I don't know if this has been brought up before, but does anyone else see a close resemblance to the old Sierra game of that name? It also had empire management, dynasties (iirc), diplomacy and RPG-style questing (using the Doom II engine).
Sounds to me like Elemental is more of a successor to that than MoM.
Yeah, I always thought that the battles in Elemental would be similar to the battles in Birthright.
They do have a lot of resemblances, but Birthright was much higher level management in general. It was much more high level politics than low level stuff like city building, unit designing and so on.
Yeah, i liked that part about Birthright. It's a rare game where you control a nation as a ruler and a hero, not some super-ghost that posessed all governors and other high-ranked officials in the country at the same time. Somehow it keeps the RPG feel in a global strategy.
I loved Birthright!
It's also nice from Birthright how it separates the 4 pillars of power: law, temples, guilds and magic sources. So even in the same realm, you have different regents each with its own political agenda, interests,... (as most temples, guilds or source players have interests in more than one realm, so you can't never be totally sure they are loyal to you if you are king).
It had some potential, but the game was a bugfest basically.
I still GM the Pen and Paper version... the best TSR Module yet. If Elemental captures just a fraction of the feel of the Birthright world 'Cerilia' then they are onto a winner.
Agreed, the game was a bugfest, but the original Pen and Paper setting for AD&D is priceless. It mixes politics and adventures really really well.
The PnP version the best AD&D produced
It's entirely possible the devs have never played it! You should mention it to them and get them to take a look at the dynasty stuff.
Agreed A pitty it will be hard to capture the same feeling with such a low level system as Elemental, but maybe a mod would work for that. Using Essence as Regency Points and so on, I don't think it would be too hard to put everything in place
In Birthright, the people who rule something are called "Regents". Let it be nobles (control the law), guilders (control the commerce), priests (control the faith) or wizards (control the magic).
Regents rule because they are "Scions": descendants of people who fought in a cataclysmic battle between the gods thousands of years ago. When the gods died fighting, their followers gained part of that divine essence in the form of "Bloodline". Bloodline is like a royal aura around a character, that allows her to rule and command normal people. People with extremely high bloodlines (the people who were closer to the gods usually) ended corrupted or affected by it, transforming into something more than a human (terrible monsters in the case of bloodlines from evil gods for example).
Bloodline is hereditary, and when two people have a child, the bloodline averages that of the parents. Bloodline can also increase or decrease if you rule wisely or badly, as if it reacted to how you care for the lands and the people under your command.
Bloodline can also increase by killing other people with Bloodline piercing them through their hearts. If you use weapons forged from a special metal you will gain far more bloodline when performing a kill. And last, you can also give your Bloodline to another person if you willingly perform a religious ceremony called "Investidure".
That's more or less how the dynasty stuff works in Birthright.
Well put!
Yeah it's a decent setting indeed.
Impossible. Even on a highest economy detail level out of three, you have only so many actions. There are about 15 different actions, including diplomacy, recruitment, adventure, army- and spell-related actions. And you can make 3 actions per turn + one action with an artifact + one action with a Leutenant. So, there are 5 actions total per turn maximum, only about 10 economy/management options at all. IMHO there is no micromanagement at all, all actions you do are important. On a lowest economy detail you don't need to control economy at all and the game is still perfectly playable.
I think it's one of the most brilliant micromanagement-free designs of all global strategies i saw (and i saw many in the last 18 years i'm playing strategies on a computer).
Also, take into account that realms are managed in a very abstract form. Realms can be "landed" (own provinces, like nobles) or "non landed" (do not own provinces, like guilders).
A province has a certain terrain, which determines:
The population of a province can be increased using actions ("Rule Province"), while the Magic Level of a province is always: Maximum Magic Level - Current Population Level. In Birthright population destroyes the nature places that are associated with power (except elves, they are an exception to this rule as they know how to live in harmony with nature).
Apart from population and magic levels, provinces can have 4 types of "Holdings":
- Law holdings: they represent the control over the province population. Usually the owner of the province is also the owner of most Law Holdings. They allow you to set taxes over other holdings.
- Guilds: represent commerce and allow to create trade routes.
- Temples: represent the faith of the people, allow to cast divine spells and influence the population loyalty.
- Sources: represent the magic power, allow to cast arcane spells.
Holdings are given levels too, so for example a Province (6) (level 6 population), can't have a Law Holding bigger than level 6 (Law (6)). The conflict in Birthright arises as several people can share holdings of the same type in the same province.
For example, a Province (4), could have two nobles, one the rightful king with a Law (3), and a rebel champion (like Robin Hood for example), with a holding Law (1). That means that in some parts of the province, the people think the rebel is the rightful leader and follow him. With 3 vs 1, the king shouldn't be worried, but there are actions ("Contest") that allow you to reduce other people holdings and increase yours. That's how conflict arises in Birthright.
And that's more or less how provinces are defined, no buildings, cities or other low level stuff, just 6 numbers and done (there are some extra things: fortifications, armies, trade routes,... but really, everything works around holdings and the conflict to own them or setup new ones in your enemies provinces).
I realize this is an old post about Birthright: The Gorgon's Alliance.
Playing that game back in the old days of DOS & Win 95 was a nightmare, and bugs/poor tactical battles/etc. prevented that game {the first, and last D&D franchise game done by Sierra} from garnering any serious accolades except from wannabe grognards like myself at that time.
I am planning a re-visit to B:TGA in next couple of weeks as I found it gathering dust in the ISO cellar, and, as far as I know all rights have been relenquished {something about ESA, sry not gonna bother to google it}
It can be run on Windows 7 x64 or x32 using Dosbox or other emulators {dosbox is the way to go imho}. I loaded it up and it has patches, etc. and runs smoothly {waited 15 years for that day }
I saw a lot of similarities in Elemental & Birthright, although there are several early 4x games that more closely resemble Elemental. A few of the early DEV journals indicate a strong link to the Ol' dnd genre {a reference to dropping the classic str/dex/const/int/wis/cha SSI standard, and the consideration of dungeon crawling elements to name 2}
If nothing else, people who play FE might enjoy the intro video for the game. The voice acting is...interesting, lol.
The game is located on 4share - and is a bit of a pain to download the files, but they're only 90+ Mb each or less. {maybe 300Megs total}
Here's the link in case anyone wanders in here lost and bored.
B_i_rthright: The Gorgon's Alliance
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