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The Kingdoms vs. The Empires

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The Kingdoms vs. The Empires

from JoeUser Forums

BG22_Fire For beta testers, only the Kingdoms have been exposed.  The Kingdoms play much like a traditional 4X game.  You build city improvements to get benefits to your city. You train up soldiers hoping they’ll get better and better. It is a civilization based on laws and rules.

The Empire has taken a different path…

In War

Their soldiers don’t gain experience. Such a concept of thinking about individual soldiers is anathema to the Empire.

As such, there is no such thing as a veteran Imperial soldier. However, they can train up special, powerful units (Guardians, Enforcers, and Sions).  These powerful individuals will routinely demonstrate the inherent flaw in trying to train groups of soldiers to be more effective. Greatness is born. Not learned.

In Peace

There is no tradition of civics in the Empire. Moreover, the concept of bee keeping or fruit orchard harvesting and what not is completely foreign. The Empire looks at the Kingdoms with absolute contempt that they would waste time harvesting such things.

Of course, it also means the Empires can harvest fewer special resources in the world. To make up for this, the Empire can build hog farms adjacent to their farms. That’s real food. Pathetic Kingdoms.

The Empire also scoffs at the Civics concepts of markets. Deals are made on the basis of leverage alone. Instead of relying on institutions, the Empire relies on leaders of capitalism to deal with it. Players can build Financiers (until we have a better name, feel free to suggest a better one) who enhance the city’s money making.

Similarly, there is no formal education system in the Empire. Schools? Universities? These concepts are worthless. The Kingdoms foolishly entrust their futures to special interests. In the Empire, players can create Sage units who can be sent where they are needed to boost knowledge production.

There are no pubs in the Empire. No Inns.  Such decadence is forbidden. Prestige is generated by showing respect to those who have seized power such as statues to great figures such as Lord Kir-Tion and Curgen the Dred’nir.

In Magic

Again, letting something as important as magic be taught by a special interest is another weakness of the Kingdom that the Empire has no part of. The Empire instead has its own magic commissars – the Lore masters who study the ancient texts to discover the correct spells needed to dominate the world. These units can be built and sent where needed.

Adventuring? I don’t think so

The Kingdoms have an entire knowledge field called “Adventuring”. There is no such concept in The Empire. Adventuring implies a light hearted search for excitement. This is why the Empire has dominated the world, it has no use for pointless wandering.

The Empires focus on Domination. Finding and re-learning knowledge scattered throughout the world. 

The Kingdoms, dominated by cowardly men, like to stay in their schools and temples. The Empire, dominated by the races of the Fallen and the lone race of men with the strength to embrace the philosophy of the Empires (Kraxis) gain knowledge and strength from going out into the world and seizing it from others. Dangerous places have great knowledge and the Empire is particularly skilled in finding that knowledge.

The Empire will rule

The fact is, the Empires are the dominant form of social organization in the world. The Kingdoms, with their weak, so-called concepts of liberty, social contracts and obsession with the rights of individuals is an absurd, artificial creation that violates the laws of nature.

361,590 views 211 replies
Reply #126 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting the, reply 123
I have to agree with the comment earlier on the post that it's worrying that now the Empires and Kingdoms seem to be so tightly defined that this will be the main dividing line and not the factions.
That doesn't prevent factions from the same side playing totally different inside their common frame. Not that I expect the 10 factions to totally play differently from each other of the same side (not enough time/money/whatever?) but surely (hopefully?) each faction from each side will have some kind of "tactic/strategy" that is important enough as to be crucial when choosing which faction you want to play in one of the sides.

Reply #127 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Wintersong, reply 126

That doesn't prevent factions from the same side playing totally different inside their common frame. Not that I expect the 10 factions to totally play differently from each other of the same side (not enough time/money/whatever?) but surely (hopefully?) each faction from each side will have some kind of "tactic/strategy" that is important enough as to be crucial when choosing which faction you want to play in one of the sides.

I guess the unique tech trees & faction bonuses + the racial differences [because we gonna have a few races afterall] should take care of that.

Elemental: Reforged
Reply #128 from Elemental Forums Top

I personally will have fun playing as the Empire.

If you want Fallen that gain exp and level, just play a Fallen Race with a Kingdom government.

Of course, in an Expanded version it will be likely that Fallen units can gain exp ... just far, far less. So that Kingdom exp growth is say 6 times faster (Empire gains 15% normal experience)

For vanilla, however, its cool that they decided to go in this direction.

Reply #129 from Elemental Forums Top

By the way, gaining experience for your units is a game mechanism which is fun. A pity if its now scrapped from half of the game just because the evil side doesn't like progression in the famous "lore" section.

As Brad said in another thread: Since you can build legions (1000 men), you should look at your units drawn from cities as cannon folder. Especially when you will need to fight a dragon with high level of casualties expected. So it make sense to have only experience for Sovereign, Champions and recuited NPCs.

Reply #130 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Terran_242, reply 118

Again I think you're looking at it from the wrong side, I think it makes perfect logical sense. Modern society doesn't test the human race at all, not like it used to. We're settling in to a soft, squishy medium right about now because for the last 5 generations or so life has been getting progressively easier, and the 100,000 or so years before them were easy compared to what we went through before advances like agriculture. There is a surplus of food in developed countries (has been for  ages) which removes the greatest force for competition, that of mating rights (more food >> more people >> more potential mates). We no longer have a society like the fallen because we no longer need it this is where the kingdoms are progressing towards sociologically, back in the neolithic phrases like "more fish in the sea" would be unfathomable, there really weren't.


But I digress, because of what was done to the Fallen to make them "better" they were locked in this pre-civilised, natural paradigm. Competition is still at the heart of Fallen society in some form or another but they have developed along that line because of the pressures they faced with living in large groups during and after Titan rule. Long story short(er) there is a general consensus that superiority cannot be trained (those kingdom fools are "training" dogs to play like men) but created. Superior specimens, just like the animal kingdom appear and thrive naturally, this is the way of life, either you excell or you don't. Can't change it lol.

I'm sorry but your pseudo science is no more coherent or plausible than the original text.

Reply #131 from Elemental Forums Top


ehm, I wasn't aware that the Mongols fought the Romans... The Huns and Goths yes, but not Mongols.

You are correct. It was the Huns I was thinking of. Got my crazies mixed up I guess. I have edited my OP. :)

Reply #132 from Elemental Forums Top

The mongols invaded Europe in the 1200s I believe. I think the Byzantine Romans might have fought them in isolated incidents, however western Rome had at that time been divvied up into the well-known medieval kingdoms united by the Catholic Church.

Reply #133 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Peace, reply 129

By the way, gaining experience for your units is a game mechanism which is fun. A pity if its now scrapped from half of the game just because the evil side doesn't like progression in the famous "lore" section.


As Brad said in another thread: Since you can build legions (1000 men), you should look at your units drawn from cities as cannon folder. Especially when you will need to fight a dragon with high level of casualties expected. So it make sense to have only experience for Sovereign, Champions and recuited NPCs.

You won't fight against dragons all the time. I guess most of the time you will fight vs. "normal" units or summoned/tamed beasts & special "Empireal" creatures. In battles like those experienced troops will have [should have] an important role.

..not to mention, that in order to train legions of soldiers, the resource system must be tweaked a lot. Let's say you need 15 iron ore / equipping a soldier. That means 15000 iron ore / legion. This means, that 1 iron mine must produce a lot of iron ore / turn. Not 1, not 5 and not even 10. More...much more.

Reply #134 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting the, reply 123
I have to agree with the comment earlier on the post that it's worrying that now the Empires and Kingdoms seem to be so tightly defined that this will be the main dividing line and not the factions. 

Nothing wrong per se with such as a set-up as presented here, but I think it would have been better if one of the Factions would have worked and thought like this, instead of creating One Tight Empire, out to rule the world.

Also, if you want to make a kind of non-individualistic society, it could have been cooler to make it more extreme (this is both a game and a fantasy game), like taking inspiration from the world of insects (ant mentality), or something inspired by the Borgs ... This is more just like a human society, it's not very clear how they think even after this long description actually: 

For example, it doesn't make any apparent sense to say that they scoff at markets and individualism and then say that they instead have "leaders of capitalism". Eh? Even the most left of all European lefties have to acknowledge that capitalism (however good or bad) is based on exactly that: the summing up of free individual decisions (a market).

By the way, gaining experience for your units is a game mechanism which is fun. A pity if its now scrapped from half of the game just because the evil side doesn't like progression in the famous "lore" section.  

If this means that 5 out of 10 playable factions will not value "experience points" nor "buildings" I'm afraid I don't like it much.

With this set-up it also feels like the game is steered towards a single dual conflict: basically good versus evil (whatever the details, for me at least, not respecting the individual is certainly not "good"). I would prefer something more advanced than that.  

Yes, I know it can be modded.     

I think you make some excellent points here.

Reply #135 from Elemental Forums Top

Well it's heartening that the Empires seem to have a genuinely differant mechanic than kingdoms rather than simply being reskins. I suppose in terms of troop experiance they're similar to the orcs of the LoTR trilogy- constantly under the whip where merit, age and capability tend not to get noticed very much. This 'powerful individuals' concept seems interesting but I wonder if it means they are minor champions with troop-buffing attributes or specialist warriors like beserkers, shamans etc. I hope for the former, as differing methods of achieving exp. are one of the things that make Company of Heroes so interesting (germans research it, brits need an officer, US get it from kills etc). Troop-buffing would make the most sense if they go against experianced kingdom troops.

Reply #136 from Elemental Forums Top

Well Tormy, an Iron mine produces 1 iron per turn. Build 1 foundry and the mine is producing 2 per turn. Build 2 foundries and the mine is producing 4 per turn. Build 3 and its producing 8, build 4 and its producing 16, build 5 and its producing 32, build 6 and its producing 64, build 7 foundries (only 1 space each) and you have one iron mine producing 128 iron per turn.

Now imagine that there were 2 iron mines in that city (256 iron per turn), or 3 mines in that city (384 iron per turn).

 

Now, if you just bump the foundry number to 8 (this would be replacing 2 schools, or 2 markets per se) you have 256 iron from one mine (in that city) or 512 iron from 2 mines in that city.

Basically, you get one size 3, 4, or 5 city, with at least one Iron mine within city walls, and built 8+ foundries. Voila, your resources start to fill up rather fast once your industry is up and running.

I think this is fair, and favors those that invest in industry to have armor for their troops.

Reply #137 from Elemental Forums Top

Not to mention the fact that fielding a thousand man legion of heavily armored, well trained troops should be a pretty significant undertaking... not just something you stamp out of the earth the way you would with a few thousand militia.

But I agree. Massive industrial focus, or economic focus (think mercenaries, with a focus on money instead of iron), or other focus I'm not thinking of, should be viable should you choose to go the economic route of the magic, hero, channeller, empire paths.

Reply #138 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Tasunke, reply 136
Well Tormy, an Iron mine produces 1 iron per turn. Build 1 foundry and the mine is producing 2 per turn. Build 2 foundries and the mine is producing 4 per turn. Build 3 and its producing 8, build 4 and its producing 16, build 5 and its producing 32, build 6 and its producing 64, build 7 foundries (only 1 space each) and you have one iron mine producing 128 iron per turn.
Making it multiplicative instead of additive seems wrong and a 'bug'.

Reply #139 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Nick-Danger, reply 138



Quoting Tasunke,
reply 136
Well Tormy, an Iron mine produces 1 iron per turn. Build 1 foundry and the mine is producing 2 per turn. Build 2 foundries and the mine is producing 4 per turn. Build 3 and its producing 8, build 4 and its producing 16, build 5 and its producing 32, build 6 and its producing 64, build 7 foundries (only 1 space each) and you have one iron mine producing 128 iron per turn.

Making it multiplicative instead of additive seems wrong and a 'bug'.

Yep.

Reply #140 from Elemental Forums Top

I think building a large number of foundries would be boring, it's better to have some technologies that allow building better types mines and foundries (and maybe a discount in the amount of iron needed to build units). Only one building like Foundry should be allowed per city (I'm not in the beta, so I don't know how it is in the current version).

City specialization is good, but it should be related to things that can be "produced" only by the people (gold income, research, army training etc.), not to the natural resources, the amount of which that you can produce from one source should be limited.

Reply #142 from Elemental Forums Top

Foundry doubles the amount of Iron produced in a city. You can build more than one. The number that you can build depends on city size. IIRC max is 6 foundries??? I was getting carried away back there ;)

As for it being multiplicative, I think it makes perfect sense, and integrates well with the increase-scale of the game. These foundries are relatively expensive iirc, take a while to build, and are a significant investment. Therefore, it is as if you are maximizing miners, and creating new infrastructure for acquiring more metals, without needing new tech.

As such, I find this mechanic is one of the few that makes sense to be multiplicative. On a level 3 city you can build a max of three foundries, which leads to 8 iron per turn from a single mine.

In addition to this, it would be nice for a "miners camp" improvement be possibly added to the side of a mine for a 50% increase in Iron production. Probably unlocked by the same tech as slums, and probably give -1 or -2 prestige, and require 4 spaces (like slums). Probably a max of 1 miners camp per city for sizes 2-4, while size 5 can have 2.

And personally, with current materials costs, I think a size 5 city should be able to have 8 foundries (multiplicative) or at least 6.

Reply #143 from Elemental Forums Top

I don't think it makes any sense at all. There's only so much raw ore coming out of that mine. Why does the first foundry double the mine's effective yield, while the sixth foundy increases it by 32x over the fifth? At some point there's no more ore coming out of that mine for a foundry to process, and diminishing returns should kick in anyway.

Why is the sixth foundry so much more effective then the first one, and when I build a new one in another city, why can't I take the miraculous effeciency gains and apply them again? (That first one would only double the mine's output again, which makes even less sense.)

Reply #144 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Nick-Danger, reply 138



Quoting Tasunke,
reply 136
Well Tormy, an Iron mine produces 1 iron per turn. Build 1 foundry and the mine is producing 2 per turn. Build 2 foundries and the mine is producing 4 per turn. Build 3 and its producing 8, build 4 and its producing 16, build 5 and its producing 32, build 6 and its producing 64, build 7 foundries (only 1 space each) and you have one iron mine producing 128 iron per turn.Making it multiplicative instead of additive seems wrong and a 'bug'.

I would tend to agree for later multiples after 2 or 3 times. Maybe it should be multiplicative to start and switch to additive once the multiplier reaches a certain number. That way it prevents abuse and building spamming.

Reply #145 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Tridus, reply 143
I don't think it makes any sense at all. There's only so much raw ore coming out of that mine. Why does the first foundry double the mine's effective yield, while the sixth foundy increases it by 32x over the fifth? At some point there's no more ore coming out of that mine for a foundry to process, and diminishing returns should kick in anyway.

Why is the sixth foundry so much more effective then the first one, and when I build a new one in another city, why can't I take the miraculous effeciency gains and apply them again? (That first one would only double the mine's output again, which makes even less sense.)

Agreed.

Reply #146 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting _PawelS_, reply 145



Quoting Tridus,
reply 143
I don't think it makes any sense at all. There's only so much raw ore coming out of that mine. Why does the first foundry double the mine's effective yield, while the sixth foundy increases it by 32x over the fifth? At some point there's no more ore coming out of that mine for a foundry to process, and diminishing returns should kick in anyway.

Why is the sixth foundry so much more effective then the first one, and when I build a new one in another city, why can't I take the miraculous effeciency gains and apply them again? (That first one would only double the mine's output again, which makes even less sense.)


Agreed.

Agreed as well.

Reply #147 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm sorry but your pseudo science is no more coherent or plausible than the original text.

 

Yeah, I have nothin' lol. I'll take another crack and pray I don't embarass myself againl lol.

It's interesting that you should mention Tolkien's orks though, because for the concepts involved they're really quite similar. Both feature a creature that for one reason or another was corrupted to form another race entirely separate form the base model. In LotR Morgoth wanted to pervert the image of the elves so he captured some, he then debased and corrupted them til they hated everything, including their master for what he'd done to them. Because of goal though there are a number of logical failings of the orks that aren't present in the Fallen.

 

THe Fallen are much more a warrior society than the orks because they're bred for war specifically. More than just improving their physical attributes the Titans look like they've narrowed not only how the Fallen view the world but also how important they percieve these things. Most of all they seem to value innate... well greatness for want of a better word. The idea that most Fallen are generic with some being born clearly above the rest I find quite logical from the view of the Titans. If they want to raise a battalion or an army, because of the way the race as a whole is created there wouldn't really be any problems with organisation. Most soldiers would naturally be grunts with a percentage becoming a command group of sorts by virtue of being born simply better. If war and labour were the only things they were bred for it's a remarkably efficient and intuitive system. After the initial setup period the Fallen can really be counted on to look after themselves with very little of the social issues that we can expect to pop up in the Kingdoms.

 

As for their culture, that has developed along the established lines of innate ability and warfare because they're hard-coded not to give a rat's about anything else lol.

 

Hopefully that was atleast a tad more coherent lol.

 

 

Reply #148 from Elemental Forums Top

Tiger pup needs to learn the ropes of being a tiger from other tigers but once he knows them (the ropes), that's all. Yeah, a human could capture a tiger and force him to learn tricks but that's not natural for a tiger.

Also, about the Fallen, a wizard did it.

Now, where is my Tiger smiley?:pout:

Reply #149 from Elemental Forums Top

Okay ... so we have a consensus of either make foundries multiplicative for the first few steps, and then switch to additive ... OR to have foundries be additive, and increase production by more than 2x with the initial building (like +4 or +6)

Reply #150 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Tasunke, reply 149
Okay ... so we have a consensus of either make foundries multiplicative for the first few steps, and then switch to additive ... OR to have foundries be additive, and increase production by more than 2x with the initial building (like +4 or +6)

I don't think it should be multiplicative at all. Multiplicative bonuses to production in this case just don't make sense. Logically, the first foundry will be able to get the highest quality ore and run at capacity, thus getting the largest gain for your investment. The second one would increase the overall output, but by less then the first one did (or in the best case by an equal amount). There's no rational or real-life explanation for why the second foundry would be double the effectiveness of the first foundry.  In real life that only happens due to process and equipment improvements, and those would carry over to the first foundry you build in another city (which using a multiplicate bonus system wouldn't apply).

If a second foundry quadruples my total production over the first one, it's an absolute no brainer that I build it. Anybody who doesn't would need four mines with one foundry to keep up with what that one mine with two foundries is doing, and there's no strategic choice to be made there at all.

I'd actually say the mine base production should be increased to 2, and each foundry adds +1.