One of the things we really want to drive home in Elemental that we think will make it stand out is that a well equipped army is a big deal.
The Roman armies dominates much of Europe not because Romans were inherently better warriors but because they were well trained and well equipped.
Contemporary fiction tends to trivialize the significance of a non-industrialized society being able to train and equip 10,000 men with swords, plate mail, steel helmets, leather boots, etc. But in reality, being able to do that is an incredible achievement.
In Elemental, your first turns will not be about designing and producing fully armored troops. On the contrary, when you see mounted units equipped with plate mail and swords we want it to give the same feeling as when you see the Mongols in Civilization show up with tanks on your island. It’s a big deal.
Because people in Elemental are a resource, it creates a lot of interesting choices on the type of civilization you want to build. You can, for instance, focus on having mass armies of poorly trained and poorly equipped peasants. These hordes might be able to conquer the world or they might meet a civilization that has a much smaller force but one that is exquisitely trained and equipped. That battle, which players can optionally fight in full tactical detail, should be breathtaking.
And of course, what I jut describe doesn’t even touch on the fact that we are talking about a world with magical items and beasts of almost unimaginable might. As I’ve mentioned previously, someone gets ahold a dragon (and by a dragon I mean 1) that is a huge deal. Nobody is going to be running around with a “throng” of dragons.
If you’ve ever read Tolkien’s Silmarillion you get an idea of just how mighty some of the beings in Elemental will be. For those into that kind of thing, if you’ve ever wanted to know one of the inspirations for the Arnor and Dread Lords you can think of them as Maiar.
There are things lurking in the world of Elemental that are just breathtakingly powerful and rare. And rare, I mean that you may only encounter or hear of one maybe after months of playing the game. We’ll talk about that more later though.
The point being, the armies of Elemental are truly going to be yours. You will have ultimate control over what kind of army you want to have. We’re very excited.
With that in mind, model economy #1 makes a lot more sense.
I can't wait to run into super-powered monsters.
Love this idea!
An army should need a hero/commander to fight better. That makes more usefull traits possible for the heroes. Traits making their troops fight better, the army to march further, or the logistics more efficient.
One of the things i didnt like with the TotalWar games (pre Empire;TW) was the lack of enough commanders for your armies. Can't understand why that model should be attractive.....
And one more thing, this game will be far better then Total War anyways.... at least for a real strategist.
The easiest way to go about creating a super soldier in elemental would be to add a few elements to what Climber is suggesting.
1. Allow the Player to Increase base stats HP, Armor, Attack, and Movement a variety of ways. Also, include a system of checks and balances where you can’t just set a spearman’s training to 100 turns and get a guy with 100 HP.
2. Allow similar control over equipment creation with a similar system of checks and balances.
3. Have a diminishing return for player created unit strength AKA it costs more and more to get just a little better unit.
4. Allow the player to give such a super soldier engineered weakness. This would have two affects it could let the player further enhance an area of the soldier and make sure the soldier wasn’t almost invincible.
Well, heroes (or champions as they're called in Elemental) are supposed to require an investment of essence from your channeler, and thus how many to use and how powerful to make them is supposed to be a very meaningful decision - in most games there's almost no reason to not get a hero. They are usually not that expensive and don't require much upkeep, but in Elemental they will draw from what's supposed to be the most precious resource of all, one that's required for creating new settlements, casting powerful spells, creating strong heroes, and empowering the channeler him/herself. So if armies require champions to lead them, you will essentially be forced to invest quite heavily in heroes unless you want to forego military...
I don't mind requiring some sort of general for each army, so long as those generals don't have to be heroes.
Also, what if you have two heroes, or generals, in an army? Can you expand army size like that?
Awesome. I love the idea of being able to raise cheap malitas from the peasent.
"Right lads, your all now parts of the imfamous wall fodder company. Lead by Captain Suicide himself !"
And I like the idea of a double paying for your army, i.e the upkeep and the my farmer not farming anymore.
Perhaps rather than having only heroes leading the armies you could have "non-essence enhanced" members of the arstocacy.
I also am very pleased with the idea of limiting the "magical horde of doom". And i also really like the idea of having caps decided by leadership. Where each soilder is worth a differnt amount towards this caps. Perhaps multiple caps could be used to determine army size, to prevent the age of wonder spam. So you could have cap of 1000 points for your elite super trained warriors, a cap of 100 for your magical thingies, 50,000 for your junk units. These numbers could be altered by the Leadership skill of the General and "what your eccomoy can afford". Perahps the magic stuff could be determind by your channelers one of your channelers skills.
Anyway really excited about this game.
In other systems to avoid big armies what they do is that certain units (commanders, flag bearers,...) give you "activation" points. You have to spend "activation" points to be able to give orders to a unit, so you can have a huge army with a single commander, but then you are going to be using each turn a very small part of your huge army, or you can have a smaller army with several commanders so you can use everyone in a more effective way.
This also makes important to try to take down commanders and other units that give "activation" points to make the enemy army fall in disarray.
Sounds very ambitious, giving a lot of freedom to tailor-make your own armies. But I would plea (personal preference) for not focussing only on the ultra-realistic equipment of your troops, with magic and other creative elements just as as a rare add-on.
There is certainly pleasure in upgrading from leather armour to chain-mail, but I must say it's more exciting to upgrade an 'Initiated ranger' to a 'Forestmaster' with power over animals and the ability to move invisibly through any forest on the map. Or upgrading a 'Champion' to a 'Blessed Paladin' turning the undead and healing his comrades. Just to give two examples of the type of troops/units I sure would like to see in this fantasy game. If there are no standard troops/units like that, ok, but I think it would be really cool and even elemental to be able to make such kind of units.
I was just playing the CIV IV MOD Fall from Heaven II and must say it is not bad in the genre. It's also an example that you can keep all the depth of the classic CIV and still use armies of undead, elves, monsters, spellcasting priests and wizards. It seems Elemental is becoming more and more focussed on historical realism (with an ultrapowerful dragon thown in every other game) and as I understand we will get only human footsoldiers, very few magic users (or only the chaneller?). Keeping this in mind I think it would be good if creating your own armies is about more than copper versus steel, (horse)mounted versus footsoldier, peasant forkbearer versus swordsman, etc. With a really creative approach you could make unique units fitting for your fantasy Empire instead of fitting for the history book.
I really don't think magic will be that rare but I rather like the idea of everything else being rare. My interpretation of magic users so far is that there may be other magic users in the world besides the Channelers but they wouldn't be able to control magic to the same extent. As for the spamfest of magic creatures I don't think I will miss that at all.
Will these super rare entities be even more powerful than dragons? Here's hoping for a "Giant Enemy Crab". (Crab Battle)
Of course you can. But they are soldiers now, so they have to undergo some rigorous peasant training first
Yeah I'm hoping for the same. If only the channeler can use magic, and if fantastical creatures are only rarely encountered (in player v player combat, anyways), the game will feel a little less fantastical to me. So I want magic itself to be common and very noticeable, but I'm very happy with the decision for magical creatures to be rare but accordingly powerful - I think that's a great idea and will result in magical creatures having a larger impact than normal. In most fantasy games magical beings are so common that not even the most powerful of them give you that 'oh shit' factor. Whereas it seems like in Elemental, even the relatively minor magical beings will make a very big splash.
I would love it if armies "behaved" differently in tactical combat based on thier training level! Your peasant hordes that you handed a stick would mill around in a disorganized mob, your +2 Pikemen with elite training march in perfect precision! Wouldnt that be a hoot!?
It would indeed. It would be even better if they had a good morale system to go with it and the untrained mob shit themselves and ran on seeing a dragon.
Hm, I may have a solution to the stack of doom problem.
If numerous soldiers are in a stack, or in a certain range of one another, give them movement penalties. The more soldiers in the stack, the more penalties. I suppose this would simulate diseases that slow down the army as a result of a high density of bodies, or the destruction of the ground as a consequence of many more hooves and boots.
This makes it difficult or impossible for them to run down smaller stacks, and forces the army to divide in the event that they are up against a foe that won't stand to fight them in one epic battle. What's more (to prevent armies from going in and out of a stack to regain original movement speed), soldiers keep movement penalties for any stack that they were in during the round that they separated, and you can only separate at the beginning of the round.
I love how this game is developing. It should be hard to make an army of trained warriors. It makes sense in a devastated world. Getting trained personnel should take a very long time and cost a lot of money and resources. Meaning peasant armies should be the norm at least in regular games. Big peasant armies with a few horse knights and a few experts warriors makes sense to me. Boy the more I hear the more I want this game.
@Wintersong: When everybody was discussing Economics people were saying I hope we will not have only an economic system and that battle will also get attention. It seems to be Stardock is working on all aspect on this game in depth. So I would not worry this will really be a cool game.
About the stack of death. Each part of your army is still human so whether you have 1000 knights of 10000 peasants they are all humans. So casting a lightning spell on them, would make all units just as vulnerable. Therefore I would prefer to have 10000 peasants rather than the 1000 because once that spell hits that 1000 might be gone but I would still have 9000 peasants. That could be one way to deal with killer stacks.
@DarkOdinPLus: I agree with you when you say you will not miss the spamming of magic creatures. Most fantasy games, humans are the rare creatures. Now it will be the other way around. I swear this is very refreshing IMO. I like that aspect of this game greatly.
Magic and magicians. I hope to see some and I do think there are some already planned. In the dev forum Frogboy was talking about changing crystal in to potion to make + swords. I think only alchemist and magicians would be able to do that. I do want to see magic other than the channeler in game I think it’s a must. But it as to be weak compared to the channeler. I want the chaneller to be the most powerful and by far Character out there.
Maybe a game setting such as "Magic Frequency" would be helpful. I generally like having lots and lots of things to play with, but having a bit of "oh no!" when a Troll or Hedge Wizard shows up could be interesting.
I need new pants after this post, its epic and full of win.
While I'm interested by the possibility of finding a dragon's egg, or whatever the mechanic turns out to be, I'm much more interested in seeing how all the bits and pieces of system fit together. Brad is giving us many of the bits but I haven't seen enough yet to get a good picture of how things will work together.
I'm semi-patiently waiting for the beta.
I think this is going the wrong way, though hints at it. Darkodinplus hit the nail on the head with logistics. Doom stacks should be damn expensive to maintain or supply or both. You can't just park 100,000 men in field near a village and keep them fed. They need supplies.
However, you could park 1000 heavily armored knights, but the time and money it takes to create them should be problematic.
I think if the system is going to model huge armies then it's going to need to model supply in some fashion. Perhaps each army has a radius of land it can scavenge from and land has a set scavenge value (modified by land type most likely). If you want to field an army larger than that land can supply then you'll need to bring a baggage train with supplies. Those should be slow, maybe expensive.
Anyway, I think the solution to the doom stack is to abstractly simulate the problems large real life armies have. Cost and supply.
I expect more than usual from this game. Not asking for impossibles, I never do, but more this game really pushing the usual limits of a TBS. I'd really love if Stardock could manage to produce a complex (but fun, because complex isn't always difficult and/or boring) game in all its areas. It would be wonderful to have an organic game where every part is truly important and you just cannot ignore any (which wouldn't prevent multiple ways of victory and even different ways to achieve each of those).
But it's soon, just alpha, and there is still a long way ahead. And considering all these wonderful people sharing ideas (just stop some of those flames...) and Stardock's usual dedication, I'm optimistic. But get ready for the worst and hope for the best... A pity that the only area where I could "shine" is somehow banned: the story.
And before I forget about it... Fantasy doesn't mean that under every stone of the plane you must find a thousand dragons, two hundred unicorns and a pixie. Just means presence of magic, mythical creatures... Some settings are just much more magical than others and even in different magnitude.
I don't really understand what you mean about "banned," but maybe that's because right up until I just read that line, I was thinking something fuzzy about Elemental having the opportunity to build a game where great battles between huge forces were more often than not going to be the first and last such 'time' in a given game.
Basically, if the devs can somehow embed some mechanics that reflect the narrative framework of LotR or most individual novels in the Wheel of Time, the very presence of those 'stacks of doom' will mean that the game is almost over. No mop-up phases, possibly excepting something like Scouring the Shire as a sort of playable victory cutscene. If they could actually do that via the engine, it would be both an awesome marke differentiator and a way to get more of us role-player/peacemonger types on the bandwagon--plenty of us are good for a single great war, but easily bored with large-scale war as a way of life.
Magic should bring pain to huge stacks too as well as siege weapons. Also hopefully balanced armies will be required so that you can't spam. Also smaller armies should be able to dodge the larger more ponderous one and mravage the homeland's economy
Stacks of doom are also a signal to another problem: there are not enough things to fight for. If the map is lineal enough (that happens a lot in HoMM) or without interesting things to hit, then the stack of doom appears and it's a clear winner.
But if you provide a lot of targets of opportunity (farms, caravans,...), then players will be forced to make several smaller armies to patrol their borders, raid the enemy territory,... It has to be balanced so it doesn't become a micromanagement nightmare, but it can help to avoid the stack of doom problem.
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