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Lord Xia's Treatise on Elemental improvement, ver 1.1

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Lord Xia's Treatise on Elemental improvement, ver 1.1

from Elemental Forums

Some old ideas, some new ideas, both big and little that need to be considered to improve the Game.

Races need to be each unique either through appearance of armor and weapons, and/or through bonuses and penalties.  Each race should look different in their armor.  Having slightly different eye/skin/hair color among the 6 tribes of humans means shit under the armor, they all look alike.

When creating a custom faction, we need to be able to tell which bonuses don't work with Empire or Kingdom, seems simple, but apparently not.  Also, when I am choosing colors for my faction, I should be able to see it modeled on the...um model on the right.  Hard?  Think not.  Also, I should be able to change skin and hair color for my factions. 

I should be able to play agaisnt enemy factions ,and I should have the ability to design their AI like I was able to do in GalCiv2.

When starting the game, I should have the option of how many neutral factions there are, how many resources there are, and so forth, options, options.  Things that we had in GalCiv2.

Minor factions should be a little more active, and have a large diplomacy rating so AI doesn't just wipe them off the map for no gain.  Let them at least arm themselves, have a few spells, and maybe a few troops and send out caravans.  They should even be able to create a little army, and maybe have special troops that can help allies.  Like if the Orekeepers ones had troops with that pressed iron armor and longswords they make, they could at least protest themselves, and if they are are conquered, instead of them disappearing, that neutral city is special and can only produce their special troop and items, making them both valuable to keep alive or conquer, depending on how you play.  Also, non human factions would be nice.

Quest are too few, and  fairly pointless.  Why put the work into getting the Sovereign sword, when by the time I have it, I have better weapons?  Orthe Sov Shield I can buy.  Make quest items special for the whole game and unique.  More quest, and have them pop up randomly.  Also, maybe a random event that is centered around one of your champions and they have a quest.  "Viy, you must seek out the great Sage at Darkroot Mountain" and then Viy gets some special item or ability.  Something like that. 

When you take a tech that produces the resource, please make the fucking resource pop in my fucking area.  Great, I got darklings that showed up in Kraxis control, hope they pick the same tech and theirs shows up over here so I can use it.  Dumb people, really.

And Stop letting other factions create cities in your area of influence.  So stupid.

Sovs need to follow the int requirements of casting, or you need to make int more important to the damage that spells cause, otherwise, I will continue to make retarded Sovs.

Make allitems usable for everyone. Why can only humans of the race of men can wear the Azor quest armor or the the pressed iron armor and why can't Ambrose wear human armor?  Frustrating.

Add "wizardly" items to the game.  Maybe I don't want all my Sovs, champs, or children to be iron clad warriors.  How about magic robes that don't offer as much protection as iron armor, but add dodge bonus, and magic staffs that work like bows? 

We need separate light armor tracts and heavy armor tech paths, maybe I don't want to specialize in heavy steel armor, maybe I am a iron poor nation, so I specialize in armor that needs less iron, but provides more mobility and agility?  Add back in the scale and chain armor and make them an alternative to the heavier, more iron costly armors. 

Champions need to be more diverse and interesting.  They are all human now, they all have boring clothes or leather armor on.  Wow, boring.  They should be each of a race or nationality, and list it in their description, "Viy a Yoren", or Tarth, or whatever, and since every faction has a unique look to them, armor wise, they will stand out in your army, most likely as they have their own armor look and color scheme.  Neat, huh?  Also, a Champion with a city based profession, like farmer, should gain exp every turn he sits in a city that uses his skill.  They should have different personalities, and maybe form rivalries or enemies with other champions, they should have loyalty and a glory stat, if you are not giving them chances to gain glory, like combat then they get less loyal, or if you keep using a farmer to fight, then they lose loyalty.  Champions shouldn't be killed, they should be captured and put in prison and traded on the diplomacy screen.

Tactical combat needs a complete overhaul.  Units need ZOC, meaning that you can't just rush past the unit or through units.  Spells and Arrows need much smaller ranges, you should have to position yourself to land a good shot.  We need meaningful terrain.  3D terrain like in Final Fantasy Tactics battles, or at least rivers, mountains, forest, things that change movement, line of sight, and dodge bonus.  Movmentand positioning, make up, of your armies should be very important.  Unit types, like Heavy, light infantry and mounted should provide bonuses based on the terrain that the battle is fought and who they are fighting.  Look to Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Brigandine, and Final Fantasy Tactics for ideas.  They are old games, so don't tell my the new fancy game cant do it.

No reason to have the entire kingdom disapear like a fart in the wind when the Sov is defeated.  That should casue the faction to have a new leader rise up, either a child or a Champion, and maybe the remaining empire splits up into factions.  Also, see Romance of the Three Kingdoms. 

Need random events, like the ones that GalCiv2 had and FFH2 had.  Also, more interesting world places, like FFH2 had that trapped angel, that stonehenge thing that provided certain bonuses with some of the factions.  Or giant dragon bones, neat shit like that, that makes me think, oh cool, this part of the world is special, unique. 

 

Thats's it for now, sure I will think of more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

elemental
322,379 views 118 replies
Reply #101 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Diardiamond, reply 100

Ah Rulemaster!


 It was an awesome rpg.. you actually needed to be skilled at 'math' to 'play' through combat resolution... they actually made a program for really really old comps (back then it was cutting edge.. lol.. modems the size of cadilacs) that helped the more math challenged players have an easier time of it. When it came to 'fun' though in combat, Stormbringer was classic with its 'parry-riposte' combat system. Very deadly and took 1/10th the time to resolve.^^

Hehe I remember we used to call it chartmaster. I remember how if god forbid you actually played a wizard type in that game, your first several levels of spells did things like raise the temperture in a cup of water. Given the extremely slow level advancement that meant you had to put up with about a years worth of game play being completely useless (assuming you played reasonably frequently).

Still for all of it's failings, there were some classic moments to be had in that game which you could not have with others.

Fences - Organize your desktop icons today!
Reply #103 from Stardock Forums Top

Overall great stuff. The channel of communication is open. The game is heading in the right direction. My interest in the game has peaked again. The problems have been layed out for Stardock to fix. Lets see what happens from here on out. I believe we are on to something great. Let the gaming gods do their magic. Keep up the good work.

Freebird back in the birdcage for the moment.

Reply #104 from Elemental Forums Top

My $0.02 worth:

-- A general thumbs-up on most of Xia's suggestions.

-- Caravans should either be abstracted away (as per suggestions above: autorestart after a period) _or_ they should become full-fledged (though auto-moving) designed units that resolve tactical combat just like any other unit and can be built increasingly more powerful as techs advance. If EWOM is going to have 'real' ships someday, it might as well have 'real' caravans.

-- Succession: here's another vote in favor of it, because I think it could make EWOM a truly different game. The possible complications are delicious, particularly when you throw in arranged marriages: wars of succession, civil wars, chunks of your empire suddenly going over to another empire because your only daughter is married to that empire's sovereign's eldest son. George R. R. Martin has done a wonderful job of outlining all the succession nastiness that can occur in the Game of Thrones series -- and those novels are _all_ about the characters rather than the kingdoms and empires per se. It means you need to carefully think about who marries whom; it also means that you'd better be carefully grooming your own heir so that things don't fall apart when you pass on. And (as per comments), it means there's a real risk of assassination of your heir(s), either from younger children or from outside factions.

-- Minor factions: also thumbs up. City-states with unique techs, resources, spells, objects, whatever. You can gain access to those only by trade, by treaty, and/or by intermarriage (and the access method may change depending upon what it is). However, if you simply trying to march in and conquer the faction, some or all of those unique things vanish forever. This means that you have to compete diplomatically to gain access, and should you do so, you have to protect the faction with your military to keep other major factions from marching in and crushing them to deny you that access. Oh, and with the right intermarriage (your son to the minor faction's sov's daughter), the city state and all its unique things become yours when that sov dies. if the marriage is the other way around (your daughter to his son), then when the sov dies, you have easier/cheaper access to the unique things, etc.

-- For that matter, permanent alliance with a major faction by intermarriage should be a possibility: you marry your son to that faction's daughter, the sov there dies, and presto! that kingdom/empire becomes a very strong ally. Of course, your son may get ambitious and be plotting to take over your kingdom from your heir when you die.

-- And this gets back to something Xia touched upon: we need some relatively simple way of modeling relationships among the sovereigns, their various descendants, and the champions, and how you can try to improve or solidify those relationships. Can you imagine being in a tactical battle -- and suddenly having one or more of your champions or even your children/grandchildren switch sides? That would certainly make the children and champions far more interesting, whereas now they are mostly just interchangeable units, albeit more powerful and flexible, that you hire once (and you don't even do that for your kids) and move in large stacks. 

-- For that matter, you may face assassination attempts as well: from the other side, from your own descendants, and/or from disgruntled champions. Again, modeled as tactical combat; it forces you to keep very loyal troops/kids/champions around you, especially early on before you have come into your full powers. 

That's it for now.  ..bruce..

Reply #105 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting sagittary, reply 30


I would say that instead of having to micro the building, maintaining,and defending of caravans, we simply take out the idea that we need specific units for them to begin with. As you said, the idea isn't to mimic what's going on, but make it a dynamic system. So routes are first build by caravans and then the benefits 'just happen' over time. Monsters can essentially siege routes as cities can be sieged and this reduces the benefits (until you're actually taking a penalty) until the monster is cleared; monsters naturally take damage over time (with reducing by armor) and this damage scales with time/tech. Sieging monsteres get a ! or whatever over their head. This way,  the player doesn't have to worry too much about cleaning up smaller monsters (they'll end up going away in a few turns at most) but particularly powerful monsters have to be dealt with. The player also doesn't have to worry about micromanaging parties of units specificially for caravans and making sure they'll all up to date on tech, etc; this is essentially automated for them. After all, there's not much reason for a player -not- to be doing these basic rote tasks; we don't want players to spend a chunk of time simply checking each caravan route for unit attrition and whatever every turn. We only want them to do so when it's really important.

Brilliant. k1

Reply #106 from Elemental Forums Top

I lost a game!  I legitimately lost a fucking game!  Fuck you Frogboy and your AI improvements!  I suck at these games, how dare you make the AI try to kill me! 

 

But seriously, pretty fun now, I actually have to plan shit and try to win, or the AI will actually make an attempt to kill me...and they did.

Reply #107 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Lord, reply 106
I lost a game!  I legitimately lost a fucking game!  Fuck you Frogboy and your AI improvements!  I suck at these games, how dare you make the AI try to kill me! 

 

But seriously, pretty fun now, I actually have to plan shit and try to win, or the AI will actually make an attempt to kill me...and they did.

 

What level world? and what level AI?

Reply #108 from Elemental Forums Top

Don't laugh at me, but the world was extreme and the AI was only Hard... I have played hundreds of these games, but I rarely play to win, I play and have fun.  I was actually had troops with better gear than my enemies, but they had far more numbers and I eventually just got over swamped and couldn't produce troops fast enough to fight them off.  I was trying a 1 city only game too.  Just couldn't produce enough soldiers.

Reply #109 from Elemental Forums Top

Very good points. Something I don't really like is how most of the battles you can just auto-combat since it's only melee vs. melee. It would be alot more fun with some terrain like you said but also with the ability to get archers or some other strategic unit much earlier. If you move your archer up on a hill and start firing you can force the enemy to come to you instead of being left with 0 strategic options like now.

Reply #110 from Elemental Forums Top

I would like if the Factions had set city names.  Like if you Play Civ, the default names of the cities are things like Paris if you play France and Washington if you play America, etc.  I know The major factions have city names already, they are in the book and they are in the tutorial.  Small detail to make the world feel more interesting. 

 

Minor factions.  Is there  a reason the leader to the minor factions have to stand outside their city?  I think Minor factions should pop up like resources in your Influence, like a random event, and then they could start terrorizing you, be friendly, trade, or you could conquer them and use their city like a special resource like I outlined above.

Reply #111 from Elemental Forums Top

As long as it picks a name at random from the list, so you won't see the same names every game. With civIV it always felt a bit wrong if I placed New York for instance in a sub-optimal spot (to get a resource, or cut off an enemy's expansion, etc). I almost felt presurred to make it a grand city, silly I know. A fantasy game with fantasy names won't have the same effect, but I do have a point in here somewhere :P ; When I play a sandbox game, I want to feel like I am playing a unique game, with its own story. But if the same names keep showing up, it feels more like you are playing someone else's game, or an alternate history of it. So flavor with fitting names: yes please. The same sequence of names every game: no thanks. But that's just me, others could be the exact opposite I guess.

On minor factions; I'd like it if both minor factions and the recruitable races were present and active at the start of the game (or spawn dynamicaly based on events and player actions). Factions that are the same race can become a vassal if you have good enough relations or conquer them, and other races can be recruited if you do the appropriate diplomatic research.

Reply #112 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting OsirisDawn, reply 105



Quoting sagittary,
reply 30


I would say that instead of having to micro the building, maintaining,and defending of caravans, we simply take out the idea that we need specific units for them to begin with. As you said, the idea isn't to mimic what's going on, but make it a dynamic system. So routes are first build by caravans and then the benefits 'just happen' over time. Monsters can essentially siege routes as cities can be sieged and this reduces the benefits (until you're actually taking a penalty) until the monster is cleared; monsters naturally take damage over time (with reducing by armor) and this damage scales with time/tech. Sieging monsteres get a ! or whatever over their head. This way,  the player doesn't have to worry too much about cleaning up smaller monsters (they'll end up going away in a few turns at most) but particularly powerful monsters have to be dealt with. The player also doesn't have to worry about micromanaging parties of units specificially for caravans and making sure they'll all up to date on tech, etc; this is essentially automated for them. After all, there's not much reason for a player -not- to be doing these basic rote tasks; we don't want players to spend a chunk of time simply checking each caravan route for unit attrition and whatever every turn. We only want them to do so when it's really important.



Brilliant.

i agree with this as well. 100%

ALSO i agree with OP. everything that Xia posted would make elemental better and funner. accually everything he put would vastly improve the game all of it should all be implemented.  ill be very honest with everyone i have yet to finish a game. i play and i kick the AI's butt so quickly with with jsut armoured to the teeth champion grunts that i lose intrest in finishing up. at that point its just a mop up job. implementing Xias suggestions would definitely make the game funner, add more depth, and entice the player to follow through.

Reply #113 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Satrhan, reply 111
As long as it picks a name at random from the list, so you won't see the same names every game. With civIV it always felt a bit wrong if I placed New York for instance in a sub-optimal spot (to get a resource, or cut off an enemy's expansion, etc). I almost felt presurred to make it a grand city, silly I know. A fantasy game with fantasy names won't have the same effect, but I do have a point in here somewhere ; When I play a sandbox game, I want to feel like I am playing a unique game, with its own story. But if the same names keep showing up, it feels more like you are playing someone else's game, or an alternate history of it. So flavor with fitting names: yes please. The same sequence of names every game: no thanks. But that's just me, others could be the exact opposite I guess.

On minor factions; I'd like it if both minor factions and the recruitable races were present and active at the start of the game (or spawn dynamicaly based on events and player actions). Factions that are the same race can become a vassal if you have good enough relations or conquer them, and other races can be recruited if you do the appropriate diplomatic research.

 

Well, I would like them to have at least set capital names, and I would like it so each faction had a different set of "Random" names for their cities and people.  The Random Name Generator is probably the worst I have ever seen in any game.  The things it spits out are amazing bad.  See my story "Randnamgen" to see my opinion of it.

Reply #114 from Elemental Forums Top

Oh I agree, the name generator is terrible, even a fixed list would be huge improvement. Also agreed on the capital, it needs to have a good solid name, as it will be the most important city in almost every game.

Reply #115 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Lord, reply 113

I would like it so each faction had a different set of "Random" names for their cities and people.  The Random Name Generator is probably the worst I have ever seen in any game.  The things it spits out are amazing bad.  See my story "Randnamgen" to see my opinion of it.

 

Agree %100. It's ridiculous some of the names this thing comes up with:

Luelbaraxe
Athrenierig
Yaegemiada
Iraamablubr
Ocuukkibres
Becruervedro
Ussiirtooruut

I've seen random name generators before, but they generally work half decent. It looks like someone didn't put much effort into this, at all.

Reply #116 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting troglyte, reply 115
I've seen random name generators before, but they generally work half decent. It looks like someone didn't put much effort into this, at all.

It could have been worse. At least there are both consonants and vowels. >_>

Reply #117 from Elemental Forums Top

lmao soo true the random name generator makes baby jesus cry. its so god awful that i have to create my own. all teh  99% of the names it spews out look like if it just punked out random letters. so bad...

Reply #118 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Lord, reply 108
Don't laugh at me, but the world was extreme and the AI was only Hard... I have played hundreds of these games, but I rarely play to win, I play and have fun.  I was actually had troops with better gear than my enemies, but they had far more numbers and I eventually just got over swamped and couldn't produce troops fast enough to fight them off.  I was trying a 1 city only game too.  Just couldn't produce enough soldiers.

Ahh, the one city limit explains it all. I was impressed (by the AI) until I read that; with how powerful spamming cities is, limiting yourself to one while your opponents expand is really shooting yourself in the foot. Good idea actually, I've got to try it - sounds like a challenge!