Elemental - Now Fallen Enchantress

[Sky]

You should load up FFH2 and run a game with fireball-spewing dwarvish mud golems.

[Sheepherder]

That's why he said specifically sci-fi and fantasy. Civilisation games already come with the worlds biggest lore book ever just from their names. (And even civ games have added unique bonuses and units to civs as the series has progressed).

Character in fantasy and sci-fi games of this type is *everything*.

That's a rather arbitrary distinction.  "This game, despite being built completely upon CivIV, is a fantasy 4x."

Because I'm pretty sure that the Norse elephant cavalry invasion of Vinland is ahistorical at the very least.  It also doesn't require whatever the hell Sky is talking about right above my post.  Just, you know, basic 4x game systems.  It probably helps if everything else about the game doesn't suck too.

[Ingmar]

That's why he said specifically sci-fi and fantasy. Civilisation games already come with the worlds biggest lore book ever just from their names. (And even civ games have added unique bonuses and units to civs as the series has progressed).

Character in fantasy and sci-fi games of this type is *everything*.

That's a rather arbitrary distinction.  "This game, despite being built completely upon CivIV, is a fantasy 4x."

Because I'm pretty sure that the Norse elephant cavalry invasion of Vinland is ahistorical at the very least.  It also doesn't require whatever the hell Sky is talking about right above my post.  Just, you know, basic 4x game systems.  It probably helps if everything else about the game doesn't suck too.

You don't get it. I don't even like FFH, but you clearly don't get it.

[Sheepherder]

I truly don't.  This is where that Penny Arcade comic goes, right?

[Ingmar]

I can try to explain where you're going wrong, if you want. You're talking about systems, they're talking about flavor.

Mere ahistoricity does not fantasy make.

[Typhon]

For me, the "it's fantasy" is a red herring.  Why FFH 2 is more fun then Civ4 is because the FFH 2 races all play out differently, AND there are multiple valid tech paths that you can follow for each race (ok! ok! some races have less options, but most have plenty).

CivX throw one or two unique units for the entire 4000+ years and that is the pretty much the sole difference between nations.  After a couple play-throughs, you have pretty much seen all that Civ4 has to show you.  Not sure why the various Civ teams never seem to figure that out,... MoM had diverse races FFS.  I guess they didn't' want to piss off their core audience.

Edit: wow I suck at typing sentences and grammar and stuff.

[Sky]

Well said. Each race plays quite differently, with a lot of flavor. And each game can be wildly different depending on your neighbors, forcing you to play radically differently.

Warlock really fell flat, despite having a lot of promise. And what differentiation there was could easily be knocked down the minute you grab an enemy city.

The last good civ-type I can remember (besides the obvious) was Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic. It was more limited than FFH2, but it had a pretty strong base to work from. And it had Warlock's 'take over a city and produce their units' thing, but it was implemented much better.

[Maledict]

For me, the "it's fantasy" is a red herring.  Why FFH 2 is more fun then Civ4 is because the FFH 2 races all play out differently, AND there are multiple valid tech paths that you can follow for each race (ok! ok! some races have less options, but most have plenty).

CivX throw one or two unique units for the entire 4000+ years and that is the pretty much the sole difference between nations.  After a couple play-throughs, you pretty much seen all Civ4 has to show you.  Not sure why the various Civ team never seem to figured that out,... MoM had diverse races FFS.  I guess they didn't' want to piss off there core audience.

It's not a case of 'not figuring it out'. The Civ series is the most successful turn based strategy game there is, why would they be messing with the core formula when it works so well? The idea that you need lots of different unique things to give a game replayability is odd as well - Monopoly, Chess, Poker, Call of Duty all have a small number of fixed pieces and are wildly successful and long lasting.

Fantasy games need the flavour, it's at the core of they 'storytelling' aspect of these games. Civ games already come with that loaded in - I don't need hundreds of unique units or abilities to tell the story of how the English invaded Russia with mechanised infantry. I already know what those things are and the story works naturally.

[Merusk]

Exactly, it's all flavor and play differences between each nation/ race *as well as* the economic layer differences you tack on.  i.e. in MoM barbarians couldn't build advanced buildings, halflings grew more food, Myrror races were all slow to grow but had powerful unit attributes to make up for it.

The Civ folks don't do this because it's not the brand.   The difference between the nations have always been in the economic strategy layer and not the unit layer.  They're hesitant to take it farther than unique units for fear of alienating fans.

I also think if you're going to do it with an all-human 4x then you need to keep it constrained to a more limited time frame.  Otherwise the legitimate bonuses you give certain nations are either far too powerful early on or limit them far too much later.  Can you imagine a nation not being allowed to build knights or mobile infantry being able to compete in the mid and late game?  How about a race getting 2x Horseman and Calvary for each unit they build. How would they not dominate the early game?

[Typhon]

For me, the "it's fantasy" is a red herring.  Why FFH 2 is more fun then Civ4 is because the FFH 2 races all play out differently, AND there are multiple valid tech paths that you can follow for each race (ok! ok! some races have less options, but most have plenty).

CivX throw one or two unique units for the entire 4000+ years and that is the pretty much the sole difference between nations.  After a couple play-throughs, you pretty much seen all Civ4 has to show you.  Not sure why the various Civ team never seem to figured that out,... MoM had diverse races FFS.  I guess they didn't' want to piss off there core audience.

It's not a case of 'not figuring it out'. The Civ series is the most successful turn based strategy game there is, why would they be messing with the core formula when it works so well? The idea that you need lots of different unique things to give a game replayability is odd as well - Monopoly, Chess, Poker, Call of Duty all have a small number of fixed pieces and are wildly successful and long lasting.

Fantasy games need the flavour, it's at the core of they 'storytelling' aspect of these games. Civ games already come with that loaded in - I don't need hundreds of unique units or abilities to tell the story of how the English invaded Russia with mechanised infantry. I already know what those things are and the story works naturally.

Yeah, that's what I meant when I typed the bold part.  Obviously that is thier call and is how the core wants it... but I don't like it.  Also, that they released a somewhat-dumbed-down version for consoles implies to me that they'd like to draw in a larger audience and are willing to make some concession/try new things.

I understand your point about, "Civ games already come with that loaded in", but I think you mean, "historical simulations come with that loaded in".  IMO Civ is in an odd place - it's not focused enough to be a historical re-enactment (Washington/US starting out in 4000 BC?).  So, it's clearly not a historical simulation, but a "test of time" 4X based upon historical figures/nations.  Given that, why wouldn't they be a bit more open to having more differences between the nations?  And it doesn't even have to be that, it could be randomization in the tech tree.  Something, anything, to make the gameplay not play out so similar each and every game.

Edit: 'you point' means nothing

[Sky]

There's room for both audiences in the theater. Pump out the requisite shiny new Civ for the core fans. But then pump out something entirely based on the engine that's quite different. I'm still baffled as to how they screwed that up. At first I thought the company might be past it, but then they put out X-Com, which people seem to like. I mean, look at the richness of mods Civ IV had and the only thing Firaxis did was a Colonization mod. They should've scooped up Kael then and put out a standalone next to Civ V, there's still a solid niche audience for fantasy (or even sci-fi) TBS. Especially when having an in-house mod team led by Kael working on stuff the core Civ team put out would be in niche market overhead. Baffling.

I mean, we all love X-Com, but to be honest, the amount of modern gamers that played it is quite niche. Kael is the closest we've seen to a MoM remake. Hell, snag the license and put it out as a sequel.

[Merusk]

Following that line of thinking is almost a hobby of mine.   There's been many many attempts to "Snag the Franchise" (Including one by Wardell) but Atari remains quite content to sit on it and not give-up marketing rights.  Because Atari has proven to be totally inept at anything but being cockgobblers since the 80's.

[HaemishM]

The idea that you need lots of different unique things to give a game replayability is odd as well - Monopoly, Chess, Poker, Call of Duty all have a small number of fixed pieces and are wildly successful and long lasting.

You're ignoring the very unique nature of the OTHER PLAYERS in those games, something that is not present in a single-player game like Civ. Those unique personalities can take the same game mechanics and make each game unique, something AI can't do without having differently flavored units.

[Maledict]

Um, the AIs in Civ are different as well. They behave differently and react in different ways. Plus with the randomisation factor of the game even the same AIs will play out differently due to the different starts, terrain and conditions.

(There's a huge different in a map full of city states on Pangea setting, and an archipelago map with zero city states).

Re. Getting Kael in to do a mod for civ - I don't think a mod would work, you need a new game full stop. Even the biggest mods are limited by the game engine, and FFH definitely showed that. (As well as his bloody attrocious lore! ;-) )

[Sky]

They made a bunch of refinements based on modder's feedback when they put out the Civ IV BtS expansion. But I wasn't talking about a 'mod', I was talking about Kael having a team in-house at Firaxis that would co-develop a game based on the Civ engine. So Firaxis would release Civ VI and FFH (or MoM or whatever) as stand alone games, moreso than Colonization.

[Merusk]

That exactly what Wardell and Stardock tried to do, too bad they had the idea and Firaxis didn't (or chose to ignore the possibility.)  Also too bad that the engine used was terrible.

Knowing what we do about Wardell, I'm willing to bet there's some major non-compete and sign-off of IP that Kael had to agree to. 

[Kitsune]

Interestingly, there seems to be a fairly vibrant modding community springing up for Fallen Enchantress.  This in particular looks to be very promising.

[Maledict]

It was on a flash sale on steam so for some reasoI bought it.

It's actually not bad - certainly better than Warlock in my opinion. A lot more depth to the game, although the graphics remain *dreadful*. I don't see the point in being able to customise your own armies when they all end up looking like a 5 year olds play dough toy.