[0.983] Beta 5E GFireflyE's Game Twelve Comments/Bugs/Balance/Tweaks/Suggestions/Etc

Before I get started, and considering the hasty nature of the beta releases, here is a list of items that have not yet been addressed from my previous beta test games: 

• [Tweak] Random events still do not happen with enough frequency despite the game setting set to ‘more often’. Recommend that the frequency of random events be increased.
• [Suggestion] When you obtain loot and are given the choice “Equip” and “Okay”, the “Equip” options should open the EQUIP window so that you may equip the item. It should NOT equip automatically without telling you the difference you have in stats. Imo, it should simply open the equip window.
• [Feature] Recommend having 'wrap world' as an option for the game in both east-west AND north-south (if the engine can handle it). I would love to be able to explore in ALL directions no matter where I am on the map. Thanks.
• [Tweak] AI doesn’t seem to want to pick up ANY loot. Quests should be left for the player though so that he has other stuff to do during the mid and late game.
• [Fix?] Tactical combat still has those extended white lines when you cursor over tiles, then moves the cursor to an un-selectable tile.
• [Fix?] When entering into wildlands, no change of music occurred when the cutscene played.
• [Tweak] Outposts are still being built too close to AI cities.
• [Tweak] Really don’t like it when I walk over AI resource improvement and it automatically destroys it. Should have a ‘raze’ option at the bottom of the army UI to give player the choice whether or not it should be destroyed.

• [Recommendation] had a huge area where I should have been able to fit 3 cities. However, when I built my first city, all of the good land disappeared. The good land stretched across 12 squares, so I was hoping to build 5 squares away in the one direction and 6 squares away in the other. That’s plenty so not sure why all that good land disappeared. Recommend highlighting build restriction area when hovering the cursor over the settle button so that you may know if you can fit in another settlement. The same can be done for outposts and their effect/impact of their ZoC. 
• [Balance] The Non-Agg Pact’s duration of 50 seasons is a very long time. It would be nice if this amount were variable. If you wanted a short duration, maybe it’s going to cost something extra. If you want a long duration, maybe the AI likes it better. Could be the other way around, depending on what the AI’s attitude is towards you and how likely he is to declare war.
• [Recommendation] Open border and Close border treaties should exist, each with duration of 10 seasons. Based upon AI’s wish to have as well as based upon influence will determine whether relations improve or decrease.
• [Tweak] I’m not sure how long it takes between the allowable time between diplomatic encounters, but that time is WAY too long currently. Every time I want to talk to someone, they’re saying ‘I’m too busy’. It cuts out a very important aspect of the game...
• [Tweak] Why is there no tax rate between 0 and 40%? Should be able to select at 20% increments.
• [Suggestion] The Shop UI is still not that great. Recommend a redesign such that the following can be accomplished:
• All four rows of carried equipment and items can be seen without having to scroll.
• The available for purchase items are organized into appropriate rows, with scroll.
• A ‘specialty’ section is added where only a few items are posted…and only sometimes available…and they change each turn…so that there is some excitement to ‘shopping’. You never know what treasure you might find.
• Apply some kind of travel mechanic where the shopkeeper would be willing to transport items to other heroes within your borders…for a fee of course.

As I still believe there are serious problems with the map generator, I’m going to put out some stats in how long it takes me to get an acceptable game going:

• Ctrl-N Count: 8
• No Essence Count: 5
• Ctrl-N Crashes: 3
• Duration till acceptable game: 10min

I have now found an acceptable start. It’s actually quite contrary and contrasting to what I’ve received in every single previous attempt.  Here’s a shot of my start. http://imageshack.us/a/img23/6457/game12start.jpg

Would have loved the 5/2/0 and the 5/3/2 to switch spots…and maybe a small patch of forest just for the munchkin in me, but can’t have everything, right?  

• [Balance] I fought one battle against a mite shaman with Othollo and he leveled.  WAY too fast, even knowing that he has Potential I and Potential II, still is too fast.
• [Comment] Is Potential I and Potential II suppose to stack (hence 35% experience bonus?), cause that is what it appears to be by showing both icons in Othollo’s display. If this is not suppose to be the case, then something needs to be changed because it would be confusing to the player in its current state.
• [Balance] Interesting that Adventurer’s Boom was further reduced to 8 hp. I thought 10 hp was quite acceptable. Recommend changing back.
• [Tweak] I wiped out Magnar on Season 4. He had no place to build a city. No option was given for him to surrender to me, so I had to kill him. He should still be on my side now, however his negative trait should be different than if he had surrendered to me.
• [Tweak] Just found a Lost Library built on a river tile.
• [Fix?] When I declared war on Kraxis, I was bumped out of his territory.
• [Tweak] Some it wrong with the clicking of tiles in this beta. I’ve had it several times now where I’ve specifically clicked on a tile, yet my unit moved to a different tile. It’s becoming quite frustrating to have my units move in directions I do not want them to go.
• [Fix?] In tactical combat, Othollo only had 4 hp, yet the opponent’s 4 units keep running away from me, allowing me to get in many free attacks…ultimately taking the city. This AI should not have happened. 

• [Tweak] I conquered Kraxis’ only city and now want him to surrender to me…but he refuses to talk to me. Why can’t he accept that he’s lost?
• [Tweak] Same thing with Kraxis. No option was given for him to surrender to me, so I had to kill him. He should still be on my side now, however his negative trait should be different than if he had surrendered to me.
• [Tweak] Noblewoman quest still offers 300gildar. It’s too much and for such a simple quest, the Ignys Longbow is too good for loot. Recommend Ignys Shortbow.
• [Fix?] I just found Lord of the Flame’s army outside of his Wildland. There is some props from his Wildland on his tile, but no Wildland around him. I’m confused so here is a picture: http://imageshack.us/a/img109/1277/game12lordoftheflame.jpg
• [Tweak] Hills being lowered to make room for city development still make for some very ugly UI transitions in the landscape and are still very confusing as ‘flat’ terrain has the hills movement restriction.
• [Tweak] Auto-road features still don’t make poor decisions when building auto-road. Still think we should be able to put segments of road in a cities queue that will build efficient and direct links between cities (with Trading tech) and outposts (with Economy tech). In the picture below, there should be two road pieces going through the forest to connect my cities…NOT the long way around as done. http://imageshack.us/a/img607/8706/game12autoroad.jpg
• [Suggestion] Maybe to help fix this, the Path of the Governor should just automatically get ‘Road editing’ at level four so that we don’t have to deal with this auto-build feature, such as it is. I say road editing, because razing segments of road should also be possible (don’t know if it is yet).

More to come...

Here's some more:

• [Fix?] The Recall Scroll indicates transportation to my capital. How do I know what my capital is?
• [Applause] Ironeer Ale FTW!! Would be nice if it gave 2hp. After all…it IS the good stuff, right?
• [Fix?] More on the topic of tile mis-clicks, here is an image of the problem I am having: http://imageshack.us/a/img10/3800/game12tileclicking.jpg I am clicking on the prestigious location tile, as depicted by the white arrow, yet it is the gold deposit tile below that continues to be selected.
• [Suggestion] Continuing the debate from the ranged attack thread, what if ranged units received a penalty to attack if they’ve moved on there turn?? This would encourage standing your ground while using range weapons and may help solve the free kiting problem that currently exists.
• [Balance] Arando’s Army seems quite expensive for the 435gildar recruitment fee.
• [Fix?] A mite shaman shrunk me, and the animation for my Ignus Lowbow fired as if I were attacking him.
• [Balance] Still think Adventurer’s Guild should have 100% chance at providing 1xp per season.
• [Fix?] The tactical selection tiles still have the white line shooting off northwest when the mouse cursor is not over a selectable tile. Picture shown: http://imageshack.us/a/img824/9485/game12selectionlines.jpg

More to come...

Fortunately the chance function is broken, so you do get +1 per season. 

LOL

• [Fix?] When I declared war on Kraxis, I was bumped out of his territory.

Good, reduce blitzing a tiny bit. Anything that gives defensive inertia is for the best.

• [Suggestion] Continuing the debate from the ranged attack thread, what if ranged units received a penalty to attack if they’ve moved on there turn?? This would encourage standing your ground while using range weapons and may help solve the free kiting problem that currently exists.

No dont make range units worse. They are already a bad choice with easy counters. Except of course for kiting the AI, Make the AI better at tactical.

Here's some more:

• [Balance] Arcane Monolith was just snapped. I saw a bunch of good resources way out by another faction. A simple spell and ‘poof’; I get to build the improvements instead. I would offer up a maximum range to the spell from the sovereign’s location to help hone in this abuse.
• [Fix?] The UI still moves on to the next target after loot has been picked up or a battle started. This makes for confusing game play.
• [Fix?] Darkling Shaman successfully cast Shrink on my hero after he was already successfully shrunk. Are they supposed to stack?
• [Bug] Just entered into a tactical combat and the UI went all wacky on me. http://imageshack.us/a/img51/7913/game12uiwacky.jpg

I think that'll be all for me tonight. Will probably have more tomorrow.

Ended up playing a bit more this evening afterall:

• [Balance] Sovereign’s Call doesn’t seem worthwhile anymore. Maybe that’s due to its relative strength from before…but I’m passing over it every time now.
• [Fix?] It’s a small thing, but on the Achievement Built screens, there are two little boxes right in between the paragraphs that probably shouldn’t be there. http://imageshack.us/a/img545/5294/game12achievementbuilt.jpg
• [Tweak] I think I mentioned this before, but have you seen the High Tower improvement attached to an Arcane Monolith? It looks out of place.
• [Fix] Sewel the Shining ain’t that shining. Her governor unrest bonus is applied four times to the city. http://imageshack.us/a/img713/2269/game12seweltheshining.jpg
• [Fix?] Should Ophidian’s be immune to skills? Cause they are…just tried to use Crushing Blow on one and failed due to immunity.
• [Fix?] AI city guard is still starting tactical combat with greater life totals than their actual life.

More to come tomorrow...

I really don't see the fun in using ctrl-n so much. I always take the first map I get. Makes for a much more interesting game. What's the fun in always having the perfect starting location? For me the map generator  does an excellent job. Start without essence! No problem, will find essence somewhere else. Same starting location for everyone is just boring, especially in a singleplayer only game.

Agree with some of your suggestions though, like the equip one.

I agree that the map generator needs some serious work.  There's two levels of work needed though.  One is at the local level: the start placement.  The differences between a 5/3/2 capital and a 4/2/1 is pretty ridiculous.

The second level that needs work is the world level.  Too often the player gets completely isolated starts.  Wrapping left-right would help.  Also, the ability to actually explore past water would help.  

Scouts suck and that aggrevates the problem.  Why don't we have a level 1 scouting spell?  In fact, I think I'm going to start a thread on that right now...

Does Sewel maybe have Administrator II? I can't check right now, because I'm on a different PC.

Here's some more gameplay:

• [Fix?] Lady Irene for some reason has Crushing Blow constantly cast on her twice. http://imageshack.us/a/img713/4672/game12ladyirene.jpg The problem here is that Othollo wants to cast Crushing Blow against her…but can’t because it’s being considered the same as an enchantment when in fact it should be use ability.
• [Balance] Tireless March is still pretty broken. The ability should not stack.
• [Tweak] Random. Yithral just abandon’s the game and quits. He was doing fine with 4 cities.
• [Tweak] Random. Now Resolin just abandon’s the game and quits. She was doing even better than Yithral. Why are they quitting?
• [Tweak] Really don’t like it that monsters can raze cities. Very unfun.
• [Fix?] When a city is razed, the tile is rendered desolate. However, after loading my game, that same tile can once again be settled.

Overall, still finding it very hard to squeeze in troop development into the city queues. Will play more tomorrow.

And some more gameplay:

• [Fix?] How come I can trade with sovereigns that have quit the game? Seems silly. Imo, you should be able to hire them as if they were neutral heroes.
• [Fix?] Sometimes when I click troops to leave a city, they exit onto a really stupid spot. There should be some logic to control roads being the primary location to leave a city from.
• [Fix?] I’m in a battle with Lady Irene and she’s doing Crushing Blow against me with a RANGED weapon!! Makes no sense.
• [Bug] When I’m holding down the ‘shift’ key to select multiple units, the mouse cursor becomes very jaded, unable to properly/easily select the troops I want.
• [Tweak] Don’t like it that other factions are always ‘too busy to talk to you, not because they’re actually too busy, but rather just because you’ve spoken with them. Why does it take so long before you are allowed to speak with them again? Also, I want to talk to them several times within the same turn. That should be allowed, as you already have an audience with them.
• [Balance] I had my city attacked twice in a row from two different forces. On the first attack, I had a huge lake in the middle of the battleground. On the second attack, the terrain outside of my city CHANGED, and now I have some roads with a dragon statue. Why would the terrain change??
• [Bug] Crushing Blow does not work properly. It does LESS damage with it activated than when it is not!!
• [Balance] Again, the same city was attacked and the landscape changed again. I now have barricades scattered across the battlefield. I think there should be some consistency as to what battlefield is naturally connected with a given city.
• [Tweak] I’ve noticed that many techs that deal with unit production happen to be in the Civilization Tree. Not sure why this is. I would think Alliances, Dance with Dragons, and King of the Wastes would all be in the Warefare tree. I would also think Logistics and Company to be in the Warefare tree aswell. This would better balance the three trees.

That'll be all for today...more to come tomorrow.

That's interesting.  I had a game where I had taken over all Tarth cities.  Lady Irene only had herself and two little armies with her and she still wouldn't give up.  My gameplay settings for "AI surrender" were normal.  What are yours on?

That's interesting... going to have to test it out.

Another bug still left over from EWOM.

Yeah, I'm not sure why this is important.  They did it in Civ 4 ... maybe Derek remembers that from FFH.  But they dropped it in Civ 5... somebody should ask Jon Shafer why.  Maybe because it's a stupid mechanic.

I do not agree with this.  Alliances, Dance with Dragons, King of the Wastes, Logistics, and Company are all in the Civ tree by design.  This helps Civ-oriented factions compete with the Warfare-oriented factions.  Warfare-oriented factions make small groups of high quality units (best weapons and armor).  Civ-oriented factions make up for lower quality units with quantity and recruit-able sources of units.  If anything, they should expand on this concept and bring the recruit-able monster techs closer for the Civ-oriented player.

I'm pretty sure you can get factions to talk to you by talking to someone else, then using the arrows at the top to switch factions.  It's a hack, but it works.

Unless otherwise stated, all abilities stack.

so unless they changed it, 4 henchmen with shieldwall add +20 defence to all units.

so all potential (1,2,3) and altar xp boost and mage skill (+25%) xp boost all stack.

mind you, thats a lot of skill slots used up so it seems balanced to me.

EDIT: although i think skills like shieldwall should not stack. uhg.

edit#2: also any skill bonus from equipment and spells stack as well (more xp boosters etc)

So it's fixed then, great!

^This should be addressed.

Set to Normal.

Good Morning

Well, I think I'm going to wrap up this 0.983 game. It's season 220 and the game is getting BORING. I'm at war with Gilden and Tarth, but they can't stop my single force of 4 heroes, no matter what he throws at me. Tireless March allows me to defend my entire empire with this one majestic force, and being Pariden allows me to significantly abuse Destiny's Insight so that force still levels at a decent rate. (and I know that in 0.984, troops should be needed more...looking forward to that)

Please consider all my bugs/fix/comments/suggestions posted above and here are my end-game comments for 0.984 that still need to be addressed, imo:

• Despite being set to 'plenty', I have received only 1 random event across the 220 seasons. Should be 1/50 seasons guarenteed to help keep things interesting.
• My core cities have NEVER been attacked. There are no random spawnings happening so I NEVER have to worry about having those cities defended. This needs to happen to keep things interesting.
• There is still zero reason to enter into wildlands. They should not be patches that you can skip. They should be blockades that you must breach. Just as the initial cutscene claims "First you must conquer the land itself!" To me, that should mean that factions should be separated more by wildlands. Not completely cut off...just more separated. This needs to happen to keep things interesting.
• There is a detailed list of fairly serious balancing concerns I have here, reply 11. I know you're a hairs-breath away from release, but some of these features and balance options are going to shine bright if released without....players will notice a 'lacking': https://forums.elementalgame.com/433438 
• Path of the Govenor needs to gain 1 XP/ turn when stationed in a city. He also needs Road Building + Road Razing immidiately at level 4. (considering that you want to reduce raise and lower land to 5 mana, this shouldn't be a problem as it's along the same lines of manipulating terrain earlier.)
• The game requires more magic equipement: Staffs and wands for mages. As is, they are better off charging in with a mace than hanging back with a staff that does no damage.
• The game requires more variety of quests. I keep getting the same ones over and over again. Boring. With all the quest suggestions given in other threads, there should be an arsenal of quests available.
• Summoning SUCKS. There, I said it. Heroes can only summon one or two creatures, and they end up summoned where the hero is and you are only allowed to summon one of that type. Boring!! I understand, you don't want to take away from troops...but there should be a massive variety of summonable creatures available....for multiple castings too. The player should have the option of having an army of summoned creatures, should he choose....mana upkeep is the perfect way of dealing with making sure it doesn't get out of control.

Stardock, in the end, you guys have done a fantastic job. I would like to thank you all for the hard work that you've put into this game. I especially thank you for being very receptive to the beta testing community. 

Eagerly awaiting 0.984

Ummm... do you mean .983 and .984 not .984 and .985?

Why yes. Yes I do. I've been reading those patch notes too long.

Edited my last post.

Thanks for catching that.

Sounds like someone is ready for added content. If only there was a modding element to this game. 

You should really really really start playing Stormworld.

Preach on, brotha Sean!

Lol. Yes, I can see myself eventually heading in that direction. Ultimately, I'll be looking for a mod that pulls in many more elements from MoM into the game.

• Different races and coorisponding cities that retain there racial traits, buildings, and special units.
• More summoning spells. More fantastic creatures.
• More variety in landscape and props.
• Tactical Combat tile improvements.
• Etc

But I'd like to emmerse myself in FE:Gold first before I move on to bigger and better...