I think that their needs to be *Later on mind you, I'm not demanding it now.* Someform of engineering/construction unit with the ability to build towers and forts for defense lay down roads and of course build outside resource centers like small settlements ontop of resource sites.
Say for example i found fertile farm land outside of my citys reach but inside my land *inbetween cities along the road or something* I would like to be able to build a farm and a small village there/farming colony to farm that would only consume asmall amount of the food and send the rest along the way to my other settlements/cities as such the trade would encourage gold taxation as well therefore generating food and gold similar to a small settlement of course creating such a thing requires a small investment as well as guarding it etc.
Anyone else agree with this?
Yes.
Possibly a small tower with defensive attributes a la the old Warlords TBS series.
I think this is being addressed directly/indirectly through the post on roads and how they should be used/created etc.
Road Building…Your thoughts?
Only Indirectly because having Inns and toll roads etc. are nice but you also need towers forts etc. more expansion of the system to not just be cities but an true empire.
I agree totally... were would the mighty Empires of the British and the Romans be without their military engineers?
Also dont forget, along with their constructive capabilities are their DESTRUCTIVE skills. The presence of an engineer unit should hasten the fall of fortresses and cities.
I guess no one else is going to comment?
Sorry to Necro. I just got back from a short trip and noticed no other comments.
Weird it double posted sorry.
In other threads the devs have stated a desire to explicitly avoid a building unit. I think it's because of the late-game civ phenomena of building roads everywhere, junking up your pretty empire, and then just having them sit around. Personally, no having them seems a little odd to me for 3 reasons:
1. the building tasks are currently self-generating (i.e.roads): wierd. A simple path might auto-generate, but then why would you have to tell the city to make the raod and use resources?
2. it also seems limiting, as there is no ability to build anything outside of your city radius (currently fudged a bit with close resources). So no fortresses, outposts, or other empire-support infrastructure.
3. with the rpg-ish focus of Elemental, I would expect the worker(s) to have an identity
Personally I agree with you, builders are fun (early-game), useful, and some of the problems with them can be addressed. For example, continuing to require resources to build roads should reduce road spam. Adding an ongoing cost to road upkeep would also reduce road spam. Giving the builders a siege capability would be a great idea also, except it probably wouldn't fit in with the planned tactical battles.
Building roads and farms is pretty pointless, and pretty dull. (This is the maxim proposed in an earlier post: games are about making choices. If there is only a single choice, automate it: there's no point in makework that involves clicking the screen over and over to get past meaningless elements.)
However building anything else is meaningful and I'd say fun. Deciding on a strategic location for a fortresses, bridges, towers, walls, outposts and others are meaningful strategic choices and it would be nice to have the power to build some of those outside of our borders. Do we need builder units to do this? Not necessarily. We could do it in the Call to Power fashion, or a drag n' drop from the UI, or from within a special constructor device, etc. We could have any unit properly equiped capable of making fortifications so that we can have a legionaire capable of [s]laying roads[/s] building the hadrian wall.
Personally the last one is my favourite. Why shouldn't there be an option to give our soldiers a bag full of gear to chop forests or fortify the front line?
Yes well scout packages etc. are given to soldiers so why not construction tools?
And roads and fortresses bridges etc. cost maintence But the trade between towns and villages etc. generates commerce this means that you can build nice single roads to other places and to bridge etc. to resources but if you build them Everywhere it'd cost you too much to support?
Wouldn't that work?
And building farms and roads is important because if theres only one place where a magical herb or LOTS of fertile soil is located why wouldn't you build a small outpost to cultivate it and send it to the capital or trade it for money? It makes Sense.
And besides Rpgish *is that even a term?* actually supports construction as many of the best RPG's have it even in limited ways particularly AOW which allowed the building of ports farms and roads etc. and many modders tried to add more because people loved it implementing construction of additional infranstructure will allow the game to have even more depth and focus as well as allowing more construction and support of large armies and cities.
Also it will allow one to control more land and to truly build an kingdom because no kingdom is just outposts and cities...Its farms towns villages central markets fortresses etc. that define a kingdom not just the few cities within its border.
We has an actual population, screw engineer units.
Place your structure blueprint and your worker drones automatically transport the resources to the site and build away.
Less micromanagement and adds tactical depth by giving a supply chain to raid and a soft target at the point of development with population and resources for the taking. A win/win situation.
And? So then we have to put workers from towns many miles away to build remote outposts? i guess that works but then once again Its still going to be abitch to micromanage the suppyline and to defend it so it makes your point moot Plus construction units aren't just 'engineers' there Settlers groups of people whom want to live and get work and jobs and build new homes etc. their not always military drones and besides why is it that everyone is so opposed to having the ability to make an Large grown kingdom and not just afew stark cities amongst the wilderness? that isn't civilization thats just cities...Cities cannot exist without infranstructure.
I don't know why people are opposed to this, but they are. Spaghetti roads and cityspam is actually very close to how real-world civilizations (especially modern ones) actually work. Roads everywhere, all the land parcelled down into increasingly smaller fragments, and big cities flooding over top of tiny little ones. Massive suburban sprawls that slowly cover landmass and the complete disappearance of forests and wildspace are hallmarks of civilization and industry and this has been true since the first Assyrian kings laid their conquest of babylon out.
Perhaps it's the deeply unsatisfactory feeling of having eroded nature in a game and replaced it with a suburbian equivalent. Maybe it bothers our environmental sensibilities: we want to see nature winning in our game. Perhaps it's the visual clutter of pieces of irrelevant information clogging out the screen, or a desire to cling to a fantasy rural utopia in a game.
I know I prefer uncluttered, pristine wildernesses surrounding my super-dense mega-cities and I'm, firmly on the anti-road-spaghetti train. I just also know that my view is basically divorced from reality.
Not really Infact for most of the medieval era roads were sparse citys as well and there were MANY villages and towns and mines amongst the wilderness with few cities infact.
Why can't i build villages and towns and cities as well as small forts towers and defensive outposts and resource harvesting centers? Its not only more realistic but more beautiful as well as being strategic.
Besides can't we all agree we need to be able to filter food and resources to our capital or at least to cities to grow them to massive amounts without the need for building them right ontop of farm land? its nonsense cities are placed in strategically defensive positions...Farms and villages supply them with their food and mines and forestrys their timber and ore cities process goods and then ship them out to these other villages and towns as well as to their own citizens to generate taxes and goods.
This is economics of the old age 101 and even the modern era is abound with these common principles so please can we not see reason over it?.
I recently saw a post stating that there will be a unit called the 'Pioner' whom can build mines as indictated in the post by frogboy.
I'm very happy about this. Anyone else?
Internally we are constantly playing, testing, and trying out new ideas.
Here are some examples of discussions we have had:
To: Team From: Brad Date: Feb 2010 Re: Tile density
One of the things I’m a bit concerned about is how barren the world is. We want to make sure that Elemental’s world is filled with interesting things that make each game different.
Here’s a picture with an example of what someone might find early on:
Here’s another:
To: Team From: Brad Date: Feb 2010 Re: Making turns count
One of the absolute goals in Elemental is to make sure we balance it so that every single move means something.
I want us to avoid what we had in GalCiv where there were a lot of “pass” turns, we want to enrich the world such that game flow proceeds with a disciplined design.
So as we’re balancing things, we should be cognizant of how different elements fit together.
For instance:
Turn # / What happens
1. Player builds city.
2. Player clicks on city, queues up a command post and a study to be built, sovereign explores.
3. Command post gets completed (hence, we need the command post to only take 1 turn to build), player trains a pioneer, moves sovereign again.
4. (a quest tile comes into view this turn), player moves sovereign (getting a goodie hut)
5. Player sees quest objective in LOS and moves towards it, a low level champion shows up on LOS (this champion is simply a free pioneer). Player can recruit this champion easily.
6. Study gets built (which means study should only take 3 turns to build). Champion pioneer is near a rock quarry which provides 2 material per turn when built. Player moves Champion pioneer towards quarry. Player moves sovereign again towards quest, player queues up a hut in their city. Civilization level 1 technology achievement is made. I choose farming. Add farm to my queue. First tech should take 5 turns to get. I switch tech to adventuring.
7. Player reaches quest objective (killing local bandit terrorizing people). Reward: 10 people go to your outpost plus you receive boots of speed which, when equipped, gives your sovereign +1.
8. Pioneer in city gets built, player moves it from city, queues up a peasant defender. Sovereign sees a sider and moves towards it.
9. Sovereign attacks spider, wins, gains 50 gold. Champion pioneer reaches stone quarry, builds quarry and is consumed.
10. Pioneer continues north. Sovereign moves west. Hut gets built. Adventuring level 1 gets completed. I choose Ruin Delving. In my LOS 1 ruin is displayed along with a stone golem. I choose Warfare level 1 next.
11. Sovereign moves west. Encounters champion builder known as “Boboth the Builder”. He has an a magic hammer that causes things in cities to be built 1 turn faster. I send him to my city. In my city, a peasant defender is built in my city. Gold is too tight to build another one at this time.
12. My pioneer is heading towards stone golem in his LOS and heads towards it. My sovereign moves north. Boboth the builder heads words my city.
13. My pioneer closes in on the stone golem. My sovereign sees an ancient ruin (goodie hut) in his LOS and heads towards it. Boboth the builder heads towards my city.
14. My pioneer reaches the stone golem. An event pops up with a piece of artwork (like a quest dialog) telling me how the Titans built golems as soldiers and they obeyed whomever activates them and asks me if I want to activate. I choose yes. I now have a golem with my pioneer. In my LOS I see an ancient spring, I send my pioneer towards it. I send the golem back towards my city. My sovereign reaches the ancient ruin which contains jewels worth 100 gold. My farm is complete and the hut is now queued up. Warfare level 1 is reached. I choose “equipment”. Some crummy armor is added. I go to the design screen and design a unit that has crummy armor. The crummy armor adds 5 gold to the cost of creating the unit (hence, we now know that designing units involves gold, metal and/or crystal). The pop up card design randomly chooses “Imperion” out of its lengthy random unit name. I am okay with it and am also okay with the randomly generated quote “I fight for my people”. My unit has a club so it has 3 attack and now 1 defense thanks to the crummy armor and costs 6 gold total (5 for the crummy armor and 1 for the club).
15. My sovereign encounters Lord Capitar and we agree to be friends. Boboth the builder reaches my city. My pioneer reaches the spring and builds a majestic spring on the spot which increases the prestige of my city by 1 and consumes the pioneer. I queue up another hut in my city. In my sovereign’s LOS I see an orchard and head near it so that I can build my second city when I reach there.
And another:
To: Team From: Brad Date: Feb 2010 Re: City / Unit construction
One TBS crutch I’d like us to try to get rid of is the reliance on things taking N turns to build where N is dependent on resources.
The reason is that this forces us to abstract out the economy in such a way that trivializes the kind of economics that I think a lot of players would like to see. In GalCiv and Civ, players produced “shields” or what have you and that determined the number of turns it took to do something.
In Elemental, I’d like us to move towards a system broadly describes as “Materials & Labor”. Labor is what determines the time to produce a thing and materials is the up front cost.
This way, I could have a given thing require a lot of different types of materials (depending on how powerful and sophisticated it is) without the user having to sit there calculating out the time it takes.
For example, with this system we could have all kinds of rare and interesting things that can effectively only be built once. I find the plans to build a Dread Golem and it requires a midnight stone to build. As a player, I now know that if I want to build this, I must find a midnight stone (that maybe I can find on a quest or something). In essence, I can have units and buildings that are very precious, rare and interesting by having a richer economic system without making the game a spreadsheet.
Thoughts?
A lot of these discussions make it into the game. A lot of them end up being rejected or not working out because it turns out not to be fun or turns out to increase scope too much or what have you.
In Elemental beta 1Z, we have started going towards the direction of making the game a lot richer and more interesting – more density.
A lot of this becomes possible by alterations in the economic system – simplifying construction thus enabling greater sophistication.
For example:
One of the big changes we’ve made that resources are now global instead of per city.
I’d like to take credit for that one but the beta group collaborated on this:
https://forums.elementalgame.com/378334
And it turns out to make the game much much more fun. I can’t even begin to describe the potential for fun by having this system.
When a player acquires a resource, it shows up on screen in their resource list. At the start of the game, all they have is food and population. Build a workshop and now you get 1 “materials” (our catch-all for building materials) per turn.
Build a garden and now you have 2 food available (food is handled as your net food production). A hut provides population but consumes food. But now you don’t have to worry about where your food comes from.
Roads and such increase your production through trade.
Moreover, now quests, goodie huts, and such can provide as many different types of resources as we (or modders) want to provide and have weapons, equipment, buildings, etc. consume these resources.
From a “fun” perspective you end up with a much more sophisticated economy but one that is remarkably straight forward to understand and play.
Beta 1Z also introduces the pioneer.
Pioneers are the answer to an often requested feature by the beta group that also solves the “density” issue I was complaining about previously.
Originally, only cities could build improvements because resources were local to the city. Now that they’re global (again thanks https://forums.elementalgame.com/378334) we can let players build pioneer units who go out and can build on resources that aren’t part of a city. The pioneer is “consumed” (since they’re settling on that resource) but now you get that resource. Of course, the downside is that someone else can capture those resources pretty easily unless you send out units to protect your territory.
Pioneers also give players a logical rationale to control their territory rather than just their cities. Historically, control of the countryside has mattered and now it matters in Elemental as well. Hence, the player that creates a massive single army may indeed be formidable but could quickly find themselves starved out by a more nimble (but smaller) opponent that controls their countryside.
I won’t even get into how cool all this stuff looks in the full mode (graphics engine turned on). But this way, every game feels and plays very different because we can have lots and lots of different resources. You might play 200 games and suddenly get a quest that gives you the plans to build a diamond golem – provided that you find the star diamond located on some distant island (you get the idea).
Here is the post the Pioneer is very similar to what iv been requesting i am now mostly satisfied.
Infact if they add in forts for construction and farming villages *they kind of did but i'd like to be able to restore land with a spell and build mass farms to feed a large metopial city*I'd be so delighted i believe i would be stricken with awe and hystaria lol.
Yes, I am also happy about the Pioneer unit. I wonder exactly how flexible upgradding Pioneer-based improvements will be, or if they automatically improve after the proper technology is researched (+ 8 turns of labor or whatever).
Hopefully it'll be very flexible and tactical *towers forts farms villages etc.* But if not im at least somewhat appeased by its existance.
Towns could be purely cosmetic Housing developments that appear along the major roadways (not benefitting any particular player) ... quests and shops can exist here for champions.
But thats not highly realistic. I'd perfer it if their was a realistic echonomic model is all.
Mostly because it'd be nice to have that added in. Add that to all of the other features and you have the Perfect strategic fantasy roleplaying trio game.
Neither are channelers.
As i said Fantasy if i really wanted it to be totally realistic i'd break out the Merchantilism guide book and begin to recite how to establish the proper medieval market system.
But i didn't and the reason why is because it'd be excessively boring. Doesn't mean some realism would ruin the game it'd expand the strategic scope and make it more interesting.
Realism is fine and all, but this is not a simulator. Realism needs to take a backseat to gameplay.
I had an in-depth post written up ... but suffice it to say that Villages can be some-what mechanically linked to your empire, and yet provide little to no direct benefit (independent parties). The "little benefit" could be each Village hut provides +1 global commerce ... however they would not be using *your* net food (but an extrapolation of your food) and may or may not be swayed by prestige.
Essentially each player would have a (village pool) for village food. Its half the Player's total Food (net + used). This food is distributed among random points assigned by the village generator. (the village generator assigns many different village points, with a Priority list ... with priority 1 being the best place for a village/most intutitve) Probably the village generator should try to produce about twice as many villages as seem possible, or provide some sort of overflow mechanic (along roads is good, near Pioneer outposts is good, in random places within influence is overflow). Food alotted to a particular Village point (more food given to higher priority points) cannot exceed Half the used food of your smallest city. So essentially your largest Village can only grow to half the size of your smallest city.
Also, each village site, once food is attained, will start to build village huts (or village houses)-dependent on tech? at a scavenger rate (if thats still in). Basically, about 150% the speed it would appear in a city (or 200% if there are no nearby trees). Each village hut would provide +1 commerce ... or if there will be huts AND houses, then huts provide +0.5 commerce and houses provide +1 commerce.
Again, this would be completely out of the control of the player, so perhaps it would be better for villages to provide no tangible benefit for the cities ... still if villages will be in (other than the random quest square, which is neat btw) then I think it should use some system to automatically be created at proper sizes, at proper locations, with proper quantity. And for this to use as little code as possible for it does not specifically add to the game. This is what I propose.
Again as I said, champions could sometimes find shops and quests in a village. Perhaps a village tile has a 5% chance to become a shop or quest tile every 15 turns.
Well Gameplay is enriched by heightened strategic options.
Hell make it optional for all i care.
And to Tasunke that sounds okay but once again i like being able to settle my own small villages and outposts even if yes its automatically managed it would still be nice to be able to do to make the world less sparse.
Forts are absolutely necessary, as are roads. Defensive buildings are a huge and fun part of all great strategy games.
The best sytem for roads would be automaticly connecting cities, mines, forts and villages. Slowly building themselves. Outposts and forst could be used to extend roads to faraway cities, increasing trade bonuses but costing upkeep.
Building out of the UI like command and conquer seems like a better idea to me though.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
