According to Brad's podcast from a while back, Elemental is going to have two tech trees: one for magic, and one for "conventional" technology like forges, siege engines, mining, etc. The question is, what technology should be on the conventional tree: at what period in technological development should the tree start, and at what peroid should it stop? I for one do NOT want to have my empire building power grids and racing with the Fallen to split the atom, but then again, I don't want to have one of the end-game techs be "The Wheel" either.
A good tech tree scope for me would be starting somewhat before the Dark Ages, developing animal husbandry, agriculture, and stonework (this ignores the Romans' advances, of course), then later getting to metallurgy, catepults, medicine, and basic machines like the crossbow. The tech tree should then stop at some point shortly before the Industrial Revolution, probably right when more potent agriculture was developed. May want to skip the heliocentric view of the solar system, hoewever.
Thoughts?
M.A.D. in a fantasy world. Fantastic.Like a fantasy arms race.
Well, it depends on who defines "superior". Since it was the nasty godly types who made the Fallen, "superior" could easily mean "big, muscular, obeys orders, does not think for itself too much" or "pretty pathetic on their own, but breeds like bunny-rabbits, so they're expendable" and there is also the good old "superior in (nearly) every way, there's just fewer of them because they constantly keep killing eachother on account of being violently competitive".
Also, a couple of good plagues and/or mass undead uprising spells would do nicely in the Evil Life Channeling department of the magical MAD.
But, there's the problem of how to make the MAD mutual. Plain old AD may be fun, but it makes for a VERY short game...... maybe have something similar to the real nuke, where you start out only able to cast one or two of them at a time at first, tyhen as the spell grows in popularity it becomes easier......
To prevent derailing this thread, I'm probably going to move the MMAD discussion into another post pretty soon.
I would like to see from the classical ere to medieval times [ersonally
I think it would be cool if the things way at the end of the tech tree require both the tech and magic. So, for example, lets say that the city-destroying superweapon is a gaint (really really giant, how else will it be able to hit far off cities?) trebuchet. It hurls a projectile infused with a huge amount of magic. So you have to research the giant trebuchet, but you have to use magic to make it a true superweapon.
And maybe, depending on what the time-period is, if air-ships and/or trains (or something similar) get included, those could require a bit of magic as well. Magic to make the air-ship fly, but a steam engine to actually make it go forward?
I also think that some of the more bizarre inventions from history could maybe be included. Maybe Archemidies' death ray, which supposedly used a lot of mirrors to focus the sun to the point where it could ignite ships.
Just my $0.02
It's a fantasy game, so the developers can imagine whatever they feel like imagining. We assume that technology and science should always evolve as they have evolved for us. But if we were to reason theoretically then we cannot compare the way it has evolved for us with a different way it could have evolved because we only know our way. So we cannot compare it because we have nothing else to compare it with. If something had gone differently in this evolution (or if you would take an entirely different philosophical view of everything) maybe our technology would have advanced differently. Therefore, I don't think necessarily that we should use for the game the way our technology advanced. But enough theoretical drivvel.
You all have good ideas.
Edit: A thought I wanted to add quickly: because it is fantasy you could take from which period you like, and then create something unique.
i hope the tech tree is even more indepth than it was for GalCiv2 , which was had a very big tech tree.
Bigger is genearlly better. I always hated "running out" of research.... even though it was a harbinger of impending victory!
running out of research in MoM always meant to me it was time pull the research slider to min and lock it.
I like civilization's "future tech" idea, where there is just a generic tech at the end that can be researched over and over again with stacking bonuses. In this I'd imagine it to be something like "future war tech" "future channeling tech" and "future economy tech" giving bonuses to weapons/damage, mana usage/perturn, and money production respectivly.
Yeah, that would be nice. Of course, there is something to be said for rewarding someone for beating the whole thing by not requiring them to spen any more resources on research in order to stay tech-competitive...
From this dev post:
The technology in Elemental is largely the same for each faction with a handful of distinctive early game features that enable special buildings and units per faction.
There are roughly 20 different technologies. This seems low because of the way (far more fun IMO) technologies are implemented. Instead of there being "Advanced Swordsmanship" or something players instead choose a more generalized tech and the more they research into it, the better that stat gets. Spell books are where the more literary interesting stuff comes in.
To me that sounds like they intend for all technologies to be like Civ IV's Future Tech. You can research any of the techs for however long you want and it'll constantly improve whatever you're researching, forever. I personally love this idea, even though it means tech bonuses need to be fairly generic. I'm still hoping that we get more than 20 techs plus a few, though.
nice find pigeonpigeon!
Fascinating. Wonder if there will be prereqs and unlockable techs?
I'm going to comment on everyting that's been posted in this thread.
The one thing that is required for something to be steampunk, and why WoW isn't steampunk even with steam gear is that Steampunk requires a Victorian setting. Jules Verne Novels are the referrence here, and epitomize what we now call steam-punk. Just think Victorian Era Science Fiction. And more recently, victorian era sci-fi/fantasy.
*Magical atom splitting*
in MoM this would equate to the spell of mastery.... The literal "I win" spell ..
I imagine that elemental will have a victory condition reached through magical mastery. This will have te same effect.
umm... what else was discussed?
Roads! just one type of road,please. Unless I can research a spell that simply upgrades all the roads in my lands into rainbow highways! *So I can knock princesspeach off from it*
Imagine a bear cavalry marching across a rainbow road. I would run in fearz.
Technologies, no guns but yes to lightsabers!
I like it when it's pure fantasy.
When I get an army of rifflemen in front of me it's a big turn off. I like the idea of starting off in the dark ages and moving up. If the entire world as been destroyed then it's normal to expect that agriculture as been lost. Some few humans might remember how to do it but most of the tools are land is gone.
As far back as it can star and move it along up to just before modern techs. Lets not go there. If we do we are bound to have big problems
Channeler: get the army together now!
General: sorry they are on strike, they feel they don't have enough wii time. Oh and they want 2 weeks more vacation.
Channeller: Cast end of world spell... Here we go again!
Same here.
Now, while true lightsabers are, of course, not going to happen, "light sowrds" might be a good idea on the magic end.
I don't know why, but it seems that some of you guys are obsessed with the thought of labelling the E:WoM fantasy as something we already know, ie. norse, greek, japanese mytholgy. Stardock has the oppportunity to do exactly what they like with their fantasy setting, and the way I see it, there's really nothing that stops them from doing just that.
IMO: screw the real world historical technological developments. E:WoM has a completely different outset. IT HAS MAGIC! Why would the people ever need to invent gunpowder when their leaders can command meteors from the heavens with their voice, alter the tides with a thought or summon earthquakes with a flick of their wrist? But then again, why would such a people ever bother doing anything? Beats me...
That stance however would make for a rather boring 4X game, so ON TOPIC: What technology span I really would like to see was something that started simple: hunter/gatherer society, moving on to basic agriculture, animal husbandry, metallurgy, mechanical machines. I agree with the people saying that gunpowder should be left out, and in reality I think that it's quite possible for the world to *not* have invented gunpowder, seeing as it quite possibly started out as an accident anyway. Techs that supported the channelers innate powers would be cool. Something in the ways of magically powered mills, magical item creating (staffs, rods, orbs etc. that could possibly be given to weaker channlers, imbueing them with more power), automatons imbued with magical life (e.g. golems)
On the topic of roads: I think that both dirt roads and cobbled roads should be available at all times. I don't think it's that much of a leap that it warrents it's own tech upgrade. It's been used all over the world, but the building of roads (both dirt and *especially* cobbled) requires VAST amounts of workpower.
Also: the Spell of Mastery would be the equivalent of dropping a billion nukes on top of the enemy, but with the positive side effect that instead of annihilating the planet, you win.
I would never compare the spell of mastery to 'nukes' as I always imagined it to opperate in a very different way. Total control of magic. At that point resistance would serve no purpose. It wouldn't be like dropping a nuke. It would be like snapping your fingers and armies would suddenly no longer exist.
...isn't that pretty much what happens when you nuke them?
I think gunpowder wouldn't really be all that bad a technology.
Look at Warhammer Fantasy Battle. They have musketeer units. They were powerful short range units but gets ass whupped in melee.
And as pointed out, we are talking about a magical world. Conventional technological paths would definitely be a lot different than what we are familiar with.
Example, flight may be something that would already be easily available with magical skyships or giant aerial mounts like dragons or giant eagles. This would push advancement in technological areas which would not have happened in a normal world.
That sounds suspiciously like a Fallout-like TBS in concept (well, the post-apocalyptic theme, at least). Which, come to think of it, could actually be a very cool thing. Start out emerging from the vault. Your people have retained a fair amount of "maintenance" technology knowledge, but much of the science has been lost, and you must either re-research it or rediscover it in order to be able to create technology again. The map would have good reason to be rife with both hazards and troves of forgotten knowledge that survived the fall - and the extreme scarcity of resources would be a great motivator of actions. Might lend itself really well to being done as a mod...
From one of the newer screenshots there seems to be more then two tech tree's, you start with civilization and magic techs and there's 3 other branches that open up later. Civilization tech is likely to deal with paved roads, crop rotations, forestation, mining techniques etc. What I hope the magic tree will have is stuff like transmutation for making a copper mine gold or vice versa, you could magicly engineer your human settlements into sub-human hybrids and construct seperate housing for them, they'd be ideal for fighting and mining but not for anything that requires a brain to do (like advanced farming). Other then that its likely to have enchantment of items, boots of walking for your scouts, hoes of destruction for your farmers and a shovel of greater digging for your worker?
If any of that is not in the game I'll probably try and mod it in, thats why I like Stardock games, they're snazzy and great on their own but they let you do anything you want with it which is just golden for the creative playerbase.
I think they're called "Fallen".
But seriously, magically re-engineering your population is something I'd expect to be be exclusive to evil/Fallen channelers. Well, apart from things like the Fountain of Life from MoM, which'd be an indirect way for good channelers to boost population strength. (ie. faster population growth due to longer lives/no diseases and higer productivity due to happy people)
Here is the journal I saw it, if you move down a bit there's a screenshot and he talks about different paths opening up as you progress.
https://forums.elementalgame.com/361047
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