Well this is the Elemental Ideas Forum so here's another one of my topics providing ideas for the game.
Every unit can have one or more tags which characterize the unit. These tags can be used to provide the units with benefits or disadvantages for the types of terrain, weather, weapons, spells, etc., :
1) Humans: Probably one of the more common unit types, can be found in almost any location on a map and the most likely to have established towns. One example would be a Crossbow Man.
2)Beasts: I recall reading the game has beast types already and these would more likely be found in jungles and forests yet can be almost anywhere. They are unpredictable yet probably have dangerous reactions to travelers. One example of a beast would be a giant squid.
3)Demons: Might be found in the deepest areas of a dungeon or cave yet sometimes have been summoned with powerful magic. They are a strong unholy force. One example would be a succubus.
4)Animals: These creatures are more likely to be found in areas of vegetation yet are unlikely to attack travelers. Many types of animals can be domesticated then trained to fight and some even made into mountable units. One example of an animal would be a horse.
5)Angelic: Might be found on the top of the highest of mountains or plateaus yet sometimes have been summoned with powerful magic. They are a strong holy force. One example of an angelic would be an Arch_Angel.
6)Undead: The undead are more likely to be found in caves, graveyards or dungeons yet sometimes have been summoned/created using Necromancy magic. One example of an undead would be a vampire.
7)Insects: Insects can be found anywhere on a map except for areas of where its cold. They will thrive in wet warm locations. One example of an insect would a giant spider.
8)Magical: A magical creature is one which has been created from magic or something which has been greatly changed because of magic. One example of a magical creature would be an Iron Golem.
9)Plant_Life: These are usually found near sources of water and thrive in wet warm locations. Plant_Life cannot move on its own and typically used in war for defensive reasons. Sometimes magic can teleport Plant_Life type units into battle and special mechanical moving devices have been used for moving Plant_Life units. One example of a Plant_Life unit would be a Giant Venus FlyTrap.
10)Mechanical: These are found being controlled by another unit type of high intelligence and are usually war machines which cannot move or strike on their own. Only through magic would it be possible for a mechanical unit to move and attack on its own. One example of a mechanical unit would be a catapult.
11)Reptilian: These are usually found in warm/hot locations on a map with a preference near water and stay away from cold locations. One example of a reptilian would be an alligator.
12)Alien: These creatures are rare and not from this realm. They might have come from the stars inside an asteroid or another dimension from a torn astral portal.
Ideally the custom modding of units would allow gamers to create their own special units thus if someone wanted to create a demon spirit they could give it the tag of being undead and a demon. Another unit someone might want to create would be a two-headed fire spitting lizardman which would have the tag of reptilian and magical.
So templates essentially? Templates are great at condensing information. In MoM for example the "undead" template is really immunity to sleep/paralysis/fear and whatnot all rolled into one. Whenever you see it on something you immediatly know whats going on.
What you have to be careful with is making those types a bit too general or too loose. Dungeons and Dragons defines its component creatures using a similar system, but the values it assigns are kind of arbitrary and don't make much sense. I mean for example a wolf is classified as an animal. A magical wolf golem which acts just like a real wolf is a construct. A demonic wolf from another plane is an outsider. A mutated wolf with 3 eyes is an abberation. An ice wolf is an elemental... and it just goes on from there.
I agree that unit templates shouldn't arbitrary. I personally think they should be helpful not confusing and, well, intimidating.
Another idea that could be done, besides defining a unit's species or whatever, is placing templates that quickly defines a unit's qualities. Chevrons for example, yes I know their a cliche but they do help define a unit's veterancy or level.
Another is using weapon and misc. symbols:
1: A bow and arrow for units' with access to range attacks.
2: A spear to mean an advantage against cavalry.
3: Swords for attack strength and shields for defense strength
4: Elemental symbols like fire for a Rock/Paper/Scissors mechanic (e.g. fire<water, water<nature, and nature<fire).
5: A pointy hat for magic users.
6: Of course, a horse for quick mobility/
7: Heck even a feather could mean flight ability.
These could be either very helpful or largely unnecessary. but is nice to know what you're going up against.
I don't know if its really a good idea to catigorize this. I mean, what is "alien" in a world of magic exactly? have you seen a beholder? Like, that could be alien, magical, or beast. In another game, I'd probebly be willing to move it into magical or something. But Elemental is all about creating your own things. The reason that conflicts with the templates is because if you read some of frogboy's comments on the units, you may notice that they don't want to get tied down my names or labels. If there is no such thing as a 'knight', 'palidin', or blackguard, why would there be a difference between angels, deamons, and other outer dimensional creatures.
I think it would be better to have different atributes that arn't attached to any name. Like don't have any kind of 'alien type' but maybe a "intimidating presence" and "climate intollerant" as unit features that go to those units. Rather than 'reptilian' it would have 'scaly skin' and 'cold blooded'. Instead of 'mechanical' it would be... well... no that would be the atribute as well. The point is, no names for the creatures themselves, just descriptions.
This kind of thinking is why I keep bringing up the old table RPG Champions. The rules worked like this, but the live games ended up with de facto schemas like NTJedi offers above (fuzzy character 'classes' like brick, blaster, psionic, etc.). My guess is that this sort of schema will mark the major boundary lines between sets of user-made content, and if the labels a user finally puts on a unit built via generic abilities & traits have words like "alien" in them, then some of us will be able to tell quickly that it won't fit with the way we like to play Elemental and others can easily idenfity something they might like.
The reason that conflicts with the templates is because if you read some of frogboy's comments on the units, you may notice that they don't want to get tied down my names or labels. If there is no such thing as a 'knight', 'palidin', or blackguard, why would there be a difference between angels, deamons, and other outer dimensional creatures.
The tags are merely an tool for identifying types of units. Hence if you've created a spell called Holy Light which does damage ONLY to the undead and demons these tags would allow them to be harmed without other units such as humans and mechanical units being harmed. Without some type of tag there's no way for a spell to provide a specific attack or benefit on a type of unit... all damage spells would harm all units. Even AoW:SM included tags of Pure Good, Good, Neutral, Evil and Pure Evil.
Unit features and unit tags are two completely different categories, but many unit tags will have some unit features which gamers would expect to see, yet those should not be mandatory. As I wrote earlier without some type of tags it would not be possible to create spells, weapons, terrain, armor, etc., which can target a type of unit such as the undead.
The tags provide complete room for creativity as well... hence if someone wanted to create an undead alien robot from another dimension which sometimes transforms into a werewolf then he could provide it the tags of beast, undead, alien and mechanical. Thus any spells, weapons, weather or terrain which target those type of tags would be recognized by this unit. Naturally this would be an insane creation and most of the community would probably not want such a unit, but the point is it provides unlimited creativity.
Ideally it should be possible to create new tags as well. Thus if someone wanted to create an elven race only the tag has to be created which would then allow spells, weather, terrain, and items to provide bonuses or disadvantages to the elves.
Not so much a template as being more of a tag... perhaps some tags can provide a few default features, but nothing should be set in stone as some map maker may wish to create a type of undead which can be harmed by poison and we shouldn't prevent his creativity.
In such a case you could split up the undead tag into two. The first tag would have to do with the unit being undead. The second tag would add all of the usual undead immunities. If you wanted to make an undead unit that was harmed by poison, you could leave out the undead immunity tag and only add the immunities that you want.
Well, my point was I didn't think that Elemental:WoM was moving in a direction where such tags would be good to have. I feel like it takes away from what has been mentioned in the developer journals about unit creation. Creating catigories limits the number of ways you create units, even if you get to make more catigories. Then you just have a throng of catigories with the same kind of limitation.
I don't think undead and deamons should all be effected by holy spells. I think if anything, holy spells should effect all evil beings, letting good undead be unharmed. (see "Oak" from the game Demigod for an existing example of holy undead.)
I wouldn't mind allignment, in fact that might be a great way of handling a lot of good vs. evil situations without creating limiting labels.
The Ebberon setting for DnD has the concept of "holy" undead. That is undead animated by positive energy as opposed to negative energy. However if we go with the "Life" Life-and-or-Death system of magic from Elemental things get a bit muddled. Reanimating a corpse is putting life where it does not belong, thus death magic. Ressurecting that same corpse into its original alive state is still death magic.
There would be no way to shoot things with laser beams composed of concentrated "good" or "evil" energy.
It's not a category or even permanent template... it's a tag. Think of it as a unit wearing a red rose which then allows spells, items, terrain and weather to either harm or benefit the unit wearing a red rose. If desired the red rose can be removed or a blue and white rose could be added. This is in no way a limitation of any kind.
Without tags no one could create a spell which harms a specific type of unit such as the undead. This would cause the game to have limitations which may not exist within a future TBS game from another company. I believe the game Elemental:WoM should be created with the maximum amount of custom creativity and tags would help.
I agree a second set of tags should exist such as good, neutral and evil which will allow for good undead to be immune from a spell created such as holy light. This would allow the ability to create a race of good undead, evil insects, neutral angels, etc., etc., etc., .
That could get complicated fast, though. For example, if there's a spell that only affects undead units, I guess it would affect good and evil undead? And if you want a spell to only affect on or the other, you'd have to add a second limitation. And what about a spell that only affects spiders - would it affect undead spiders, or only living spiders? It could quickly lead to a very unfriendly and confusing mechanic...
I disagree. Simple AND /OR logic would keep it simple.
Holy LightTargets: UndeadImmune: Good
The Holy Light spell would then Target all Undead units that were not also tagged 'Good'.
If you added Help / Harm sections to spells you could have;<Spell Name="Holy Light"> <Help> <Target>Good</Target> <Effect> <Healing>([Spell_Power]*2)+10</Healing> </Effect> </Help> <Harm> <Target>Undead</Target> <Immune>Good</Immune> <Effect> <Dammage>([Spell_Power]*2)+10</Dammage> </Effect> </Harm></Spell>Now you have a spell you could cast on 'Undead' OR 'Good' Tagged units for different effects.
Sammual
Thanks Sammual that's a great spell example and hopefully we'll be able to create spells which can have multiple effects/uses.
Whether its from any of the fantasy TBS games such as the Heroes series or Age_of_Wonders series or even the Dominions series... they all use tags. The two sets of tags mentioned provide the greatest room for creativity with the least amount of complication.
This tags & spells talk is just the umpty-Nth thing to come up that makes me want *basic metaphysics info now*. Not only do we have no idea about the possible details of custom spell design, we have had no real info yet on whether/what the base game will include by way of 'alignment' mechanics.
We also seem to have no good idea of just how far from the base game user-made content will be able to go. If the base game has some Good and Evil stuff, but no Law or Chaos, could we add 'tags' (OOP parent-child relationships?) for Law and Chaos to custom content?
The impression I got is only four types of units:
Human, fallen, beasts, dragons. Maybe a construct as a fifth class for undead and magical constructs like golems and elementals.
One question is how many classes will the heroes have? Hopefully it's like AoW2 in that regard- I liked the hero system in that.
I got the impression that dragons are going to be beasts. But more importantly it'd really suck of we were limited to 3 or 4 types of units in a world of magic.
I was under the impression that dragons were going to be super rare and hard to get, and NOT beasts. Somewhere frogboy said something about how sentient fantastic creatures like dragons were going to really feel special in this game.
Yes, the default game should have dragons as very rare. It should still be possible for a map maker to create a custom map where a channeller who's a father of wyverns could battle another channeller who's a father of dragons.
I really hope we're not limited to only 4 types of units in a world of magic... and if that is true then I PRAY we have the option to add new types of units as well as modify existing ones.
Yeah, thats already been confirmed. We will be able to create entirely new units
Well I know we can create new units, but can we create new unit tags... I should have been more specific. For example let's say the default game only has a Giant Spider and a Mutated Scorpion as insects which fall into the Beast unit tag. I pray we can create a new unit tag called Insects where those two can be moved and where I could also add other types of insects.
I don't think these 'tags' are going to exist. I imagine if they don't then will be messy with a bunch of tags I'd imagine. Stardock really sounds to me like they don't want such labels.
I'm pretty sure that if we are going to want something like, say weakness to holy spells, we are going to make an atribute 'weak to holy spells'. And if we are going to want to make a Cuforg'nub spell that only hurts snork'nol creatures, then we'll have to make an atribute 'can be effected by the Cuforg'nub type spell' for your snork'nol creatures. For balance purposes, you wouldn't want spells to be too terribly specific or else they'd be useless.
As I wrote earlier... it would be the easiest way to create spells, items, terrain, etc, which provide benefits and disadvantages to units. Sammual provided a perfect example, simple to understand, which has two uses and one exclusion.
Based on your example a general spell which works on all units except the undead would require someone to add the attribute to all existing creatures except the undead which might be a couple hundred or more units. And what if I wanted to create 30 unique buff spells specific for my new race of 50 units... I'm suppose to go into all 50 units and give each one all 30 attributes? That's significantly more time consuming.
Another benefit of having a tag is that it can include a default template which can speed the process of creating a new race such as elves, gnomes or undead if the tag does not already exist.
I don't see how sentient fantastic creatures like dragons being super rare and beasts are mutually exclusive? Although I think I just found evidence that you're probably right, at least when it comes to dragons. If you go to the media page and look at artwork, the last three images are titled: "Creatures - Beasts - Quadrupeds", "Creatures - Beasts - Arachnids", and "Creatures - Dragons". That convinces me that at least at the time that artwork was made, Dragons were not considered 'beasts'.
Yeah I'm starting to agree with you. Tags do seem like they'd be the cleanest way to handle customization - as long as we can create our own.
Somewhere frogboy said they probebly wouldn't have dragons as mounts just because they were special or smart or something like that. I'll see if I can pull up the post. it was back last november though, so maybe things will change since it was a while ago.
I surely hope Brad sticks to his guns here. I would *very much* prefer to see dragons being closer to a 'force of nature' than something you'd dress up for a parade. Melnibonean dragons might be a barely-tolerable compromise, but I'd expect anyone claiming the right to ride them to be wielding something like Stormbringer.
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