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).
I can't argue the point at hand but it does bring up a issue I have seen in other games where "GLOBAL" resources are available.
That being. When I have 4 Cities spread across my Kingdom, and I get attacked at the outter most, no worries, I don't have to transport material in order to produce the much needed defenses. I just burn off a bunch of "Global" resources in that town, fend off the attack and go back about my business.
How is someone going to be able to attack outlying areas if defenses are at hand immediately?
The whole point of strategy oft depends on how you handle what resources you possess and where you maintain those same resources.
How can you turn iron into defenses in a couple turns? It takes time to train units and build walls. Hopefully we don't have a ton of rush build type options that let you crank out stuff at super accelerated speeds.
The point isn't how long, it is that with a Global available source, all I need is to get a short heads up it is coming thus response times are drastically reduced.
This kind of thing happens because it's ultimately more fun for most players then trying to figure out how to transport stuff around the map is.
You didn't have to figure out how to transport stuff around the map before hand either. It was just a matter of building a road to them and transport was everywhere.
What is gone is the fun of making tactical choices of where to place your cities. Now just place it anywhere because all resources are shared between all cities and you can send pioneers (I like pioneers just prefer them with the old system) out to grab any resource not close enough to your city.
To me this isn't simplifying the game, just dumbing it down.
Let's not make another lame strategy game where the aggressor always wins. Make defense a possibility. Global resources, while not realistic, would make the game more fun. You wouldn't get crushed for preferring long, economic play to militaristic rush tactics.
I would assume that there will be some sort of 'blockade' feature that will prevent cities from access to global resources. I don't think global resources is an automatic loss to strategic city placement. You can place a city anywhere, however, someone who places their cities in better positions will have access to more resources and/or better defensive positions. Now we just dont have to worry as much about each city in relation to the resources around it. Instead there's more focus on resources empire wide. Personally, I would love a economy system like Anno, but this isn't much 'dumber' than the system as it was before
I would agree that a system that allows a lot of 'rush' building of anything is a negative. Throwing a lot of gold into building city walls shouldn't produce them much faster...the stone still has to be cut, moved, lifted, etc. Same with units, it takes time to train soldiers regardless of the gold the boss has.
Yea, this is why I was so excited about the "everything is a resource" aspect of camp 1 in the internal debate. Because back then, with per city stockpiling as well, outlying cities wouldn't have to necessarily have the infrastructure to build swords, but swords could be shipped in from cities that do have that infrastructure. The possibilities for strategy are endless with this sort of system. And seriously, it wouldn't take more then a few mouse clicks
*Click on "Outlying City B", click on resources, click request X amount of iron swords*
Caravan arrives from the capital (which had a stockpile of iron swords from their metal smithy) turns later and bam, you have swordsman, as many people as can carry the swords (it would be neat if you find some of your citizens aren't strong enough to wield) However, they aren't trained so they are basically just stronger fodder, hope you've got number on your side
This to me is so much more flowing and interesting. Even leaving strategics aside, this would get us away from the seemingly random, "Oh you have to wait a magical 5 turns to produce a swordsman here." Instead you can see the caravan leave from your capital and deliver the swords, effectively "producing" swordsmen.
No "rush", but also no random "wait time". Want to get those swords there instantly? Use your "Teleport items" spell. Which effectively takes amount (weight?) of items being transfered x the distance to be teleported. Could be pretty draining, but is it worth it to save your outpost?
I'm really hoping it will be possible to mod this kind of gameplay back into Elemental. I say this because Frogboy seems quite convinced that less micromanagment = more fun.
I think the economy changes are definitely a step in the right direction. I was laways in favor of global stockpiling of resources. And now resources actually do stockpile instead of just globally "available/not avilable" toggle.
Very very happy about this.
Which on a similar topic of pioneers, I hope to see a formation of something similar to settlers, which could be so much more effective in a game like this as opposed to civ. I mean look at it, our population is already more personal. It takes population to create units.
So if we want to risk sending them into the wild with a caravan (which can hold whatever you think they need, up to a certain weight of course: Food, Wood, Iron, Swords, Spears, etc.) and expect them to build a new city, I say we should let them. Here's my proposal on that, let the sovereign bring life back to the land, and make it livable again, but let the people build the cities!! I mean it only seems normal that way..
maybe, just maybe, we can change his mind... I mean we all know he plays Dwarf fortress in his free time Overall I agree with denryu, definitely a step in the right direction!
Gotta ask! Where did that come from?
Probably from concerns it would end up as a Civ style resource system. The earlier versions didn't actually have the resources in yet so it was a little questionable.
I see your point. I make further suggestion, hopefully it will keep the conversation rolling. How about the following?
Suggestion 1: If a city mines ore, it becomes available everywhere and goes into storage. If that city is connected via roads (network) then need LESS ore to make your armor.
In your suggestion, if building Armor consumes 12 Iron as material and my Global stockpile only have 10 Iron, I can still build it in cities connected to the mine via road network. I found it a bit confusing.
In my suggestion, the cost of building the same Armor will be reduced to 10 Iron instead at the time of purchase. I believe this helps in usability.
Suggestion 2: If a city mines ore, it becomes available everywhere and goes into storage. If that city is NOT connected via roads (network) then need MORE to make your armor. How much more depends on how far away it is, or whether it is on another island (and hopefully depends on how perishable it is). Caravans will do the actual shipping of material from the closest network that has the resource, so its delivery time is not instant.
Any thoughts?
Hopefully Frogboy will create a fun game without stupid pointless micromanagment and silly designs.
Then you can all mod that gameplay that only a few of you like in to the game so you can suffer alone.
I feel a poll coming on... Thats extremely ignorant to think only "a few" of us want this game to be engaging and be a living breathing world every game..
Do you consider this micromanagement, truly?
Agreed. Things like logistics (moving supplies, etc) and in-depth economies allow for a wider array of strategies.
Well, in the greek mythology, lots of cities are reported as being founded by heroes or demigods after they have clean the land from nasty beasts ( bringing civilization to wilderness).
We currently know that teh sovereign can build a city. We don't know if they are plans for champions (who can be imbued with essence to cast spells) to be able to do the same thing.
I found the fact that there isn't any settler unit to build city a good solution against the snowball effect that can be found in Civ series or in the Gal Civ series allowing you to build fastly cities/ colonize planets. It really helps to reduce the amount of cities in a game.
I do not know if Aractain does, but i truly do.
Not for one city one time. But what about a dozen cities in mid to late game? What about if i just want one knight in every one of them? to click on
request sword in each city,
request horse in each city,
request shield in each city,
request armor in each city,
request leg armor in each city,
request horse armor in each city,
request lance in each city,
request helmet in each city
and do it all over again in a few turns?
I would hate this and i am very sure not to be the only one.
I stopped playing Dominion 3 because the micromanagement in mid to late game was omnipresent.
I do not want to stop playing Elemental for the same reasons.
And please do not use semantics to imply everyone who does not agree with you wants this game to be boring and does not want a living breathing world. It is childish and immature.
Just in my living breathing world there is no place for spending half an hour real time to order recruitment of ten knights in ten cities.
On the topic:
i think the global ressources are the right way to go to strike a balance between complexity and micromanagement. Siege mechanics and trade route mechanics need to be discussed further as well as if there is/should be some difference between an amount of ressource gathered by a pioneer in comparison to a ressource gathered in a city, and if/how the pioneer outposts should be upgradable.
Another thing i feel should be discussed are forts with garrisons and zones of control. I think they could add a lot to the game.
Agreed, the Camp 1 concept was the best imo. I suppose stuff like these [global/local resources] won't be hardcoded, so yeah....I think that experienced modders/coders will be able to change it.
Agreed, that was an ignorant post by Aractain...
While my post was clearly not serious in its hostility, that is definatley micro - If you have 100 citys.
And you have to do that every 3 turns. Clearly if you were going to design a system like that, you setup automation systems. See Anno 1404. At that point unless there is some SERIOUS advantage to the micro level of the game the design is flawed. You need a complex design (through many subsystem each of which are simple and obvious) to benifit from such levels of micromanagement and that really puts you onto the level of settlers, not civ. And sorry but if you want elemental to compete with Setlers (minus DRM anyway lol) Ubisoft is gonna win.
Most people I've talked to do not like micro that is uninteresting (read: not blowing stuff up or making direct and important changes but with limited scale). A good example is optimising a squad in a tactical game, micro BUT limited number of guys. These typeof strategic games have pretty much unlimited scale and therefore micro can get unbareable in the late stages of a game which sucks out the fun of the stratergy (to put it simply: that plannin shit were you plan shit not that clicky shit where you click shit to tell individual peseants what to do).
But thats just my opinion of course.
Erm...do you ever heard about automatization? Example: Send X number of swords to Y city in every 3rd turns? It's micro for sure, but it's far from being hardcore.
The very next line. Read much?
if you have everything automated anyway - what is benifit of the micro?
You can't be serious. Local vs. global resources = very different strategical and tactical options. Automated or not, you gotta make different choices. Like where should I send X resource from? Which resource should I send to Y city? etc. You got it.
I have to think that creating a HYBRID 4X/RTS/Strat game would have it's challenges and perhaps become different. But I am starting to think that we are throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
I am not one of the "few" micro nuts, but I am also getting paranoid about whether this is a Kingdom building game, up to the point where the wars start and then it becomes a mop up op, or a game that allows for Strategy, based on how I design my own personal Kingdom, and take certain, albeit, perhaps, incorrect, means to protect it when the SHIT hits the fan so to speak.
Are Govenors a thing of the past? Wasn't that our automation mechanic?
I guess at this point it comes down to what 1Z will offer.
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