Frogboy Frogboy

Elemental: And now for something completely different

▼

Elemental: And now for something completely different

from JoeUser Forums

It’s not the loudness

I’m a stalker.

No. Really. I am.

I don’t just read the feedback on Elemental in our forums. I read the feedback on lots of other forums. So I lurk on sites like RPG.net, Octopus Overlords, PCCohort, Qt3, CnardPC, WArgamers.com, rpgcodex.net, tacticularcancer, colonyofgamers, bay12games.com, Shrapnel Games, penny-arcade forums, etc.

And one of the most consistent concerns I read is that the hard core beta testers who post the most will influence the game to become too hard-core.  There is nothing to fear.

I have happily debated, over the years, the merits of games like Space Empires V vs. Galactic Civilizations and such.  And while Elemental will be “deeper” than Galactic Civilizations, players are not going to have to micro-manage sword production or something.  Elemental is, at its core, a macro-game. Your stratregy will have more to do with your victory than tactical prowess.

That doesn’t mean that the battle system won’t be heavily modified to be richer than we currently have it but it does mean that we will not have cutting versus slashing damage. 

Where things stand with the beta

We are officially at Beta 1-B.  The economic phase of the beta.  Several weeks have been schedule to work on this until we’re all happy with it. So expect more beta 1-B updates before we get to the initial AI skeleton beta.

Elemental Economics

My sovereign founds a city.

The city has an initial prestige based on the prestige ability of that civilization (typically 10).

Each turn, the population of that city grows by prestige/10 + existing population*prestige/10 % pre turn.  The first number represents sheer prestige, the second one is meant to model natural population growth (babies).  Sure, we could have a “fertility” rating but we are trying to keep the number of variables down to a minimum so that players aren’t having to build 20 different types of buildings.

Each citizen pays taxes at a fixed rate. There is no slider to increase taxes ala Galactic Civilizations. Instead, if you want to increase income, you need to increase the wealth of your city through improvements. Your money comes from people.

When you harvest a resource (food, metal, crystals, stone, whatever) your city gets M per turn. In addition, your other cities will receive Q per turn (typically 1.0).  If they are connected by roads, they will get Q * R (road bonus which is typically 2.0).

You can increase these variables based on improvements you choose to build in your city.

Each citizen produces T technology units per turn (typically 0.10).  You can increase this rate by building schools, libraries, and other improvements. 

Building a new improvement in your city takes L turns for the labor plus S turns based on the supplies needed.  So a fancy estate that increases the prestige of your city may take 10 turns to build due to labor + an additional 2 turns to get the 4 stone needed to construct it. Improvements also have an up-front cost that is the labor (in turns) X A for the labor cost per turn (typically 10.0).  So that estate would cost 100 gold to build because it takes 10 turns of labor.

You can produce soldiers. Soldiers cost Z gold per turn to keep around. They are the main drain on your economy per turn.

Researching

We are playing around with different types of research mechanisms for Elemental.  The current research screen UI is deplorable.

Here is a rough mockup of a new one that we hope to make available next Thursday.

image

The idea being that players would choose amongst the 5 research categories:

  1. Civilization
  2. Warfare
  3. Magic
  4. Adventure
  5. Diplomacy

When they chose a category, they would get a list of technologies that may become available when they make their breakthru.  If the listed technology is green, then it will definitely be available when you make your breakthru.  If it’s yellow, it might be available when you make a breakthru, if it’s red, it probably won’t be available.

Some technologies will require a pre-requisite. You can’t simply (by luck) get access to say plate metal armor. You would have to research warfare, then defenses, then armor and then after that you would have a chance to get plate metal armor. The more points you have in a particular category, the greater the odds that one of those techs will pop up.

So let’s walk through this:

I choose warfare: level 1 and I see:

  • Barracks (green)
  • Weapons (green)
  • Defenses (green)
  • City Walls (yellow)
  • Archery (yellow)

Warfare level 1 costs 10 technology points (which at this stage means 10 turns).

I know I want to get to plate mail so I pick Defenses.

10 turns pass…

The breakthru window pops up and I choose Defenses. City Walls also showed up but Archery didn’t.

The research window comes up again and I see this:

Warfare: level 2

  • Barracks (green)
  • Weapons (green)
  • Armor (green)
  • City Walls (yellow)
  • Archery (yellow)
  • Fortify Position (red)

Warfare Level 2 costs 20 tech points (which at this point in the game is taking 14 turns).

14 turns pass…

The breakthru window pops up and I get to choose between Barracks, Weapons, Armor, and Fortify Position.  Now, because it was red, it means I got pretty lucky that it is an option and next time, it may not show up as an option. Do I pick that now or do I go with Armor?  I choose Armor anyway.

Now I see this:

  • Barracks (green)
  • Weapons (green)
  • Leather Armor (green)
  • Plate Armor (yellow)
  • City Walls (green)
  • Archery (green)
  • Fortify Position (red)

As you can see, City Walls and Archery have become green which means they will always be choices because enough points have been put into Warfare that they’ve gone from being maybes to certainties.

Warfare level 3 costs 40 points (which at this point will take 20 turns to get).

The other thing about this system is that we can have a giant pool of minor but interesting techs that normally don’t show up in a game but when we go through the new game generation, we will randomly give them a slight chance to come up during a game. So, for instance, you might get a tech called “Forest Defenses” where if you have it, it will give your units extra defensive bonuses in a forest.  All players would have access to such a tech (i.e. it’s not per player though we might make some race-based).

We’re finding this system to simply be a lot more fun to play and give the player a lot more interesting choices.

The idea here is that you’re researching an area of technology, you have breakthrus and the player can then choose what that breakthru was.

Next Beta opening?

For those who are pre-ordering, we will probably let more people join just before Christmas. But that really depends on the state of the game.  Right now, we’re still working out basic stuff like crashing, memory leaks, and low level game mechanics.  I don’t anticipate the game being “fun” until Beta 2 and even then it’ll still be pretty raw.

A typical “beta” program that is open to the public wouldn’t start to what we are calling Beta 4.  So others might call Beta 1, 2 and 3 “alphas” if you’re into the semantics of this kind of thing.  But it gives you an idea of the distance that must be traveled between where we are now and where we expect the game to be something that a sane company would want its fans to see.

Why are we torturing our top supporters?

Stardockers are a rare breed of power user / gamer.  Most of them know what they’re in for already.  The reason they got involved is because they know that we’re reading their “walls of text”. We may not always respond, but we’re reading them, thinking about them, and will make real changes.  We’re making the game with them.

When all is said and done, every game design decision the game has will have to be defensible to the main base.  Hence, there will be posts arguing that the magic system should be different or that the research system should be different.  The question is whether the design decisions that are ultimately made can be logically defended and whether most of our target audience likes what we ultimately have chosen.

323,440 views 196 replies
Reply #151 from Elemental Forums Top

Is there any limit, of how many techs I will have a choice to choose from? If the system calculated that I can research 3 techs (choose one of those), will it roll for the other techs?
  As of now there is no hard 'limit' to the available breakthroughs.  It will roll for each and fill the list accordingly.

Reply #152 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Demiansky, reply 148

I really, Really, don't think everyone should get Every tech. This severely limits the usefulness of Tech Trading and other tech related options that could be a big part of diplomacy. Part of the draw of these games is the feeling you get when you're doing good and slaughtering your opponents. This is partly done with Technological Superiority.


Well, I agree that every tech shouldn't be gainable through sheer research, but I'm concerned about tech trading being too powerful.  I generally always turn tech trading off in every game, because it always makes the strong even stronger and the weak, weaker even if a player can't nab every tech.  I would actually like to see some features that make tech gain for weaker opponents easier if they are woefully behind in tech.  Most of the time, by the time weaker players finally get a specific tech, it's already been passed around by the more powerful players, leaving nothing for the weaker player to offer or gain.

Aside from this, tech trading just doesn't seem to make sense to me.  I would like to see a more organic mode of tech trading than "you give me X and I'll give you Y."  In a mideaval setting, it seems like "technology" would actually be more of a culturally integrated development rather than a blue print sitting on a parchment somewhere.  Instead of trading "tech," two civilizations might open their borders, allowing both cultures to exchange customs and knowledge.  So what you might instead see is that certain techs which you are unable to research yourself but belongs to another Civ appear on the tech chart and, over time, it begins to slowly research itself as your civilizations become closer.  For tech options that you have in common but they already own, you would slowly see the tech research itself.  At a certain point, you could take the reins after you've exchanged enough cultural elements and research the rest of the tech yourself if you wanted to speed it along.

As for gaining techs when you conquer a city of another civilization, you might see a one time boost in knowledge toward a tech, but not consistent growth (after all, when you subjugate a city your aim is to coerce them into your own culture, not affod them their own indentity.)

I like this idea for the cultural exchange of knowledge.  This is more realistic and from a game mechanic it makes you really buddy up to another civilization to gain their tech as opposed to the 'drug deal' sale of a tech one time and then you ignore them for 20-30 turns until you need something again.  Essentially you slowly share tech with allies, but can't get tech from a rival or distant empire.

I have to say I really, really disagree with Climber and agree with Tridus.  There should never be a situation where the grey tech is unattainable.  The whole point is that these techs are WAY obsolete.  High level techs will never turn grey, only the early techs.  Everyone should be able to get ALL the early techs, because these are usually core techs.  If I can't get barracks, because I went way down the path towards swords and/or armor, thats just stupid and not fun.  I will probably already be WAY behind by not having taken the barracks early: my heavily armed, untrained soldiers will probably not be as good as a moderately armed soldier that is trained well (from a player who took a balanced approach).  It just makes no sense to lock someone out of a low level tech: gee I've seen the path to create barracks for a while now and suddenly I can't figure out how to make one?

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #153 from Elemental Forums Top

I've always viewed tech trading in games as a bit of a crutch that games use to force players to make use of diplomacy because diplomacy was otherwise useless.  In the real world diplomacy is not generally viewed as a method to acquire technology.  (Of course in the real world most technology is developed in the private sector anyway).  I'd prefer to make diplomacy useful even if tech trading were completely forbidden.

Reply #154 from Elemental Forums Top

First let me say that if you think that the gray freebies means that eventually you get all techs you flat out do not understand what was proposed - IT DOES NOT, nor would I want it to.

Second greys being selectable vs non selectable. I will address this at Climber since he clearly doesn't understand the inherent penalty of CHOOSING a grey tech. Let's use your example that a person has just reached his 10th breakthrough, Reaching that breakthrough (going from 9 to 10) cost 5,120 research points. Now, the person gets to choose what was actually discovered - hmmm there is greyed option plate mail, or there is City-Wide Impenetrable Force Field of Death, which just turned green for this level. Should he be able to choose Plate armor over CWIFFOD? Sure! Why the HECK would you not allow that choice?

So therefore I think your argument against greys being selectable is solely due to misunderstanding how the proposed system (and I am talking about Frogboy's original proposal, not my grey-out idea) works. Frankly I think the chances that someone would ever choose a greyed tech is small but if there is some reason suddenly that he needs that tech, the penalty he pays is that he just paid a MINIMUM of double the research that he would have paid for the same tech when it was green, and literally it could be HUNDREDS of times more costly. So please stop with the silly posts about making greys non-selectable like it is a big deal. There is never an instance when allowing a person to do so hurts gameplay. How can it lead to everyone learning everything eventually when as I have illustrated they had to pass up CWIFFOD and if they now want CWIFFOD they have to research Warfare XI (10,280 research points, yay!) to get it.

At the point that you stop research in a certain tree, by definition all unchosen green yellow or red techs will NEVER be learned. So enough of the silly concerns that free grey tech means everyone gets everything. Not to mention that all techs may not even appear in your tech tree to begin with.

Reply #155 from Elemental Forums Top

Yea ... somekind of usefull diplomacy which is not simply modifiers to force the AI into liking you. There has to be some incentive for two nations to work together (even if both human controlled). I also agree it should not be tech trading. Well, maybe some cultural progression of "tech leak" between closely tied empires/trade-routes, ect. Either way I would like for Diplomacy to be a unique and interesting path ... perhaps trade-caravans that greatly increase the wealth of two nations, and begin automatically once there is a road (perhaps dirt roads/trails will develop automatically and organically) ... and increase as the road gets better (upgraded).

Which is why I think Flag-bearers, Religion, things dealing with Tolerance, IN-Tolerance, and Crusade should be involved in Diplomacy. I think the player should be in some-what slightly limited in cource of actions based upon populace.

I would like to see Diplomacy include ways to control your people ... ways to build Senates to be a more plebian leader, or secret police to be more Tyrannical. Even Imperial Rome had the Principes, which were highly trained mobsters which kept the people in line (with the help of bread n circus) and who would occasionally kill an unpopular political figure (like a noble or a family member).

I would like to see Diplomacy instate different types of governments, or at least different ways of hearing your people or controlling them, and like-minded governments should get greater wealth from trade-routes with each other (to encourage like-minded governments to like each other more)

I would also like to see multi-national Coalitions to be formed, like the Overcouncil (UN), Undercouncil (Inernational Mobster Federation), or the Firecouncil (crusaders of the Firelord). Also such things like vassals, protectorate states, and alliances to factor in as well, like Vassal of X has secretly joined the Undercouncil, even though his Conqueror is a proud and public member of the Overcouncil. Councils would have resolutions, and would attempt to be some-what trade and military alliances (like NATO). Alliances would share alot of perks, and over-all be the closest sort of tie, they would have vested interest in the outcome of the other. Vassals and Protectorates would be either voluntary or forced into obedience ... have to pay a certain amount of tribute X number of turns ... can be roughed up by leader if he doesn't play by rules, but has enough freedom to get into trouble/ eventually try to fight back.

I think Diplomacy should also enable you to Inspire your people ... with flag-bearers, or other such ... I know alot of this would probably be tied into civilization, but able to increase the freedoms of the people to adjust over-all wealth (less gold and more science) or to Inspire them in the ONE WILL OF THE EMPEROR, and to give donations and fall in line (more gold, less science) .... I suppose alot of this is Civics, but I think the more Morality based civics/ect should be located into Diplomacy.

Obviously appropriate relationship modifiers would be programmed into the AI, forcing it into certain situations, but I would like for there to be visible mechanical incentives for the human player to follow a similar course of action (at least until he reveals his nefarious plan) ... and for ways of players to form formal and informal alliance structures, yet within the mechanics of the game instead of simply "saying" something. (Obviously deals can be broken, but to what consequence? and how early do you have to officially cancel an alliance before such breaks will be consequencial among your populace?)

Essentially I see diplomacy as a Giant PR firm for your citizens, and the realm of all sorts of Alignment, Religion, and other more Esoterical Values. In addition to granting bonuses for like-minded nations to work together (or something to that effect)

Reply #156 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Denryu, reply 154
...
Second greys being selectable vs non selectable. I will address this at Climber since he clearly doesn't understand the inherent penalty of CHOOSING a grey tech. Let's use your example that a person has just reached his 10th breakthrough, Reaching that breakthrough (going from 9 to 10) cost 5,120 research points. Now, the person gets to choose what was actually discovered - hmmm there is greyed option plate mail, or there is City-Wide Impenetrable Force Field of Death, which just turned green for this level. Should he be able to choose Plate armor over CWIFFOD? Sure! Why the HECK would you not allow that choice?

I have no misunderstanding of the system, either the OP or how your proposed grey.  My non-selectable grey system is a more 'harsh' system than many of you like.  In your example, you should be disallowed to choose Plate Armor, considered it is a level 3 (or 4) tech while CWIFFOD maybe of tech level 8.  There is a huge jump of tech levels when you attempt to get CWIFFOD before you even research the Plate Armor.  I am not saying that you should not get CWIFFOD right away; but if you do, you should either get all those lower level tech like Plate Armor (& others) first, be4 beelining to CWIFFOD; Otherwise you should suffer some risk.

I am not trying to get everyone saying 'yes, Climber's idea is want I want too!".  I am try to make it clear the idea of 'non-selectable grey'.  Really it is ok you don't like it.  I am presenting an option I like & I've a clear understanding of what I want.   Hopefully this idea is not too hard-core for many of you to accept.

Quoting Denryu, reply 154

So therefore I think your argument against greys being selectable is solely due to misunderstanding how the proposed system (and I am talking about Frogboy's original proposal, not my grey-out idea) works. Frankly I think the chances that someone would ever choose a greyed tech is small but if there is some reason suddenly that he needs that tech, the penalty he pays is that he just paid a MINIMUM of double the research that he would have paid for the same tech when it was green, and literally it could be HUNDREDS of times more costly. So please stop with the silly posts about making greys non-selectable like it is a big deal. There is never an instance when allowing a person to do so hurts gameplay. How can it lead to everyone learning everything eventually when as I have illustrated they had to pass up CWIFFOD and if they now want CWIFFOD they have to research Warfare XI (10,280 research points, yay!) to get it.

Pls note that in the OP system, the cost of getting a tech is proportional (or even exponential) to the number of breakthru you already had.  If it takes you Warfare XI to get both the CWIFFOD and plate armor you want, the accumulative cost is the same regardless of whether you research CWIFFOD first or the Plate first.  

Finally, my idea is not silly, nor do my concerns.  This just shows how inflexible mindset you have.      

==

Anyhow, I've raised my suggestion.  I've attempted to explain it.  Unless there is some neat comment rgds to non-selectable grey, I will stop explaning now.   I have better use of my time explaining this concept.

Reply #157 from Elemental Forums Top

So to be absolutely clear, when someone does Warfare XI research from the example above, you think it is important  or harsher to remove plate mail as an choice? It really seems like that is what you are saying but I have to say that saying that removing plate mail as a choice is somehow a hardcore option - my mind is getting slightly blown here. But you are certainly as welcome as anyone to support whatever ideas you want.

Reply #158 from Elemental Forums Top

I don't see what this has to do with hardcore vs non-hardcore. Removing plate armor as an option because I learned "advanced pike formations" doesn't make any sense. Punishing people for picking the thing they need most out of the list right now by permanently removing something they might have picked later is punishing the player for doing what rational players do (prioritization).

Reply #159 from Elemental Forums Top

I don't see how removing the options would make the game more fun OR more realistic.

Reply #160 from Elemental Forums Top

rpgcodex! That rules, and reminds me I should go there to read how bad they are ripping on dragon age ;)

Most of you are all focused on research but I wanted to talk a bit about the basic economics section.

I understand the desire to reduce the number of things a player has to worry about but it seems odd to have the natural birth rate of a population be tied into prestige. I do not have a good feeling for the range of populations and prestige yet, but if prestige does not grow quickly compared with population then you quickly get into a situation where your growth rate is almost entirely driven by existing population which makes prestige less important/interesting. I would suggest having population growth be broken into two equations. First you get a flat addition each turn from prestige. Second you get a flat (for now) growth rate based on a % of the existing population. Then in a city/turn report you could list how many people immigrated to the city and how many people were born. 

Resource harvest still feels weird to me. As I understand it as soon as my area of influence expands over a resource I instantly start harvesting it and all cities instantly gain access to it. This means that resources are controlled by cities, not some resource collection improvement. So in a conflict the only way I can remove that resource is by taking one or more cities. I worry that this will make attacking an opponent with access to important resources very difficult.

I assume we will be allowed to pillage buildings without taking the main city. Depending on how much of a bonus the various resource extraction buildings give this may or may not be useful. Also as described the amount of a resource that your connected cities receive is not liked to the rate that the first cities produces it. So if I have 20 cities it would make a lot more sense to build a unit in each rather than try to focus production in the one that has bonus production. The defender only needs to ensure that single production city does not fall to allow the rest of his cities the large initial production bonus having access to the resource allows. As such it might not even be worth building the resource extraction buildings as your time and gold could be used to builddefenses.

I understand that the lack of a resource does not prevent you from building anything, but it does limit the practical number of things you can build that use the resource. If it takes me 10x longer to build something than my opponent I might as well not be able to build it for all the good it will do me. At the same time it is going to be very difficult to deny access to a resource from an established kingdom(empire).

If soldiers are the main drag on the economy then what is in place to prevent ICS? I understand at the start you are limited by your essence, but once you lay out a few cities to anchor the corners of your space you can then seemingly backfill as much as you want. In fact with the way each city can both fully produce AND fully research each turn I am a bit worried right now that a huge number of cities is going to be the key to victory. I think there needs to be some other main source of upkeep rather than armies to prevent such things.

Reply #161 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting PurplePaladin, reply 140
In reguards to trading techs, I hope you will concider not going the Civ route, where, you can trade a Tech to another civ, and in just one turn, bam, the natives are making tanks.  Even worse, the natives then trade their new tank technology to every other civ on the next turn, and, bam, the entire world goes from spears to tanks in two turns.
A similar 'problem' with civ4 is how people will research techs they don't really want (that the AI doesn't generally research early on) to get techs they do want (that the AI does typically research).  It's 'gamey' that it's 'good strategy' to think "I want Iron Working but the AI will research it first so it'll have no trade value, so I'll research Literature then trade that and Aesthetics for IW and hopefully back fill older techs".

Reply #162 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Shadowdragoon, reply 145

Quoting mrakomo, reply 143PurplePaladin: Bad idea. If I have the blueprints for tanks, why shall I produce "men with club" units? And if I have something I may sell it, why not if I can make a profit. If you don't like the tech brokering, I think the solution in GC2 was good (you can disable it).
i think even Civ4 have the disable techbrokering, so only researched by "you" techs can be traded, not recived by trade ones.
Civ4 also has an option to disable all tech trading, not just self-researched techs.

Options like that are good.  The option to turn off goody huts is also good, to get rid of the random free techs that can unbalance a game (especially GOTMs and SGOTMs where there's a 'competition', so a lucky free Bronze Working at the start can make a huge difference).

Reply #163 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Sarudak, reply 159
I don't see how removing the options would make the game more fun OR more realistic.
Agreed.  Better a 'soft cap' (where grays are still choosable, but the non-gray choices are so tempting/better that we'd need a great reason to choose the gray) than 'hard cap' (unchoosable grays).

 

Reply #164 from Elemental Forums Top

You realise Climber that Denryu's system shouyld be just as appealing to you right? I see your reasoning but I prefer the arguments against what you're saying. If it's hard-coded then players can feasably get penalised unfairly for prioritising, if it's soft then you can just make a point of not selecting grey techs. Everyone wins. There's no reason why the dev team can't keep it "soft" and have players such as yourself impose the non-selectable-greys rule on yourself (or mod it in later). While I admit that the idea isn't quite as solid as yours it's still easy to pull off.

 

 

 

Reply #165 from Elemental Forums Top

again, being able to tech a grey does not mean you automatically get acess to all techs that grey leads to as if THEY were grey. Researching a grey would lead to certain other techs (usually/mostly/surely) and THOSE techs would start out as GREEN ... so you would need to do ALOT of reasearching to get to the next platform in the tree. It discourages bi-polar teching within a tree (and more specialization, Squee!) ... although some-one that goes for a broader tech-path will have a more well-rounded army, and probably be more prepared for warfare/multiple battles against opponents.

Reply #166 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Valiant_Turtle, reply 153
I've always viewed tech trading in games as a bit of a crutch that games use to force players to make use of diplomacy because diplomacy was otherwise useless.  In the real world diplomacy is not generally viewed as a method to acquire technology.  (Of course in the real world most technology is developed in the private sector anyway).  I'd prefer to make diplomacy useful even if tech trading were completely forbidden.

I think this is mainly because of the key difference between Real Life diplomacy and Video Game diplomacy. VG Diplomacy also has a lot in common with Sci Fi diplomacy. In most popular Sci Fi series, lets use Star Trek as a example, less advanced civilizations are always trying to get their hands on Federation technology. Particularly weapons. The Federation has a strict policy Not to give weapons or other harmful tech to less advanced civilizations. Most of these Sci Fi or Fantasy type "Realities" follow some kind of moral basis along these lines. Still, Tech trading is often the highlight of many episodes as technology tends to solve a lot of their problems. Tech trading (or in Elemental, Magic) is a big deal in these kinds of realities as it often precedes a change in the balance of power.

Real World diplomacy does not involve the heavy trading of weapon technologies because as a whole, Man Kind is greedy and will not give away a advantage that they can use to over-power their enemies. If you would have approached the US Government in the late 50's or early 60's and offered them a bazillion, trillion, dollars for a nuclear bomb they would say No. No matter what you would have offered them, they'd still say no. Not because they'd worry about who you would hurt with the bomb, but because by them having the bomb and you not having the bomb they have the power to do what ever they want to your country because if you get out of line they USE the bomb. Hence in Real Life trading technology usually isn't that big of a part of diplomacy. RL Diplomacy is more about trading resources and having rights to pass through each others lands without starting wars.

Reply #167 from Elemental Forums Top

I have a good post on what I think Diplomacy should entail on this game ... I think its post 155, the readers digest version is to have Alignment Issues (secret police vs Senate), Religions, and Overcouncils/Alliances (think league of nations or UN, only several different organizations each with their own flavor).

Also, Alignment issues could effect Royal Family member traits. A good commander could do alot with trade benefits and perhaps prestige bonuses, while an evil commander could harm prestige in favor for greater protection from assasins, greater farming/mining bonuses (of resources), ect. The more "complex" a city-system is, the more varied the alignments would be, but even the current system is a good starting position to work with. Either way, I think such useful perks such as that would be good for diplomacy ... espcially since the more you specialize in a certain way of thinking, the more friendly you can become to others thinking the same way. (and perhaps peace-time trade routes will accrue more wealth/gold if your government is most similar to theirs, incentivising like minded human players to also naturally ally (at least for a time).

Reply #168 from Elemental Forums Top

Overall I am in agreement with the ideas that the research plan is an improvement.  I also agree with the idea of implimenting a grey tech, where at say 5 levels above the tech turning green it is automatically learned even if not selected.  The way I look at it is with the escalating costs of breakthroughs, there is more and more research points being invested, by the time something goes grey, the idea has been hanging around so long that the effort to achieve its understanding is insignificant. 

There are some technologies that are not intended to be in every game, so they should have a rare or unique flag so that the tech will never go green or grey.  The argument for going deep or wide in a tech tree is really dependant on the relative cost of a breakthrough.  If there is an escalating cost for breakthroughs, and no way to research a specific low cost tech, then the incentive will always be to go deep unless there is a specific goal for attaining a lower level tech. 

Going wide is dependant on the ability to research specific technologies without the  escalating cost of achieving a breakthrough level; this might not be a bad system either.  So for example if barracks and leather armor are green techs at level 1(costing 10 points) perhaps once they become grey I could choose to spend 10 points to reseach that specific tech; that way it still requires additional effort to gain the tech, but I am not "wasting" a potentially 320+ point breakthrough on an arguably obsolete tech. 

There will always be an incentive to choose the most advantagous techs for any breakthrough and order of selection will provide different advantages based on the player's objectives which will continue to keep that aspect of the game interesting. 

Reply #169 from Elemental Forums Top

PHEW! This was my greatest worry for the game. That you would listen to all these really hardcore people on the forums and think that they represent all the fans (or even the majority, I dare say).
I'm very glad you're listening to us simpler people :) 

Regarding Economics;
Fantastic! This is EXACTLY what I've been thinking. Major thumbs up from me

 

Regarding the Research system; 

I think it sounds like a great system. It kind of reminds me of the old DOS game called "Syndicate", where you didn't really know what you were researching until you had it but you had a vague idea of what it was gonna be (guns, medical equipment etc).

 
Regarding the next Beta Opening; 
Will this be available to europeans as well? I'm a bit nervous about pre-ordering until I know for sure it's gonna arrive here...


Why are we torturing our top supporters?
Stardockers are a rare breed of power user / gamer. Most of them know what they’re in for already. The reason they got involved is because they know that we’re reading their “walls of text”. We may not always respond, but we’re reading them, thinking about them, and will make real changes. We’re making the game with them.
When all is said and done, every game design decision the game has will have to be defensible to the main base. Hence, there will be posts arguing that the magic system should be different or that the research system should be different. The question is whether the design decisions that are ultimately made can be logically defended and whether most of our target audience likes what we ultimately have chosen.




:inlove:

Reply #170 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting BoogieBac, reply 81
For clarification, I beleive the free 'low level' tech mechanisim should work like this.

- old techs will eventually turn GREY (this is after you've passed them over them around 8 milestones in that same category)

- when a milestone is completed, the game will look to see if that category has any outdated 'grey' techs

- if so, there's an overall 10% chance of getting one for free

- if you roll a freebe, then it goes through and does the random roll on each outdated tech

- the first one that rolls within that 10% liklihood (or 5%, or 1%...whichever works best) is picked as a a free tech...if none of them are picked, then no freebe's for that milestone round

So you'd never get more than 1 grey outdated tech in a given milestone. You'd also probably not get one until there're about 4-5 available. We're also talking about techs that may not be very useful to you anymore (otherwise you would have grabbed them earlier).

Very low liklihood of free techs = probably won't drastically alter anyone's research strategy. 

 

This I like.

Sammual

Reply #171 from Stardock Forums Top

I agree that techs should newer get "Outdated" to the point of not being able to research them.. i just dont see why i should after (following is a made up eventseries) i for some strange necesety need to focus my research up to a hig level of spears, and imbuning them whit fire, and offencive tactics, to take down something thats attacks ignore armour making armour research useless to after its gone. so when the threat, lets say ghost dragon is dead by the fire enchanted mithril spears, why should i not then be able to get armour research since the focus on spears and offencive tacktics made basic armour research obsolete?

Should that i started a little to cloose to a dead dragons skeleton, and needing to "remove" ghost by enchanted weponry make it so i cant get armour afterwards? as that is what obsoleting research so you cant research it will do?

Reply #172 from Elemental Forums Top

A research suggestion since we're discussing techs -

for slow, medium and fast research how about selecting the cost increment when starting a game, assuming each tech will be exponentially more expensive.

Assuming a simple Tech2= nTech1 + c

you can have slow/fast start options (high or low constant value like 0 or 5 or 100 or 1000 for example) a slower tech option n is 2, 3 for very slow, default n (whatever works) and fast techs n = 1.3 or very fast techs n = 1.05 with a low(ish) c... if you explained them you could add custom tech speed with whatever formula you go with.

Since it's not easy to imagine more complex equations, maybe have a tiny graph so you could see how it'd scale for low - high end techs against an expected research point increase. (have a graph with research costs (in days) vs research level calculated with the cost formula divided by the average assumed research point income taken from a sample game at 5 or 10 turn intervals - using a set progression first but using your last game after you've played once to tailor it to you) that way you could pick a preformed tech rate or even the preferred tech cost formula - having the best one (most popular) as default

It'd be nice to have options to have default values that keep each tech increase to around 10 days for example, or one where early techs come slowly (30 days) but late are fast (2 days), or one where early techs are fast (5 days) but late come exponentially slower (20, 22, 25, 29 days)

Thoughts? (since I like the colour coded techs and the tech discovery rate seems like the next logical topic)

What should the default tech rate be?

Reply #173 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting BoogieBac, reply 81


Very low liklihood of free techs = probably won't drastically alter anyone's research strategy.

Or, in GC2 terms: Did you ever skip over a needed tech because you figured you'd get it during an invasion or random event?


First, thanks for all these updates.

Grey free techs won't drastically alter research strategy.  Sure, no problem.  But exactly what kind of function/benefit/goal this mechanism should be acheived?   As you said, grey techs does not represent a needed tech (at this moment).  To me, it represent "Nice to have" tech, which will improve your overall empire strength, OR tech that you are not sure if it is useful later.

Let me exaggerate a bit here again.  If the probability is 0.1%, grey is useless.   If the probability is 50%, gamer will drive Deep into the tech tree to try acheiving high tech competitive advantage now AND getting those "Nice to have" techs later.

If the probability to somewhere in between these extremes, (somewhere in at a reasonable 10%) the gamer probably will reseach what they need now(either by going wide and/or narrow) and some times ignoring those "Nice to have".  Is this the function of Grey, from the view of SD, as of now?

Reply #174 from Elemental Forums Top

This post comments the 1st post, I read half of the of the thread and got tired or it. I realised at the end, people where now talking about diplomacy. So I think I am going to make another diplomacy thread. Anyways, here what I think of the development and technology system.

Development: This system is pretty nice. I have not analysed the math formulas, but what I like about it is that you cannot easily re-adjust yourself if something bad happens. So it is possible to disturb your opponent by capturing key cities or using well placed malicious spells. In MOM/MOO/civ, you can easily reassign your your people to change the focus of your production (food/gold/work, tech, etc). Here you can't. So if for some reason you need to rush toward a certain goal (need a tech or need more food) you can't easily shift your production to fill up the needs. You need to take some time to build the required buildings that will gives you what you need. Which also mean that you would have sometime to play safe and plan ahead what could happen.

Technology: The technology system is also very nice. First, you have the chance to develop old technologies if you actually needs it but the price is more expensive. In MOO, I always wanted "Automated factories" and "reinforced hull" which where both in the same group, so I could not research both. Now I could, but I would pay a higher price for the 2nd technology.

The other interesting things is that since you vaguely knows what you are going to get, you do not need to bother about the details of the tech you are going to get. You could only bother about the direction you want to go. Ex: there is going to be war soon, let's focus on warfare without taking a look at the techs I could get.

Having a variable "tech tree" is also interesting. But rather than having a random tree, I would preffer having a tree based on the territory you are occupying. In MOM, a city needs a forest to build the sawmill, a mountain to build a miner's guild etc. Here you could have some technologies available if you have access to a certain resource or land type. Since each game has a random map, it would make the tech tree evolve differently each game according to the map generated.

Having some race specific tech, or maybe have some races get access to some technologies that other races need certain terrain or ressources is a also good idea.

 

Reply #175 from Elemental Forums Top


That doesn’t mean that the battle system won’t be heavily modified to be richer than we currently have it but it does mean that we will not have cutting versus slashing damage. 

OK -- but then you WILL need to have something to allow for unit countering. CivIV, Dom3, WCIII, SC, AoW, etc. -- all have unit types to which they adhere (e.g. CivIV "knight" and "tank") and unit families (e.g. "melee" or "mounted" or "archer"). If you are not going to have some form of differentiation in damage, then you should consider allowing for unit type flag creation in unit creation -- e.g., "is an archer". The novel thing you could do would be to make these flags conjunctive, unlike your competition; i.e., other games treat these flags as disjunctive: a unit can be an archer, but if so, then it cannot also be a melee unit. Perhaps your units can have more than one ability and family to which they belong (e.g. mounted archers, rangers (melee capability and to a lesser degree ranged as well), etc.  -- they should then cost more.