Welcome to the Fallen Enchantress forum!

Fallen Enchantress is Stardock's second PC game based in in the world of Elemental.

In 2010, Random House released Elemental: Destiny's Embers (at a bookstore near you). A month after that, Stardock released Elemental: War of Magic.

Originally, Fallen Enchantress was going to be an expansion pack to War of Magic but the design changes to Fallen Enchantress have been so significant that we decided it made more sense to make it into its own game hence Elemental: Fallen Enchantress (complete with its own domain www.fallenenchantress.com which will be up as its own stand alone sight this Fall).

To understand Elemental one has to know its basic history.

Age of the Magi

In the Hiergamenon, the Book of the Magic recounts the great sorcerers (Ereog, Argynn, Breon).  It ends with the casting of the Forge of the Overlord which attracted the the Elas'nirand the Dred'nir.

Age of the Titans

The age of the titans is broken up into three books (Pariden, Curgen, and arguably the Book of Ezmir). If you have the limited edition of the PC game, War of Magic, then you know much about this.

The age of the Titans ends with the cataclysm, the breaking of the world.

Age of Mortals

The PC Game, War of Magic, takes place in the western continent in the world of Elemental approximately 150 years after the cataclysm.  The West (known as Anthys) is a desolate but relatively tame part of the world. War of Magic concerns itself with the claiming of vital resources and the building of a great kingdom.

By contrast, Fallen Enchantress is much less desolate but a lot more dangerous. It takes place on the eastern continent and revolves around a very different set of circumstances.  The Kingdoms of the West's philosophy was gain control of strategic resources and overwhelm the enemy through superior masses.  By contrasts, the Empires of the East rely much more heavily on magic and intelligent construction of cities, fortresses and so forth. Part of that is that the East is much less rich with strategic resources but much richer in overall terrain (not as desolate).

Moreover, because the Titans dwelt in the East, sorcery is much more developed.

Fallen Enchantress, as a game, will be a very different experience than War of Magic as a result (not to mention it has a much bigger budget but I digress).

...

Destiny's Embers, the book, takes place approximately 8 centuries after the War of Magic has ended and deals with the Destiny's last attempt to thwart the unnatural interference of immortals in the world of Elemental. But that story is told elsewhere.

I’ve been an Outlook user for years.  But in the past several months, I’ve been migrating more and more to Gmail. The email still goes through our company server to and from ultimately but Gmail is just a better mail reader.

Here’s what’s changed:

1. Gmail now has a way of identifying “important” emails. I don’t know how its algorithm works but it works quite well.
2. Gmail has insanely good spam filtering.
3. Gmail has mouse gesture support (I hold down the right mouse button and drag left or right to go to next message).
4. Gmail has added copy and pasting of images into emails. This was a big show stopper.

The only thing I really miss outlook for is its editor.  I use outlining a lot in emails and Gmail just has nothing like that yet. 

Another nice thing about Gmail is that you don’t have to store the messages locally. This matters for tech companies in an era of patent trolling litigation and the like where you are expected to be able to quickly hand over email on a particular subject to legal.  Storing emails locally long-term is not practical.

Ironically, Windows Live mail, while visually pretty, is still very far behind.  Given how much Microsoft continues to charge for Outlook, I fear its future is in doubt.

This will eventually get stickied somewhere.

So here is where we stand as we near the first anniversary of the release of the first Elemental title (War of Magic)

War of Magic v1.4

Last month we released War of Magic v1.3.  We are currently working on v1.4 which we anticipate going into beta this month.  v1.4 is scheduled to include AI updates, balance updates, and bug fixes.

Fallen Enchantress

Most of Stardock Entertainment’s resources are currently being put on the second Elemental title (Fallen Enchantress) which is a fairly radical departure from War of Magic (other than art resources).  I can’t go into much detail regarding it other than to say it that it is much more similar to a Civilization/Master of Magic style strategy game versus a Galactic Civilizations/HOMM style strategy game (i.e. every tile of terrain matters i.e. building near rivers or forests or hills and that kind of thing will matter and there are things like unrest and tax rates and that kind of thing).

Of course, the decision to make Fallen Enchantress effectively a new game (other than art assets) has meant that its date is being pushed out to being more like a sequel’s release.  That said, our plan is for the beta to come out this Fall still. However, bear in mind, that other than both existing in the Elemental universe, the gameplay of the two are very different.

Staffing

For those of you who follow/are interested in this sort of thing, the staffing on Fallen Enchantress is similar to War of Magic. 

• I am the executive producer of both. 
• Cari and Jesse have been the senior engine developers. 
• The big changes have been that Scott has moved from being Producer to being senior Animator. 
• We also were able to re-hire (call back from last year’s lay offs) Auri who was the lead animator on WOM who is back on animating all the new monsters. 
• Derek Paxton (Civilization: Fall from Heaven fame) has taken over from Scott as Producer.
• Derek has also taken over as lead developer (as opposed to the quasi “design by committee” led by myself with WOM). 
• Jon Shafer (Civilization V lead designer) has designed the single player campaigns for Fallen Enchantress.

In addition, several new artists/developers have been hired over the past year with the result being that the FE team is larger than the WOM team was.

Who gets what

Everyone who bought War of Magic in 2010 gets Fallen Enchantress for free. The betas will one day simply “show up” in your Impulse account. You don’t have to do anything to get access to it.  People who bought War of Magic in 2011 up to its release will be able to get Fallen Enchantress for a discounted price. The full price for Fallen Enchantress is likely going to be $39.95 and it’s a stand alone game (and in fact, we may sunset War of Magic entirely – i.e. no longer sell it new after FE is released – however we may continue to release updates to WOM after FE comes out regardless to satisfy ourselves and our fans who like its game mechanics).

Objectives

As some of you know, my “day job” is CEO of Stardock overall of which Stardock Entertainment is one business unit of with the Elemental franchise being one game series of.  To make a long story short, I’ve given Derek cart blanche to do what is necessary to make sure Fallen Enchantress awesome – even if it means spending more money or taking more time. As a result, while I am fairly certain the betas of it will come out this Fall, I can’t promise when the final version will come out.

Multiplayer

Since I don’t want that dangling out there, multiplayer matters to me personally but we know the hard statistics on the % of people who play turn-based strategy games MP (and I mean industry wide). The word tiny comes to mind.  That said, Elemental will be receiving multiplayer love anyway.

Lastly

Yes, we do read the forums religiously. But we don’t typically respond. 

War of Magic: v1.3

With Summer here it is time to get v1.3 of War of Magic out the door and start thinking about v1.4.  I had to push some of the things I wanted to do in v1.3 (notably rewriting the tactical AI) into v1.4 as I ended up spending a lot more time than anticipating improving the overall “feel” of the game.

With v1.2F, I tweaked the economics further and made a few AI changes that I think should result in greater challenge as well as a tighter experience.  Overall, I’m feeling much better about how the game plays even if I’m not happy with other parts of the game (and I’ve yet to make a game I’m happy with but that’s a different topic).

Starting this month and into the Fall I’ll be focusing my efforts on the AI for Fallen Enchantress. So it’ll be what I learn in Fallen Enchantress that goes into v1.4. 

Fallen Enchantress will be the biggest challenge of my AI career as I believe (perhaps incorrectly as I’m biased) the ability of the AI monsters and AI players to make intelligent use of their special abilities in battle will be crucial to the overall enjoyment of the game. So a great deal of my time will be spent having the AI learn to not just cast spells but to treat their abilities and magical powers as a cohesive whole – to build micro strategies with them. 

In all likelihood, the first beta of Fallen Enchantress will hit before War of Magic v1.4 goes into beta so we’ll have a better idea where players want me to focus my efforts at that point since virtually everyone who got War of Magic will be getting Fallen Enchantress for free anyway.

The Lore of the World

War of Magic didn’t have the opportunity to express the considerable lore of the world. There are so many different creatures and types of beings in the world of Elemental that we are hoping will start to be shown in Fallen Enchantress.

If you’re read the book, Elemental: Destiny's Embers, you get an idea of some of the complex politics of the world, particularly amongst the Kingdoms of Men. Fallen Enchantress will let us explore the complexities of the Empires of the so-called “Fallen” as well as give players a better understanding of the much harsher conditions that exist in the eastern lands where the Fallen survive.

In War of Magic, the maps took place in the west where the lands were barren and brigands and darklings may have roamed the landscape. But the west was a paradise compared to what the Fallen were dealing with in the East.

+ New citizen cost system re-done. Exponential growth system eliminated.

+ Previously unlimited improvements are now set to be N per city level N

+ Tax income no longer grows linearly but rather fast at first and then slows down with diminishing returns.  3 Population brings in 3 gold per turn. 25 brings in 18. 50 brings in 34. 100 brings in 63. 1000 brings in 500.

+ The more cities you build, the harsher the prestige penalty overall. That is, as you add more cities to your kingdom, all of your cities will begin to see diminished prestige. I.e. a few big cities or lots of smaller cities but not easy to do both.

+ Studies only take 3 turns to construct (was 4)

+ Studies consume 3 citizens (Was 1…2…4…8…etc.)

+ Only 1 study for a level 1 settlement. +2 more for level 2. +3 for level 3 and so on.

+ Same system as above for workshops and arcane labs.

+ Same for Imperial system.

+ Cleaned up tool tip text to be clearer

+ City influence growth slowed

+ Technology cost grows slower (fewer labs and such)

+  Max number of children per generation now 3

+ Sovereign mana generation now 1 per turn

+ Fortifications provide 25% defense bonus (was 10%)

+ Base spell cost increased from 25 to 50

+ Spell level doubling cost increased from 25 to 100

+ Auto Resolve will aggressively use tactical combat spells if mana is available

+  Pioneer made cheaper, quicker to build, changed graphic

+  Base HP increased from 3 to 4

+ Training time for formations decreased

+ AI sovereigns will select combat spells

+ Money spell now costs 50 mana to generate 25 gildar

+ AI Improvements (haven’t done anything to tactical yet)

This build should go up in the next few days as a beta.

UPDATE: The build is up but it's showing up as 1.2d in Impulse.

I just got email from Google that they are discontinuing their Google PowerMeter product.

Google PowerMeter allows people who have a supported device to track the energy use of their house in real time as well as look at graphs and such to determine what is consuming their energy. It’s like Google web analytics except for electricity.

After September 16, it’s gone.  Total bummer as it was a very useful service. One I would have been willing to pay for.

My puppy can be pretty disgusting. The things it tries to eat. The things it rolls in. It’s all bad news. And if it’s an indoor dog, it becomes your problem.

And I have to say, I’m glad I waited until after having 3 children because when it’s your own child, you grin and bear it as you learn to deal with icky gross stuff. By the time you get the dog, you’re numb.

Welcome, my friends, once again to the sausage factory.  While Fallen Enchantress continues forward internally, we also continue work on War of Magic.  Right now, we’re working on the betas of v1.3 which are known as the 1.2X series (1.2c being the most recent beta).

Having programmed most of the changes myself and gotten to play around with them at length as well as listen to feedback here are some of the thoughts I have in no particular order:

1. Despite the considerable work I’ve put in to the new population use system on improvements, I think I’m going to have to yank it out. The problem is that it quickly becomes incredibly difficult and not-fun to manage when your kingdom gets large.  This is a classic case of “kill your darlings”.
2. The game mechanic I am interested in seeing is one that rewards the player for intelligently planning out their cities. I.e. better to have fewer, better cities than more, wimpier cities.
3. The default of having 4 guys in a unit is good. But needs more balancing.
4. One of the objectives is to make it clear that champions (and your sovereign) are a very big deal so we want those 4 guys to be mowed down.  However, the weapons they carry make them glass canons.
5. Need more random events.
6. Need more variation on what the goodie huts give.
7. If I don’t get to redo that tactical battle AI code soon I’m going to die. It makes me cry every time I see the AI sovereign run at my guys stupidly.
8. I am getting dehydrated from crying.
9. I need to get in the reward system so that players get more champions.
10. The game mechanic I am considering is having is using quests as the means of getting champions

I’m glad to hear that the beta itself is stable crash-wise. In fact, I haven’t seen any reports of out of memory issues so it’s possible that this problem has been eliminated in this series.  There is a crash problem with the AI thread and the main thread when they’re looking at tiles. The easy solution would be to use a critical section but I don’t want you guys to find the game choppy between turns. So I’m still looking at it.

I also want to get more AI time on it.  I’m scheduled to be full-time on Fallen Enchantress later this Summer.  Unlike War of Magic where I only got a very limited number of hours to work on the AI by release, with Fallen Enchantress I get a lot more time. But I can use v1.3 of War of Magic as an opportunity to try some new things.

So this weekend I had to take my boat out of the water. In the process I had to wade into water that was up to my waste. Unfortunately, my iPhone was in my pocket.

Like an idiot, I immediately try to turn it on and got just the Apple logo which came on and then would go off. After a few tries of turning it on and off, I didn’t even get the Apple logo.

Ruined. Dammit. $500. @#$@#$@#!

So then I started searching online. Surely, I wasn’t the first person who had done this. I found lots of advice (most of it bad) and none of the advice I found actually included whether it was taken and the results.

Well, the one piece of advice I took was to take the iPhone and put it in a bag of plain dry white rice. I was skeptical about whether this would work.  But next morning, sure enough, I plugged it in to recharge and voila, all we right in the world. Good as new.

Change Log: v1.2c