First, I want to thank all the people at SD for making a great game. (As usual). I also bought a second copy as a gift for a friend as a more concrete way to say thank you.
I also wanted to note down a number of early impressions that I've had as I've been playing over the past couple of weeks, and some suggestions for some of the issues I've had. Because there are limited resources for game system changes and corresponding AI fixes, I've tried to limit suggestions to make them doable. I'm a programmer and worked on published PC games, so I understand the constraints SD is under.
These are ordered roughly from largest concept at the top to nits at the bottom.
* Complicated production systems - FE uses some novel and complicated game design features that are important from the first turn. The material->production, grain->food, Faction Power->growth, city base+improvements->Gildar, and shard->mana are each different from the other, and I found them hard to figure out. I don't know what to do here, other than improve the tutorial and tooltips, and maybe somehow get more than the 1% of users that read to forums to see the info in the "getting started" posts. Maybe as part of the tutorials? The two parts I found particularly confusing were that food doesn't improve growth, and the way Faction Power is divided by the number of cities to get growth rate. I'll address those two below.
* Faction Power driving growth is very confusing. I'd suggest adding the per city growth rate in the "Faction Power" panel somehow, either adding it after the total power in parentheses, or in the tool tip. Also, perhaps the "Growth" tool tip should explicitly say "Faction Power/Number of Cities (192/18) +1.1", instead of "Faction Prestige +1.1". (What the hell is "Faction Prestige" anyway?" Also, after six games, I'm still not what actually are all the things that go into determining Faction Power, so when I want to increase growth rate, it's hard to know what to do.
* Food setting a limit on population but not otherwise affecting growth is confusing, and the way it's presented in the UI makes it worse. The display and tool tip on the city screen show the amount of free food, but the tool tip text says: "Food is the maximum population your city can support". Perhaps the tool tip can be reworked to be more clear that it is "free food" to avoid misleading new players, though this doesn't address that it doesn't affect growth...
* Choosing city specialization when you can't review city list is a pain. I see why Tuidjy names his city with things like "Conclave I". I'm not sure what an easy fix for this is. Maybe a warning popup the turn before based on pop and growth rate so I can think about it while I can pull up the city ledger?
* Population is not displayed in city ledger, making it harder to plan specialization since it's not obvious how close cities are to popping to next level. This should not be hard to add.
* Squad size needs tool tips in research explaining what it is. Took me awhile to sort this out verses army size.
* Does city population matter beyond specialization other than level up perks? I know there are things you can build in the cities that make them do things when they are idle, but otherwise, if I leave a city idle, am I getting anything for it? I'm not sure where this should be explained or displayed...
* A different point about Faction Power is that the AI use of it in determining cost or treaties and such is too on/off based on whether you are slightly below or slightly above the other party. When you're both at 100 the behavior, like offered treaty costs, shouldn't fluctuate hugely when one of you goes up or down one point.
* Autoturn is not usable. If you have Autoturn on, it is too easy to click on the map to try to move the map around while you have a city build selected and end up instead placing a Black Market building at a random spot that you didn't want and rolling into the next turn. Also, once the list of heroes and cities on the left gets too long so it has to scroll up and down, things get pretty clumsy. Could there be a mode between Autoturn and regular where you get a "everyone has moved" dialog?
* It took me a long time to notice the green border around heroes means "I haven't moved yet", as opposed to the "ZZz" on the cities. Couldn't they both used the same "I haven't been dealt with" indicator? And maybe one for both that says "I've been told to sleep for multiple turns, so don't jump to me or block Autoturn"?
* Heroes should still show up on the list even if they are hiding in Cities so they don't get forgotten turn after turn.
* No preview of unit track. Others have noted this, but it is pretty bad to have a unit dash off in the wrong direction when you try to move it. How hard would it be to make it so if you hold down Right-Mouse button it shows you the track the unit will take, with up-button moving? (Cancel by putting mouse over units current position.)
* "Wasted" city production needing rushing for min/max - how hard would it be to carry production into next turns build? Have mercy on me if I have to calculate in my head for every building in every city that has two turns to complete whether I should rush it to avoid wasting production the way Tuidjy does.
* Why are some numbers in city display red?
* Where did opposing faction attitude factor display go? I'm playing 1.02, and I can't find the list of factors like "+1 I like war!" for the enemies. It must be here somewhere, but I really can't find it.
Last, I have a couple of things that aren't nits, and so don't belong at the bottom for that reason, but they've been raised so much I didn't want to emphasize them, but didn't want to let them go either:
* Faction and Sov balance could use some tweaking. I agree that things don't have to be perfectly balanced in a single player game like this, and part of the fun is trying different things based on their atmosphere, but right now some of the atmospheric things you might want to try are so weak it's hard to face them compared to other choices. I think the game could benefit from a pass through the faction and sov traits to even things out a bit, not so much to nerf the good ones, but to improve the bad ones so you don't feel like you're crippling yourself to take them.
* The magic spells are pretty limited for a game with "Enchantress" in the title. I'm not sure how much design and AI work it takes to add more, but a few more in each school would add to that feeling of a complex mystical system instead of just a cookie cutter "If this is level 3, I must get fireball" sort of thing that the current system unfortunately has a bit of.
That's it. Thanks for reading if you plowed through this far, and don't forget to get a copy of FE for a friend!
Cheers,
Phleem
