{"id":7602,"date":"2012-08-31T10:52:02","date_gmt":"2012-08-31T14:52:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/?p=7602"},"modified":"2012-10-23T10:54:48","modified_gmt":"2012-10-23T14:54:48","slug":"elemental-fallen-enchantress-hands-on-beta-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/2012\/08\/elemental-fallen-enchantress-hands-on-beta-preview\/","title":{"rendered":"Elemental: Fallen Enchantress Hands-On Beta Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fallen<\/a><\/p>\n

Just over two years ago, Stardock released their first ever fantasy 4X turn-based game, Elemental: War of Magic<\/a>. As a longtime fan of fantasy 4X classics like Master of Magic and Age of Wonders, I was very excited based on the promises being made and pre-ordered the game back in the spring of 2010. Unfortunately, the game ended up not living up to expectations and received poor review scores from both critics and fans alike<\/a>. In addition, there was quite a lot of drama<\/a> surrounding this release at the time.<\/p>\n

This preview isn’t about War of Magic though, and is instead about Fallen Enchantress<\/a>, or Elemental: Fallen Enchantress depending on how you choose to associate it. Brad Wardell, Stardock’s CEO, eventually stepped up to the plate and came out and offered the next two expansions free to anyone who ordered the game prior to a certain date. He also brought in Derek Paxton, creator of the Civilization IV Fall from Heaven mod<\/a>, as lead designer and changed his own role on the project so he could view the game more objectively this time around.<\/p>\n

Based on Brad’s willingness to admit some mistakes and the efforts being made to improve upon the game, I decided to keep my game back in 2010 and put my faith in him and in Stardock. The reward for my support has been Fallen Enchantress and access to the Fallen Enchantress beta since the earliest days. Let’s see how things are shaping up now that Fallen Enchantress Beta 4 (Beta 5 is currently the last scheduled phase of the beta) has been released.<\/p>\n

Fallen Enchantress, much like War of Magic, is a sandbox 4X Fantasy Turn-based strategy game set in the world of Elemental. If you skipped the first Elemental game, the first thing that you will realize upon starting the game is that the game has its own quite unique visual style. Once you’ve taken that in, the next thing you might choose to do is take a look at the options available to you.<\/p>\n

Unlike a lot of games, you aren’t just going to find some video and audio settings in here. In fact you will find much more than that, and many of the options may be hard to understand until you’ve gotten into a game and seen how they affect things. The types of options included here allow you to do everything from customize when\/how you scroll the map around (and how quickly), whether automatic end turn is enabled, how the map should look, whether the camera should follow moving units, and quite a few other things. They had too much to fit on one options screen and there is a second, advanced options screen in order to contain all of the checkboxes and sliders available to you. I’ve included a screenshot of just one of the screens to give you a rough idea.<\/p>\n

\"Fallen<\/a><\/p>\n

Who are you?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

This is the first question you are asked when you click to start a new game. Presented with a screen full of heroic characters, you must decide whether to choose a pre-designed sovereign or to design a sovereign of your own. The sovereign character will be the first and only unit you have when you start a new game, and ultimately is the political face of your nation.<\/p>\n

It is therefore important to choose a sovereign that will be strong enough to survive the very early game, but who will also be able to help you meet your long-term goals as well. The pre-designed sovereigns are still being balanced, but in general the game already offers a wide range of choices from pure mage types, offensive and defensive melee types, hunters, and adventurers. All of the 8 pre-designed sovereigns have some level of skill in magic and can cast spells, but certain sovereigns are more specialized or have higher level spells and skills associated with spellcasting.<\/p>\n

Choosing a pre-designed sovereign means you’ll also receive their pre-designed race. All of these races have several unique features that differentiate them from the others, so in some ways playing one race will not feel quite the same as playing another. As an example, some of the races can’t wear armor beyond leather, and others can’t train archers or ranged units of any kind. It is important to note that all sovereigns, heroes, and nations fall under one of two factions in the game, the Empire of the Fallen and the Kingdoms of Men.<\/p>\n

While these two do differ in a few of their building choices and aesthetics, the most important thing to realize here is that you are going to have a much easier time befriending a fellow nation of the same faction as you compared to one of the opposing one, although it is certainly possible to overcome these differences. Depending on how you choose to populate your game world later on, you may make things easier or harder on yourself through this mechanic.<\/p>\n

\"Fallen<\/a><\/p>\n

Perhaps the pre-designed sovereigns don’t meet your needs and you’d rather create your own. Doing so is as simple as clicking on create character. You’ll get to select their physical appearance as well as their prior profession, traits, magical prowess, and even their backstory if you are feeling creative. Fallen Enchantress uses a point system to ensure balance, so if you choose to give your sovereign several abilities and spells, you may need to give yourself some negative traits to offset your point expenditure.<\/p>\n

Perhaps you don’t want a preset nation either and want to create your own. There are several things to consider when doing so. Beyond faction choice, which is of course rather important, you’ll also define your nations banner and its traits, which much like your sovereign, use a point system. Nation traits can be positive or negative as well, and while some nations, like the pre-designed Yithril nation, have chosen to have powerful starting troops and access to special axe variants through research, they also have to sacrifice all ranged weapons or in some cases even armor to be able to afford these benefits. All in all, the system is still being balanced, but the customization of the sovereign and your nation should allow it to suit just about everyone’s tastes.<\/p>\n

\"Fallen<\/a><\/p>\n

Forging Your Empire<\/strong><\/h3>\n

With your options set, and your starting sovereign selected, you will then be ready to start the game. Your first task in the game will be to take your sovereign and found your first city, and effectively your kingdom. Fallen Enchantress is smart enough to realize you’ll need a decent place to found your city, so it will always start you in an area that includes several tiles capable of supporting a city. This is important, because not every tile can support a city. In fact, the majority of them can not support one.<\/p>\n

A suitable tile will be shown on the map with 2 or 3 indicators and a number. These include grain (food), production and essence. These are very important values as all future modifiers will scale off these starting values. A city with 2 production will always under perform when compared to one with 3 for instance. Grain is pretty straightforward as food controls your maximum population size, which means more taxes and potentially a city size increase that comes with your choice of a free building that will be instantly added to the city.<\/p>\n

Essence is a bit more abstract, but essentially an essence value of 2 means that the city can be the recipient of up to 2 city enchantment spells. These spells also tend to scale off of essence, so for instance the earth spell Enchanted Hammers will provide you with +5 production per essence in that city. In addition, some buildings like the Cleric are only available if essence is present, and they also provide additional benefits based on the quantity of essence available. In the Cleric example, you will receive 5% unrest reduction per essence. In short, all three of these resources are very important and finding the best tile you can is pretty important. Unlike in Civilization games, only the tile you actually found a city on is used in calculating that city’s resources, so choose wisely.<\/p>\n

I’ve covered most of what cities do, but there are a few additional things worth mentioning. Cities are of course, vitally important for generating research, income, troops, etc. Each city, when it gains enough people to reach level 2, has to choose a path of either Town, Fortress, or Conclave. This choice, while not restrict the construction of basic buildings, but it does control which more advanced buildings that city will have access to. Towns get more production and grain buildings, as well as buildings designated to increase city growth and wealth. Fortress cities are designed with access to training yards, barracks, and other buildings that enhance the capability and training of newly trained troops. Conclaves have access to alchemy labs, more advanced research centers, and some other buildings that can offer additional mana per turn.<\/p>\n

As you will have to focus your cities on certain goals, you will inevitably want to get more cities in place. Each new city after your first can only be founded on a applicable square that has enough grain available. Fallen Enchantress is smart enough not to even show the resource overlay on the tile if it doesn’t meet that criteria, and sometimes you will have to travel a decent distance to find another suitable location. To found cities beyond your first one, you must train and send out pioneer units, and these units disappear from the map once the city is founded.<\/p>\n

\"Fallen<\/a><\/p>\n

Beyond city buildings there are also resources all over the map that you’ll want to bring into your zone of control and construct buildings upon. Mines generate metal for troops, stables generate horses, clay adds to your production, elemental shards provide you with mana and enhance some of your spells, and so on. To add these to your empire, you must bring them into your zone of control. Your zone spreads out from your cities as they grow, and some improvements cause them to grow faster or even instantly.<\/p>\n

Once the resource is in your zone of control, you can click on it and queue the construction of a building at the closest city to the resource. Sometimes resources are just too far away though, and you really want them. This is where the second purpose of pioneers comes in. They can also create an “outpost”, which has a decent size zone of control of its own, and any resources contained within it can be queued for construction at the nearest city. The outposts can be upgraded slightly, but in general are set and forget for the most part. You do need to guard them though, as an enemy stepping on your outpost will take control of it and any resources contained within. Also, any enemy or monster stepping on a resource building will destroy it, so it does pay to have some protection if enemies are around your vital resources.<\/p>\n

Resources and potential new city locations are not the only things you’ll be searching for or encountering as you explore. A sovereign does not have to rely on his own wits alone. In addition to troops you can train in your cities, there are, scattered across the map, heroes of both the Empire and Kingdom variety, and you can hire these heroes if you are of the right faction, have the right amount of coin, and in some cases have researched the proper technology in the case of higher level heroes. If they are instead of the enemy faction, you can attack them and attempt to eliminate them from the game before one of your opponent’s is able to recruit them. These champions are very similar to your sovereign and are able to take part in the RPG aspects of the game as well. They level up, can gain new skills and traits, can often cast spells and can equip items. I’ll be mentioning items a few times in the next few sections.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of locations on the map with green treasure chest icons that are referred to as “goodie huts”. These are essentially abandoned locations containing free loot for your champions. Often times, this loot is better than the goods you can buy at your city shops, depending on your research level. Any time you research a new technology that deals with weapons, armor, or mounts, these items become available for purchase and use by your sovereign and other heroes. While some armor and weaponry is better than none, you will often find better items through exploring these goodie huts, or as quest rewards.<\/p>\n

Another RPG element in this strategy title is the fact that you will also encounter quest locations on the world map. These quests can vary in difficulty and some higher level quests require certain technologies be researched before you can attempt them. Blocking the player from higher level quests is a good thing. It will be quite some time before you are strong enough to take on the threats those quests entail. Generally speaking, a quest will send you to another location to fetch this or that, to destroy some creature, or to escort someone to another location. Often times, you are faced with decisions both when accepting the quest and when completing it. Sometimes you will want to take what they originally offered you, but other times you may find one of the other choices is more appealing. Of course, all quests offer you xp for completion as well.<\/p>\n

The final thing you will encounter on the map, aside from other factions and their troops, is monster lairs. These are locations guarded by monsters visible on the world map. If you kill these monsters, you generally will find a higher level item inside their lair. Many of these monsters are high level though, and this actually is an added concern when founding cities. Whenever a monster lair is overtaken by a city’s zone of control, it immediately frees the monster and it will begin to roam somewhat randomly and attack things nearby. If you are unlucky, it may even attack and destroy one of your cities. It is therefore important to place your cities carefully and plan ahead for the time when nearby dangers may become actual threats. I’ve made the mistake multiple times of building too close to an Obsidian Golem or Slag early on, and I can tell you from personal experience it doesn’t usually end well for you.<\/p>\n

\"Fallen<\/a><\/p>\n

Influence matters<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Researching, queuing up buildings and troops in your cities, leveling your champions and sovereign, casting spells, and exploring the map are the things you’ll be doing the majority of the time. The game also has a diplomacy system in place that is quite unique.<\/p>\n

When engaging other races, you will be brought to a diplomacy screen where you stand one on one, face to face, with its sovereign. A slider bar will give you a general sense of how they are feeling about you, and will generally tell you if you can get them to make a deal with you or not. Seemingly everything in Elemental is a commodity though, and with enough of some \u201cthing\u201d, you can generally get what you want in return. Diplomacy is one of the only ways you will be able to make use of a special resource called \u201cInfluence\u201d. Influence is gained through quests, special buildings, and resource locations you will find in the world. While other goods are all fair game for trading or bartering as well, Influence can be quite valuable at the bargaining table.<\/p>\n

\"Fallen<\/a><\/p>\n

Trading and deal making involves a numbers game at its core. The opponent will provide you a value that you need to reach to make a deal for whatever item it is you are looking for. Want 10 metal from them so you can build some armored troops? That carries a value of 10 in their eyes. If they dislike you, maybe it’s 20 or more instead. You can trade them 10 influence for it, or perhaps 10 horses or crystal if they don’t have any currently. It works the same basic way with treaties as well. A peace treaty with a race of the same faction who likes your nation may be very easy to come by, free in some cases, and in some cases they will even be willing to offer you goods in return. In other cases, your bitter rival may demand ridiculous amounts in the tens of thousands to come to peace.<\/p>\n

So what exactly controls these feelings of like and dislike, trust and animosity? Thankfully, there is a diplomatic overview that provides quite a bit of insight into this exact question. You can view this overview and tell at a quick glance why a particular ruler feels the way they do about you. Most of these reasons really do make a lot of sense. +1 because you share our allegiance, +1 because we are still settling, +1 because we are already fighting other wars, -1 because you are too close to our borders, -1 because your faction is weaker than ours. In a way, you can see what you might be doing wrong and improve your standing with them by addressing those areas.<\/p>\n

In other cases though, you may be facing a sovereign suffering from mood swings, and you may be facing a -2 because today is an angry day or +2 because today is a manic day. Even things like, say attacking a fellow faction member, will resonate strongly with the other sovereigns. Again, from personal experience, they really don’t like it when you seem warlike and attack a faction that they belong to. Even though you didn’t attack them directly, you will face some difficulty earning their trust back. I feel as though this is a rather good system that rewards the more cautious player.<\/p>\n

\"Fallen<\/a><\/p>\n

Waging War<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In Fallen Enchantress, all combat is turn based on a square tiled grid. You can choose to automatically resolve battles of course, but any manually fought battles will take place on the square tile grid. There is also an option to watch turn based combat play out on auto pilot, letting the AI control your actions, and even still you can choose to simulate the remainder of a turn based engagement instantly with the click of a button should you feel you have the battle under control.<\/p>\n

In combat, an initiative system is used to determine when a unit’s turn comes, and this system can be used to your advantage to get several moves in before a slow lumbering opponent. Some spells and abilities play off of this mechanic, raising and lowering initiative, and in addition hero traits, training facilities, enchantments, and armor weight can all impact initiative as well. I prefer this to many other simpler systems as it offers lighter, more agile units, an opportunity to take action, and sometimes multiple actions, before their slower well armed counterparts.<\/p>\n

Combat itself features all the mechanics you’d expect to find. One of my chief complaints with War of Magic was a lack of interesting combat mechanics, and I do feel as though vast improvements have been made in Fallen Enchantress. Bears can maul, Juggernauts can cause splash damage to all units around them, counter-attacks are in, critical hits, dodge, knockdowns, stuns, poison, bleeds, and many more mechanics all play a part in victory or defeat on the battlefield.<\/p>\n

This isn’t even including the plethora of tactical spells that can reduce attack, reduce defense, cause direct damage to enemies, slow down, speed up, teleport, summon units, and generally cause a lot of problems for people coming in unprepared. One thing I do like about spells is that the more powerful spells often have a casting time and do not instantly fire. This allows the opponent to counter the spell if they have a caster in the party and the mana to do so.<\/p>\n

\"Fallen<\/a><\/p>\n

When troops are defeated in battle, they are gone from the world forever. Champions and your sovereign are not removed from the game as long as you have at least 1 friendly city. They will instead suffer an injury, sometimes one that permanently reduces their stats, and will be immobilized to rest in that city for 5 turns or longer. While it can be frustrating to defeat an enemy hero multiple times throughout a game, it is also nice that your own heroes, including all the time and items you’ve invested in them, are not permanently removed either should the tide of battle not go your way.<\/p>\n

It would be interesting to see some further options that could be selected upon game creation for those who want more of a \u201cplay for keeps\u201d type of game. For instance, I’d personally like to see some options like having a chance to steal an enemy’s artifact after defeating them (they drop an item while retreating for instance), or perhaps a chance at imprisoning them for a time (necessitating diplomatic payoffs or jailbreaks from the city they are held at if you want them back) or even killing them outright and removing them from the game. As it stands now, I feel like defeating the same hero every 10 turns or so, as I’ve seen happen many times, is rather unrewarding.<\/p>\n

When a battle is over, you are presented with a rather robust set of statistical data. You can view the overview, which shows you who did how much damage and how much they took, but also you can click to view a complete blow by blow showing who attacked whom, whether they missed or not, and how much damage was done. It reads sort of like an older RPG (think Baldur’s Gate) game’s statistics would. The nice thing about this breakdown is that it can be viewed even after a simulated\/auto battle, and it helps demystify some of the unknowns that usually come along with simulated battles.<\/p>\n

If I have one concern regarding combat right now, it is the ability for sovereigns and heroes to become almost unstoppable when leveled, buffed with enchantments, and equipped with quality equipment. I was able to reach a point where my sovereign, as a melee tank, was literally a 1 man army, taking entire armies and even cities on his own with very little damage taken or downtime. While I like having heroes that are powerful, I feel this somewhat diminishes the usefulness of troops in some ways.<\/p>\n

Troops require significant research in order to improve their gear and party size (default troop units include 3 individuals, but this can be increased through research), and by the time I was able to research decent troops they were vastly outclassed by my heroes. Only particular circumstances, for instance a need for ranged troops to deal with heavy hitting enemies, prompted me to train troops for anything beyond self defense.<\/p>\n

Seizing Victory<\/strong><\/h3>\n

There are currently 4 methods of victory in Fallen Enchantress, and all can be toggled off or on as you choose. These include Conquest, which is the classic eliminate all your enemies option. Then you have the Diplomatic option, which states you need to have an alliance with all remaining races. Thirdly, you have the Master Quest, which stipulates you must complete a special epic level quest hidden in the world. In actuality, this entails completing some research and then finding and completing 3 quests including some very powerful enemies.<\/p>\n

Finally, you have the Spell of Making victory, which requires research and then construction of 4 towers, and then the casting of a spell that takes 25 turns to complete. I can’t speak to how well balanced each of these are as I have only won via conquest and diplomatic victories thus far in any of the Fallen Enchantress betas, and I’ve played a few games in each one since the first beta went live. They are in-game though, and I have a feeling any issues with them will be worked out in the upcoming beta 5 which will be primarily based around polishing and balancing the game.<\/p>\n

The AI difficulty in the game can be set per opponent, and includes 8 levels ranging from novice to insane. My most recent game was with all opponents at the \u201cChallenging\u201d difficulty, which is one step above normal and three steps away from \u201cInsane\u201d, the hardest mode. I found the AI to be competent in city development and expansion, but was eventually able to overcome them due to poor unit design. Beta 5 is going to involve balancing and AI tuning, so I won’t comment much more on this for the moment.<\/p>\n

\"Fallen<\/a><\/p>\n

Music, Sound, UI, and Information<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Fallen Enchantress features a relatively wide assortment of musical tracks, many of which are tied to specific events such as founding a city, completing a research project, or defeating an opponent. As I played through the game, I began to associate specific musical sounds with specific activities such as research completion. What I found somewhat lacking, personally, was the actual ambient music. It seemed to me like there were too few tracks or perhaps too little variance in the tracks, and I eventually found that they became background noise that I didn’t pay much attention to.<\/p>\n

Sounds effects also adequately portray what is going on. Hearing the crashing sound while waiting on your next turn to be ready generally confirmed that I’d be trying to track down a resource that has been destroyed. In combat, the sounds of arrows flying from their bows and the groans of those taking damage seemed accurate enough to me. Nothing bad, but nothing outstanding in this area would be my opinion on it.<\/p>\n

The UI for Fallen Enchantress is quite good and allows you to quickly view your armies and cities on the left side, while keeping other more detailed info at the bottom of your screen. On your right is where you’ll be looking at the start of each turn, as this is where the many notifications present in the game will appear. Buildings being completed, armies being trained, declarations of war, enemies in your territory, and numerous other events are easy to view simply by clicking on the appropriate notification.<\/p>\n

One other area I want to give credit to is the in-game encyclopedia, the hiergamenon, and the in-game video tutorials. Nearly everything new that you encounter will pop up a notification asking if you’d like to watch a tutorial video. I stopped counting at 15 videos, but there were more than even that. In this beta stage, not all of these videos were in-game yet, but many of them did have fully functional videos explaining and showing how to do something new. Even without the videos though, the in-game guide has a ton of information on nearly anything you’d want to know about. It’s a nice touch that really gives the impression that they want players to be understand whats going on and not sit around confused, and I must admit it works.<\/p>\n

\"Fallen<\/a><\/p>\n

Beta Bugs and the Fallen Enchantress Engine<\/strong><\/h3>\n

There are of course some issues with the game in its current beta state, and I would be amiss to fail to mention them as some of them are quite annoying in my opinion. There are also a few bugs that are\/were game-breaking, like save game corruption, but this has been listed as fixed in the Beta 4a patch<\/a> released just this past Tuesday. Thankfully, I never encountered the save game corruption issue in my most recent game that I played through to completion.<\/p>\n

The engine they are using still seems to have some issues with significant slowdown in the later stages of a game, both on the tactical front and on the world map. My system is perfectly capable of playing much prettier games with even more particles flying around, but with Fallen Enchantress, the lag in later stages of the campaign seem to be quite noticeable. While not enough to make the game unplayable, it certainly doesn’t feel optimized or polished in its current state.<\/p>\n

Aside from engine issues, the game has some bugs that have been in existence for some time. For instance, sometimes archers will fire and the arrows will not come out of their bow, but instead the game will hang for a second and then the arrows will fly in from the left side of the screen. Another issue is that health bars do not update or adjust to accurately reflect the percentage of damage done to units, so in this sense they are almost useless in their current state. I can take a unit from 100 health to 10 health and the health bar may still be half filled in green for instance. Both of these are bugs that I’ve recalled since many beta releases ago. Another one I encountered in my most recent game was where I could sometimes perform a rush production on a building for say, 40 gildar, and instead of having that value subtracted from my total, it would be added to it. Oh, and the building would be completed of course as well.<\/p>\n

Mid and Late Gate Play<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Beyond bugs and engine issues, I’ve also got some issues with gameplay getting rather tedious, especially in the later stages. Early on, the AI is very aggressive at starting additional cities and placing outposts. This isn’t initially a problem, but I find that later on in the game it becomes somewhat of one. Let me try to explain.<\/p>\n

As the game progresses, I find that a lot of the gameplay becomes about retaining and managing what you have as well as taking new holdings. With each city you take comes a commitment to build a construction queue for it, and while obviously it is best to micromanage this and completely optimize your play, I find it often takes me away from more important and interesting things I’d rather be doing. This is especially true when I am on the warpath and am taking a city every turn or two at times. Not only are you having to set queues within the city itself, but often times the city will have other resources in its zone of control as well.<\/p>\n

If the AI has not constructed these resources yet, you will of course want to do so to optimize your holdings. Even if they have, many of these resources have upgrades to their buildings, and this again often requires clicking on the resource and then clicking to upgrade it, which queues it in the nearby city for construction. This leads to a lot of time spent wondering and searching for things to build, and honestly, at later stages of the game you may already have quite a bit of resources and may not want to fuss with it all. To the game’s credit, it does have an “!” marker and a notification on the right side of the screen that appears on new resources that come into your zone of control, but still it becomes rather tiresome due to some other issues I will explain soon.<\/p>\n

In addition to setting a build order for these cities, you also have to consider defending your new holdings, which honestly I sometimes just raze in true scorched earth style so I don’t have to manage them, especially if the AI is moving troops nearby to reclaim it. One of the big problems that I haven’t mentioned yet, a problem even bigger than the city micromanagement issues right now in my eyes, is managing outposts and resources.<\/p>\n

Outposts, as I mentioned earlier, are built by pioneers and create a zone of control that allows you to capture resources and build structures on them. The AI loves to build outposts everywhere right now. The problem is that outposts can be flipped from one side to another simply by stepping on them. In a large empire, this leads to a constant back and forth flipping that reminds me of the old days I spent in Heroes of Might & Magic trying to turn resources flags back to my color after I decided to go explore elsewhere. Having to build defensive cleanup forces to go and flip these back and kill the small attack squads sent by the AI is tiresome and extends late game turns longer than they need to be in my opinion.<\/p>\n

Now, perhaps my biggest pet peeve of them all right now. Resource buildings are currently destroyed when any enemy unit or monster steps on them. This requires constant rebuilding unless you have defensive forces everywhere to prevent this from happening. Since some of your resources have upgrade buildings, this means you will be starting from scratch with them once more. This isn’t necessarily the bad part, but it may need some tweaking. My big issue right now is that the game will give you a very vague description of where this occurred, with something along the lines of \u201cyour crystal quarry in the southwest has been destroyed\u201d. With an empire consisting of 11 cities, tons of landmass, and perhaps 6 or more crystal quarry resources spread around, this description is pretty useless. It does not include a notification banner like most other things to do where you can click and go directly to the object and I have no earthly idea why as it works so well for other things. I typically just forget about it and move on unless I was able to see exactly where it occurred.<\/p>\n

\"Fallen<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite all these faults, Fallen Enchantress is quite an enjoyable game right up until the tedious micromanagement sets in for me. If the game instituted some city governors who I could assign overall goals to, I think it would go a long way in reducing this for me. Perhaps even allowing them to rebuild resource buildings that have been destroyed would be a good idea. At the very least, let me have a notification that takes me directly to the resource so I can rebuild it. Of course, micromanagement may be less of an issue for you than it is for me, so this may not bother everyone.<\/p>\n

Closing Thoughts based on Beta 4<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Fallen Enchantress is a huge improvement over Elemental: War of Magic. If they can polish the game up, eliminate some of the engine slowdowns, and continue to tune the AI behavior in Beta 5, I think people looking for a fantasy 4X title will be quite pleased when it finally releases. My only fear is that thus far some bugs have remained in the game since its earliest days, and until they are fixed there is no guarantee that they will be, though I am hopeful.<\/p>\n

Just this week, Fallen Enchantress has for the first time been listed on multiple digital download sites including\u00a0GamersGate<\/a>,\u00a0Gamestop\/Impulse<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Steam<\/a>\u00a0with a retail price of $39.99\/\u20ac29.99. Every pre-order includes immediate beta access. The release date is set for Fall 2012.<\/p>\n

As always, Space Sector encourages you to make your purchasing decisions based on all available information. We are seeing the line between beta and release being walked here, as the pre-order is being offered at full retail price with no discount aside from immediate beta access. Considering the game is now being pushed out this way to all the major portals for sale and beta access, I have given my honest opinion on the game in its current state as of this preview, with the exception of this week’s patch coming out after my playthrough. I will of course follow up with a review when the game has been officially released.<\/p>\n

More Screenshots<\/strong>
\nngg_shortcode_0_placeholder<\/p>\n

Keith Turner, also known as aReclusiveMind here on SpaceSector, has been an avid gamer ever since he first laid his hands on a Commodore 128 in the mid 1980s. He enjoys multiple computer game genres, but his primary interests are in deep strategy games, 4x games, rpgs, and action rpgs. He enjoys writing and hopes to contribute with additional reviews, previews, and informative AARs to the community. See all Keith’s posts here<\/a>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just over two years ago, Stardock released their first ever fantasy 4X turn-based game, Elemental: War of Magic. But this is not about War of Magic, this is the preview of Elemental: Fallen Enchantress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[198],"tags":[86,1088,234,1086,117,203,158,230],"class_list":["post-7602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-previews","tag-4x-game","tag-elemental-fallen-enchantress","tag-elemental-war-of-magic","tag-fantasy","tag-pc-game","tag-preview","tag-stardock","tag-turn-based-strategy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7602\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacesector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}