I think the game is fun, even though I am unhappy with it.
First of all, it is a TBS. It gets points right of the bat because of this. Extra points since there is tactical combat. When was the last time we had a "big budget" TBS released? HoMM5 or Civ4? It is an unused genre I like.
You get to design your units. I really enjoy this feature. I don't care as much about how they look or what their quotes are, but getting to decide that I want to invest in an axe for that extra damage is nice.
I also actually enjoy the research system, particularly the part for adventuring. It allows the area around you to become more dangerous and keep pace with your advancing society, while offering benifits as well.
Provides a decent, though not great, sense of exploration. I've always enjoyed the early game of HoMM or Civ where you are just trying to figure out what is around you.
I like the resource system better than Civ. Instead of just getting horses and building as many horse archers as you want, in EWOM they are consumed when you build a unit.
A game doesn’t have to “break the mold” or create some new amazing feature to be fun. It just has to provide you with whatever desire you have. I desire an epic TBS. The game provides that.
I think overall, this game is only suffering from 3 problems.
#1. Over promised. Everyone had expectations of how great the game was going to be because Stardock told us how great the game was going to be. Even right up until launch you had the CEO playing the game and being all smiles.
#2. We got used to our systems. Civ/MOO mechanics have worked pretty much the same since the 90s. People are producing food, production or science. Now we have food, but it is produced and consumed differently. Buildings do all the work, what is population good for? This was one of my major road blocks with GalCiv.
When Civ 1 came out, I had no idea what was going on. I played it for 30 hours before I even figured out how to delegate what my workers did. But I am sure we all fought through it.
Today we are spoiled. The system isn’t obvious and we don’t want to learn it. It is different. None of the systems really make any sense. Turn based games are a complete abstraction of reality to begin with. You don’t take turns swinging at eachother!
I agree that the food/housing system is goofy, but I don’t think it is that much goofier than the Civ system. Having 10,999,999 people is way less effective than 11,000,000. The only thing it takes to grow is food and health? Having mines allows you to build things faster? This is madness!
#2 TL:DR systems in EWOM are no more goofy than any other TBS, we just A) aren’t taught them and B) to spoiled to try and learn them
#3. Bad programming. Most obvious one here. The game was released too early and the company had too much faith in it. That is obvious. But beyond that, how the hell did they manage to break the game on the Win7 ATI combo? No beta testers had this configuration? Why does the game run like garbage on a middle of the road system? How many computer resources do you have to waste to lose frame rate in a turn based game? Are you using CPU power to draw the map or something?
Anyways, those are the 3 problems. #1 and #2 we should just deal with, because those can allow you to ruin a good game for yourself. A Dwarf Fortress with half the promised features and no tutorial is still a very good game.
#3 really pisses me off.