Since things in this thread have mostly focused on being boring and including the same lame-o smiley in every post -- seriously what is going on with that, smilies are so 1990 -- I think I'll talk about what I'm excited about in Elemental.
First off, there's no doubt that seeing what Mr. Wardell will do with Mr. Wardell's idea of active neutrals is amazingly cool. If anything, Stardock will exceed Civ5's level of open and accessible file structure, possibly by doing a lot -- or even all, I'm not clear on that -- of the game in .py files. And the included low hassle visual editor is a massive draw. Sure, CFC has an enormous fan base of amateur artists, but that doesn't mean they're up for making the stuff I want them to make! In particular I like that the visual stuff is element based -- as in, each individual element can be added or removed without affecting the overall design or requiring radical redraws. That is some serious power right there.
So, in terms of sheer modding power, I'm expecting Elemental to be the superior game. Just, out and out, it will beat Civ5 on ease and ability and visual freedom.
Buuuuut I'm still personally leaning towards Civ as my primary modding platform (although without a doubt I'll be doing some stuff over here as well, because Elemental is offering unprecedented freedom) entirely because of the 1upt and hexes. It should be obvious to every veteran tbs gamer, after multiple iterations of Civ and Civalikes, as to why 1upt and hexes are so enormously essential that those two features alone would be that advantageous even when compared to Elemental's likely superior modding capability, but I'm going to assume that it isn't and go over things real quick.
As you read all this, be sure to focus on the fact that not once will I reference any Civ5 specific features. Hexes and 1upt are essential on their own merits, not simply because they're part of a good game. If Elemental had them, I wouldn't have bothered with this thread as the answer would have been so obvious even a Canadian could see it.
Stack play eliminates positional play. In stack play, a massive army and a minor army both take up a single tile. Frontage is never an issue and concentration is potentially infinite, and thus a small army will always lose to a large one unless it has a significant tech advantage or is sitting on a favorable defensive position that, for whatever reason, the larger army chooses to attack -- usually a city, but often a wooded hill equivalent. Terrain is of limited importance -- usually only two squares come up, the one you're on and the one the enemy occupies.
1upt makes positional play a vital issue due to the emergence of frontage concerns. A large army occupies more physical space than a smaller one, and thus cannot bring all its members to bear unless it manages to surround the smaller army somehow -- and as such terrain becomes generally important, rather than specifically as in a stack system. A smaller army, then, has a chance to win through sub-local supremacy and superior positioning. Which brings up possibilities like flying columns (blitzes) that bust through the enemy front and keep going, strategic flanking attacks or limited envelopments of enemy None of which is possible in a stack system.
Stack play also generally uses best defender algorithms. Which means that there is no reason to consider non-specialist defenders. And as a corollary, there's no reason to consider anything other than specialist attackers -- because, after all, you'll be facing specialist defenders. And there's no reason to split up your troops, because it means having to bring even more specialist defenders against a potentially concentrated enemy counter attack stack. Just ask yourself how many paratroopers you bothered to build in Civ4, or how many times you split up your stack in a Deity level game, or how many times you bothered to build war chariots or take drill or combat promotions, as opposed to specialized combat promotions. Right, none and never. Because it was almost never a good idea!
In a 1upt, where no single defender can protect the entire army, the opposite effect takes place. Generalists are preferred for their ability to respond to any potential threat -- although specialists are still included, because you still need crazed attackers and best defenders for key positions. The army is inherently split, so advancing in spread columns is a viable strategy -- and even a necessary one, if the army is large enough and frontage becomes a sufficiently serious concern! And funky abilities or fast moving units become viable -- in other words, paratroopers are viable.
Finally, and this is key, in a stack system all combat must necessarily occur around cities. Players are generally rational, and they are aware that fighting in the field necessitates damage or casualties (which slow the rate at which the player can acquire new cities) and offers no rewards other than the destruction of easily replaced units, while fighting to take or hold a city offers significant and tangible gains. Especially when a stack need merely go to a hill/forest/foresthill to have a serious advantage over any potential attacker -- making it a fairly trivial matter to advance right up to an enemy city and begin the bombardment process.
Hexes are key for a different reason. As every map maker has said since, well, maps started being made for games, squares just aren't a good option for representing a landscape. By now, I'm sure that everyone has heard the complaints that are traditionally leveled at locations like the Baltic, which simply cannot be done well with squares, or the Black Sea and the Hellespont, which often either look terrible or have connection issues. Coastlines inevitably look horrifyingly jagged with squares. And hexes, as even a cursory glance at any hex-mapped game will make patently clear, actually do a fairly good job of handling terrain. Battle for Wesnoth is an excellent example of how hexes, even those designed by amateurs, do a great job. And Civ4 is an example of how they do a terrible job, even in the hands of professionals.
But what do you get with those squares to repay you for that loss of aesthetic beauty? Nothing. Squares allow movement in eight directions, four of which (the diagonals) allow the unit to move 1.41 times the distance of a straight movement. This extremely gamey element means that the computer, which often fails to recognize that all moves should be diagonal, is at an extreme disadvantage. And if it does recognize that diagonal is best, always, then things get really stupid because no one uses a straight movement unless the landscape forces it. By contrast, hexes move you the same distance whatever direction you choose.
So, to cap it off, 1upt and hexes are important.
But, you might say, Elemental has tactical battles with armies -- that requires stacks! Mr. Wardell has already made it clear that stacks are a different beast entirely from armies. You could still have tactical armies as a single unit of grouped up units in a 1upt system. Or there are other options! If you've played the excellent Civ4 mod "History of the Three Kingdoms" http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=311432 you'll be able to name a perfect method of how armies could be implemented in a 1upt system. It's amazing, so seriously give it a shot. It could be done.
Finisher of this POSTAGEDDON. I'm sure that despite the lack of 1upt and hexes, Elemental will have a vibrant and extremely cool modding community. After all, Civ pulled it off! But here's hoping that Elemental 2 sees the light, and follows Civ5 in going the hexes/1upt route.
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