What do you think about the game?

[megakill]

Well, I guess it depeds on one's tactics. 90% of my army consisted of rangers and archers. I didn't use infantry at all. Put rnagers on the hill or forest, back up by archers - very often enemy unit will be killed at once while attacking. As for Ballistas - actually an ugraded archer unit kills a ballista with one attack easily.

[six]

Thoughts on the Game:

I love the game. I loved the panzer general series, having played pg1, pg2, and people's general all the way through the entire campaign, often more than once. I'ved also played ag and fg, though not the entire way through. I do love wargames of all different sorts though, having played through most of the close combat series to completion. I also played king's bounty back in the day (though never got into the later homm). So fantasy wars really fit into a fantasy wargaming niche for me. That being said, I'm a fairly broad gamer, having put in a year altogether in 3 different mmorpgs, playing in clan fps competitively (paradigm shift hehe, we own battlefield, I'm retired now though), as well as enjoying rts and games like moo...so quite a variety lol.

I've played through the entire Orc Campaign on hard (getting mostly golds, a few silvers, and 2 bronzes)...Yes it took some time to figure out what units worked, more on this later.

I'm about halfway through the Human Campaign on hard.

Thoughts on Orc Units:

I was having problems dealing with hard as you need to maintain your experienced units. This often means having resilient (defense or escape ability) units else when half of your force is green for a new late campaign mission you are screwed or in save-reload city for every turn of the battle.

However, I found that Battle Orcs are a perfect mainstay unit. Get them shooting protection at lvl 1 and cavalry protection at lvl 2 and they are beasts. Trolls work too but they get shooting protection at lvl 5 and are vunerable to the slayer perk. Battle Orcs are cheap, so get tons of them up and running before encountering hordes of human cavalry later on.

I also found Goblin Bombardiers (forgot the name) are awesome. Great for softening up any unit. At lvl 2 they get shooting protection and can be used to kill archer units.

When you eventually get pteradon riders you also will want to use these.

So basically, an elite force of battle orcs, with 2xbombadiers, 2xpteradons, and of course elite heros carried the Orc Hard Campaign Day [Be sure to item stack your units, not your heros]. You don't really need archers, since you have your hexars and your airforce to take care of that stuff. You don't really need skirmishers since your air can scout. Your orcs move slow on weird terrain, but the main threat of the humans come from the cavalry, so it was usually worse for the human cavarly than it was for me to deal with a difficult terrian map...And Battle orcs' hard target ability makes skirmishers kind of bounce off.

Thoughts on the Human Campaign:

I'm still trying to find a nice mainstay core. However, he sky rider or eagles are awesome for the same reasons you want an orc airforce -- projection power, they can kill archers in pairs or kill units on rivers. It seems that humans favor cavalry, but I think it will require much more unit mixing than orcs because you still have to deal with taking cities and cavalry is poor for that.

Thoughts on the Game:

Great game. However, a few of the units could be tweaked. My perspective may be skewed since I started playing the game on hard and only really extensive studied orc units, but the costs/stats on some of the unit types needs to be tweaked...for example while skirmishers are great, they are too fragile imho when you just can just use air instead. Maybe bump them up to 15 strength for the foot skirmishers. Or perhaps this is an issue that detecting invis is too easy between all the abilities/artifacts/air scouting and distances involved. Also, light infantry did not seem to have that much of a role except to move faster through bad terrain, and as such it seemed a bit overpriced for only that ability (or perhaps keep the price the same but add many of the skirmisher abilies sans the skirmisher attack). I also particularly disliked the fact that activating some of the unit abilities (not spells) precluded an attack that turn...yet it would stay in effect till next turn allowing for an attack w/ the ability...it would be better if it lasted only one turn but allowed for an attack.

I'll also second what others have said about the AI. It could be better. I didn't notice anything exceptionally bad tactically, but it would play poorly strategically. I noticed that groups of enemies on the map would only activate once they saw my units, so maybe its something to do with this. This was exceptionally noticeable on hard as hard has like 30+ units you destroy in the later mission...and usually you did it with less than 5 losses of your own...that in itself probably says something could get better with the AI. But compared to other hex based war games, its not bad at all...but this could be related to the strategic activiation problem I mentioned above.

However, I especially enjoy the cutscenes, the plot, and the varied objectives. Compared to all of the above mentioned wargames, these definitely take the cake!

But in any case, can't wait till I get to the Allied Campaign!

[megakill]

Funny - I thought that Skirmishers are way too powerful. A level 5 skirmisher in good terran (forest, swamp) can kill pretty much anything. Also they are great for softening up targets. Couple attackes and the most powerful enemy unit is yours. All those fear and bad morale perks rule.

[Guardian]

See? Everyone has his own approach, boy what a game! I like skirmishers (rangers) very much as well

So, when we're doing some skirmish?

P.S. I can already feel cold, abysmal lack of map editor, maps, campaigns... Guys, I know that King's Bounty is on it's way but Fantasy Wars is a really gooood game - more! More!

[six]

My problem with skirmishers is that they just die so easily once detected to spells, ranged, air bombardment and concentrated attacks. Terrain helps, but their defense isn't that high compared to heavy infantry or cavalry types to begin with.

At least on hard, it's quite an effort to get any unit to lvl 5 unless it is very survivable, and I find if you use skirmishers to soften enemy they are often close enough that the enemy units can often accidentally see them, focus on them, and destroy them early on before lvl 5.

It's a similar problem with all 10 str units such as cavalry, heros and air units. However, cavalry are hard targets so they are harder to destroy, heros come back the next mission, and air units early on can be used away from frontline combat much more easily due to increased movement and ignoring land area control until they gain more experience. Also air units are harder to gang up on since fewer units can assault them.

That being said, maybe human rangers are much better than goblin equivalents. And even with goblin sneakers it was crazy fun to see an enemy unit get ambushed and decimated :)

[tulan]

Six it sounds like you where useing them as frontline troops.

You should be useing them to hit, then move behind your frontline and as such they dont get hit back.

[Bad Mad]

Yeah… you can find alot of good troops mixes in this game. I like to advance with 2 or 3 foot nights with a royal archer with multiple support as a covering unit, The orcs would just smash themselves against it and get decimated.
And foot nights are excellent for urban warfare. My level 5 foot nights in a castle are rated at 31 melee, and 30 defense.
I also have 2 rangers that are fun too use with the hit and run tactic. The war eagle helps out also. Almost forgot mass heal is a life & timesaver.

[megakill]

Originally Posted by tulan

Six it sounds like you where useing them as frontline troops.

You should be useing them to hit, then move behind your frontline and as such they dont get hit back.

Yep, especially with segmented movement perk. Hit and run.

[Quevedo]

As a lover of General series I love this game too. Congrats.


Now some suggestions:


- PBEM mode for multiplayer. Since a lot of us don´t have much time for play multi, play by email is very usefull and funny. This mode is implemented in most of turn based games. I hope you think about this.


- Map editor, I know it is a nobilis decision but I would be great for a longer game playability.


Really a great and very addictive game which updates the turn based games specially good for nostalgics of board games without enough space at home or without enough friends to play

Regards

[Bad Mad]

Im surprise PBEM is not in the game.