Super Weapons & Units

Right now, my guess (preference?) would be that both strategies could work. The paths to creating a 'super weapon' that you describe seem almost like an analog to the basic channeler choice of imbuing land and heros vs. keeping essence to stay personally strong.

If you pour tons of effort into a single project, say forging a Hammer of Doom, you might have a single city tile and a few vital supply lines that you have to protect for the entire life of the project or the thing is a failure. But if your 'super weapon' is something more like the Nazgûl, you might have nine annointed units (Nazgûl-in-waiting) to keep an eye on and a series of major spells to cast, so the project is harder to manage but more resilient if a component is destroyed, a supply line is broken, or a major spell is interrupted.

Hmmm the idea of a "power sharing" system would also be nice

we all know the channeler is going to be a fairly powerful unit, so how about giving up some of his power to increase the power of another unit

now this unit is stronger than most, but the player has to be careful with it, as if lost it'll weaken his channeler for a (long time, permanent?) as his power "dies" with the said creature

but then if he wants to he can take a few turns to "recall" that power, weakening the creature but strengthening the channeler (though not recalling all his power, possibly having some stay with the unit, make it so "powering up" a unit isn't a light decision)

of course you'd have to have some limits to stop a demi-god unit appearing from turn one, but it's an idea nonetheless.

This is actually almost exactly what will be implemented according to stardock posts...

Although why stop a demi-god unit from appearing early on? 10 power units... 2 (unit) + 8 (caster) = 10; 8 (unit) + 2 (caster) = 10... also, essence will be used for making land arable and otherwise useful.

Well, I was under the impression that it was going to be spells that were the most 'super' near end game.  So I figure by 'depending how you play the game' would rely a lot on how focused you are on magic vs. military.

I would expect that you could only a super weapon, super unit, or super spell 

(I can imagine a giant cannon like from breath of fire 4.  It would 'hex' cities causing everybody in them to die and filling them with bizzar mutant creatures.)

I kind of thought the OP was a suggested complement to the basic essence investment tradeoffs. The essence question is fully personalized--it's about the channeler unit. Seems like Darkodinplus is wondering if we'll have a sort of empire-level analog for that in the 'normal' unit and magic item production systems. And it seems like such an idea could fit in well with late-game worldwrecking magic as a general theme, and also has potential for integration with quests, depending on how they'll work.

That's what I would call hitting the nail on the head. I should note I hadn't expected produceable super weapons / units to be as powerful as Doomsday spells, Dragons, or Epic Channelers. I was just talking about powerful weapons / units that could be produced in limited quantities to give an edge to traditional military forces in the game.  

You mean put a limit on the amount of elite units you can have at one time so that you can't steamroll your enemy with an unstoppable all elite army MoM style?

Actually I was shooting for a scenario similar to player A has a dragon in his army and player B doesn't but other than the dragon it's a fairly even match. Obviously player A is going to send his dragon to kick player B’s ass it would be nice if player B had the capability to create a limited number of very powerful units or weapons in an attempt to level the playing field. Of course these units / weapons wouldn’t be as powerful as the dragon but the battle would go from no contest to hotly contested. 

Now I like your idea even more--it seemed fun as just a production tradeoff thing, but you've given it a good battle context. IIRC, we'll be lucky to see dragon allies and they'll never be regular units in channelers' forces, but surely there will be some slightly less awesome fantastic creatures that would make this scenario work. 'Super weapons and/or units' might also be the only way a channeler who's lost all her heroes can fight off the Fearsome Field Marshall at the head of an enemy army.

So when one side gets ahold of a superunit, all of the related anti-superunits would naturally migrate to the enemies of that side?

I hadn't thought of anything like that or gotten the impression Darkodinplus did, but there are plenty of other 'elemental magic' frameworks include opposing pairs (mostly all boiling down to fire vs. water and earth vs. air, I admit). Why not have something like this also.

Except the 'side' thing is really unclear to me, other than being pretty sure there's some good vs. evil (Human vs. Fallen) stuff. The fact that we'll have five elements and the one we've heard most about, Life, appears to span the good-evil axis, suggests there might never be anything as simple as Just Two Sides.

From the short blurb in the Lore section, there are two classes of Beasts - sentient and non-sentient. I assume the non-sentient would be the beasts of the land that you can find a herd of and, through a technology like animal husbandry, easily tame to make mounts for cavalry. The sentient creatures would be more powerful, but more difficult to sway to your cause. Them being sentient sounds like it would almost be acts of diplomacy/questing/economics to align them to your cause and contribute units to your armies.

With the sentient beasts, there could be a web of relationships that make it increasingly difficult (but not impossible) to gather all of the most powerful of the sentient beasts to your flag - the greatest of the beasts are rivals just as the Men and Fallen are. The relationships could extend to the lesser sentient beasts. If you sway the dragons to your flag, it could make it easier to recruit the drakes but more difficult to recruit the bears. This can reverse as well, making the recruiting of a greater beast easier if you recruit the lessers that have a positive relationship. These relationships could also be randomized when a new world is created to make it such that you won't always know what beasts you will easily acquire. You might always find bears near your capital, but in one game those bears will make it easier to recruit dragons but harder in another game.

A last thought concerning balancing the powerful beasts would be through unit training. The specifics of unit training are unknown, so maybe it is possible there are training related technologies (beast lore, dragon slaying, etc) that you can use to make effective Man/Fallen troops to counter a powerful beast. This would at least provide for more options and challenges and not being at a severe disadvantage if you choose not to recruit such beasts.

From the various dev posts I got the impression that the sentient beasts will be the 'masters' or caretakers/guardians whatever you want to call it of the non-sentient beasts. In fact I'm pretty sure that Frogboy said somewhere that if you want non-sentient magical mounts (unicorns were used as an example), you would need to treat with whatever sentient beasts were in charge of the non-sentient ones. I don't think this would apply to regular non-magical mounts like horses and bears, though. It might be an interesting mechanic if getting ahold of magical mounts is more difficult if you make heavy use of regular mounts, though. 
 

If implemented at all, I think there should be severe limitations to training 'slayer' units. If it's too easy to train units to be especially good against specific powerful units, or if they're too good at fighting that unit, then getting ahold of powerful units wouldn't be nearly as valuable. I mean, if I get ahold of a handful of ents, and all my enemy needs to do to counter them is to train a squad or too of anti-ent infantry, then it diminishes the importance of such powerful units. 

I have to agree because you do want the work put into acquiring these powerful units to be worth something. But at the same time you want to diffuse the rush to those units; you don't want the first person to acquire powerful units to be able to rampage through your armies. Slayer units could require long training and be more effective than regular units but not an instant counter to them (i.e. just lone slayer won't take down a dragon, but a squad of 50 can while you'd need an army of 500 regulars without slayers).

Or, instead of increased training time, slayer units are less effective against units of normal men because their training was to fight a single large beast. So you'd have to balance the logistics of how many slayers you can afford to train without hurting your defense/offense against an opponent's regulars.

This idea of slayer units (or Special Combat Unit S.C.Us) is on a tangent to what I was originally suggesting. Considering how in Elemental there won’t be knights unless a player decided to make a knight I would assume the some applies to S.C.Us. For example if I had a war with player X and he had a Steel Golem in his army Instead of just producing more spearmen, knights, and archers I would go to the unit creator screen make a new unit call him Anti-Golem Infantry outfit him with armor that primarily protected him from earth based attacks (and or bludgeoning) then equip him with a weapon that was effective against earth / heavy armor / [insert golem armor type]. I’m not sure how accurately you will be able to do this in Elemental since the information on weapon damage types and armor classes is still very sketchy but I would guess you’d need to do something like this to make an S.C.U.

Considering that this game is supposed to be very easy for users to create their own units, I imagine thinsg like "slayer units' will be very easy.

My hypothisis is that this game will have a very solid item-creation mechanic (more complex than the create artifact spell from MoM) that will like you create weapons that have special properties, like specialize in countering other units, are on fire, have bonus is certain situations, or other properties.   It has already been stated that a 'knight' doesn't exist.  The same could be said for say... a 'dragon slayer'  you just create a guy and give him a dragon slaying sword, stick him on a dragon-bear, an boom!     So downloadable sets of units + counter-units would be easily created for play like some of the ideas listed above.

Well, you can design a unit, but to have the specific trait or skill to make it more effective against a beast is unknown. You don't want a specific one-to-one unit and counter-unit when dealing with the massively powerful units; just ways to blunt the massive power of such a unit. My idea of the slayer unit would be more effective than regular troops. If there is a dragon consuming all of your sheep in their pasture and you send an army of just regulars, 95% of them die to kill the dragon. If you send an army with a few slayer units, yes the dragon still flys over and roasts a good number of them in their armor, but the slayers make it so that you only lose 80% of your army before the dragon has been killed.

Perhaps special counter skills like "slayer" would be the realm of the heroes. Either as an individual or as a leader of an army, he commands more effectively when against a beast.

I'm going to assume that getting a dragon is a monumental task requiring a substantial investment, thus the scenario is moot.  If the dragon is on top of an already equal army and you have no answer, the dragon eats you.

In such a scenario, you're losing, substantially, and that's the way things go when you're severely outgunned.

I do want to be able to imbue armories with actual buff spells however.  If not included on release, easy modding of it would still cause drooling.  Some nice regenerating breastplates, life ward helmets, fire shields and lightning strike swords would go really nicely for a stack of nigh invincible super paladins of doom.

Not in my opinion, by your own appraisal of the situation getting a dragon or as GW Swicord suggested some other lesser magical beast would require a substantial investment. In my situation the two armies were pretty much equal until Player A got a dragon to ally with him. It would be reasonable to assume Player B would then have a large amount of resources since he didn’t have to negotiate with a magic beast (assuming magical creatures want resources or something that consumes resources). Player B should therefore be able to pour the lion’s share of his resources into producing a limited number of viable super weapons / units to try and balance the battle. 

Well if Player A declares war immediately after he gets the dragon to ally with him, Player B shouldn't have time to prepare superweapons or highly trained elite slayer units before a significant portion of his army or towns has already been lost. It shouldn't be possible to whip up super-anything on a dime, but should require significant preparation. Not to mention there might be other ways of getting a dragon to join your side other than throwing resources at it.

Well your assessment of the scenario is largely depended on the size of the map. Yea I suppose if player A and B combined only had 4 cities (2 apiece) and were on a small island then Player B would be pretty screwed since making super weapons / units would require a good piece of time. I personally don’t play on small maps all that much so in my scenario we’ll say the total number of cities owned by both players is close to 90 so Player A wouldn’t be able to end the game in 10 or 15 turns. I would guess it would be around 40 - 50+ turns assuming his army is already to go.  This would give Player B plenty of time to get the super weapons / units in question on the field of battle and hopefully turn the tide of the war.

Now as for getting magical beasts to join a players army granted we don’t know how exactly it will work but I seriously doubt you can get a magical beast to join your army just by asking very, very pleasantly if that is what you’re suggesting. Since these creatures are sentient and excluding extreme situations I doubt they would fight and risk their lives for nothing in return. I would guess the magical creature asking for a large amount of resources or some event / project that would consume resources is a likely system model.   

Wow ,90 cities... Honestly I think if you're at that stage, you'd both be fielding such powerful armies that even a dragon wouldn't be able to so drastically sway the odds. Frogboy has said that a single dragon would be capable of wiping out a thousand regular soldiers all by itself, but if you've got 90 cities I'd imagine you'd be able to field several armies numbering in the tens of thousands of soldiers each.

I hope that buying off/bribing dragons won't be the only way to get to join you. In a way I'd actually prefer that it not even be an option at all. Rather, I'd want dragons to have ambitions, and to get them to join you it would have to serve their purpose. For example, Player B does something to piss off a dragon, so when Player A declares war on Player B he goes to the dragon, who agrees to join Player A in order to destroy Player B. Or if Player A is strong enough, he could threaten the dragon with death or capture. Or the dragon could send the player on a quest, or string of quests to prove himself. Not only does this make it possible for weaker civs to get a dragon to join its cause, but it really makes the dragons feel like willful, independent powers - not some roving force of nature that you can buy with a bit of gold or whatever.

On the other hand, for the 'lesser' magical beasts I wouldn't be as opposed for resources to be an option. Especially for the non-sentient ones that you have to treat with their 'overseers' in order to obtain.

That would be 45 cities each which is about medium small to me in a game like this depending on land mass available. Hell, 120 cities each is probably laughable on some maps you need to remember there is going to be a 64-bit version. I also disagree with your assertion that dragons depending on the size of an army would be irrelevant for two main reasons. First the power level of a dragon could scale dynamically based on map size or some other variable. Second and perhaps most logically if you put in the time, effort, and resources to get a dragon I wouldn’t send him off alone to face the enemy no matter how powerful he was. Even the most powerful weapon system (or in this case creature) need full support form traditional forces.

I would be tremendously disappointed in the magic creature system if some significant level of input was not required to gain their allegiance. Now that doesn’t mean give X amount of gold for every dragon as you suggest (although dragons in several fantasy worlds are notoriously greedy and like shinny objects) depending on the dragon they might want some specific event or project that consumes resources as I stated. For example Player A may have found a fire dragon in some volcano and to get him to join his army Player A had to build him a new roost with gold statues of the dragon or recover some precious jewel that was stole by another dragon, etc. All of these would consume large amounts of resources without Player A simple giving the dragon X amount of gold. I also doubt threatening the dragon would be an intelligent move no matter how powerful you are plus that would just be lame.     

Ah I misunderstood. Nonetheless 45 cities is huge. I always play on the biggest map sizes available in these types of games, but even in Civ IV, 45 cities is huge. At that point corruption makes cities so inefficient that they stop being worth settling... (I actually hope there's no corruption-like system in Elemental, it always pissed me off no matter how realistic it might be :P). And in AoW, 45 cities would be absolutely ludicrous... Personally I hope cities are more important in Elemental than they tend to be in most 4X games. I'd be disappointed if a regular grid of cities covering the entire landscape is a common sight. For me, that would ruin the fantasy feel.

And I never suggested sending the dragon into battle alone. But if both players' armies are 15,000-strong, but Player A also has a dragon, then Player A will have an advantage but not necessarily an insurmountable one. On the other hand if the army sizes were just 2000-strong, then the player with the dragon would probably have a field day. I'm not sure how I'd feel about dragon strength scaling with map size. It could be okay, but it could be excessive. It would be cool if there could be a "dragon strength" slider in the options

So would I, for the most part. Unless you and the dragon have a common, priority goal, you should have to do quite a bit to get the dragon to join you, which could come in the form of quests. The quest could require a significant input of resources, but it doesn't have to - it should depend. I hope that SD doesn't do the stereotypical gold-hoarding dragons - personally I think it belittles them. Now if some dragons like their gold, that's one thing, but the priorities of dragons should be varied. And even if you and the dragon have lots of shared goals/ideals/enemies, it doesn't mean the dragon will automatically join you, but the process could be a little easier, or there could be a chance that the dragon won't take kindly to your offer despite the common grounds. 

Why? If your channeler alone is powerful enough to kill a dragon all by himself with minimal effort, then why would threatening it be unintelligent? A dragon that's been forced into serving you should have a chance to go rogue and turn against you, though, so it would be a risk. Plus it could make all other dragons think less of you.

I've had well over 150+ planets in GalCiv2 on the larger maps and that is a 32-bit program. On to this specific quote,  I personally don't think a Channeler will ever get anywhere close to the power level of a dragon hence it would be very stupid to threaten one especially in person.