WAR of MAGIC & FALLEN ENCHANTRESS

Quoting Frogboy,

The blandess was a "feature" not a bug.

I think you are going to regret using this formulation. The abstractness might have been a feature, and one that you may or may not, in hindsight, deem a poor idea. But blandness? No, that was a result of the (suboptimal) way that the abstractness was implemented. At least that is how I would like to interpret what you are saying. Just doesn't seem like the kind of statement you'd like to be quoted on.

Quoting Magog_AoW,

reply 25

You don’t have housing in Fallen Enchantress. City Building is much more specialized
Sounds great. I never got any kicks out of building the cities in WoM anyway...

Housing in WOM is just boring: you pretty much have to research 4 or 5 things in more or less the same order all the times. If you don't start with a tech researching structure for example, you end up stuck without being able to do anything, for possibly lots of turns until you have enough money and material to start the research.You also have to spawn pioneers as much as possible since that is the only way to be competitive. City building in WOM simply doesn't work and is boring!

If on the top of that you also add that all heroes end up being identical you realize that the RPG element is just as boring... and should we mention the wargame element? Let's not even start talking about the choice of using squares instead than hexes (which is arguable, but makes the whole thing look really simplistic to any expert wargamer). What are the strategic choices one has to make? almost none most of the times.

The problem with WOM is that it is a 1) RPG, 2) A wargame and 3) A city building game where none of those three things is either fun or challenging. I really disagree with the Frogman when he says this game tries to be everything to everyone. In fact this game does not. It LOOKS like it is everything because it has the cosmetic element of all those 3 kinds of games (and therefore indeed lots of potential), but in fact there is no study on the gameplay and it could have been at least one of those three kinds of games if in any of them the player really had choices to make.

How to fix it?

1) Heroes should evolve in different ways (random attributes when reaching new levels?)

2) Cities should drastically change and open new tech trees according to the player's starting choices (all of them should offer specific strategic advantages and disadvantages: You want to develop a city by the sea exploiting that side? People there become specialized and they fish in order to get food but are unable to do other things. They get for example negative bonuses in agriculture and instead than soldiers they only produce warships...)

3) Develop the wargame element: too late for hexes, unfortunately, but you could use the concept of "zone of control"! The zone of control in wargames is represented by the hexes surrounding a unit. Any unit entering those hexes is forced to end its movement (unless it has special skills). That basic concept and many other that come from the wargame culture could have been implemented to develop a rich combat system. (Frogman hates hexes and apparently has no wargame experience, and it shows!).

The real problem of WOM is not that it tried to be everything to everyone, but that too much time and effort were invested in making the game look nice instead than making it work in terms of gameplay! Player need to have choices to make and all choices must have a good and a bad side.

All that is obvious? Then how comes they didn't do it?

Quoting Vallu751,

reply 22

I think you're missing the point.

The point is that there's very little chance the sequel will be worse than E:WoM.

While I personally consider E:WoM the largest gaming disappointment since Master of Orion 3, I think we should all look to the future with FE. I'm willing to give Stardock an honest chance with it. If they deliver this time, I promise to wipe away as much memory of E:WoM as I possibly can.

Actually I think your missing my point there. I agree the sequel is likely to be better, in fact I said as much in my post. It has nothing to do with whether or not the sequel is "better". No matter how much better a sequel is, there will always be people who hate it and like the original better. That's just human nature. Some people just don't like change.

Quoting FadedC,

reply 28

Actually I think your missing my point there. I agree the sequel is likely to be better, in fact I said as much in my post. It has nothing to do with whether or not the sequel is "better". No matter how much better a sequel is, there will always be people who hate it and like the original better. That's just human nature. Some people just don't like change.

I hear you. For many games, the worst audience is the old fans. Total War: Shogun 2 has been a very rare case when the game was so good that a large part of the fan community actually thinks the game is good. Usually sequels get thrashed if they change anything. Even WoM suffers a bit from that effect: design choices that are different from MoM get thrashed.

That said, I still think E:WoM is something of a special case... hopefully with a few updates it will become a game that can beat FE for some people. But without further updates the people who love it are rather few.

I am enthousiastic and scared at the same time to read this... Especially when there's sentences like WoM and FE are totally different... I worry a lot with all that, FE will either be really excellent and bypass all the flaws of WoM or it will be so different, that we won't like it anymore [e digicons]:'([/e]

For me a sequel of a successful game should take the original and add / modify stuff and make it better without removing anything from the original.

For example, Starcraft 2 is good, but it's not an amazing sequel because a lot of units we used to love in the first one disapeared here.

And I'm afraid with FE, they take a lot out of WoM, rather than making it better, they just modify the system entirely ! It might give something good but will we like it?

I'm actually most excited because they are changing and revamping so much stuff. I don't think WoM was ever thought through enough to have the potential to become a good game. It just threw in a whole bunch of features without much thought to how they would work to getter to create a fun or challenging game. It needed a complete redesigning if it was ever to reach the quality of GalCiv.

I'm also excited because Kael is working on the project and he did such a great job with the whole player vs. evironment thing in Fall from Heaven. I can't wait to see what he might accomplish with that in elemental, which seems in many ways like a much better venue for it then Civ. We've already seen what I assume to be a lot of his creativity and flavor in the previews.

By this description this sound a bit like HOMM which is not a bad thing. Hopefully you can pull that off better then your MoM spiritual successor try.

Quoting onomastikon,

reply 26

Quoting Frogboy, reply 18The blandess was a "feature" not a bug.

I think you are going to regret using this formulation. The abstractness might have been a feature, and one that you may or may not, in hindsight, deem a poor idea. But blandness? No, that was a result of the (suboptimal) way that the abstractness was implemented. At least that is how I would like to interpret what you are saying. Just doesn't seem like the kind of statement you'd like to be quoted on.

There's plenty of people who think Galactic Civilizations is bland and generic. That's because Galactic Civilizations is designed as a game where the wars are won based on who builds the mightiest civilization. You win via logistics. Not tactics.

Fallen Enchantress will likely feel a lot closer to MOM than War of Magic because MOM was much MUCH more about the tactical decisions -- the importance of special abilities and effective use of specific spells.

By contrast, in War of Magic, I was perfect satisfied with spell books revolving around getting a better Fireball spell or a bigger army because the "winning" was about who built the more powerful magical kingdom capable of delivering these logistical capabilities.

Of course, Fallen Enchantress is certainly going to get a better reception than War of Magic because unlike War of Magic, FE starts out with a reasonably mature engine that the designers know what it can and can't do.

With War of Magic, the original design had to be essentially tossed/morphed based on what the engine could do. That's one of the reasons why I want to see WOM to be enhanced too so that it too can reach a closer proximity of its original vision.

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 18

I was thinking tonight of a more succinct way to describe the philosophy different. I'd say War of Magic was designed to be a lot more abstract. That's why so many people found it bland I think. The details of the soldiers and magic were not considered core to the game design because ultimately it was about which civilization was able to acquire the most powerful weapons and spells rather than any real concern over how well those weapons and spells were used. The blandess was a "feature" not a bug. But in hindsight, not a good idea.

Ya, actually attempting to make a game bland probably not a good idea.

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 18

The problem with WOM in its current state is that it still tries to be too many things at once. That's something I hope to address in future builds of WOM. If WOM had stayed true to its "battle of magical civilizations" concept (which would mean huge armies rather than small groups) users might not have cared so much about how generic individuals could be. It tried to have it both ways -- abstracted individuals = bland. armies that are abstracted (like in Total War) make sense. individuals whose details have been abstracted doesn't make as much sense.

Hence, one of the first changes I put into v1.3 of WOM is the elimination of individual formations and instead starting with 4 and going up from there.

WOM is not a horrible game. 1.1 went along way to fix city building and stability. 1.2 will make it a decent(C), if somewhat bland when you replay it multiple times. That's far from perfect but hardly unusual in this industry. Games you can replay endlessly are pretty far between. FE looks like a amazing game and even 1.3 could become a great game.With 1.2 WOM has a great base with which to expand from and could become a true A game, something that is pretty rare. Neither Civilization V or even Starcraft are A games in my book.

Of course while 1.3 adds a bunch of cool features that will increase replayability, what I'm really looking forward to is 1.4 where hopefully you fix diplomacy and tactical AI.

It doesn't matter to me that I didn't use all my population, Population and housing to me makes me feel like I am apart of the civilization and the world. It is part of what immerses me into the game and story because I feel people live there and I like to build large cities and huge civilizations.

Sounds like lots of potential.

Then again, so did EWOM and look how that turned out. Hard for me to get excited about FE when EWOM pretty much..um.. missed the mark.

Thanks though for the info, nice to see where things stand. Any word on EWOM 1.2final so that you can actually put out 1.3 so I can try to play it before FE comes out in 2012 (my prediction based on how things are going)?

Quoting RavenX,

reply 9

That's a great update chief . Forgive me if I'm wrong, but, the description above seems to fit in a lot with what was originally planned with Elemental doesn't it? If not what "was planned", then perhaps I should say what "was wanted"? I know we've covered these ideas before, especially city specialization, which I my-self made a post about a long time back. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's in the big Idea's List.

Yeap, here it is:

[Gameplay-Map] City Specialization, Building Caps, and Guilds (Guild Bonuses & Buildings)

Yeah, kinda makes it hard to get excited for anything. Beta was sadly more than fun than anything we had within 3 months of release (and even the game today since it is uninstalled for me).

I'm hoping Stardock can regain some of their lost rep for making good strategy games.

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 33

Fallen Enchantress will likely feel a lot closer to MOM than War of Magic because MOM was much MUCH more about the tactical decisions -- the importance of special abilities and effective use of specific spells.

I also thought that the most fun parts of MoM were early in the game when you were still exploring the world and dealing with taking over nodes and dungeons, and the various rampaging monsters. That's because there was still a sense of fantasy and wonder at that point and you never knew what you might run into, or what treasures you might find. It didn't matter as much if the AI was god awful when you weren't dealing with enemy players but rather monster lairs and such that didn't play by the same rules as you. This is what I'm hoping to see more of in FE.

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 33

Quoting onomastikon, reply 26
Quoting Frogboy, reply 18The blandess was a "feature" not a bug.

I think you are going to regret using this formulation. The abstractness might have been a feature, and one that you may or may not, in hindsight, deem a poor idea. But blandness? No, that was a result of the (suboptimal) way that the abstractness was implemented. At least that is how I would like to interpret what you are saying. Just doesn't seem like the kind of statement you'd like to be quoted on.

There's plenty of people who think Galactic Civilizations is bland and generic. That's because Galactic Civilizations is designed as a game where the wars are won based on who builds the mightiest civilization. You win via logistics. Not tactics.

Fallen Enchantress will likely feel a lot closer to MOM than War of Magic because MOM was much MUCH more about the tactical decisions -- the importance of special abilities and effective use of specific spells.

By contrast, in War of Magic, I was perfect satisfied with spell books revolving around getting a better Fireball spell or a bigger army because the "winning" was about who built the more powerful magical kingdom capable of delivering these logistical capabilities.

Of course, Fallen Enchantress is certainly going to get a better reception than War of Magic because unlike War of Magic, FE starts out with a reasonably mature engine that the designers know what it can and can't do.

With War of Magic, the original design had to be essentially tossed/morphed based on what the engine could do. That's one of the reasons why I want to see WOM to be enhanced too so that it too can reach a closer proximity of its original vision.

As long as you get the engine mature enough for Galciv3, I'll be happy.

Quoting FadedC,

reply 38

I also thought that the most fun parts of MoM were early in the game when you were still exploring the world and dealing with taking over nodes and dungeons, and the various rampaging monsters. That's because there was still a sense of fantasy and wonder at that point and you never knew what you might run into, or what treasures you might find. It didn't matter as much if the AI was god awful when you weren't dealing with enemy players but rather monster lairs and such that didn't play by the same rules as you. This is what I'm hoping to see more of in FE.

Well said. MoM had so many interesting features in it that it didn't really matter that the stategic AI was so dumb. I think the combat AI was decent. It was able to cast spells and chose them pretty well. It knew how to use ranged units and charged with the others. And in MoM simple charging wasn't as bad a move as it is in WoM. WoM emphasis on attack with multiple strikes in a combat round just devastates units that behave like they did in MoM. Similar AI, different rules -> combat challenge gone.

MoM wizard creation was incredibly cool. There were so many subtle differences and choices actually mattered. I can't understand why WoM choices include whether to give your sovereign a pointy stick or a point in an attribute. Both can be gained with money or experience. That's bland. An example of an interesting MoM choice was whether to have 10 nature books and nature mastery trait or 11 nature books. Nature mastery gave bonuses to various things, including combat against nature nodes. 10 books gave you most common spells to begin with and all nature spells available to research. 11 books gave you the same research capability, but you started with all common spells, 2 uncommon and 1 rare spell. Consequences of this choice were vast, even though it seems minor. For instance, 11 black books gave you the possibility to summon an Invisible Stalker on the first few turns. This higher end unit was able to take entire cities by itself, but it's usefullness declined with time.

And that was just the wizard creation. Then there were the dungeons and nodes, independent cities and interesting heroes... after the enviroment you got to battle the not-so-good AI. That's kind of where WoM starts..

Ah... MoM...

Quoting Black-Knight,

reply 27

How to fix it?

1) Heroes should evolve in different ways (random attributes when reaching new levels?)

Stardock is a step ahead of you. What you just said is a one sentence summary of the new Traits feature in FE. And I think it's going to be great!

On a related note, I'm really looking forward to seeing who wins the Design a Trait contest... there are so many imaginative and interesting entries! How much longer until the 5 finalists are announced?

+1 for MoM, it was really the king of turned-based strategy game !!!!

I've never been disapointed with MoM, sad all the remakes fell down, there's still some out there, playable but not finished I believe, especially the multiplayer version. Spells were totally amazing too.

They succeeded something quite similar but still lacking something with Age of Wonders 2: SM, I had hope seriously that WoM would be the successor ! While the army making and everything is great, the lack of spells (or at least useful ones) made the game kind of similar to Civilization with more customisation choices.

I hope FE will succeed where all who tried to make a successor of MoM have failed. So I'm really hoping the spells will be awesome

Second thing I hope, is tactical combat in cities to be more tactical than any normal combat with walls, defenses of the city, etc... because taking a city for now is kind of similar to attacking an army in the middle of nowhere

So from what I understand, the scale of the world the player play in will be reduced to increase the amount of details in the game. That will increase the richness of the game. This is a good decision if you want to make the game feel more like an open RPG which was I think your objective.

As for War of Magic, it's true that if you wanted to have everything without abstracting any details, it could be problematic. I wrote a article about this on my website called "Command Window and chains of command"

http://bgd.lariennalibrary.com/index.php?n=DesignArticle.Article-CommandWindow

In summary, when your command level is very high, you do not want to worry about the low level details.

"Fallen Enchantress will likely feel a lot closer to MOM than War of Magic because MOM was much MUCH more about the tactical decisions -- the importance of special abilities and effective use of specific spells. "

This is something I have just realsed with my board game. Since MOM was taking place in the whole world, I designed a game where the abstration level was high enough to manage a whole world. I knew that MOM was about details, so I created clever mechanics to detail some game elements, when the needed, appeared (ex: combat get's detailed). The problem is that non combat spells are still limited because there is little stuff on the board to influence due to the high abstration level. Here is the last picture of the board.

http://bgd.lariennalibrary.com/uploads/Mainsite/GameIdea/GameIdea201003240528PM/Picture_SpellcraftPA_NewMap_sm.jpg

In a system like the above, players will not be able to manage specific spells, but rather family of spells the gives a global bonus to something.

What I have just realised is that even if MOM takes place in the whole world, the scale of the cities and units is not proportional to that world. It is much more detailed than it should be. Or the planet is very small. So one solution could be to detail the game much more like if the scale of the map was closer but still have a wrap around map that claims to cover the whole world.

Are the maps and terrain randomly generated?

It sounds like FE is getting even farther away from being a empire building, 4X game; instead focusing more on the RPG aspects. IMO this is a mistake. I have yet to hear grand design decisions that put Elemental on par (strategy game wise) with Galciv2.

quoting post

One of the most common series of questions I’ve been getting over the past month is what the difference between War of Magic and Fallen Enchantress will be.
The marketing folks want me to keep the specifics to a minimum so I’ll focus on broad terms.
The Plague Cat you see on the right would never have been in War of Magic. That’s because War of Magic was much more broadly scaled. Fallen Enchantress, by contrast, is much more tightly designed. Put another way, Fallen Enchantress isn’t an expansion pack for War of Magic. It’s a new strategy game that takes place in the Elemental universe (hence Elemental: War of Magic, Elemental: Fallen Enchantress, there won’t be an Elemental II for example because it would be like having a Star Wars II).
War of Magic, hence focuses on building a kingdom where your primary competitors are other kingdoms and empires. It’s very much like Galactic Civilizations in that sense. The terrain itself in War of Magic is of only minor importance and the individual soldiers and heroes are heavily abstracted.
Fallen Enchantress, by contrast, has the world itself as one of your primary antagonists. The cataclysm has ruined and in the vacuum of civilization other…things have taken hold of the land. From a lore perspective, War of Magic broadly takes place in the West of Anthys, far from the epicenter of the cataclysm. Told largely from the point of view of the men of the West, the races of the East, collectively called “The Fallen” are treated as villains. By contrast, Fallen Enchantress largely revolves the much more hostile and dangerous East. There, we learn that there is a lot more nuance to the various races fighting for survival. The world itself is as much your enemy as Magnar or Kraxis.
Fallen Enchantress is a much more personal experience. Winning is not just about building up the most lethal civilization but also adapting to the environment. As a result, weapons, magic, and technology are much more specific. You’ll need to look at what your opponents are up to and focus on countering it. Biggest mob != Win. You don’t have housing in Fallen Enchantress. City Building is much more specialized. You won’t be building the same kinds of things in every city but instead of customizing your cities such that they can meet the threats and environments they exist in.
Stay tuned.

Are the maps and terrain randomly generated?

Yes. Unlike War of Magic, the continents are generated on the fly.

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 46

Are the maps and terrain randomly generated?

Yes. Unlike War of Magic, the continents are generated on the fly.

cool!

Fallen Enchantress is not focusing on large-scale combat as much as WoM. But will the changes in later bits of WoM for the purpose of fixing the large-scale up also be true in Fallen Enchantress? Specifically, the decrease of health for trained units, and making the minimum unit size four soldiers instead of one?

Quoting Cruxador,

reply 48

Fallen Enchantress is not focusing on large-scale combat as much as WoM. But will the changes in later bits of WoM for the purpose of fixing the large-scale up also be true in Fallen Enchantress? Specifically, the decrease of health for trained units, and making the minimum unit size four soldiers instead of one?

Well, a better way to look at it is that War of Magic is going to evolve in its own direction with its changes possibly finding their way in FE.

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 49

Well, a better way to look at it is that War of Magic is going to evolve in its own direction with its changes possibly finding their way in FE.

I actually really like this idea. The truth is that War of Magic is not the deeply flawed game many have tried to espouse on these forums, but is in fact a solid foundation for a really great game. While I am excited to hear about some of the designs for FE, it is good to know that War of Magic itself will evolve in its own right. Having a version where you are engaging in a living world is a neat idea, it would be neat to see War of Magic evolve a more interesting faction experience.

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