the bear thing and what it could actually do for the game.

from Stardock Forums

allright yeah im a noob around here and whatever but just my 2 cents on this subject of bear cavalry.

allright first this is a game where two all powerfull wizards are fighting eachother, wizards so the pretense of any kind of realism is out right.

second bear cavalry shoud be feasible if we can cast spells maybe we magically tame them whatever.

third bear cavarly could be a really cool option stat wise, maybe they could be realtively slow mounts but add atk points to all melee units and have like a roar special abilty that makes all enemy units in close distance cower.

fourth if we are going to go all theorycraft on this thing there should be problems with breeding and tameing bears and the resources required to do so i mean this are bears people bears eat people, but then again this all up to stardock.

fifth if there are bears and not jusr horse there should be a insane number of mounts, and it should be a very big investment in to what mount you choose breeding, specific food fot the mount, diffrent armor for said mount, and training to ride a specific mount should make choosing your mount a very big choice and would open up some really cool builds but that is once again all up to stardock.

Also im open to everything personally, id love to see some frog warriors with blowpipes and a abilty to hop over any enemy unit but thats me. tigers, elephants, lions, pegasuses( have no idea if thats right or not ), and my personal awesomeness hydras should be in, also raptors, wolfs, and of courses horses should be in, boar would be awesomeness as well, but space ponies should not at all ever be in a game not set in space end of conversation but im all for ponies if we get hobbits or dwarves to ride them.

well there it is my two cents rant and rave all you want, (and for you spelling and puncation police i know something is wrong in there give me a break) and add your own cool mount ideas. plz

elemental
8,434 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Whenever i read about "Bear Cavalry" i think of "Beer Cavalry". 8|

Being a game i don't mind bending our reality to give us things like Bee... Bear Cavalry. And i would only ask for: different visuals (looks are not the same as a horses); different stats for the unit (more strength than horses for example); different grow ratio (i don't think that bears have the same birth ratio as horses); and maybe some side effects (like they are worse during winter unless magically altered? random chance of charging against the enemy even if you don't want?).

About an insane amount of mounts... Well, no. There are other things in the game appart from mounts. ;) Some extra types of mounts (that could allow some easy modding too) is nice, but no need to focus too much on this. Specially when it would be an unending list of different types of mounts that people would like to have (without waiting for mods).

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

well maybe not insane but about 10-14 dosnt sound so bad but i defently agree with birth ratios and all the diffrent stats but i really think that it should be a real investment when you choose a beast of burden for your army considering all the problems of tameing beast and making them fit for war. and really i dont think it would be too hard to implement i mean if we are going to be allowed to make are own units then the mount should be like choosing a weapon or something, and should really hike up the cost and change stats of your unit greatly.  

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

I think I talked about mount powers somewher in a different thread.    

Spider mounts could give poisoned attacks and allow better terrain handling (spider climb after all)

Giant bird mounts could actually have a second person hanging from the feet dropping bombs on people

Boars could get massive hit point bonuses

Bulls could get a bonus on turns they move and attack (charge!)

snake mounts could constrict enemies preventing movement.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

I like the idea, but snake mounts sound particularly impracticle.

-If there are flying units in the game they probly will be limited as to prevent abuse.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

If there are flying units in the game they probly will be limited as to prevent abuse.

lol... MoM had a choosable race that ONLY had flying units with the exception of the dragon turtle fantastic mount (which was actually rather high-tier)  so I doubt they will be limited at all in any way.  Since this is the spiritual sequel

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

If there is Bear cavalry I want a Hero named Takamura as a counter.

 

 

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting landisaurus, reply 5

lol... MoM had a choosable race that ONLY had flying units with the exception of the dragon turtle fantastic mount (which was actually rather high-tier)  so I doubt they will be limited at all in any way.  Since this is the spiritual sequel

Firstly on a point of pedantry dragon turtles were a Lizardmen unit, not Draconian ;)

Secondly although this is the spiritual successor to MoM sadly it's still not actually MoM2 so I wouldn't make any assumptions about flying units; no dev to my knowledge has thus far confirmed that there'll even be any in the game (much as I would like there to be). My guess would be that there's probably some question on how to handle flying units in tactical combat as they either bring in a whole new 3d aspect to model (which would necessitate a lot more complexity in terms of development), or you go for the same system as MoM where they essentially occupy a square just like a normal land unit, but just can't be engaged in melee from the ground up. The MoM system, while simple, is a little clunky and inelegant and I could see why SD might find it unsatisfactory and just choose not to have any flying units instead.

To back up my caution I'd point out that the devs HAVE said that there WON'T be any tactical naval combat in the game as they don't think they can pull it off... and at a superficial level to me I think naval combat would probably be easier to implement than flying units that actually act like flying units (i.e. with the ability to fly over and above other units on the same square on the tactical map). I mean how naval units acted in MoM didn't seem particularly bad to me, whereas the flying units inability to actually fly over stuff did always seem a little sub optimal and so I think it would take more work to sort that aspect out.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Jonny5446, reply 7
Secondly although this is the spiritual successor to MoM sadly it's still not actually MoM2 so I wouldn't make any assumptions about flying units; no dev to my knowledge has thus far confirmed that there'll even be any in the game (much as I would like there to be).

We know there are dragons. And we have screenshots of said dragons which wings. If they have wings for purely cosmetic reasons, I and most people will be extremely disappointed. Therefore I think it's pretty safe to assume that there will be flying units in the game.

Quoting Jonny5446, reply 7
My guess would be that there's probably some question on how to handle flying units in tactical combat as they either bring in a whole new 3d aspect to model (which would necessitate a lot more complexity in terms of development), or you go for the same system as MoM where they essentially occupy a square just like a normal land unit, but just can't be engaged in melee from the ground up. The MoM system, while simple, is a little clunky and inelegant and I could see why SD might find it unsatisfactory and just choose not to have any flying units instead.

Thankfully, there has been a lot of headway in tactical combat in the 15 years since MoM. For example they can just coopt HoMM's system of dealing with flying units. Just let flying units fly to any open spot within range, regardless of obstacles. There are lots of ways of determining what types of attacks can affect flying units, too. They could do it HoMM's way (anybody can hit them anytime), MoM's way, or even another way. For example 'flight' could be a toggle ability; while flying units are in flight they can't attack (or maybe could only do significantly weaker-than-normal strafing attacks), but can only be hit by ranged/magic attacks. And if flying units are currently grounded, they'll deal their full damage but can also be attacked by anybody. Stardock has lots of good options to handle flying units - choosing which to use will be the hard part. 

Quoting Jonny5446, reply 7
To back up my caution I'd point out that the devs HAVE said that there WON'T be any tactical naval combat in the game as they don't think they can pull it off... and at a superficial level to me I think naval combat would probably be easier to implement than flying units that actually act like flying units (i.e. with the ability to fly over and above other units on the same square on the tactical map).

Many games have implemented the exact mechanics for flying units that you're arguing would be too hard to pull off. I'm sure Stardock will succeed as well. Naval combat is significantly trickier. HoMM handled them by just changing the battlefield to two boats side-to-side with planks connecting them. King's bounty did it by just fighting on a single boat. But from what we keep hearing from the developers, the scale of the battles in Elemental will be more comparable to those in the Total War series. Therefore none of those options are applicable.

Naval combat is especially difficult because of how boats move, and how units onboard the boats affect the battle. I don't think cannons are going to be common (or even exist at all) in Elemental. That means destroying other ships would require ramming, setting them on fire, or boarding them. This means that units on board the ships would actually play a significant role (especially if you have flying units). To be satisfying this would pretty much require tactical battles within tactical battles and would get way out of hand very fast. Tactical naval combat in a game like this is much harder than implementing flight mechanics.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

We know there are dragons. And we have screenshots of said dragons which wings. If they have wings for purely cosmetic reasons, I and most people will be extremely disappointed. Therefore I think it's pretty safe to assume that there will be flying units in the game.

We do know there'll be dragons, but in the tactical screenshots that have thus far been released they haven't been flying. At this point it still seems conceivable to me that they may have movement bonuses on the strategic map to reflect their ability to fly but act as solely ground based units on the tactical map. Like I said before I of course hope that's not the case, I'm just erring on the side of caution until we actually get anything confirmed.

Thankfully, there has been a lot of headway in tactical combat in the 15 years since MoM. For example they can just coopt HoMM's system of dealing with flying units. Just let flying units fly to any open spot within range, regardless of obstacles. There are lots of ways of determining what types of attacks can affect flying units, too. They could do it HoMM's way (anybody can hit them anytime), MoM's way, or even another way. For example 'flight' could be a toggle ability; while flying units are in flight they can't attack (or maybe could only do significantly weaker-than-normal strafing attacks), but can only be hit by ranged/magic attacks. And if flying units are currently grounded, they'll deal their full damage but can also be attacked by anybody. Stardock has lots of good options to handle flying units - choosing which to use will be the hard part.

Well I'll bow to your superior knowledge as now that I think about it I can't recall playing any 4x games with tactical combat since MoM.. other than the Total War games which obviously don't include flying units. The above suggested systems do sound pretty workable so lets hope one of them, or something even more exciting will be applied in this case.

On a side point, as I've only ever played Gal Civ 2 that's been made by Stardock, have they previously made any games involving tactical combat? Do we have any idea how in depth they're likely to go with this aspect/how much of their development resources they're likely to commit to it if they don't have any prior experience?

Naval combat is especially difficult because of how boats move, and how units onboard the boats affect the battle. I don't think cannons are going to be common (or even exist at all) in Elemental. That means destroying other ships would require ramming, setting them on fire, or boarding them.

Yeah I guess you're right, I was more thinking of a paired down version of naval combat with the more abstracted interface of MoM where each vessel just acts as an individual unit with the contained units playing no part at all. I still think that's potentially fairly easy to implement on a very simplified level but I do concede that if you want to take into account boarding, realistic ship movement (tacking etc), as well as incorporating the onboard units then the complexity does ramp up exponentially. I guess if Stardock aren't happy with such a simplified system then that probably augers well for their treatment of the land based tactical comabt eh? :)

 

 

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

You kids and your damn BEAR! AND BEAR CALVARY! AND BEAR EATING PEOPLE AND! yad yad... ride them their fun. :grin: :waaaa:   x_x Hey wait a sec we need a bear smiles...