I apologize in advance for potential redundancy as I did not read through all other posts:
1. Please create a Boat boarding button!
What I would see as extremely helpful is that when I left click a boat with unit(s) adjacent to it on a beach that there is a "Board Boat" option. If I click that button a "Box" opens displaying all units able to Board the Transport. Clicking on a unit places the unit in the boat. Unloading from a boat works fine, but units tend to run in to the Ocean Tile more often than load in to the boat...very aggravating.
2. Please explain somewhere the importance of Influence.
I read the PDF manual, but there was not much importance attributed to Influence as a resource. Much later in my first completion game I had unlocked Sions, Wildland Allies, Knights of Asok, etc. only to find out I was generating only 1 influence per season....Had I known I would need Influence later I would have dug around to find out how to generate it better if I wanted it based on my pre-game Sovereign/Faction selection...
3. Please explain somewhere in the manual or game the mechanics of piercing weapons like bows {Range/Armor effects/etc.}. Armor mouse-hover tips show blunt and cutting stats but no piercing...
4. Please add a Soveign customizer like the Faction tool in the Workshop. Also, maybe a mouse hover over custom soveign designs that says "Right click to delete" Some indication of the limit on number of custom sovereigns?
5. Somewhere or somehow more easily found information on upgrades for Cities/Conclaves/Fortresses. For Veterans this is not a big deal, they have seen, through the progress of a game, all 3 upgrades at each of the 5 levels.
Hand in hand with this, it seems to me that a larger statistics window could be made available when a Hero/Champion/Sovereign levels up. Many key stats are not displayed in the window at level up. Though, in general, the level window is excellent. When I click an upgrade a highlighted attribute or stat is green or red, thats awesome. Maybe an enhancement of this could be incorporated?
Overall, I really like what was done with FE.
This is just my opinion and style of play general feedback following. The way I play FE borders on painful, and for many people, maybe mildly crazy. IMHO, so much of the mid to late stages of a strategy depend on decisions I make 10, 20, 100, 200 turns BEFORE. Many of my custom units are just that. Designed for one purpose ie. kill a corpse spider, or some Trolls or a group of Ogres. I am not saying I am some arm chair game developing guru, but my guess is you guys want to sell games so you can have bennies to make more games and so your wives can buy more shoes? {bear with me here, there is a point}. So, although I am not a "Newb" {I know, over-used cliched "word"} when I started FE it was as a new player, but not new to strategy games. You guys took quite detailed and complex mechanics and made it "user-friendly". Kudos. My personal exerience is that the first few hours (minutes sometimes) of a game determine 80% likelyhood (+/-) I will spend more time playing that game. So that first few hours needs to hook the customer. Don't sell your game short or lose new customers because of a decision to make a "scenario" with limited options the introduction to your game. Take some time to leverage AS MUCH of the detail and work you guys built in to the game and find some way to put it in the hands of the people picking up the FE demo or game for the first time. I don't know how this could be done, but instead of a forward progressing scenario, maybe a "Dream Scenario" where on some world an ancient Champion has embarked on a quest to end the reign of some Overlord of Evil {lol}. Start him/her at around level 10 and have all 3 city types at his/her disposal, with most if not all resource types available for interaction. That way, a new player can study end game properties and development and, consequently, enter in to their first game with the information to allow thoughtful choices on unit design/settlement development/diplomacy etc. For example, on a custom Faction design I picked "archery". I knew Ram's Horn bows were awesome because a recruited champion,in a previous game, was equipped with one. What I did not know is that Ram's head bows were the LAST bow down a long research path...that's fine for balance etc. but can be a painful lesson for people that don't want/aren't interested in computing how many turns or how far in to the game they will have to be before unlocking that Bow.
P.S. Kind of a funny story: My wife {she's Ukrainian/garbled English comprehension} was questioning who this "Enchantress" was that I was spending so much time with on my computer {lol}. When I explained I had downloaded this free game {made her happy} and explained it a little she observed a few minutes of a tactical battle and said... "Cool". This is coming from a girl whose experience with gaming is "Plants Vs. Zombies" on her Nokia mobile. Nuff said.
Elric
