I have not seem the AI terraform, but then again, I have not seem the AI cast strategic level offensive spells either...

Fair enough. Although I can't say I miss the boats, but they could add a lot to the game if maps could be generated with separated islands.

They added special code to move through mountains. I have been trying for flying units since WoM beta. What I really want is flying cities though. Now that we have that, it's just a matter of time before I figure out how.

LOL. How did I never see that? I guess I always just avoided them out of habit.

Moving back to modding, there are a few things I would like to say as I fall into the category of "I don't want to try mods, vanilla should be perfect in every way for everyone". Well....almost fall into that category...

Vanilla should not require mods in order for it to be 'perfect'. All customers should have the right to expect that the product being released is in fact sufficent without requiring modificaiton.

In fact, imo, as a developer you know you have a GREAT game when the players actually DONT take the time to make mods because they are so immersed in the vanilla.

Naturally, their will be a eventual progression towards mods in a great game cause, afterall....it's a great game. However, the duration after release it takes for those mods to start being made, greatly impact the perception as to how great that game actually was to begin with. Again, imo.

I can see that, after release, if mods are being released within a week, reviewers are going to look at it and say "this game is incomplete. Modders attacked it almost right away. Pass"

Instead, if after release no modding pops up for awhile, reviewers are going to say "Wow. This game must be really good. Sales are high, yet no modding. This must be a REALLY spectacular product."  

That's the way I see it anyways. Just wanted to post my thoughts...

Part of the problem with early rapid expansion being the best strategy right now is that it is actually the opposite of brittle. But first one needs to define expansion. Yes expanding with outposts is brittle but that isn't the part that is broken. The part that is broken is expanding with cities. There are few situations where it isn't optimal to settle everwhere you possibly can (the only two reasons I can think of is if you want a clay mine/food resource for a particular city so deliberately avoid settling another city closer, and if it is obvious that you would lose the new city quickly to the enemy or monsters).

This is not a brittle strategy because in order to have strength (ie avoid being brittle) you need troops and gold, and to a slightly lesser extent research. Building more cities is the best way to get more troops, gold and research. Therefore the way to avoid being brittle is to build more cities as quickly as possible.

Fortunately it appears Stardock realise this and have made some changes to make it slightly less of a no brainer to constantly mass settle. I'm looking forward to beta 5.

Bioware released the mod tools early. There were mods for NWN before the game even came out. So by your reasoning, the game was a failure. I appreciate your courtesy but you're are incorrect. 

That didn't really happen with NWN. From day one, you could go to NWN Vault and find a new mod with nearly each refresh of the page.

The big difference between that and Fallen Enchantress is there are maybe 6 people modding this game. You may not see mods for this for a while simply because the community is microscopic, even when compared to old indy games like Dominions 3.

Can you show me an example of a terrible game that has been saved by or attempted to be saved by an active modding community?

True. Moddable games are very appreciated by everyone and this is also good for sales. I, for example, bought Rome Total War and Medieval 2 Total War only to play the Europa Barbarorum mod. When I recommend games to people, I always mention what great mods it has too. You can look at mods as free expansion packs between which you can switch at will. Also, if there are things that you don't like about the game, and there always are, you can change them and play the game the way you want, you create your own sandbox universe in which to play.

Civilization IV, because V isn't even worth mentioning, even shipped with a few mods preinstalled. And now look at mods like Caveman2Cosmos and see where the game got because of that, and people still buy the game only to play the mods, because otherwise they would have gotten bored with the vanilla experience.

I'm going to mostly agree with you here (and I'm moved to post because I feel as though JShores was a bit rough in his decrying of your opinion).

Vanilla should not require mods for it to be a great game for just about anyone. There is no way it can be perfect though, as everyone will have a different opinion as to what makes a 'perfect' game. At the same time, we should not have people having to mod it straight away in order to counter obvious flaws that should have been picked up and fixed during development.

I also agree that one of the signs of a great game is that mods aren't released straight away as everyone is too busy having fun playing the game as it is to bother with modding it to start with.

However, it's not a sign of failure if people do start modding quickly - some people just like to tinker and get more of a kick out of doing that than playing, which is fair enough.

I do think reviewers will give give it due consideration - most are generally fair. If the vanilla game is good, they will say that at the same time as giving it credit for being easily moddable (which has to be a good thing for the games longevity) regardless if people are already modding it. If the vanilla game is flawed but can be saved by mods, they will say that instead but that will obviously count against it in many people's eyes, which is why it is important for the game to be as good, and as universally appealing, as it can be 'out of the box'

Civ IV must have really sucked. Lots of mods.

Well, I don't feel I was too harsh with anyone, I was just stating my opinion. 

That being said, I agree with most of what you say except one point. I think you and GFireflyE are wrong on one major thing. Modders aren't driven to mod games to "fix" bad games. I am sure there are a few people out there that are willing to do that, but the vast majority of modders tweak and add content to good games. If the modding system is easy to learn, even better. I can give you as many examples as you like of this being the case. Can you give me at least some examples that prove your point.

Particularly, I would love to see reviews that say to steer clear of a game because the modding community is fixing it.