug (I have found 3 in total so far)

1. The turn button was no longer available (enter did not work either) because 2 armies of Tarth attacked my cities in the same turn. After the first battle, I got a second announcement (city under attack) and then nothing. UI was still responsive

2. I've reported this before, but the 'infection' speel for Resoln doesn't seem to be working as intended (or I don't get it). I put it in one unit of an army in tactical then, curse, blind the hell of the unit : no success. Maybe if I cast infection after the curse, blind ? Not clear anyway.

3. Small one... If you use the 'e' keyboard shortcut, then the equip window willbe spawned 3 times.

Congratulations for your hard work !

- Really like how cities work, like how champions play. Like the research trees (they make more sense now).

- Spells finally seem useful, yet are not overpowered.

- Also, great great thing : like others noticed think that military units are useful (opposed to before a stack of overpowered heroes kills everything).

- The game feels different from anything I've played and has its own mind. I like the small stories and texts about most of the things, it makes the world a bit more alive.

- The IA is challenging (if I could have advanced in my game I would have probably lost). Expansion seems quite necessary. Maybe there should be some penalty for having large number of cities ?

That's all I can think of for now.

Keep up the good work !

Going to vote.

I am playing large maps with just two or three other civs. I just can't stand the crowded world when you use the recommended number of players for a given map size.

+1

I thought Quests could be attempted at any time now?  If not, and Breon's Letters doesn't help, then that definitely is a bug.

Go into the sfx directory and click on FemAdv1_CrazyDeath1 and FemADv1_CrazyDeath2.

One thing I dont like is that i can manuly place my citys improvent anymore. The game just auto places them.

There's a setting to let you place them.

Voted Good.

* nice animation change. Apart

* early exploration is the phase I like best and it's quite pleasant

* I've seen more items with different effects but I guess there should be even more. Goodie huts gave me 5 +1 Initiative amulets:/

* Good idea about leaving the improvement placement. I can give my cities unique look.

* great move with spells showing real damage on tactical.

I think the game has big replayability potential. Different skills, quests and loot can make different games. But I guess we need more of it. There's not much faction or sov traits to choose. The same with appearance. I'd like my created sovereign to be unique. Give him some jewelry or tatoos or tartan scarf. Kind of customization that is so fun in GalCiv2.

I like the changes but there are good old annoyances around.

* focus on event - when starting battle camera switches to next unit before going to tactical screen. Outpost/mine destroyed - which one? By who? Don't know.

* very low FPS at some battles. Few times I've had to turn on autobattle for a moment to unfreeze the battle.

* I'm playing on medium map and didn't discovered even quarter of it and the FPS is decreasing.

* My first pioneer sent to settle stopped in the middle and didn't move for a few turns

* I don't understand the pickaxe icons. I think they could be of a great use (yellow - don't have technology, green- can build, none - built) but the icons stays after buildning on resources and disappearing after game reload.

* Finding which resource building/oupost is ready to upgrade. At first I thought it will be build option at the corresponding city but no. I have to click every shard and outpost and click upgrade. Till now I don't know if the shads that are in city limits are upgradeable...

*  I like playing without going to cloth map and while I like the new map (especially new bases for units) I would very like to see units with icons on them on strategic level. With lots of environment stuff sometimes the units got lost and bam - you have umberdoth at your gates. Icons with faction symbol would fix this issue. I think this could be usefull in tactical also.

* concerning outpost. I like the upgrading but I guess some upgrades should make others unavailable so I can't make all in one outpost

* Pure esthetics. It would be nice to have the capital shown is some special way on the map - different font or some symbol near the name.

* I think some intelligent creatures should improve their caves into towns later in the game that would add another killall factions

* The scarcity of champions and abundance of goodie huts and magic "stuff" unlocked by research got me thinking that number of trinket slots could improve with champion level. For example if you could get one slot every 2 levels.

* Little annoying thing about the quests. When you refuse to take a quest (because it's too dangerous) the quest hut disappears. Imo they should stay for hero brave enough to undertake it. BTW - broken quest with false kill dragon spell (I guess). Dragon killed me and stayed in my country but quest icon was still on the vertical bar. When later I killed the dragon nothing happened.

* I haven't encountered any random events till now. Pity.

* tactical - prone units turn to face their enemy while lying down. Levitation effect.

* tactical - kills from counterattacks are shown before the hit

I don't get it. I mean, I did....but why?

Ok then, but let me explain better.

That answer actually has been given dozens of times to people who appeared to criticize "too much". Which can be understandable to a point but is also frustrating for people who have been waiting 2+ years for MoM's successor, which, ok, by now we should know that is not coming. But consider this:

• The whole situation is weird because the game does offers some moments of pure brilliance. And there were legitimate hopes for Beta 4. That's why we kept hoping despite everything, and also because there's no other game attempting to do what FE does, so we're kinda "stuck" here.

• Modding CAN change the game a lot. Personally I think a lot of the blandness of the game stems from the "low fantasy approach" the devs apparently prefer. Modders will dare a lot more. Just a quick example: in MoM the spell Regeneration can even "resurrect" an unit as long as your side wins the battle: that's a pretty major effect, and it allows for crazy stuff like letting the unit go suicidal if you were confident you were gonna win. In FE regeneration heals 1 HP/turn... That is, you hardly even notice it and you can well do without it.

This is the greatest problem with FE, imho: it's a fantasy game where Magic and Magical Equipment are basically forgettable. Modders can do a lot here, so yes, I have hopes in that aspect, although I'm not sure that the way spells are acquired can be altered (another major problem imho, spell research should have been something similar to MoM).

Stormworld is intended as a high fantasy mod. http://stormworld.wikidot.com/

I don't think I am burned out, I have had a nice long rest.

Beta 3 0.912 was most definitely my favourite beta version so far.  It was before they started screwing up the AI.  Just watching the AI trying to deal with the monsters was fun in it's self. 

I sort of got the same feeling. If I may, I believe because it is because the actual gameplay has been so much improved. Before, the gameplay just wansn't central - there were certain key strategies but it was more about winning as fast as possible and exploring the content. Now the gameplay has become more apparent and more important. This takes away from the immersion because we are constantly reminded that it is a game.

My point is, I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing but a necessary sacrifice.

There are also some improvements to immersion, like the new tech screen and the better spellbook.

I think I would like beta 4 much better if it had all the improvements of beta 4 but retained the AI from 0.912.  This new AI sucks peanut crackers, but I believe it is only temporary, which is promising.

Well said. I see your point. Maybe the next game or an ensuing expansion pack will bring more high fantasy to FE. I would really like to see spells like that in MoM. I think I need to replay a game or two to remind myself of MoM's brilliance. But yes, I can see where you're coming from. 

Perhaps Beta 5 will finally bring what you're looking for....

Favorable Impressions:

• I like the new mechanics (Essence and city specialization.)
• I feel like I'm making meaningful choices each time I add to the build queue and that's very good.  There are always competing priorities, particularly with resources requiring build time.
• The AI is doing a good job at Challenging, though I'm a bit suspicious as to how it's progressing as well as it does (I share the suspicion of others here that somehow the AI is not being impacted by roaming monsters as much as the player.)  

What can be improved:

• The pacing in the mid-late game seems a little bit slow.  I think the early game plays out at an excellent pace (as long as you're quick and aggressive about expanding, which is how it should be for a 4x game), but the scaling of costs seems to outstrip the scaling of production and research, even with a heavy investment in Civilization tech.
• I was a little disappointed to beat a giant frost demon with my level 8 sovereign (and several fire-throwing mages) only to have the uber-weapon it dropped not be usable until level 15.  At the current pace, I have a hard time seeing how I'll ever reach that level before the game ends.  It would be nice if the reward were immediately usable; perhaps it could have a lower level requirement, but then have stats that scale with level up to the intended power at level 15?
• There are lots of little bugs, but that's to be expected in a Beta.  My favorite so far has been rushing an improvement and getting paid gold for doing so, though it makes me wonder if the AI is inadvertently exploiting it to gain gold, speeding up its expansion.
• I think the 'faction power' metric is overvaluing the hordes of cheap units that the AI favors.  Having a large number of units gives you strategic flexibility for taking down outposts and undefended settlements, but they are easily mowed down by my fewer, but strong armies.  This causes the AI to make silly demands and commit to wars that it cannot really win.

Yea, I have to go back and re-write a lot of stuff to deal with all the new game mechanics.  I've already started doing that.  Beta 4 does have the AI from Beta 3. That's the problem.

The only real changes I made to the AI really were to wimp it down in terms of going after quests and goodie huts, particularly on lower levels.  In Beta 4, you can go on a quest at any time. Which is not necessarily a good thing for the AI.

hnnnnggggg!!!!!  sorry, that made me giggle more than it really should have.