In Elemental, you design your own units. Give them whatever name you want to give them, equipment them with weapons, armor, helmets along with deciding how much training they need.
Creating a soldier or a scout or a knight or what have you boils down to how long it takes you to have the equipment on hand and training which is raw time.
There is still "quick build" but that simply, at a cost, gets supplies to that town a lot quicker. It's like having your "stuff" sent to you via Fed Ex Air rather than UPS Ground.
So we're still playing around with this concept so would love to hear thoughts on it.
I went back and re-read Brad's post on the intended economics for EWoM. Each unit costs a certain variety of manufactured resources (swords, armor, etc.), some amount of your cities population (so one "paladin" might represent one dude in armor or a squad of ten; regardless, you are losing citizens every time your expand your military), and some amount of time for training the unit (improving it's stats).
As far as the actual interface, it seems fine. What I am really curious about is how queueing up multiple units will work.
Now, let's say we want to build 3 paladins (as defined above; 1 sword, 1 shield, 1 armor, 1 helmet and 5 turns of training) at City X and I have 3 swords, 3 shields, 2 sets of armor and 1 helmet in stock. That first paladin will be completed with no delays (presumably after 5 turns of training) but the second and third paladin will need to wait on a shipment of armor and helmets. It would be nice if the queue reflected the delays for the second and third paladin at the time that I queued all of them. Since caravans can be interrupted, the creation time indicated would only be an estimate if shipping resources were involved.
Now, let's explore having multiple unit types queued up in a city. Say we are wanting to build 6 paladins and 4 archers (1 bow, 1 armor, 3 turns of training) at City X. City X has 6 swords, 4 shields, 10 sets of armor, 4 bows and 6 helmets.
If I queue up the the 6 paladins first, followed by the archers and the queue is handled in a strict FIFO (first in, first out) order then I will have to wait on extra shields to arrive for my 5th and 6th paladins. While waiting for the shields to get in, I have all the resources on hand that I'd need to instead train archers. It would be nice if there were an option to prioritize the production queue of a city to favor certain goals, such as emptying the queue as fast as posssible (favoring the speediest, long-term emptying of the queue). Other queue priorities could be to favor specific units (build paladins first, then everything else), favor specific resources (I have a temporary glut of swords so I want to spam sword-wielding units first) or favor building the fastest-producible units first (short-term queue emptying; an army will reach my city in two turns and I need an additional defender by the time it arrives. As such, I want to prioritize units I can quickly produce over everything else).
Furthermore, there are 2 steps in actually producing a unit (collecting resources and training units). Do each of those steps have to be reserved by the same unit or can each step have it's own internal queue (for the Computer Science people in the audience, is each step part of the same or separate pipelines)? Furthermore, is it ever possible to have multiple training queues (say you build a barracks and an advanced barracks, could you train two units simultaneously)?
For every scenario, for every goal, there is a single, optimized solution. Often times players have to handle this optimization themselves (such as queueing units in Civilization IV just right so the overflow production from each previous build allows you to finish the current build in 1 turn). However, it would streamline the interface immensely if the game simply took your current production goal (long term speed, short term speed or favoring a specific unit/resource) and performed the optimization for you.
About the weapons technology. Are we going to be forced to switch between different weapons because they are better? I don't want to have to swap longswords for katanas just because katanas are +3 instead of +2.
That's enough stats for me, but I would like to see some special abilities add more flexability, like, say, a "Mounted" bonus that gives +1 attack against unmounted units, or a "Spear/Pike" bonus that adds first strike and cancels out an enemy "Mounted" bonus.
Of course, I'm pretty sure you already have such things in..
Other than that, though, I don't see too many more stats being needed. Total War didn't have many more, for example.
yeah? so? thats how it happened in MoM... generally speaking by the time I started building units my population growth was so high that nothing short of settlers (which cost massive population) would stop growth.
I would imagine there would be several queues to which you could deticate certain amount of population. Like in MoM, you basically had 3 catigories that workers could be in (each worker representing 1000 people). You could have farmers (created food) or workers (they created production). The 3rd kind was rebels, but they didn't do anything, they just took up space and you did not want them.
Now, I would imagine we have A: farmers, B: smiths (create swords and armor), C: Trainer (train people and mounts, from here I guess you would lose guys when you built things), and D: Builders (create buildings), or something along those lines. So that way you could balance your different queues.
I can see it being easy to pick the catigories if you base it on which buildings are related. For example, you could not build swords unless you had a smithy (or upgraded form of it like armory or something) and you could not train troops unless you had a training hall (or upgraded form of it, like war collage). You can pick which establishments population would go into. This could make the Que like a mini-sim game where you could population into other fields as well such as worshiping (or whatever they do to generate you mana), researching (helps research points to your spells), trading (adds boost to city income), miners (work in local mine for bonus income), shipwrights (builds ships) and so on.
This would really make that 'governer' mentioned in another thread an important feature, because many people would want something to auto-balance the queues for you while you were not micro-managing them.
Upgrades of buildings (which I do think should exist, even if the tech-tree doesn't have it) should increase the efficiency. So like a smithy is so-so, but an armory is better, and forge and smelter is even better.
(more examples) Training hall > barracks > war collage ... Stables > jousting arrena > fantastic stables ... library > university > wizard school .... I guess building something like a forge would help the smithy and armory work, so bonus there even though it wouldn't replace the old building per-se. a smelter would both help the mine (since it would process ore mined straight to tradable goods) and the production of weapons (would be able to take tradable goods and melt them into weapon meterials).
Things you couldn't build would either be A: bought at a higher price via fed-ex air (or whatever) or B: there is a default super-low production that lets you get the very basics that would be related to the trade rate of the town.
Actually, now that I think about it. I want this!! I think you should be able to assign population to different jobs avialable through what buildings are built there with a governer of some sort managing queues so you don't have any idoling population. This is much better than the MoM system and does not sound much harder to implement (thats what sequels are all about right)
so thats my feedback
I agree, however I would like both to be options (I'd expect they do about the same amount of damage if both are well made) as well as other weapons that are made by either stardock or the fan community.
There is no such thing as a Paladin other than the player giving that name to a unit they create.
The player gets a person. They train that person and equip that person with various things (mounts, weapons, armor, etc.). Then they give it a name like "Knight". Maybe they give the unit an enchanted ring and call that unit a Paladin.
But there is no concept of "can't use X if Y is evil".
Brad - This is pretty much stating what has already been stated which is simple enough as it is.. what exactly did you want feedback on? The concept has been commented on already..
what I would like to know is how the combat mechanics work..?
I think it's a really interesting system, I hope it works as well in the game as in the imagination. Regarding this:
'But there is no concept of "can't use X if Y is evil"'.
What about the possibility of equippable items/resources excluding each other? Firstly, will players be able to mod in custom resources as well as design units? Then, assuming that, suppose for example someone wanted to make one resource that confers some extra magic resistance, and have that prevent you from equipping other items tagged magical?
Or am I barking up the wrong tree there?
Ok, first I'm a bit disappointed in the seeming simplicity of the stats involved in the system. While we don't know how combat will work out in the end, I really hope it's not as simple as in GalCiv with only attack, defense and hp and a bunch of special abilities or in CivIV. Combat in CivIV was imho always boring, since you only had some stats and some special abilities, which made combat very predictable and boring. But we'll see how it will play out in the beta I guess. I'm prepared to complain about it anyway.
Now for the system, imho it has one strange part in it. What's preventing you to train the paladins for the whole 9 days instead of only 5 days, since they won't be finished earlier anyway?
Why is the cost per turn for the whole 9 turns, when you only do stuff (training) during 5 days while you only wait for the rest of the equipment during the other time, doing nothing? What happens if it takes 20 turns until a certain sword arrives, do I have to pay gold every turn until it arrives?
Or is training required to use the armor and sword (as the order of arrows seems to imply)?
Is there a limit on training time?
Two questions.
Is tech tree endless ? i.e. possible to research sword +1000 but with bizillions of research points. A lot of such models implemented in f2p browser-based mmo tbs games .
Is status of developed technologies stored in avatar? I mean once I got sword +9 it can be uses in another game.
"Is status of developed technologies stored in avatar? I mean once I got sword +9 it can be uses in another game."
Yep, in GalCiv ship designs were saved, and would be shown when you have the technology researched to use it. For example, a ship which had a basic tiny hull, laser I tech weapons and ion II type engines would be hidden until the player researched the laser 1 tech and the ion engines 2 tech. I would guess we will have similar systems in place for Elemental.
This was really what my concern was. If training time is variable, then it makes no sense to ever train for less time than it takes to get the materials. The only thing that matters is the maximum of the times for each box, so you should make EVERYTHING equal to that maximum time.
Frogboy, are there going to be limits as to what kind of equipment that men will be capable of equipping? I mean, because it seems unlikely that we will be able to give a man three weapons and wear two suits of armour at the same time. It doesn't seem terribly ambitious right now, only the most basic implementation of a very attractive feature.
Which isn't intended to belittle it in any way, as it looks to be great.
I interpret it such that you can't beginning training a unit until it has all it's equipment first. I take the diagram in the original post to be sequential:
1) the player selects a unit (paladin)
2) the player selects a quantity (10)
3) the game informs them how long it'll take to assemble the components (9 turns)
4) after the components are assembled the unit enters 5 turns of training.
In other words, you can't really train an archer if he lacks a bow and arrows...
It seems to me that each peice of 'equipment' you add to a unit should increse the training time it needs. Not only that but it should also increase the gold cost per day to train that unit. That would help keep your 'industrial' power from being the only thing that determines the size and quality of your army.
If you give a man a spear, it doesn't take very long for him to learn which end is the pointy one. All you need is a few days, an open plot of land, and a drill sargent to shout at them for a bit. We'll say it takes three days and one gold per day. So training ten basic spearmen would take the three days of training and cost thirty gold.
But what if we want something more then just a spearman? What if we want to train... A MYSTIC WAR KNIGHT OF THE GOLDEN ROSE?
Well, Knights use swords, which take more training then a spear. Moreover, you have to learn one on one, you can't just have a drill sargent shouting at you. So learning the sword takes five days at three gold apeice for cost of all those training masters. (Sword: +5 Days, +15 Gold)
They also use sheilds, which take two days at two gold per day. (Shield: +2 Days, +4 Gold)
Next is the warhorse. Remember too, mounted knights were the elites, the tanks of the ancient world. You have to factor in not just the training for the knight, but all the infastructure needed, including the fact that the knight needs a squire. So add a horse doubles the needed manpower for a unit (an invisible squire). Learning to fight well on horse back takes a week at five gold per day (Horse: +7 Days, +35 gold)
Then there's the armor. It takes a four days to learn to fight comfortably in and maintain your full plate. We might be cruel and require another squire, but we won't. Four gold a day. (Plate Armor: +4 days, +16 gold)
Finally, there's the mystic spell book that makes them a Knight of the Golden Rose, allowing them to heal their allies and boost morale in battle. We need monks to copy the books, libraries to maintain them, priest to train the knights, mystic ink from Dimension X. This all adds up. Plus it take quite a long time for a unit to learn magic. Ten days at eight gold a day. (Magic Book of Healing: +10 days, +80 gold)
SO. All told it takes 28 days and ~150 gold to train a single Mystic Knight of the Golden Rose, as opposed to 3 days and 3 gold to train a peasant spearman. On the plus side, a couple Knights would be able to cut through and rout an entire unit of peasants without even breaking a sweat.
Otherwise you could wind up with a situation where players are outfitting ALL their units with tons of cool equipment. I'd say the majority of most players armies should be made of realativily cheep and quick to train troops. It makes using awsome elite units like the MYSTIC KNIGHTS OF THE GOLDEN ROSE far more realistic and satisfying.
Most of my concerns have already been addressed by others, so I'll simply leave my thoughts on how I'd like to see this unit creation process expanded upon.
There are a couple of things I'm hoping are already intended to be added, or will be considered to be added as apart of the unit creation process. First, I'd like to see a pop out or attached window to the armor/weapon/accessory selection screens for magical enchantments to be placed upon them. For instance you could put a sensor enchantment on your "Elite Sentry" units helm, allowing them to see further and detect invisible or stealthed enemies. I see it generally as a costly endeavor reserved specificly for units you consider to be your elite forces, but I suppose if you're wealthy enough you're army could benefit too, hehe.
Secondly, and I think this is the potentially more interesting one, I'd like to see training packages for your units. Basicly, when you create a unit you select a training package to give it a focused purpose. As an example, you want to make a recon/scout type unit to spy on your enemies, so you give them the "basic scout training" which gives them the ability to avoid detection. As they gain experience, this basic training allows them to acquire more abilities and potentially focuses them even more. For instance, basic scout training could lead to advanced recon abilities such as the ability to detect other stealthed units, invisible units, or even empire productions in progress etc. On the flip side, the basic scout training could lead to advanced spy abilities, giving the unit the ability to kill off heroes, sabatoge the enemies efforts etc. If you dont want a specially trained unit, just give them Basic Combat Training, the standard military training, and you got yourself a foot soldier.
And I'll point out something important, there needs to be a distinct difference between training, and experience. Training gives you the tools you need to succeed, experience tells you how to best utilize them. You should be able to train a unit for a purpose, and if they survive they should get that much better at doing so. Perhaps, units could gain small amounts of experience as turns pass eventually plateauing, at which point the unit needs to be active in order to gain anymore experience.
As a more out there idea, if you have the training packages, you could also set it so you could retrain units, taking a recon unit and making it a front line soldier. The units previous experience could either give them a head start into their new package, accelerate their experience gain, or they could be green but retain their previous training, and should you desire they could be switched back.
I'd like to add that i completely agree with this line of thought. Fintilgin is on the right track.
edit: Trimmed the quote, there ya go Tamren, merry christmas to you.
Bloody hell. How many times will you repeat this?
Yikes, please cull your quotes. Unless you are quoting multiple topics at once you shouldn't need more than 4 lines.
I dont know about you lot, this latest screenshot is bloody awful..... what res is it at?
Tamren, I normally would keep my quotes short, but I felt that the entire point made as a whole was important, and that quoting a specific part was less optimal way of expressing that. So I quoted the entire thing. But lets not derail this thread with proper quotation ethics, you can always private message me if you think I'm out of line.
Ya, I don't really understand why if you request 10 units you have to wait for all 10 to finish to get any of them. This could also creat a problem. Lets say you have requested 50 Knights to be built in a particular city. You have enough equipment on hand for 45 of them, but it will take a few days for the rest of the horses to get there. Then one of the factions you are at war against takes your reasource of horses preventing you from finishing to the knights. What happens? Will that city be building them forever unless you get that source of horses back? Will you have to cancel your production and build something else. If that happens do you loose the equipment you gave to the 45 of them? Will the knights just finish building, except 5 of them wont have horses?
No matter what your reasoning is you don't need 46 lines of text to say "I agree with Fintilgin".
This is an important point. Until a soldier participates in his first real battle, everything he has learned up until that point will be nothing but theory. If he survives then he can start to build up real experience.
As well the training a unit has should determine what you can equip it with. I make a unit of spearmen and train them with both spears and longbows, they should be able to ditch the spears for longbows when the situation requires it. Defending a castle tower is a great job for a longbow but a spear wouldn't be very useful up there. The alternative is to attach units permanently to one weapon type, but in the above example that would leave me with an undefended tower due to my lack of deticated archer units. Not very ideal.
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It would be nice if we could train units with different equipment on the spot. Using the castle example again, lets say I have only 1 unit of archers and 20 units of spearmen. The archers can man the tower but that will leave the walls bare. The castle armoury has enough longbows to outfit them all so I deploy the spearmen to the wall and give them all longbows. Since we have a unit of archers on hand we can use them to give the spearmen enough training that they can load and fire a longbow without shooting themselves in the foot. The walls form a hexagon and each face can support 2 units. Instead of 1 unit of archers defending the entire castle grounds we now have 1 unit of archers in the high tower and 12 units of green archers leaving 8 units of spearmen to defend the gate.
When the siege starts those novice archers are going to learn quickly. Even if they have poor accuracy the sheer weight of fire will have some effect on the attacking enemy. As an added bonus they retain thier spears because they are defending a stationary position. (lets just imagine they left them on the floor or something). If and when the enemy gains the wall using siege towers or ladders, those soldiers near the gaps can repel climbers with spears while the rest of the unit continues to fire thier longbows.
The combined arms approach is great because it lets you do so many things. If you were defending your multi-tile city in Elemental you could draft workers to be militia and arm them with a weapon that would keep them off the front lines such as crossbows since they are easy to use. The more arrows headed at your enemy the better.
The system we get will probably fall short of this ideal. But even then if we can avoid welding units to specific weapon types it would be a fantastic bonus.
When you have old, outdated equipment, can you choose to put it back in your equipment pool, or can you only sell it? I could see having both options. However, keeping anything on-hand is going to carry with it some sort of upkeep (it costs money to keep inventory).
Here's another thought- with this level of customization, it's going to be freaking difficult to tell how powerful another army is in comparison with your own. Can we have some sort of overall score/range that is a rough estimate of the power of a unit/squad? It could be an estimate that becomes more accurate as your heroes and/or units and/or scouting ability advance. I know there needs to be some sort of mystery behind not knowing everything precisely, but I imagine the AI should be able to calculate unit power, so we should be able to as well.
frogboy said there was no 'super-cutlass' or anything like that, so your regular cutlass should never get outdated - is how I read it. Just over time as you pour research into it, the cutlass would eventually get better (so those with a cutlass get +2 rather than +1 I assume)
Also, Frogboy? What are you doing up at 2AM on christmas eve answering business questions?
I hope that we will be able to mod the weapons to be a bit more realistic. A cutlass and a machete are both swords but one works more like an axe and the other one cuts like a chefs knife. The difference between them would not be huge but would be very important when you get down to the 1 vs 1 combat scale.
From the sound of it basic units are not going to be very complex under the hood, even if we can customize them visually. Heroes and channelers should be a lot more interesting.
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