Congratulations on the scheduled release!

Congratulations!

And, if I may be so bold, good on you guys for being so careful to make sure the game is absolutely ready for release. As an old Master of Magic hand, I am delighted that I have, at last, found a new home. Good job.

Am I the only one who doesn't buy the story of "AI stupid, I win on ridiculous" at face value? I can beat Civilization IV at pretty high levels but I get smoked on FE at anything above challenging and I've been playing every beta. I'm not doubting someone found a way to do it. But me thinks they're not telling the whole story.

 Same history as WOM, early release -> bad reviews -> disappointment. Today the game quality requirements are to high.

Also: AI is very stupid, SAME history as WOM.

compared to WOM  FE´s quality standards are very high. I´m unable to see how WOM and FE are even comparable. They might looks the same at first glance, but it only takes a few minutes to recognise these two are different pairs of shoes.

And then the VASELINE a highest difficulty. Let me see one of those "ai is stupid" "cakewalk" "insert meaningless rant here" guys doing a youtube let´s-play on highest diffuculty settings, oh i forgot there is none.

kesmai

You again? How many AAR do I have to post, with turn-by-turn. blow-by-blow accounts AND saved games on turn 1?

Stop calling people liars.  The AI has many exploitable blind spots, and custom races can be made extremely effective. In my last AAR, I am doing OK with standard Karavox on Ridiculous.  

With every beta, developers are stomping out more cheese. There's still plenty of cheese left.  There are at least three players, apart from myself, who have won on Insane one way or another, and posted about it.  I am sure there are dozens who have not posted.  If you cannot win on Hard with a race of enchanters/henchmen/heroic/scouts with sovereign tailored for buffed melee, you are not as good as you think you are.

Congratulations to the team

FE is really fun to play, and it can only get better with patches and mods.

If i may ask, will at some point the "game within a game" issues addressed which plague the elemental world for so long now? (win7 32bit loading crashes, cntrl n crashes etc)?

Post release, there will be more optimization for 32-bit versions of Windows (XP, and those using 32-bit Windows 7). We still recommend people move to 64-bit but we haven't forgotten those running 32 bit.

Regarding users who win via cheese. Please realize, it's not a multiplayer game. You can choose not to make use of an exploit or, better yet, post the exploit you found.

For example, there was an exploit with Cloak of Fear where in the right hands a sovereign could become unkillable. Winning the game that way doesn't make the AI "dumb". It just means that that spell needs to be modified.

I didn't call you a liar.  I think you do win. I think you're winning using cheese. That's like the guy who figures out in Civilization how to make the AI trade 2 gold for 1 gold and uses that to win and claim the AI sucks.  If you find cheese, you aren't forced to use it.

Just because I haven't discovered a trick to make the AI give away their gold or a spell bug that makes my unit unhittable doesn't make me bad or you good.

Two weeks should be more than enough time to fix the remaining issues. I am more worried about the game not working on download and install than any balance issue. Assuming that gets solid, go for it!

And release the mod tools!!! 

Stability wise, the game's been ready for awhile. I think we'll be quibbling over balance for years to come. At least, I hope we do.

Thanks for keeping us 'poor' 32-bit users in mind.

If you can't win above Challenging you are not at the "haven't discovered a spell bug that makes my unit unhittable" stage, you are at the "haven't figured out to use maces against chain mail" stage.

In the .982 AAR you may notice that the first time my fortifying guy and my blinding gal met was to take out a Shrill Lord on turn 67.  Before that, I did perfectly well without using a combo (fortify+dodge+blind) that works a bit too well. 

I also think that it is not too much to expect that IF

1. I pick a race defined by its fortifying ability

2. I retrain a spell casting sovereign as a dodging assassin.

3. I dress him in a robe, skullcap and give him a one-hander to maximize his dodge

4. I recruit and train a death mage, and give her a staff, a mage robe, and a emerald skullcap to maximise penetration.

5. Get ready for the fight with two healing elixirs and a bag of pork.

THEN

I may expect to actually have a chance to take down a single monster that's threatening my city... provided it does not hit me too often. In that fight, I used all the pork, was down to one elixir, and the mage blew through 60 mana dishing out damage.

You call that cheese. I call this playing the game as intended, and pointing out, as a good little beta tester, things that the developers MAY want to address.  Personally, I think Blindness should gradually dissipate.

And, by the way, if the only thing you took with you from that AAR is 'Blindness makes you unhittable"... Well, I guess you have nothing to learn, do you?

Well, I have 3 hours to go before breaking the hundrend hour marker, this game is a whole lot of fun - just hit me that this release date means that several long awaited mods will be out soon too!! 

derek, please lock the ai programmer(s) in a room and refuse to let them out until the monster ai will attack the NEAREST town/outpost that releases them, and afterwards has a bias to attack the faction that triggered the release ie a hatred of the side that caused the wandering so if a player releases a dragon near another player's town the dragon will target the player, BUT if it was released by an ai then the ai will be the target and not only destroy the outpost/town that released it bit continues to target/kill all units in it's sight range of that side, so the only defenses are to be faster than the monster OR kill the monster.

harpo