Rob Zacny

Episode 192: Fallen Enchantress with Derek Paxton

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Derek Paxton comes back to the show to talk with Tom, Rob, Bruce, and Troy about Fallen Enchantress, his massive revision of 2010's Elemental: War of Magic. He explains how he started reshaping Elemental, and how the project grew along the way. Tom is already a big fan, and even suggests that Fallen Enchantress may be close to Master of Magic-levels of greatness. Rob and Troy are a bit more reserved, and some arguments break out over diplomacy, the early game, and the tactical combat. Derek details his thinking on each of those points, and goes a long way to explaining why Fallen Enchantress works the way it does.

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"Meatshields in front. archers in back" is supposed to be repetitive. It's a key difference between tactics and strategy. There's probably a reason for it.

It'll be interesting to see how long it takes for the tactical battles to become dull. I'm guessing that the designers anticipated this happening and put in the auto-resolve feature as a result.

But there are inherent problems with that. What am I automatically resolving? Because this is actually a strategy game, there are mutually exclusive goals. Which units am I trying to keep alive? Am I preserving mana? Am I preserving items?

Even if the auto-resolve was optimal in some way (it's nowhere close), it seems like a non-solution to the fundamental problems with tactical combat. Even if they make the battles more complicated or put more variety in them, at the end of the day they're still going to be about routine execution.

Still, it's nice to see Fallen Enchantress try to be more than an optimization battle versus some AIs (which is a dead-end as soon as the AI cannot compete with the player). I think the game is really innovative in its approach. If it succeeds, it'll be a big win for strategy gaming. Borrowing from RPGs is great because those games have figured out how to handle difficulty and progression which is where every single 4X fails.

Also, it would probably be cooler to have a broader view of the game with more discussion from the designer instead of a review show prepared before anyone was ready.

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Excellent show, I can't begin to describe how chuffed I am to have the old crew together again (minus Julian), it really doesn't matter what game you talk about, it's just thrilling to hear the familar folks chatting again.

I thought Derek did an excellent job of explaining some of the design decisions and some of evolution the game has gone through. Since the initial release of Elemental, I've been less than enthusiastic for Fallen Enchantress. Warlock delivered what I thought Elemental should have done. I didn't think anything fresher could come from that cauldron again.

I haven't played much of FE, beyond installing it and seeing if it still played reasonably on my hardware. I did wonder whether two years more development and enhancements, would shave the performance off my cob-webbed PC. But surprisingly, it still plays smoothly.

After listening to the show, I'm now positively buoyant with enthusiasm for the game! Perhaps there is life beyond Warlock?

When the discussion dipped into "lack of tactical variation", I couldn't help but have Conquest of Elysium battle flashbacks, and I'd take anything Fallen Enchantress could deliver over minute sprites lined up in a black void, watching blurred damage numbers scroll up the screen. I remember Elemental's tactical combat being quite sparse, and uninteresting, but the bottom end of my tolerance to "tactical" battles has been set so low by CoE that I'm quite ready to forgive Fallen Enchantress of many of its pupating predecessor's sins.

Thanks again for a very interesting show, and I hope the old team makes more regular visits to 3MA, because they add extra icing/frosting to an already tasty cake!

"I'm with yah, and if I'm not with yah, I'm a'gin yah!"

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Also, it would probably be cooler to have a broader view of the game with more discussion from the designer instead of a review show prepared before anyone was ready.

A much more enjoyable show (for me) than last weeks. Although I do agree with the above. It was a shame Bruce was so quiet... i usually like to hear what he thinks, but I got the impression that he was keeping quiet as he hadn't had much of a chance to play the game.

The most interesting part of the discussion was Derek's comments near the start about the difference between FfH2 and Ele:FE. Would of been nice to have developed this a little. I wonder if the reason that some people dislike Ele:FE, is that they're approaching it as a strategy game, when in fact it perhaps has more in common with a sandbox game: it's a big toy box. Not only are there RPG mechanics, but the whole game works best if you role play it... filling in some of the gaps in the lore with your imagination and playing as a character, rather than trying to mixmax overarching, and then complain that the game is unbalanced and broken because you can beat it easily with a certain build. I think those imbalances are part of the design: Derek wants to let you play as an all conquering evil overlord if you want to. And of course that's going to be overpowered!

Note: I haven't actually played the game... I'm waiting for the first patch :) But my enthusiasm for it is a lot higher after listening to Tom Chick rave about it.

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A much more enjoyable show (for me) than last weeks. Although I do agree with the above. It was a shame Bruce was so quiet... i usually like to hear what he thinks, but I got the impression that he was keeping quiet as he hadn't had much of a chance to play the game.

Yeah, after giving Jake Solomon the Spanish Inquisition about X-Com design decisions, it was weird for him to be so quiet on this show.

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I love this game.

From the podcast about how random maps making for uneven starting positions...

From roguelikes this random factor leading to sometimes almost impossible early game situations is almost revered. The community has a strong "thats the way it is so learn to love it" attitude. But thats ok because its not so much us vs the ai as it is us vs the randomised dungeon.

As strategy gamers we go into games thinking that its a strategy game and thus our intelligence should be the deciding factor. However there is always randomness in games, the Civ series always had their Civ 1 and 2 "Battleship vs Spearmen" jokes and while this is not present in current games as much there still can be very bad rolls leading to catastrophic rage quits.

For some difficulty levels a good start is always needed. If I had a dollar for each time I used the "Regenerate World" button in Civ IV I wouldn't be writing this post but rather racing the autobahns in Germany in my new Ferrari. At difficulty levels not pushing the boundries of a players skill level its not as important and can actually lead to a more satisfying game if you have a harder start that makes you work for the victory. Also I feel the maps in Fallen Enchantress really do make each game feel more unique than any other tbs (or rts) I have seen before and thus leading itself a better level of immersion in the game world.

Its a great game and with mods and the expansion it will only get better.

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Oops I totally missed this episode. I've been active on the elemental forums for 2+ years now... though I only bought the game in june once it seemed good enough to warrant the purchase.

I am feeling kinda meh about the game but it has pretty good modding support so I think I can tweak it to the point where its very enjoyable.

The tactical combat was designed to be fast, simple, and very similar results to auto-resolve. I think this is a huge problem for the game, I don't want to play a game where all the battles are predetermined before they start. If you are going to let me move units around a battlefield then I should be able to have significant impact over the outcome. The AI is very predictable and still has some serious flaws such as never moving once it enters a zone of control.

The diplomacy system also is not very well designed, I don't like it. It should feel like playing with other human players, not like a store. I also hate when in 4x games the AI gangs up on the human player, but it seems to happen in this game too. Part of this is that the AI underestimates the human strength and likes to pick on weaklings.

In order to get the game balanced to the point it is now, they had to nerf a ton of features which makes the game less interesting. The game was way more fun when you could get powerful magic items on your hero in the first 100 turns... now I will likely kill the AI players in the first 100-150 turns and never experience any of the cool features like the wildlands, powerful items, etc. I can kill an AI player with only my sovereign, a champion, and the freebie units you get from quests/goodie huts. I usually don't build any units until I unlock most of the tech tree and them build super units that can each kill a dragon.

Part of the problem with the game is that there is an optimum way to play thats pretty easy to identify, so every game feels the same. (Build order, research order, unit traits are all constants for me)

I think the major complaint people have with the game is that it is bland. The champions don't feel unique, the units don't feel unique, an there are no elves, dwarves, and other cool races due to budget constraints. The spells are pretty boring and stuff I have seen before, and even though there are lots of spells in the game it doesn't feel like it because of how hard it is to get spells.

Overall it was an ambitious game that had lots of potential and fell a bit short. However, it is great that it got made in the first place and it will only improve as time goes on. Time to dig into those xml files!

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