I agree with Tormy on being concerned about the combat system being too simple. Having only ATT/DEF/LIFE/SPEED makes it extremely difficult creating many of the fantasy creatures. I've mentioned this topic previously, but revisiting the most important attributes which are missing from Elemental. If we were dealing with only boats, siege weapons and single skilled humans... aka the original CIV_4, then those 4 attributes would be okay. Each of the examples below explain why a specific attribute is needed.
EXAMPLE A} If someone wanted to create a mind flayer this creature attacks primarily with its mind, thus units with low intelligence such as giant ants would die easily while a wizard would be more difficult and a catapult would be immune because it has no mind. In this one example it would not be possible to create a mind flayer accurately in Elemental because a wizard would have less defense than a well armored barbarian. Here is just one example why the intelligence attribute is important... others can be provided.
EXAMPLE B} Also consider the fantasy creatures/beings which can corrupt enemy units/beings using one of the well known seven sins, yet there's no attribute which can be linked for these ethical decisions/attacks. I would not suggest linking corruption attacks to intelligence since we all know lawyers, high rank government officials, doctors, etc., etc., can also easily be tempted by seduction, bribery, domestic violence, etc., . So a seduction attempt from a succubus may work on a wizard, but fail miserably on a paladin... unfortunately this does not seem possible for Elemental unless more attributes are included. Here is just one example why the wisdom attribute is important... others can be provided.
EXAMPLE C} Let's now examine a battlefield which has a group of archers and some swordsmen fighting a few giant spiders(size_of_a_human) and one enormous giant spider(size_of_a_house). All spiders are equally skilled. The group of archers would naturally find it easier to aim at the larger target... whether or not the arrows penetrate is a different story. The size of a unit should also be the most important variable for determining the life of a creature/being this is best explained by taking any unit then having the unit paralyzed 4 turns where it cannot defend itself... naturally the spider the size of a house probably won't be killed by two swings of a sword, but the human sized spiders would be killed. Here is just one example why the size attribute would be important along with its link to hitpoints/life... others can be provided
EXAMPLE D} Currently it seems the attack attribute will be used for both archer types and melee types. However this creates a problem for units which are skilled in both weapons... naturally a unit which has spent his entire life fighting with the sword should not be able to be trained inside a town using a bow and then have a lifetime worth of archery skill. The aiming of a missile weapon is completely different from the skills of a sword and each should have their own attribute. Here is just one reason why the precision or accuracy attribute is important... others can be provided.
I recall reading from the developer journals how it would be interesting if the game could be modded to the point of providing an RPG. I cannot remember the last RPG which had only 4 attributes.
Well, I think all magic users will have an "essence" stat which allows for the amount of mana it has. The Channeler/Sovereign will be the only one which can distill node essence into his own, and increase essence upon level up, but he can spend essence in order to attach it to certain heroes.
In your mentioning of a Mind-Flayer, it could use essence and turn it into an intelligence stat (for mods) or simply have the mind-flayer decrease the mana of a character, and once mana hits 0 (or for most units which have no mana) that creature will die. Sounds like a very scary creature, and another reason for Rare Magical creatures to have large banks of essence/mana.
as far as extra-planar temptations/demons, as usual most units would be completely vulnerable (although I would like for levelled and high-morale units to be quite resistant) ... you could display immunity, Resistance, and Bonus relations via Religion tags. Where Religion A is immune the abilities of Religion B, while B has bonuses vs Religion C, and Religion C has bonuses vs everyone. And Religion D is relatively weak against other religions but is good at breaking morale and insta-killing normal units most effectively. Meanwhile, Relgion C's main rival is Religion A, and Religion C wants to wipe out Religion A. Meanwhile Religion B is the only one in a position to take out Religion C, although would like to wait until C has completely wiped out B, although any increase in mundane power for religion C is bad for religion B, even though B still has the Divine advantage.
Meanwhile, Religion D would want all the other religions to wipe each other out in their own holy wars, as all divine units of religion D could be easily killed by the other religions, although Religion D excells against most other units, so its best used against Massive regular armies ... they want an absence of religion in order for their religion to shine.
There are all sorts of possibilities for the theme of each religion, but the anti-parallel game-mechanic is very dynamic and interesting.
If I was going to assign any "themes" to these religions, I would have Religion C being the all-powerful religion of the Fire-god, while Religion B was the Water-tribe, the only one capable of freezing the flames of the Pyromancers. Meanwhile, Air is practically immune to the effects of water, so could steamroll the water-tribe, but could obviously be burnt by Fire if they went through with their extermination of Water. So Fire would want Air to wipe out Water, and Water would want Fire to wipe out air, meanwhile Earth/Nature would want all these destructive forces to wipe each other out, being Camp D, weak to the other elements, and if the other religions largely wipe each other out, Earth religion will be in a good position to take over the world, or at least convert the rest of the civilized peoples in order to win a religious victory, as its the rationale decision to make in the face of other-wise destruction from the now superior religion.
Equally so, if Religion C went ahead and wiped out Air, Religion B would want to ask Religion D's aid (in the form of regular troops) vs Religion C, for even though Water will beat Fire, Fire now has too much land and troops to be opposed in locations where there are no priests fielded. However, if B and D were to then Wipe out C ... then B would most likely have the advantage. I mean ... whomever has the biggest armies will ultimately be the most powerful, but as far as magical/Divine abilities, its better to have the potential for an absolute advantage than to rather simply happen to have the largest army. AKA people will always want to have a natural advantage, therefore there is more conflict between religions rather than simply to gain the most land ... its also important which religion is going to benefit the most from this war, and an interesting decision of which side to be on ... and what will most likely be the next war once the current enemy is defeated.
The Religion mechanic, combined with the Call-to-Arms mechanic listed else-where, would provide a very interesting Diplomatic arena for the game ... not just as AI modifiers, but also providing a very real dynamic which can be used with Human players on a sophisticated level.
Some of your examples (the mind flayers, corruption), would involve highly specialized combat rules that would not come into play that often, but would require a bunch of extra things to keep track of in game, so I wouldn't want these in the original game at release. (For mods, this isn't an issue, although I am not sure how hard it would be to allow such modding, so do not have a strong opinion either way on that issue.)
I would say add Morale and Endurance (especially Morale) but otherwise I refer to my original statement, that any intelligence based attributes/abilities could be goverened by level of essence imo, and this system could enable easier modding to switch from essence to intelligence in an RPG system ... especially since essence governs your amount of mana (from what I hear)
Well these aren't highly specialized combat rules... the variables involved are few. Basically intelligence determines the mind attack and mind defense. Wisdom determines the defense against attacks of corruption... such as casting a beserking spell at enemy archers so they charge melee into battle out of rage.
Level of essence wouldn't work for intelligence because normal units would have zero the same as a giant spider from the wilderness. Humans are smarter than spiders. Intelligence is needed for both defending mind attacks as well as executing them.
Most units should not be completely vulnerable to corruption attacks because it should depend on the unit. Instead of adding a unique religion tag for each of the seven sins the management of corruption attacks would be more easily handled by merging the defense of these attacks into a single attribute such as wisdom. While it would be interesting for each corruption attack to have its own specific defense that would add too much detail into the unit.
Perhaps a static value, then, for intelligence? 0-10, with zero representing absolutely no intelligence (mindless golems, for example) while 10 would be superior intellect (dragons and the like). Traditionally, I don't see many soldiers having very high intelligence. They aren't stupid, but when you were a soldier back in the day, you didn't spend your days learning, but training.
A rough way of doing things...giant spider, a zero. Standard human, a five, and noble a six.. A spellcaster-type character, who would be very learned, 7. The sovereign, 8 to 10, depending on how far along in the game. Dragons, a 10.
Age of Wonders, I'll add, had a 'resistance' attribute to handle magical attacks, and a 'defense' attribute for physical attacks. I can see resistance being easy to implement, and if a unit was to have additional defenses, give them an ability relating to it.
And Age of Wonders Fire Dragon, for example, would have high Defense and Resistance, but would also have Fire Immunity or Fire Resistance. Add in a new type of damage - mental - and make such a defense an option. It makes sense, therefore, to have such methods...if I created a swordsman with fire-imbued armor, a fire-imbued sword, a fire-imbued shield, and a fire-imbued helm, the chances of him taking damage from a fireball are rather low. Being smacked with a blizzard, well, that likely would be more painful.
In the game as we've seen it so far, they would be, since very little combat is done with magical creatures, and an even smaller sections of those might use "anti intelligence" types of attacks. (The same goes for corruption.)
I think Willpower/discipline is a very appropriate attribute. Willpower, rather than intelligence, would determine a unit's defense against mind spells, and could also double as a modifier for morale (if we get morale...). After all, a unit with strong willpower would be less likely to turn and flee, cower in fear, or succumb to temptations (corruption) of any kind.
I see this as being totally separate from any attribute that would modify a unit's spell-casting abilities. I hadn't thought about that, though - what about spell-casters? How would the strength of their spells be determined? We would indeed need another trait for that... Unless of course only units that have been imbued with essence can cast spells at all, in which case essence could be a good determination of spell-casting ability.
So you are saying that, because magical creatures will be rare, the combat mechanics regarding them should be secondary?
The reason Stardock decided to make magical creatures rare is in large part to make most/every encounter with magical creatures an "oh shit" moment (obviously to different degrees, a Djinn might only be able to defeat hundreds of your troops while a Dragon might be able to take on thousands). But if the combat mechanics are only sophisticated enough to make fantastical creatures to have high ATT, DEF and HP/Strength/whatever it's going to be called, plus perhaps a special ability or two... They'll be much less cool. If all they can do is hit things, maybe breathe fire once in a while, maybe a Djinn can teleport or whatever... They'll just get old. That works in games like HoMM because nearly every unit is fantastical, but in a game where the fantastical is as rare as they are meant to be in Elemental, they should be appropriately differentiated in many very significant ways.
Not to mention even if magical creatures are rare, if they are the match of hundreds or thousands of regular units, then their effective use will not be much less than in a game with magical creatures all over the place. Maybe by late-game 1/5 of my battles will involve one (or more) magical creatures; if each one of those creatures is pitted against hundreds of troops each time then their rarity will be made up by their effectiveness. Just because something is rare does not mean it is secondary.
Oops, sorry for the double post. I didn't realize this was the same thread...
This is an area where I think it would be best to refer to "Master of Magic".
"Attack" is a perfectly fine solo stat, so long as there are "types". In MOM, there were a couple basic types of attack, and each unit got one (two if they were ranged). That way, if they dealt a magic/fire attack they were good against everything that didnt resist magic or fire. That adds complexity to the strategy without adding a whole ton of confusing micro to the combat system.
With careful balancing of how you access those specialty attacks, and how you get particular resists (physical, magic, etc.) you can create a very robust stragegy element.
I, for one, would hate to see the combat system go the way of GalCiv and have 3 types of attacks that each only work on an unprepared enemy, and 3 types of defense which are each borderline useless against the attack they are'nt designed to thwart. That is FAR too much work building an army in any game, and really wouldn't make any sense in this genre.
Intelligence is also important for spells such as illusions... if a warrior believes a swarm of wasps are buzzing around his head trying to crawl into his nose and ears then the soldier will probably fall helplessly to the ground dropping his sword and shield so he can cover his ears and nose with his hands. An illusion is a spell which does no harm and in fact powerless unless the enemy targets believe its real... thus using intelligence.
The size attribute can be especially valuable in the editor. Imagine being able to select any existing unit from the editor and then adjust it's current size and colors to create a new unit. No 3D software skills needed... anyone would be able to create a baby dragon, enormous spider, sprites/brownies, ankheg, etc., etc., . By selecting a size_1 the image is instantly shrunk to the smallest image size and by selecting size_10 the image is instantly expanded to the largest image size.
NTJedi, I share the same concern you’ve mentioned in OP. I intended to write something about it but your presentation in OP is top notched. You save me time. Thanks!
Whether it is called Intelligence, wisdom, Fire DEF, and or RESIST, I do not have much preference specifically. Any effort to debate on exactly which one (or two or three) should be used is futile. Different people will have a different preference. The point is there should be at least 1 attribute on resisting Magic attack, the rest depends on what SD wants
Frogboy’s extremely streamlined 4 attribute ATT/DEF/STRENGTH/SPEED has the following pros:
Cons:
*** Basically this Cons is what your OP has described. The solution is allow attaching different Tags (e.g. Religion as Tasunke mentioned at Reply#1) to units. SD can make many different kind of tag, be it immunity, Size, Cover%, Accuracy, or what not. However this Tagging system is not elegant because if certain attribute is used often enough, SD should have standardize the rules governing them AND present the Attribute as a standard stat.
If SD’s concern is displaying many 0 stat attribute (for 0% magic resistance for most buildable unit), it can still be easily resolved by displaying only non-0 attribute. Browsing thorough a long list of Tags, unit by unit is a bigger UI issue, imho.
Seconded! Morale is crucial!
Very good post NTJedi, as usual.
Without morale the combat system will be handicapped, but we've talked about this in many topics already.
Am not agaist adding more attributes,but most of your wishes can be resolved with abilities...
magic resistance,for example, could be ability with few available levels(basic - 25%,advanced - 50%,master - 75%,ultimate - 100%),same with inteligence(problem would be all human units need at last basic level here),elemental (fire,air...) resistence and everything else you wish.
Size could be determined by HP,1-10 small,10-25 normal, 25-50 huge and so on
I don't think size should be determined by HP. Maybe you could grant Base HP according to size for newly created monsters n such (like fusing creatures together to make lizadmen) ... but your strength/hp is going to increase upon training and level-up, (and perhaps morale increases on level-up too )
anyways, I agree size should be its own stat, although mostly hidden except for in things like the Fantasy Creature creator .. or that thing where you research magical mutations, and experiment with animals and/or your own population to come up with some interesting stuff. But limited of course, and creating a blue-print should cause some essence.
Willpower or intelligence will work for mind spells and mind attacks.
Since there's no magic path primarily associated with mind research the best method would be having mind attacks linked with intangible weapons the same as a fang weapon where it cannot be picked up after battle. This allows anyone the ability to create new mind weapons from the editor and specify the proper amount of damage. Units can be given the mind weapons from the editor. I estimate most mind attacks should have a very high precision/accuracy, but that's my opinion. Any spells thus only need to be linked to the associated mind weapon. Some of the very high level mind spells could be absorbing the map knowledge from a captured soldier revealing what he knows about the map.
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]-->If SD’s concern is displaying many 0 stat attribute (for 0% magic resistance for most buildable unit), it can still be easily resolved by displaying only non-0 attribute. Browsing thorough a long list of Tags, unit by unit is a bigger UI issue, imho.
Thanks Climber, the more attributes also means the developers and modders have more unique spells, traps, andd even events. For just spells alone there's the creation of spells which confuse enemy units on the battlefield via an attack on intelligence, or spells which lower the morale of all units, or a spell which increases precision/accuracy and fire resistance for rangers.
I think everyone including the developers would rather have attributes included now which can later be made useful as compared to having too few attributes and then adjusting lots of existing code and existing units for adding more attributes later via an expansion and/or sequel.
Each of these attributes can be used allowing nations to be more unique as well. One nation could have moderate fire resistance, low precision/accuracy, and specialize in corruption attacks. Another nation could have minor cold resistance, high wisdom/willpower, and specialize in mind attacks.
** I especially like your suggestion of displaying non zero attributes... if it's zero then don't show it.
During unit creation there's more flexibility in using percentages because sometimes negative percentages are needed or percentages above 100% are needed. For example a water elemental will take more damage from fire attacks then an earth elemental. The water elemental should have some negative resistance value so it takes more damage. One example is where a fire elemental needs more than 100% fire resistance because if a friendly or enemy spell lowers fire resistance the fire elemental shouldn't be allowed to set himself on fire or take damage from fire.
Yes, the size attribute is mainly to provide a recommended hitpoint range since 99% of beings the larger something is the higher the hitpoints/life. Naturally anyone in the editor could adjust the recommended hitpoint range. Training and experience should only provide a small amount of hitpoints/life because an untrained soldier will die just as easily as an elite soldier when both are paralyzed.
Thanks Tormy... I wish I had more time to devote for Elemental, but my career keeps me unpredictably busy... so I might vanish for weeks at a time. That almost sounds like I'm a professional assassin.
I would not add any new stats, but would instead add "traits," of which there could be a multitude. Traits would be present below the main stats on the unit card and each one would have a unique icon to identify it. Traits would work to modify main stats in specific ways under specific circumstances.
The thing is that intelligence, willpower,... aren't going to be commonly used at all. I agree with 4 (having 2 attack attributes, one for range and one for melee), but 1 and 2 are going to be pretty strange (or even missing at all) and 3 is nice but it's more headaches than it's worth and it can be abstracted more or less ok with defense and hit points.
I would like for heroes to have more stats or traits ... especially a dexterity to effect rate-of-attack and range of ranged weapons to a greater extent than normally possible.
Perhaps one type of hero works best with leather armor, and another is a tank/ is best in heavy armor.
Wrong... take a look at Dominions_3 and you'll see having many attributes is what provides such great game depth. Check the forums on Dominions_3 and you'll never see anyone complaining about the many attributes. Dominions_3 is one of the greatest fantasy TBS games and it still has a very active community.
As I mentioned earlier... I think everyone including the developers would rather have attributes included now which can later be made useful as compared to having too few attributes and then adjusting lots of existing code and existing units for adding more attributes later via an expansion and/or sequel.
Agreed... I requested the dexterity attribute within another thread titled The Attributes.
What's much more important, for me, is the lack of special abilities/skills! Screw INT, WIS, CHA, PENSIZ, whatever. If we create too many attributes, the balancing will be a horror, not to mention the hardships with selecting proper units. So here's my proposal:
Here we have basic 7 attributes (typical setting, but it works, and no one should be confused). For me, it's enough. Now, everything special you want to put, you set as a special skill. Here's a list of such abilities:
I listed only the most cliché ones. The diversity, that can be added (modded) this way to the game is infinite. You can precisely define how deep your game has to be. Basic attributes are just a simple representation.
Considering the developers have reported this game as being singleplayer focused a perfect balance for all nations isn't necessary and there's plenty of beta testing time so the game balance will be good enough. There's no hardships with selecting proper units in Dominions_3 which has even more attributes.
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