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The Elemental all-purpose mega thread

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The Elemental all-purpose mega thread

from Elemental Forums

I'm putting up this thread as a way for us to just generally talk about the game, brain storm ideas for the future, etc.

So here's my stream of consciousness to get it started:

What I'd like to see happen is for Elemental: War of Magic to continue to be refined with its existing game mechanics largely intact other than the change to the mana system and UI update scheduled for v1.1.

Beyond that, the evolution of the Elemental TBS would be delivered via expansions, sequels, etc. like every other traditional game. This way, we can introduce pretty substantial gameplay changes without people feeling like the War of Magic version is some sort of test tube of game design experimentation.

For brevity, call these A, B, C where A is Elemental: War of Magic and B and C are some sort of future expansions.  B would be free to everyone and C would be free to those who own the game by September 30th.

So with A, the game mechanics revolve around exploring the world, exploiting world resources, expanding your control, and exterminating enemies. A will evolve as we go to 1.1 with more techs and improvements that let players convert 1 resource that they have a lot in to one they are lacking in. Spells will draw from a global mana pool and the UI will be cleaned up and content across the board expanded on. For good or bad, minus bugs, A is what we originally conceived of for War of Magic and it should rise or fall based on that.

B will be a new Elemental title (an expansion pack ala GalCiv II: Dark Avatar). It is important that B come out sooner rather than later. Users who like/enjoy A can stick with A but users who find the combat in Elemental too simplistic or are unsatsified with some other core game element will hopefully have much of this addressed in B.

C will also be a new Elemental title (ala GalCiv II: Twilight of the Arnor). C involves more wholesale gameplay changes and would take quite a bit longer to come out.  A and B would continue to be supported (just like we did with GalCiv and Sins) but I would picture C adding a great deal more depth to the overall game across the board.    

So as we move forward, when people say "I think something should be like this" we will think about those requests and put them either in the A, B, or C buckets.

So for example, a user commented today that the combat should support flanking and there should be taxes and that there should be easy ways to convert resources and such.  If we concluded that this is a direction we'd want to take the game into, it would go into the C bucket.  It's way too radical for A, not doable for B but would be doable for C.

On the other hand, having the tactical battles eliminate "action points" but instead go with initiative on a per unit basis is too much for A (that's not the system we had in mind for War of Magic) but is something we would do for B.

And so on.

So feel free to use this thread to talk about pretty much anything you want. It's just a back and forth with us.

elemental
141,141 views 193 replies
Reply #151 from Elemental Forums Top

In my opinion, there are several ways to "fix" this issue

1) make unit production way cheaper and "max out" easier so you will not be able to pool all your forces in one single stack. It is a simple solution which would solve some other problems, but also create some.

2) Give fights a time limit, i.e. after for example 10 Turns (could also depend on the sieged city or some technology research), the battle ends in a draw. Therefore, the attacker usually needs several turns to wear down the weaker defenders, giving the defender the opportunity to send in reinforcements before the damage is done. That way, it would actually make sense to spread your forces across several border cities, since they can hold of the attacker long enough for you to reinforce the attacked city (without teleport) and probably even give you an opportunity to counterattack the enemy's cities while the single stack of death is busy with your defenders, forcing him to defend his cities.

This approach would make big stacks of death still powerful, especially if the opponent made some strategic mistakes, but not the only feasible approach, and not always the best one.

Excellent idea ! I love the counter attacks it let you do. And you could try a multi timed attack : instead of a stack of doom you have 3 good stack that attack one after another with only the goal of depleting defending forces.

 

Reply #152 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting vieuxchat, reply 151



Excellent idea ! I love the counter attacks it let you do. And you could try a multi timed attack : instead of a stack of doom you have 3 good stack that attack one after another with only the goal of depleting defending forces.

 

Why not just make the AI create a "stack of doom" and have it attack the human "stack of doom" (or better yet, make the AI smart enough to teleport it & attack the human stack when it should)? .. if you put all your eggs in one basket you risk the consequences.

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #153 from Elemental Forums Top

Sorry, what's the problem with a stack of doom? I've been using them for 20-odd years. If Stardock would just crank up the random monster spawn again and make bandits/monsters more aggressive the player will have enough incentive to garrison their cities, and a "non-doom" garrison is still highly efffective agaisnt NPC spawn. Personally I don't care how deep in my own territory I am, I want a chance for a random wandering demon or something to errupt out of nowhere and start a rampage. Keep me on my toes. If enough threat is spread around the world just one uber stack won't cut it.

Reply #154 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Gyb, reply 153
Sorry, what's the problem with a stack of doom?

There's nothing wrong with the stack of doom. The problem & point that they're making in this thread is essentially that the AI cannot deal with this strategy, as with other strategies. My suggestion is to let the AI "learn" from its opponent: human has a stack of doom, then I should create a stack of doom & kill the human stack of doom. Other players have other ideas.

Just like everything else (teleportation, organized, city-spam), the problem is not the strategy (stack of doom in this case), it's the AIs lack of ability to deal with the strategy. IMO, you don't "deal with it" by nerfing the stack of doom (in whatever way) but by making the AI create it's own "stack of doom" & use it against the human player' "stack of doom". This is much more interesting to me, also, I might add. 

Reply #155 from Elemental Forums Top

If Stardock would just crank up the random monster spawn again and make bandits/monsters more aggressive the player will have enough incentive to garrison their cities, and a "non-doom" garrison is still highly efffective agaisnt NPC spawn. Personally I don't care how deep in my own territory I am, I want a chance for a random wandering demon or something to errupt out of nowhere and start a rampage. Keep me on my toes. If enough threat is spread around the world just one uber stack won't cut it.

 

I like this idea, more bandits.  More random spawns.  I want the other sovereigns and myself to have to protect our cities.  Might also cut down on the city spam since it would be to difficult to protect them all.

Reply #156 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting cpl_rk, reply 154
IMO, you don't "deal with it" by nerfing the stack of doom (in whatever way) but by making the AI create it's own "stack of doom" & use it against the human player' "stack of doom". This is much more interesting to me, also, I might add. 

There were an entire thread dedicated only to the problematic of stacks of doom and how to prevent/circumvent them...but as everything else I suppose all those posts have been lost in time like tears in the rain.

Reply #157 from Elemental Forums Top

The issue with mega armies (they're not really stacks since they fight as a single unit) is that we don't want that to be the only way to play the game. It should be a strategic choice to do so. The problem with the organized talent was that it made the mega army strategy the best one by far.

in GalCiv, we limited fleet size based on the player's logistics ability.  The idea was that the player had to make a strategic choice as to whether to spend their resources researching means to increase the number of units they could manage in a fleet.

Reply #158 from Elemental Forums Top

For modding, it needs to be possible to specify for prereqesites if the condition should be true or false for the whatever it is being added to to be availible (e.g. making a standard structure unavailible to a custom race with Kingdom Allegiance).

Reply #159 from Elemental Forums Top

Here's how you "Fix" the mega stack thing.  Allow instant cast overworld spells that cost a TON of mana and brings down its effect on 1 tile.  Like Call the Void, or Ice Storm from Master of Magic.  If someone wan't to run around with1 gigantic mega army, then blasting it with an overworld spell to soften it up before you attack it would be great.  There would be different spells for overworld depending on the books you have and how much mana you want to spend to blast the stack.

- "Ice storm" or whatever could freeze the stack for 1 turn and do some damage.

- "Pillar of Fire" -  could bring down a ton of damage for high mana cost

- "Plant overgrowth" - this spell could slow down all units by subtracting 1 movement from each unit during the tactical battle.  This spell could cost less.

Basically, just have some options for overworld spells that can be cast directly onto units on the map.  80 mana wouldn't be worth blasting 2 units, but it might be worth doing if there were 20 units in the stack.  This would definitely encourage armies to be broken up into divisions, which would atleast give defenders the chance to attack them seperately.

Ofcourse, one could just plan on sending big stacks and a person might be ok with having it get nuked for a tremendous mana cost which would deplete the enemies total mana if that person could send a follow up army to take advantage of a mana depleted foe. 

Reply #160 from Elemental Forums Top

Personally I really like how the new Kings Bounty game added a leadership score that limits the troops you can carry around to prevent mega armies.

 

I don't know what the easiest solution would be here. derive a value from units experience, equipment and numbers, and then give all heroes a Leadership score (or Willpower based one?).

 

Troops without heroes would be limited by a leadership score created by the unit with the highest Experience. This makes sense to me, because large numbers of troops without proper training and battle experience aren't going to be able to stay organized to fight.

 

so a unit with only the lowest level of experience could only have 10-15 troops in a megaarmy. Troops of the second level could command up to 25-50 etc.

Reply #161 from Elemental Forums Top

I posted this in another thread but it looks like this is the place for suggestions so ....

 

 Three Tactical Battle Suggestions:

 

1. Pre-battle placement: Each stack should have an optional pre-battle placement window that Elemental saves between turns and is accessible any time that a battle is not being fought. Perhaps something like the Dominions 3 battle placement (with better graphics, of course ) If I outfit my sovereign like a tank I should be able to put him out front. If I have some damaged soldiers I should be able to put them in the back before the battle.

2. Optional larger battle fields. (Optional because this will cause longer battles.) With fast units it would be nice to be able to flank units, etc.

3. Optional "We-Go" or simultaneous turn base combat: Both players enter orders for their units, then one turn's worth of time is simultaneously carried out by the computer. This would negate several unrealistic strategies that turn based play introduces. I envision this as being similar to the combat system used by 'Combat Mission Barbarossa to Berlin' or 'Combat Mission Afrika Korps'. I think this should be optional because there are players who love sequential turn based battles.


Reply #162 from Elemental Forums Top

Blegh .... I don't think one would "have" to look at an army as a single unit.

That being said, I've made plans for a better battle system assuming that each "battle" is a skirmish.

You know ... like Arrows, Spells, and Catapults shooting over the over-land map? Things like that.

 

Its once thing if each battle is a huge battlefield, and its another thing if its a skirmish.

 

If its a huge battlefield, then you can have *everything* in one battle ...

 

I mean, imho, there are two basic types of "awesome" fantasy battles ... Fantasy: Total War, and Fantasy: Chess

 

Civ V is a great platform for Fantasy: Chess ... it'd be nice if Elemental was a great platform for Fantasy: Total War

//

A feel that a *lot* of the abstraction/ limits in Gal Civ could be justified because it was all Space/ new Tech ... and there actually *wasn't* a tactical battle system, it was just a neat little mechanic.

Trying to do that in a setting that people are more familiar with, imho, is a lot trickier.

Rather ... soft caps and bonuses vs absolute limits. In Gal Civ it was harder to get frustrated over absolute limits because, in the setting, it was very abstract and fun. I mean, it was *all* macro in Gal Civ. There was no tactical element.

 

Imho, its harder to just be macro in fantasy due to ... Stacks of Literature, People's expectations, an expected sense of realism vs non-realism ....

I'll reserve judgment until a new Tactical Battle system is in place.

Reply #163 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 144

A new design that has a casting time for spells. The player will be able to see what units and actions are coming up in a kind of "film strip" at the top of the screen. Thus, if a player is casting "Rock Slide" on them, they will likely have time to react.

Giving spells a casting time changes a lot of game mechanics and by looking at feedback from the forums, we can refine things further by hearing other players with their experiences. We don't develop our games by "community consensus" but we do listen to ideas to see if there's something we like better than what we came up with.

The same with combat.  Splitting the "To Hit" and "Damage" rolls allows us to make a much more satisfying system.

These two items make me happy.

Sammual

Reply #164 from Elemental Forums Top

I'd like to see a "turn counter" so these people that are giving you these ideas show just how many turns they've played and state things like the ai doesn't do this or this needs to be added because this happened or didn't happen. I think ideas should come from those who actually have played the game 1000's of turns not 50 as I can see too many people already stating things that would be there in the end game had they played that far. The counter should be Impluse client based stored so they can't hack into it either and makeup numbers of turns up they've never played.

Reply #165 from Elemental Forums Top

Heh. You mean that the opinion of developers, who generelly don't play "a lot of turns", should be less worthy than that of some 10 year old with too much time on his hand?
That's an interesting approach.

Reply #166 from Elemental Forums Top

Some 10 year olds happen to be very bright and perceptive beyond an adult who usually makes open stupid statements like yours about the devs and how much they play.

Reply #167 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting rossanderson48, reply 164
I'd like to see a "turn counter" so these people that are giving you these ideas show just how many turns they've played and state things like the ai doesn't do this or this needs to be added because this happened or didn't happen. I think ideas should come from those who actually have played the game 1000's of turns not 50 as I can see too many people already stating things that would be there in the end game had they played that far. The counter should be Impluse client based stored so they can't hack into it either and makeup numbers of turns up they've never played.

My turn counter would probably top out at 100... End game means nothing if you're bored out of your mind during the start of the game.

Reply #168 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 157
The issue with mega armies (they're not really stacks since they fight as a single unit) is that we don't want that to be the only way to play the game. It should be a strategic choice to do so. The problem with the organized talent was that it made the mega army strategy the best one by far.

in GalCiv, we limited fleet size based on the player's logistics ability.  The idea was that the player had to make a strategic choice as to whether to spend their resources researching means to increase the number of units they could manage in a fleet.

Very true. That's where I think you can make use of the population caps in Elemental. As I was playing last night I went ahead and wrote down the population caps it took me to reach each city level (I looked and looked and couldn't find it in the XML). Here's how it broke down.

Level 1 City: 25 pop

Level 2 City: 100 pop

Level 3 City: 500 pop

Level 4 City: 1,250 pop

and I didn't get to level 5 in that game yet and forgot to write it down in previous games. With the big jump from 500 to 1,250 though I'd guess a level 5 city is what, 2,000 people, 3,000 people? For a small empire with only a couple cities (like on a small map) this would lead to a total population of maybe 10,000 people, and that's with 5 or 6 full level 5 cities. On the Large maps and Epic maps like the "Mega-Map" you made that I like to play on, I easily have 20-30 cities by late/mid to late game. This is a over-all population of 40K to 50K people. With a massive Empire that size I don't think it would be unrealistic to see an army in Elemental of 1,000 men.

Of course on a small or medium map, that wouldn't be the case. With only 5 or 6 cities and a over-all population of 10K people, armies of a couple hundred would be the norm or max for late/mid to late game, and that's perfectly acceptable.

Some type of Elemental equivalent of GalCiv's "Logistics" would be great when used here. This would allow for smaller armies based on population limits for small and medium maps, while also allowing for huge Epic Armies on those really large maps where you have 50 or 100 Thousand people in a massive empire with 20 or 30 maxed out level 5 cities :).

Using the population as a resource is definitely the way to go here, as would be incorporating GalCiv's "Logistics". That's good stuff.

 

Reply #169 from Elemental Forums Top

You are forgetting that you start at level one, so it is level 2 at 25, level 3 at 100, level 4 at 400, and level 5 at 1,250 for Kingdom, and I believe Empire is level 4 at 500 and then not sure about level 5 for Empire. This is off memory so maybe Kingdom and Empire are the same at level 4 and I'm just misremembering.

Reply #170 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Gyb, reply 169
You are forgetting that you start at level one, so it is level 2 at 25, level 3 at 100, level 4 at 400, and level 5 at 1,250 for Kingdom, and I believe Empire is level 4 at 500 and then not sure about level 5 for Empire. This is off memory so maybe Kingdom and Empire are the same at level 4 and I'm just misremembering.

Level 5 for Empire is 1000.

Reply #171 from Elemental Forums Top

I think the locked dev journal from Thursday about focusing on what can be changed in the near term is obviously the best path forward; I am assuming this is still the thread to discuss ideas. Personally I think the link from the journal to the ideas of population as a resource, discovering it in the environment, having pop breed in cities, etc is a great idea for adding flavor and depth to the initial phases of the game. 

DIPLOMACY

Focused on what can be changed short term, I think there is an opportunity to deepen the types of Allied units available and the Diplomacy tech tree in general.  Please see my larger post on adding more Allied Unit types and design ideas around the Diplomacy system in general.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/395966

 

Cheers.

Reply #172 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Gyb, reply 169
You are forgetting that you start at level one, so it is level 2 at 25, level 3 at 100, level 4 at 400, and level 5 at 1,250 for Kingdom, and I believe Empire is level 4 at 500 and then not sure about level 5 for Empire. This is off memory so maybe Kingdom and Empire are the same at level 4 and I'm just misremembering.

Quoting Gwenio1, reply 170



Quoting Gyb,
reply 169
You are forgetting that you start at level one, so it is level 2 at 25, level 3 at 100, level 4 at 400, and level 5 at 1,250 for Kingdom, and I believe Empire is level 4 at 500 and then not sure about level 5 for Empire. This is off memory so maybe Kingdom and Empire are the same at level 4 and I'm just misremembering.



Level 5 for Empire is 1000.

It's higher than 1,000. When I had a level 4 city, not yet level 5, and I moused over the red line that tells me how much Pop I need for the city to level up, it told me I needed 1,250 to reach Level 5. See here...

1,250 for level 5. I was capped at 1000 because I hadn't built enough houses to reach 1,250 at the time.

Reply #173 from Elemental Forums Top

They must have raised it, it was 1000 when in 1.07 (or was it 1.06?). I have not played long enough since 1.08 to find out.

Reply #174 from Elemental Forums Top

Empire and Kingdom cities has different reqs for lvl 4 and 5. Both of you are correct.

 

Empire lvl 4 = 500, lvl5 = 1000

Kingdom lvl4 = 400, lvl5 = 1250

Reply #175 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Gwenio1, reply 173
They must have raised it, it was 1000 when in 1.07 (or was it 1.06?). I have not played long enough since 1.08 to find out.

No biggie. It's not like it was a big numerical difference anyway. In the big picture 250 isn't going to be a whole lot (hopefully).

Quoting Kalin, reply 174
Empire and Kingdom cities has different reqs for lvl 4 and 5. Both of you are correct.

 

Empire lvl 4 = 500, lvl5 = 1000

Kingdom lvl4 = 400, lvl5 = 1250

Are you sure you don't have those backwards? I always play with a custom Empire faction. I don't think I've even tried a Kingdom faction. That 1,250 is for the Empires.