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Flow of time and map scaling

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Flow of time and map scaling

from Elemental Forums

First of all, let me say that it's awesome seeing Elemental slowly becoming a better game. But there's something that has been bugging me now that I've taken another look at the game.

A Sovereign moves 2 squares per turn. That's basically a very short distance on the map. Your starting village will span two tiles immediately. In one turn, three months, you can travel a distance that seems like a five minute walk. It will likely take 'years' to take the shortest route to the closest inn. What gives?

Three months feels wayyy too long for a turn in a wargame to begin with. A week sounds more reasonable. It feels like the turns were made unrealistically long just to make your offspring age faster. But surely you could simply have time jumps between acts in the official campaign to bring children into play? I don't think children belong in a skirmish type game, unless you can magically age them faster. I'd like the time aspect of the game to make sense.

On a related note, the cities quickly expand to take up as much space on the map as a big mountain range. A Sovereign who moves two tiles per turn needs a year to pass by a proper grown city. What? The cities should fit the scale of the map and turns should really be shorter.

I'm sorry to say the cities also tend to look quite boring and ugly when they consist out of similar buildings on a square grid. Couldn't the locations of the different buildings be abstracted and the cities be made look more impressive graphically? Seeing the exact location of your study (that you can't even recognize by glance) is completely irrelevant and the grid building makes the cities burst out of scale quickly.

elemental
90,695 views 30 replies
Reply #26 from Elemental Forums Top

So only Magic should be able to be used a weapon and defense. No mundane spears and stuff. Because it's all about War of Magic. No, enchanted mundane weapons don't count as "magic". Also, as it's about War, you should start automatically in war with everybody and never being able to get any kind of treaty or peace. And forget about cities because, really, what the fuck has city building do with war? Do you throw buildings with your catapults or what? And quests? No need for them! If it's not War of magic, out!

First, change to decaf, clean up your language.....then we can talk.:S

Reply #27 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting dowdyhoody, reply 26
First, change to decaf, clean up your language.....then we can talk.
What can I say? Silly arguments, sillier contraarguments. Full Metal Me. ^_^ (not that I need silly arguments to use sillier contraarguments...)

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Reply #28 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Lonemessiah, reply 24
Yes Civilization spans 1000's of years. Elemental spans decades, rather than a 4 year period. The things you are asking for change the fundamental foundations of what makes Elemental unique. If these are aspects you don't like then, as i said, this probably isn't the game for you. There are many of Empire/War games that you will find right up your street.

How about trying to be a bit more constructive?

The game is still in development and many things are not locked down permanently. We don't even have a clue what the magic system will be like after the overhaul, which will be a much bigger deal than whether a turn is three months, one week or just a "turn". I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss anyone who posts criticism on the current version.

In the end, it is not the amount of time that makes the scope of the game epic. The elapsed time is just a number. It's what actually happens during that time. Ten years or a hundred years, there's hardly a difference since it's about the achievement itself and not how quickly or slowly you did it. But time passing unrealistically fast just to bring your children into play is more eyecatching.

So just maybe there could be a good middle ground for the turns, like one month. Increase the movement rates of units as well and we'd have years passing by quickly and units that travel at a much more believable rate. A month would also be good in the sense that the devs could expand the lore by creating an Elemental calendar that would be quite cool and make the world of Elemental richer.

And no there aren't that many good turn based fantasy strategy games. MoM is still the best one out of the oldies and it's about time it got some competition.

Reply #29 from Elemental Forums Top

I am not sure if you understand the point i am getting at. Lets address your points seperately.

 

1/ Turns time; At the moment the seasonal turn time fits well with every aspect of the game except map movement. To change the turn timing would make every aspect of the game not quite work.. including map movement. Let's be honest you would probably have to reduce the turns to days to actually get the map movement right.

 

2/ Cities should only take up one space: This is the point i am most anti. Sprawling cities is very much what Elemental is about. You would take a unique feature and remove it because you don't like it. I would expect that most people love it. Also have you considered the impact that removing it would do? How would resources now work? How would terrain affect the city? Would harbours only be able to be built in cities next to the sea. Will we no longer be able to sprawl a city across a bottle neck to hinder our opponents? How will ZOC work?

 

My point is not that I don't welcome new ideas. But your ideas were about personal opinion on what you do and don't like that were then pushed forward without truly looking at the ramifications.

Reply #30 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Lonemessiah, reply 29
I am not sure if you understand the point i am getting at. Lets address your points seperately.

 

1/ Turns time; At the moment the seasonal turn time fits well with every aspect of the game except map movement. To change the turn timing would make every aspect of the game not quite work.. including map movement. Let's be honest you would probably have to reduce the turns to days to actually get the map movement right.

Not if you also increase movement rates. Say double them. I'm pretty convinced by having one month turns and increasing movement rates we could have best of both worlds.

2/ Cities should only take up one space: This is the point i am most anti. Sprawling cities is very much what Elemental is about. You would take a unique feature and remove it because you don't like it. I would expect that most people love it. Also have you considered the impact that removing it would do? How would resources now work? How would terrain affect the city? Would harbours only be able to be built in cities next to the sea. Will we no longer be able to sprawl a city across a bottle neck to hinder our opponents? How will ZOC work?

I already suggested a separate city building screen with the grid as it is now. You would still get to influence which way your ZoC expands. Resources would be harvested just the same. Separate harbours could be easily built on the shore within your ZoC, just like resource harvesting. Bottlenecks could be achieved by building a separate fort or wall structure within your ZoC, or by raising more land to narrow it down. I think all these options sound a lot better than having ugly grid cities cover up most of the map. The cities would look much better on the map without losing any of their functionality. The idea with the cities is good, which we can agree on, but the execution isn't great.

My point is not that I don't welcome new ideas. But your ideas were about personal opinion on what you do and don't like that were then pushed forward without truly looking at the ramifications.

I think I addressed all the issues you mentioned?