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).
Excellent info, thanks Frogboy for the peek.
Re: labour camps, will "evil" races/nations be able to have slave/captured enemies as workers? Opens a can of worms as well as quest options as well. (as well as discussions on the right/wrong of slave labour..)
Free the slaves and perhaps they may come work for you.
this is a good point and seems to fall w/n the "option A" regarding lots of availible upgrades to units. Makes sense, lack metal, lots of magical crystal gummy bears, have the gummy bear squad.
My concern is the placing the emPHAsis on the wrong syLAble. Meaning, that if Frog wants metal to be super ultra important for the development of civilizations [someone read Guns, Germs and Steel recently] then the system is going to necessarily bottleneck at certain points, which is completely historically accurate. My steel, thanks to coal and iron, is going to rip through your pathetic excuse for a sword. so with these key resources being the potential building blocks of your civilization, you're going to get screwed unless you can come up with something else. wooden battleship with magic steel melter magic? no idea. Elemental does have the magic going for it so that's almost an instant ability to balance things out.
I pretty much sucked at trading w/n Civs and I think you nailed it: infinite horses just gave too much power. A market would be fun.
I also know absolutely nothing about coding in AI but it would seem to me that if you assign a numerical value to a source, say iron gets 10 on a 1-10 scale, then the AI is going to really hold onto that no matter what. I actually cannot think of a time that I was able to get the AI in GalCiv to trade tech with me mainly, I think and other than me sucking, that tech was just so valuable they never wanted to let it go. I could see resources doing the same here.
Quick example: multiplayer. If we were playing and you saw that I lacked iron and you have it in spades, then why would you give it to me if you want to win? Maybe b/c I have something you need, but you have such a strategic advantage with that iron you could just come and take it from me.
PITA mechanic to balance imho
The key difference being that there isn't that much abstraction here. If you need A horse, you will use up A horse. Building stables on a herd of wild horses will produce N horses for your kingdom per turn.
having to buy horses sounds like a good thing to incorporate, I like that idea. So resources are like population? To build a unit on a horse and a sword we need just that? 1 horse, 1 man, and 1 sword? To have a sword we need iron , copper ore, etc.? Cool, this makes me feel a lot better about this I sure hope stockpiling is re instituted. Also I love the idea of a world wide marketplace like tormy was saying earlier. I'd like to see caravans coming from separate nations with excess resources of theirs, priced out based on their rarity in the world.
Stockpiling is in, you can see it in the screenshot. To stick with horses, say you have a stable on a horse resource that produces 2 horses a turn. Those pile up until you use or trade them, every turn you gain 2 horses. Building a horse archer (for example) would cost 1 horse.
So your Knight would cost 1 person, 1 horse, X metal for the sword, Y metal for the armor, and Z crystal for his Holy Ring of Smiting. If you find some rare starmetal or something, you can replace the sword with a +5 Dragonslaying sword and call that guy a Knight-Captain.
So will the trading of resources be in the game, like selling excess horses to the neighbors in exchange for gold - excuse me, I meant Rigma - or maybe iron ore, or is selling and trading raw resources not possible?
Well, I think the idea of the stockpiling is good. However I would like to see the cap for the maximum amount of resources. The idea is:
every empire has some initial amount of resources, that can be stockpiled. You may build some storage facilities in the cities, that can increase the cap. If the limit is reached, you don't get more resources, even if you have the sources.
I think such thing might encourage the trade with others.
This is a good suggestion.
Regards to post #82, I believe there maybe a better way. Having buildable warehouses are micro management nightmare. It is a good thing that warehouse has unlimited capacity.
Some resources are perishable. Horses are good only for a few years, preserved horse meat for dozen month, fruits lasts 1 month max. The quantity stockpiled dwindles after certain time has past. These forces player trade away excess stockpile (for a lower price than the market expectation) when he does not expect using it any time soon.
When we talk about resources, there should be some distinction btn Natural resources and Manufactured resources. Referring to the good old economy debate thread, it looks like the only option mentioned in OP is Natural resources + Labor = Manufactured resources.
There is no Manufactured resources 1 + Labor = Manufactured resources 2.
I like this direction.
Finally can we also make ALL resources perishable, when applicable? For example, if a hastily raised Peasant troop is made from Fork + population + Labor, it will have a very limited shelf life. When they perish (after a month), the peasant will be returned back into the generation population while the Fork they used will be nulled. Or maybe there are other criteria used for Manufactured resources... the Peasant troop will turn back to the population when its morale drop to 0, or they travel too far from their home town.
Frogboy, assuming your #49 is a reply to my post #48, I believe you mean that free & instant resource teleportation is not a major concern, so that "when Christopher Columbus arrived NA, his crew would have 1 million tons of Iron available building their first outpost."
While I wish our developers address this concern more directly, I am glad that they are aware of it. Hopefully, they share my view that this is a flaw that needs improvement, and will follow up with a more direct conversation (or, making a remedy without any discussion here).
For now, other than making a "1 Global resource network per road network" suggestion, I have not much to say.
Obviously, Columbus needed more wizards in his group!
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. We've kind of gone back in the direction of a more complex economy with the resources now having quantities and being stockpiled (which is great), but I doubt it'll go all the way around to cities needing local warehouses and 15 different trade routes in order to get access to everything.
Regarding how much goes on each turn:
For turns to be interesting there needs to be a balance between 'busywork' and 'boring.' Repeat turns with no decisions are boring, repeat turns with repetitive actions are busywork. Getting a '10 gold' goodie hut every third turn isn't exciting, it is close to the busywork category.
However, too many 'unique' events too often also detract from the value of each event. For example, if a potential quest event can be found every six turns but the average quest takes 16 turns to complete, then the abundance of quests becomes frustrating. Either you don't do all you want or you pick up too many and finish few. A good quest should hold your interest as well as being worthwhile. So here is the twist, if the quest is in depth enough that it will take, say, 30 or 40 turns to do, then won't you be missing a whole lot of other 'events' while you do the quest? Also, is a turn supposed to represent some length of time, like a month? (For example, nine turns between conception and birth of an hier.)
So if turns are months, an interesting 36 turn quest means you are gone from your empire for three years, which is pretty drastic. But a five turn quest might be too trivial to be of lasting interest. I am wondering if these 'month long turns' might be divisible into smaller time periods for quest purposes, just like the tactical battle map probably implies a day or two of battle rather than a month long engagement. So if your quest takes you into a dungeon, you might be able to do quite a number of actions related to the quest within the same game turn. Therefore the quest could be long enough to be emotionally fulfilling for the player without it absorbing an unreasonable amount of 'real game time turns.'
How would we deal with this in multi-player when one player has to spend 25 minutes on a quest while the other players cannot advance to the next turn during this time? Perhaps the 'quest turn' could be designed to fall into every third, fourth, sixth (or whatever) month of game turn. This way multiplayers would have their longer quest turn all at the same time. If one player didn't have a quest in a 'quest turn' then that can be their time to go bio, get lunch or smooch their sweetie enough that s/he doesn't complain about their game time.
Others may come up with better solutions than mine.
I would like somome to clarify something for me please.
The NEW global economy model still supposes that if my City A has Horses and I feel the urge to build Mounted troops in City B, where my Forge is and I can build the troops Swords there already, which has a road and currently caravans travel between the 2 Cities regularly, my mounted troop construction would not be direct disallowed, but rather delayed until such a time as City A delivers said Horses that I need, via Caravan, to City B.
And if I currently don't own any City that have horses, I should send Pioneers out to aquire some in the wild, or find a neighor, who is freindly, and has horses and trade for them?
Same for all other required resources that are missing from your "Global" list right?
I don't like the "Out of Thin Air" model at all. But having to truck things in, even after buying them abroad, at a cost of "time" seems a equitable and almost realistic model.
Sorry for the current confusion...
I completely love the new Pioneer Unit.
And as i put in the post about my personal idea's. I am glad that you've decided to include the ability to construct farms and mines and villages etc. outside of cities.
Makes it less sparse and barren and more realistic *even in a wasteland people need an infranstructure*
Well, obviously I haven't played this new build yet (hurry up thursday!), but the way it reads is global storage. That is, "cities" don't have anything. Your empire in this case has horses. Any city can use them. If you trade for some diamonds because you don't have any, your empire now has some diamonds, which any city can use. Once you use them all, you don't have diamonds anymore.
Local storage and transport time to move things around was something a bunch of us supported during the original economics discussion, but I don't see it happening in the model they have now. All things considered, I can live with that. The transport part is nice, but not as important as the idea of resource quantities.
(It's pretty easy for someone to understand their iron mine gives 1 iron a turn, and that a soldier with armor takes 2 iron to make. It's much more confusing to try to explain that those rules apply, but city X can make it immediately, city Y can make it in 3 turns, and city Z will take 14 turns despite having a barracks and a forge, because it happens to be farther away from the iron mine. If you trade for iron from someone else, that's even more confusing, because where does it go by default?)
The real question is : what will be the use of caravans ? What would happen to a city whose caravan has been destroyed ? Does it have still access to "global" resources ?
City A has iron, City B has horses. There's no caravans between them (maybe it has been destroyed, or there's no road). What are the consequences ?
Micro nightmare? Not at all. Dominions 3. lategame is a micro nightmare, but constructing a couple of additional warehouses if needed is far from being a nightmare.
Stockpiling of non-perishables is in.
If a city mines ore, it becomes available everywhere and goes into storage. If that city is connected via roads then you get more ore.
If I want to have a knight on horseback I would presume I would have a metal shield, metal breast plate, metal helm, metal leggings, a metal sword and a horse.
If I don't have horses or enough metal to build it, then I need to buy that stuff.
HOWEVER, what we are dispensing with is the "Oh, you don't have horses, no problem, it'll just take longer to build your unit." What? So if I wait long enough I can have a pony too?
Yay!
Er... not about the pony.
How will be handled perishable resources ? A max/turn ? (I mean you have for instance 10 food. Each turn you can only use 10 food because any amount over that number would be lost)
What about caravans killed ? Does it only lessens the resources income ?
EDIT: and I hope there will be bear cavalry instead of space pony
That sounds good to me. I'm guessing that in a versatile game like Elemental, there will always be viable alternatives if you don't have access to horses or some other resource, unlike in Civ, where you're just screwed. I would also guess that something like metal ore would be relatively common, so you could always mine or trade for at least a little bit of it. Even if you only have a trickle coming in from one mine or trade agreement, you can still build an armoured force, you just won't be able to do it overnight.
Hmm, are horses perishable? And can we eat them?
I'm ok with the market place but please be careful with how it is implemented. If it is not much more expensive to get your resources on the market, then having resources at all becomes close to just annoying micromanagement that you don´t want to waste your time on. Your resources should be important and help define the style of your civ.
Also, if everyone is able to buy almost all resources the civs won´t be as unique anymore.
Also, there is a charm, I think, in seeing that an army from a particular civ is really "from that civ", meaning that in principle it only uses what that civ has access to. If it gets too attractive to buy everything you need, you will always see armies including all interesting units there are (even if in smaller numbers), and never an army with only footsoldiers because that civ is lacking horses. The armies of Rohan should be on horses, but the dwarven armies should not come with horse cavalry - even if expensively bought ...! I hope the AI is going to be able to manage.
I always hated what happened in Civ when everyone was trading around their technologies so they were just evenly spread around. Like, you have spent 50 turns of painful researching on an expensive tech, just to see that it is now available to anyone with some gold left over.
Only if someone mods in a French faction.
The horse resource isn't really the sort of thing that would perish. Your herd has a minimum requirement, so many stallions, so many mares. All of the extra stallions aren't of any value for breeding purposes and would be separated, but the extra mares beyond the optimal working capacity for the herd would be breeding in the meantime. They'd grow old and infirm, but they'd also more than replace themselves in the meantime. As you'd have to feed the warhorses anyway, there can't be a lack of food preventing the herd growth.
You're sure to see this argument if they make livestock perishable. Much better to stick to more discrete methods or ignore perishability entirely for sake of sanity.
My dwarves in DF have horse biscuits, yes
So thrilled about this!! Though I wish per city stockpiling would stay, but I guess you can't ask for everything, huh? ... Modding anyone?
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