I agree, I would like to see some individual personalities out of the sovereigns.  Perhaps have 2 or 3 personality types for each Sovereign so don't quite know which one you are going to get.

This might be getting to particular, but the AI should make some errors from time to time.  It does make it fun.  I have always felt the randomness is what makes strategy games fun.  Don't get me wrong, even on "normal" level the AI should make a mistake like that once every 50 turns.

Ohhh, actually... I really, really like the idea of localized blows. That would give a lot more usefulness to armor parts. And it opens up possibilites: you could make weapons which are better at striking a specific part, have a specific effect happen when too much damage is dealt to a part...

All this sounds good, except the best equipment. Maybe, depending on city lvel, the units are different between peasant, then up to like honor guard and stuff.

Also, make walled cities unattackable. Walls could be an improvement from level 2 on, and the first city a nation has automatically has walls, or at least hedge walls.

Walls would be a "unit" by having hp. when that is destroyed, either by seige weapons or a new spell(s) of some kind, they disappear, both tactically and strategically mapwise.

In the expansion, maybe have archers behind walls be able to fire over them/stand on them, and units behind walls not able to be attack or to attack unless they go through a gate that can be closed.

Also, this (another quote): 

And armor would be localized... And area striked would depend in how desireable that location is... and how trained the unit is...

This would require a LOT, but if it was done right it would be absolutely fantastic. Maybe an expansion could include more of the RPG Element- allow us to duel another sovereign to the death!!

And this:

Please set Elemental apart from all other 4X games and do something unique. Give AI leaders some hidden stats such as:

• aggressiveness: How eagerly an opponent leader will engage in warfare, quest hunting, expansion, etc.
  
• recklessness: The size and frequency of an opponent leader taking risks such as committing entire armies to one task, or going to war with stronger opponents, etc.
  
• pride: How much the opponent leader is willing to forgive past conflicts with a nation. For example, an extremely proud leader may be stubborn and devote himself to taking revenge on a nation that has wronged him in the past.
  
• empathy: How likely the opponent leader is willing to embrace another peaceful nation and make diplomatic ties REGARDLESS of the strength of their armies. A highly empathetic leader may wish to form alliances with smaller, insignificant nations rather than go to war with them.
  

Well if you go down that path you end up with the dwarf fortress damage model which would be a bit much for a strategy game.

Stuff like "The Knight strikes the Thief into the Upper body with his steel Longsword tearing the Skin, tearing the muscle, breaking 2nd false Rib on the right, bruising the sensor nerve, tearing the Liver tearing and tearing the Stomach. A Mayor artery has been hit. Your are spattered with blood. The Steel Longsword is Stuck in the wound. The Thief gives into pain."

And No i am not joking - this is a damage-log how it can appear ingame. As long there is no more RPG heavy expansion ofr Elemental i would say that is a bit over the top. 

Anyway what would be nice to literally see is the units Blocking and dodging. I know its some additional work but could make fights a bit more immersive.

Also could it be that the Ai is so short on money and/or resources that it just cant afford groups? I have seen plenty of Ai players that were really low on resources which could have never build a Group of heavy Armed units - especially after i bought them out with some useless "junk" like crystals or horses. I mean it strikes me as idiotic to hand me 1600 Gold just for some crystals which could be used for a decent unit if the money for that wouldnt have been gone now.

I love this idea, so I fleshed it out a little further:

I don't remember the group sizes past squad, so I'm assuming Sethai is correct (squad = 3, party = 9, company = 12).

Defenses added by city level:

lvl 1: 1 foot soldier, 
lvl 2: 1 foot soldier, 1 archer
lvl 3: 1 foot soldier squad, 2 archers
lvl 4: 2 foot soldier squads, 1 archer squad
lvl 5: 1 foot soldier party, 1 archer party

foot soldier: as you'd expect, a defender with armor and weapons consistent with melee combat

archer: ranged weapons specialists

I would love to add a support type at level 5 or with special buildings, but there is no provision for supporting roles in the current tactical combat given available equipment/abilities.

graceful degradation of missing technologies:

if squad not researched, replace w/ 2 individuals

if party not researched, replace w/ 2 squads

I'm not addressing company, since 12 is very oddly proportioned after 9

if archery is not researched, replace archers with foot soldiers 1-to-1

equipment: defenders are equipped based on settlement value, such that the cost of equipment = (calculated value of settlement * modifier)

restrictions: defenders cannot have metal equipment if no metal resources are activated in the empire; likewise for items that require crystal

implication: since the value of a settlement grows with settlement size, defenders should be better equiped for bigger and/or better settlements.

Palace:

Adds the Royal Guard to the defense, which is a single additional group of foot soldiers of size Math.min(citysize.defenderSizeRestriction, largest group size researched)

the Royal Guard should have 125% of the typical equipment value

Royal Guard group size restrictions for the Palace:

1,2 : individual (this might be N/A if lvl 3 city is required to build the palace)

3: squad (3)

4: party(9)

5: company(12)

edit 2: also, please find some better alternative to teleportation of defeated enemy sovereigns. It just cheapens the impact of battle with them. And when a sovereign is killed, instead of magically removing all of their cities, turn them into independent states or assign one of the sovereign's children as the new leader.


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I'm with you there, I'm flabbergasted that the empire explodes, and then you have such an incentive to not kill the leader (take the cities first, save settler resources/improvements)... where in most other conflicts, taking out the leadership is the first priority.  Especially since 4x games normally don't let you kill the leader or have them walking around.  Even the MoM style banishment would be better.

While I was thinking about the combat text popping up (as mentioned earlier).. I was thinking how nice it would be to have a "bone crunching sound" for when a character scores a critical hit. It would add that extra oomph! to successful critical hits.

Great idea. This would be my preference, as well. It would make me feel like I'm actually playing against a "real" leader instead of a bunch of algorithms.

Hmmm where is that promised update? (And "Ai wars 3" for that matter?)

I think that this thread technically is AI Wars 3.

Still waiting on that update though.

(Like Brad has nothing better to do.)

great videos - wildly entertaining!  :)