Greetings!
We’re glad to see the beta has gone out relatively painlessly. For those of you who have been with us since back in the GalCiv I betas, I think you will agree this one went off a lot smoother. After a decade or so, you eventually start to get the hang of this.
That isn’t to say we are free of hicups. There’s people with video issues. There’s people who can’t even get the game to run. That will be our big priority next week.
Our favorite part of the development cycle began with Beta 2. This is where ridiculously rapid changes to the game start to occur.
Given the notoriously massive suckitude of Stardock betas, we now have the collective opportunity to roll up our sleeves and decrease the crappiness of the game from nightmarish to merely painful.
#1 City Improvements
These are trivial for us to add. And we’ve only started touching the capabilities here.
Examples
#2 Research
The research screen is still pretty rough. The tech tree button is disabled and there’s too little information on it.
Feel free to discuss different ideas on what information you’d like to see. How you would like to see it presented. Bear in mind, we are not going to toss out the general research concept (the one in there came from the 9 month beta 1 cycle and we like it as a game mechanic).
#3 HUD options
Beta 3 will have a Head’s up Display toggle that will allow you to get information about your cities.
#4 NON-HUD Information
That said, we don’t users to have to use a HUD to get basic info at a glance. Thus, feedback and suggestions of looking at a unit, city, etc. and telling if they are defended, how strong they are, the general output, etc. We have our own thoughts on this but we’d love to hear yours.
We do NOT, however, want to have units running around with flags or other things of the sort. We want subtle (non-HUD) and hard core (HUD).
#5 Visual Distinctions between Factions.
The Beta 2 series will begin to show how factions are different from one another much better. However, we’d love to hear your thoughts on making different factions more distinct and interesting. Bear in mind, from a RAM point of view, it’s not practical for every faction to have a completely different building design setup (when we’re all 64-bit then we can talk about that).
#6 Other types of World Resources
The Beta 2 series will start to add horses as a global resource that is used to create mounted warriors. But we’d like to hear your thoughts on other resources that one might control – rarer ones.
We have plenty of ideas of things about a given kingdom that might be affected by this or that but we don’t want to bias the direction of suggestions. I will say, however, we want to stay away from the GalCiv “Approval/Happiness” concept.
The XML allows us to create any type of resource, define a graphic, a 3D tile, and what stats it changes and how much. The random generator will make use of it automatically (and this same thing will happen through modding no doubt). So it’s not a big deal to add more resources as long as they’re fun and not simply there for the sake of “complexity”.
Ideally, we can define resources that are all very rare and thus would only occasionally show up in a game (but yet every game would have a couple of these different rare resources).
The Beta 2 series will start to re-enable the other technology trees. Right now, building up your kingdom has limited choices because you’re effectively a mundane. The Magic tech path takes the view that rather than building up your cities with improvements you can also do things to enchant them to do better. It’s just an alternative direction (or you can mix and match).
Next build will be next week.
UPDATE!
One thing I've been reading on the forums has to do with weapons and defenses available. Right now, a lot of them aren't in (for instance, you only get daggers on melee weapons) because we still have to update the UI to handle the different types of damage and defense types.
For instance:
So a club does blunt damage, a dagger does piercing damage, etc. But we need to display this in a way that easy to understand for the user so that when they go into battle, these modifiers can be understood.
UPDATE #2!
Great stuff in the comments area! Keep it up! Now you're getting into the spirit of the beta. We'll look at all of this and see which things make sense to put in, which things make sense to put in after release and which things make sense to put in some future update.
#5 Visual Distinctions between Factions. The Beta 2 series will begin to show how factions are different from one another much better. However, we’d love to hear your thoughts on making different factions more distinct and interesting....<snip>
The Beta 2 series will begin to show how factions are different from one another much better. However, we’d love to hear your thoughts on making different factions more distinct and interesting....<snip>
Based on experiences with GalCiv 2, I would love the ability to change each faction's colors and logo during the game. In GalCiv 2, it was often very difficult to distinguish one player from another on the map since they were often the same shade - and was quickly made worse when a minor civilization appeared with the same color and similar logo as a major race. I and others asked for this option a number of times and I'm hoping it can be worked into future games.
-note: I did see that you'd be adding the friendly/nuetral/enemy coloring option - that's wonderful, but I'd still like the option to change both my own and my oponent's color/logo during the game.
Some of us are a tad color-blind, call it an 'accessibility' feature if you will.
I kind of second what SavageBananaMan said. It's weird to have global resources for your cities even if the cities and resource improvements are not connected by roads or caravans, they need to be connected or else how do the reources get around? The current system could theoretically let two cities be on opposite sides of the map and not connected by roads or seaports to exchange resources.
I was also thinking that a good way to make factions more unique is to have at least different styles of architecture and maybe even similar but differently designed weapons and armor available for equiping units. These don't have to completely different as I know there is a RAM limitation with 32-bit, but I would like more differences than just colors.
Could just a couple key buildings be different? Maybe the town center, palace, and one or two others? I suspect that giving each faction custom armor, clothing, etc would also fall under the "not practical" umbrella? Do you want suggestions about how to make them different asctecically, or gameplay-wise?
EDIT: Ha, wasn't paying attention to the "Visual" part
I'm a little disappointed with the 1 or 4 square rule. Why cant we have 2 and 3 tile buildings
#1) Beats me. I think the housing thing needs adjusting and it needs to be easier to see why you can't build things sometimes (usually its not enough spaces or the like).
#2) Condense it. Theres just too many damned techs that do little to nothing. Like... a whole tech for daggers? AND one for short swords? At the very least those two could be combined into just one crappy tech that noone wants that they take to get to long swords. Add in that most pieces of gear don't actually do anything other than look different and you have issues. I mean hardened leather and regular leather? Exactly the same thing. Hell even light plate is the same in a lot of cases to leather iirc. Weapons are in the same boat in a lot of ways. Every technology should make me think "I want that!" Daggers are stupid. Who arms an army with daggers? Not to mention most weapons are just a skin instead of something that matters.
#3) Make it so that when you click on something you can still see its card. Also its extremely annoying that if you click on a city or unit and try to scroll away the game will force you back to them, resulting in a tug of war with the interface.
#4) Maybe you don't want flags but you really need something. If you see a hero wandering around theres no way to tell who it belongs to without clicking on him and looking for the flag. Then you have to know which flag is who. Its a giant pain in the butt. Half the time its better to zoom out to the cloth map to see someone's allegance than bother with the regular interface. Things should be obvious at a glance, not require multiple click to just find out who's units they are.
#5) Well since theres next to no distinction between the factions in any regard... do whatever I guess.
#6) No idea. Maybe a breeding ground of creatures that you could then recruit? Hard to say since we don't even know what half the stuff thats already in the game does yet.
On this one, I'm going to have to agree about the weapon techs, and armor techs. They don't seem to supply a distinct advantage, and then you go from daggers to short swords. I realize from a logical evolution that makes sense. But from a gameplay point, those techs that only supply one thing, like daggers, should be dagger specializations, and other specializations. The base tech should unlock light bladed weapons, daggers, short swords, two weapon fighting. And so on, and the next one up unlocks a few other options, and so on, until you get to a point where your able to go back and revisit earlier techs, to upgrade them with new smithing techniques, weapons of different materials, etcetera.
See my feel is that an army with daggers is beaten by an army with swords, and the pretech to that should of been unlocked earlier with little fuss.
Except leather requires materials, while plate requires metal. Big difference there.
If it's an option, I'd probably like to equip all my archers with daggers as a backup weapon Something small and light that won't slow them down, but also doesn't leave them with squat if somebody manages to force them into melee range.
Now, as for additional resources... the ability to have 'advanced' metals, like mithril, admantium, etc etc, would be nice. As an addition past that, include support for 'refining' materials. E. G. ore -> iron, iron -> steel. But instead of tracking each individual upgrade, just have 'ore'. When I want to use something that requires iron, it's upgraded 'on the spot'... and goes much quicker if I have the right building in the city already.
Possibly have mithril / admantium be magically 'fueled' upgrades to the war tree, thus allowing hybridization between the two, like you suggested was possible for civ / magic. (Personally, I think 'magic' should be able to support / synergize with all the other trees).
I must strongly voice my opinion AGAINST a building next to a farm that makes the farm output much more.
Right now, chasing down farms/honeybees/oasis (oasises?) is an important part of the game to feed your megacity. However, we already have the Granary which can only be built once a city has completed a farm (adds 25% to all food production in that city). We also have a global upgrade from research that increases garden from 1 to 2 food.
I guess my point is that one farm already gives a massive advantage when it comes to food supply, not only by the (20?15?) food it supplies from the start, but by the massive granary boost as well. Now you're thinking about increasing that even further. I'd say farms are already TOO STRONG.
I'm also not sure about the buildings that you have to connect to other buildings. It sounds more PAINFUL than FUN. Not only would it require city planning on a geographical level, but it would also make it too microscopic in terms of management. It might sound like a good idea, but when you've got 6-7 megacities running, maybe, just maybe, it's not really fun at all.
Here's some of my thoughts for the topics you have brought up Frogboy, enjoy!
-First off I think that all city graphics should be scaled down just a little bit on their tiles to create a little bit more space between them. The addition of road and track graphics between city improvements with the addition of walking citizens would really help finish off the look of cities in my opinion.
-Adjacency bonuses would probably help with the feeling of just placing buildings mindlessly. You don't want to make such a system too complicated however.
-I don't mind having to build multiple types of some improvements such as houses or gardens as you'd expect to see alot of those sorts of things in a city. Being allowed to build multiple buildings such as town halls however does look a bit silly. How many town halls does one city really need? I suppose I'm subscribing myself to the view that cities should look somewhat realistic in their construction which adds to the immersion factor. In GalCiv 2 it wasn't an issue because "cities" weren't visually represented in such detail as they are in Elemental.
-I'm quite happy with improvements using 1 or 4 tiles. I like the idea that a specialised 4-tile improvement earns more than its 4 1-tile improvement equivalent.
-Visually merging identical improvements would be cool, especially if it was setup in such a way that the improvements dynamically merged in a variety of ways. For example, if two gardens were placed side by side the fence around them should automatically encompass both gardens. If another one was placed adjacent the fence would extend to encompass it and so on. It'd be very similar to how cities generate their walls currently. This would be difficult to implement for other building types though I'm sure.
-I agree with you Frogboy in that there should be improvements that magnify the output of resource tiles. This would encourage and allow the player to build very specialised cities and really help leverage the advantages of the resources they have secured for themselves. It also has the additional effect of creating goals for the player as they would try to capture or destroy opposing cities that possess the resources that are creating the most trouble for them.
-I don't have too much to say on it as its still a work-in-progress clearly in the current Beta 2 build. Apart from the addition of a visible tech tree (which is still being worked on) I quite like how the research system works. Its flexible in that while you commit yourself to one of the trees to unlock a technology or ability, you are allowed to change your mind when the technology is finally unlocked. This allows the player to react alot better to changing circumstances. I am a fan of technologies that aren't always available (as was the case in the 4X game Sword of the Stars) but in the case of Elemental it has to be implemented differently. Players should always be able to access all resources in the world, so having them miss out on a warfare technology that provides metal weapons would mean they wouldn't have a use for metal in the world. This is an extreme example but its the sort of thing I'd like to avoid. Ultimately in the end I would hope that random technologies would be a choice thing and a player would be allowed to enable or disable a feature easily from the game start menu.
#6 Other Types of World Resources
-I'm sure you guys at Stardock have got plenty of ideas for different resources so I won't go into too much detail about what I'd like to see as I'm sure you'll implement it eventually. I'm curious though as to why we don't have any resources currently that generate gilden. At the moment gilden generation is limited to the building of merchant buildings and the acquisition of merchant characters.
I seem to recall (don't quote me on this) someone from Stardock saying that they originally intended to include 2 tile buildings, but it turned out to be too much of a pain from a coding perspective.
I like this idea. A LOT.
Hey, at least we don't have player-color UI text on a black background... with black as a selectable choice for color.
RESEARCH Ya im all about more details describing the tech we are about to choose and give a vague idea on what it can lead too. Maybe under War tech you can have BLADES and you start off with Dagger, and not give away the final tech of this pathway. Just looking for a more organized way to see what im choosing and a description. I dont see the game to be less engaging knowing the next choice or two. I think laying out many options and choosing 1 where you still are stressed on time and resources is known as strategy anyways.
City Improvements Hmmm. I dont like the clutter either or the look. Maybe organizing buildings could benefit. +2 Food for cattle farm, +2 Food for slaughter house, but next to each other you get a +5 food building where they merge into a new single building taking 2 tiles.
Slight Micromanagement also have to support city life. Population for 200? You have to have the houses and the food to support them, as well as the authority/faith/ or just general happiness to keep from revolts. I think adjustable taxing should be available without any tech (no biggie). Would that be micromanagement?... kind of, Total War did it kind of easy, it wasnt a hassle but kept you on your toes. Better to have some strategy in building than no strategy.
I think its more annoying doing simple non-micromanagement. If i have 6 cities i think i would enjoy myself more deciding and strategizing what to do with each city THAN just click 6 times in a non thought out manner just to "up keep" my towns and get those pesky reminders out of my face.
Quests. Im 100% sure there will be way more quest types, but getting tired of just getting str or dex books all the time.How about always some XP and throw in gold more often. Also does finding maps do anything?...yet?
School should be more efficient than a study (it is), University should be more efficient than a library (haven't tested), slums are still too weak of an improvement. 3 houses @ 64 pop each use 12 food and house 186 ... thats 1 extra space and no prestige penalty.
4 houses use 16 food and house 256 pop. More expensive than slums, sure ... but when houses are 25% more effective at housing pop then something has gone wrong.
I like the idea of Estates just being plain better than Villas in every way (hence 80 pop and 2 prestige), and I like that they are NOT automatically upgraded. I do wonder though if such a building is overpowered or not. At that point though ... I think its justified because all your really benefiting from is the extra prestige at the cost of plenty of resources.
Mililtary (econ) Buildings-
more tooltips. How do I build a Ventri Mine over a regular mine? Do I need to destroy the Ventri? What bonuses does an Armory or barracks give? I kind of like that there is only a 1 per city on Armory and Forge, so that Military (read non Civ-teching) nations will get equal chance for training discounts and extra ore.
I would like though, for cities with access to a Mine to be able to build 2 forges (or maybe only Mine towns can build forges, in that case probably 2 - 3 forges per mine, hard cap.
Weapons/Armor/Equipment -
currently there is no difference between Leather and Hardened Leather ... since they both give 1 defense per item. Personally I think patchwork cloth should be 1 (or 0.5), etc. Also, I wish there were more tool tips on how you get Magic Rings, and I wish there was a +defense magic ring and a + combat speed magic ring.
Tactical Battles-
is there once again a separation between movement and combat speed? If so, place combat speed into more of the stat-menu/HUDs. As it is, finding out a soldier's combat speed isn't as easy as any of the other stats.
Military (training) Buildings-
its not exactly obvious that we need to build a Siege Workshop to train a unit with a battering ram ... tool tips could help. Tool tips could also be in place to explain that archers need an archery range to be built. Its perfectly feasible to assume that archery ranges merely give some extra benefit to archer units, as opposed to being required for their training.
QUESTS!!!!!
I really think that every successfully completed quest should give some exp. I don't think that battles should be only exp. Though, you should have to complete the quest "correctly" in order to get the exp (properly escorting dude, actually saving the Knight/Princess).
Even if quests only gave a little bit of exp, I think i'd still of gained a couple levels on quests alone. I think it should be perfectly valid to gain levels by completing enough quests (especially harder/ more difficult quests->more exp)
This would be as an extra(bonus) reward added to the actual posted reward ... I doubt any (or very few) quests would "only" give experience points as a reward.
On the same thought, it'd be cool to have little mini dungeons to explore in, with random respawning monsters ... for a little random battle action. Not a lot, perhaps, but about one relatively near each starting location would be nice (but out of the way so as not to be a nuisance).
Oh, you'll not get an argument from me - I just think it's very possible to go overboard, and suddenly it's more Sim City than it is Empire Building and Strategy. I don't want to have to spend the first 5 minutes of every turn managing what TILE I build on, then spend the next 1 min doing the rest of the stuff I manage like my armies, battles, spell casting, etc., is my meaning.
Would having an option to automactially place buildings be a good idea? I thought it would speed up the process if you don't mind where they go. If you don't have a required building, it could give you a message saying what building you're missing.
I'm not in the Beta, so my apologies if there is already an option for this. I don't remember seeing one mentioned in the preview videos I've watched though.
So, can buildings actually consume resources (i.e. provide negative production)? I'd love to see a "black market" type building - or call it whatever you will - to provide access to a rare resource you can't otherwise get, but at a substantial gold cost. For example: 4 tiles, produces 1 ore per turn, -10 gold per turn. For when your military desperately needs metal, you don't have a natural source of it, and other players aren't quite willing to help equip your armies so you can conquer them - you can get it, for a price.
Ideally you'd be able to pick what resource it produces, ore or crystal or whatever else, although a workaround is to have several different such black markets that can produce different resources, player chooses whether to build an Ore Buyer or Crystal Trader or whatever. You'd want to make them unique (1 per player), the amount of any such resource available to be bought should after all be limited and not something you can base a huge industry on. Still vastly better than no ore whatsoever, you'd be able to fully equip a small number of units in metal weapons/full plate, or a larger number with just metal weapons and leather armor, it gives the player more options and makes the game more interesting when a crucial resource is scarce or nonexistant.
Edit: Of course you could just make something similar to the shop interface that allows buying/selling of resources, it would be the same effect in the end, but that seems to me like an unnatural mix of the game's city-building and RPG elements - buying individual items for your sovereign in a shop is one thing, equipping an army with ore or equipment bought at a shop would seem strange. A building that 'produces' a resource at a gold cost would feel more organic I think, it fits neatly into the city-building side of the game.
Houses are the biggest issue I run into. No matter what I do, my city ends up at a standstill requiring reorganization to fit more houses.
Why not make houses automatic? The city grows based off your surplus food and houses become sort of a pleasant visual buffer zone between the city improvements. This makes the city improvements spaced out and visually, a little bit nicer, with little huts and houses in between them. This might require rebalancing of city space per city level, but in the end, it eliminates one of the tedious aspects of city building right now.
Either that, or I would go with housing area instead of just a single hut or house. And make it upgradeable, so that if I have huts and research villas, I can improve my four tile housing district to the next level, rather than demolish and rebuild.
Tooltips and new requirements. I may have missed it, but when you get archery, you can design an archer unit and never be able to build it because nothing showed you the archery range is required. Maybe the yielding technology could be displayed like this:
>New Ability: Ranged Weapons
->New Improvement: Archery Range
-->New Item: Yew Shortbow
This shows I gain the ability for Ranged Weapons, which lets me build an Archery Range so I can make Shortbows. An example of technology info that doesn't have reqs:
>New Item: Shortsword
>New Item:Longsword
>New Item:Dagger
The Longsword here doesn't require the shortsword to be made. The only reason I find something like this would be useful is when Techs give us multiple rewards, but we have to build/use one reward before the others are available.
I'm not sure if this is planned, but I'd like to see the actual City tile grow. It always looks like a wooden fort. Will it age into a keep, and then a stone castle, and then an ivory tower? (for example)
If the houses were automatic, they would also grow out with the city. This growth should also be on the cloth map. Similar to Master of Magic, this would be comparing a hamlet to a city - the city stretches a bit further and has a level of magnificence to it. This instantly distincts the difference between a low population city and a high-pop city, which is my point. Population is hidden in the bottom corner of the screen. It should be more obvious (but unless the hardcore HUD is on, no numbers on the map!).
First thought on this: Emblems. Crests. These should be displayed somehow on units. Your mentioning of flags gave me an idea you used in Gal Civ 2. You had components that gave a buff to an entire Fleet. Why not have Herald's or Flagbearers that can grant an entire army an ability? With magic, you could even make enchanted Standards. This could be fun, but I guess in the end, it'd end up being doable in the modding editors. It would just be nice to see the Crests/Emblems more obvious on units.
A different building or 2 per faction wouldn't be bad, or even individual gear. I'll have to come up with something specific.
I need to brush up on the factions a bit more, but a special ability for Pioneers might be nice, as well. An example would be, one faction is from the mountains and their Pioneers can build tunnels through mountain ranges. Another is a faction of exceptional traders, perhaps their Pioneers can upgrade roads in highways. Maybe a warlike factions can have Pioneers build Forts outside city limits, or walls, for a forward defensive position.
Off shore resources would be a nice twist to a fantasy game.
Turtle Mounts,Coral Reefs, or Underwater Shards?
What about tile specific resources? Maybe a Goldenwood thicket in a cluster of forests, a Waterfall on a river tile (some kind of mill improvement?) or something to that effect.
It would be interesting if there were Essence Fonts. Areas naturally saturated with Essence that can quicken mana regeneration for champions.
I think animals can play a big part here. I saw someone recommend that a cattle farm have a slaughterhouse and a tannery for bonus food and materials versus a mill. Well, in order to have cattle, you need cows! That could be a resource. Alternative mounts could have a great presence here, but they need to be different from horses. Raptors have an extra attack, Elephants grant more defense, and Turtles (mentioned above) can swim? Having any of those available could greatly alter tactics.
#1 City Improvements These are trivial for us to add. And we’ve only started touching the capabilities here. We can have improvements that require adjacency. That is, we can have a farm and require a second improvement be adjacent to a farm tile. We can have improvements in which you can build as many as you want per city, only 1 per faction, or one per city level. Improvements can use either 1 tile or 4 tiles. City tiles that meet a criteria can be merged. So if you built N of the same type of improvement in 4 tiles, we can visually merge them together. You won’t get to see it during the beta phase but you can make requests on this still. I like the idea that putting buildings near each other give extra bonuses. Maybe not make them required to be built beside them, but the buildings that give a flat % increase to a cities output should have that % bumped up a little if put beside a corresponding building. For example: Granary's put beside gardens, farms, behives, etc. give a higher % bonus to food production Workshops put beside lumber mills or mines Armouries beside a barracks / training yard Just as a few examples. To help tweak the races a little and give them a little more variety, these beside-bonuses could be higher or lower depending on the faction? Also, I don't know why people are having trouble with their houses, I seem to be doing okay with mine? It's kind of a pain when it looks like the majority of your city is garden and houses at the lower levels, but once you get higher level tech's you can start to shift away from slums and move everyone into compy villa's and mansions!
I like the idea that putting buildings near each other give extra bonuses. Maybe not make them required to be built beside them, but the buildings that give a flat % increase to a cities output should have that % bumped up a little if put beside a corresponding building. For example:
#2 Research The research screen is still pretty rough. The tech tree button is disabled and there’s too little information on it. Feel free to discuss different ideas on what information you’d like to see. How you would like to see it presented. Bear in mind, we are not going to toss out the general research concept (the one in there came from the 9 month beta 1 cycle and we like it as a game mechanic).
I think I kind of said my peace about this one in one of the other threads, but to kind of summarize what I'd like to see the research tree look like:
#3 HUD options Beta 3 will have a Head’s up Display toggle that will allow you to get information about your cities.
Then I'll wait on this one
#4 NON-HUD Information That said, we don’t users to have to use a HUD to get basic info at a glance. Thus, feedback and suggestions of looking at a unit, city, etc. and telling if they are defended, how strong they are, the general output, etc. We have our own thoughts on this but we’d love to hear yours. We do NOT, however, want to have units running around with flags or other things of the sort. We want subtle (non-HUD) and hard core (HUD).
Maybe use something like a mouseover display when hovering over your own units or enemy units, to see the composition without having to click and look at the individual units in a stack?
#5 Visual Distinctions between Factions. The Beta 2 series will begin to show how factions are different from one another much better. However, we’d love to hear your thoughts on making different factions more distinct and interesting. Bear in mind, from a RAM point of view, it’s not practical for every faction to have a completely different building design setup (when we’re all 64-bit then we can talk about that).
I'd love to see a little more distinction in armour and/or weapons, even if it isn't faction specific. Just so we can give our units their own kind of flair
I didn't really want to comment much on the world resources, because right now it seems like I have little to do with the resources that are already in the game. This might be a question I have more of an opinion on later in the beta <.<
#6 Other types of World Resources The Beta 2 series will start to add horses as a global resource that is used to create mounted warriors. But we’d like to hear your thoughts on other resources that one might control – rarer ones. We have plenty of ideas of things about a given kingdom that might be affected by this or that but we don’t want to bias the direction of suggestions. I will say, however, we want to stay away from the GalCiv “Approval/Happiness” concept. The XML allows us to create any type of resource, define a graphic, a 3D tile, and what stats it changes and how much. The random generator will make use of it automatically (and this same thing will happen through modding no doubt). So it’s not a big deal to add more resources as long as they’re fun and not simply there for the sake of “complexity”.
I'd like to see a type of mutagen resource. I remember you discussing how in the dynasty system off spring could have drastic appearances depending on who or what their parents were. I'd like to see something similar applied to soldiers. Where a player might find a "Raven Blood" pool (or whatever) that could be used to alter soldiers. During training the player could select the mutagen to use on his soldiers which would change their appearance and stats in random ways. Similar to the off spring system, soldiers given a mutagen during training would have randomly generated appearances and stats based on the mutagen.
So for example Raven Blood could randomly alter strength & hit points positively but randomly affect defense and combat speed negatively. As for appearance the soldiers might have pale skin and pulsing black veins running throughout their bodies. Instead of using traditional weapons these soldiers might have sharp claws or other monstrous qualities for weapons. A simple example but you get the idea.
I have to agree here, this is one of those things that can make a game unfun. FFH sometimes suffers from this as well, and unlike FFH, there's no chance of an unbalancing goody hut to compensate.
(Actually: having some unbalanced stuff lootable would be nice for single-player)
Other suggestions (not what you want)
Have some standardized troops pre-designed, so people don't have to go into the unit editor early on. I do think the unit editor feature is, right now, less fun then it was in GCII, and needs more stuff.
There needs to be a real difference between daggers/staffs/swords/polearms in terms of bonuses/penalties. Maybe give a polearm a bonus against some monsters, daggers a bonus for some troops (rogues) , etc. Otherwise, people are just going to select what has the best stats. Weaponry should matter, especially faction vs faction. Might be too much realism though.
So far I am really enjoying the no crash experience, I am not sure why others are having problems. Maybe I just have not pushed it to the crash point but I have about 10 hours with no CTD!! I am still wrapped up in the eye candy, but did have the disappearing buildings issue pop up while scrolling in and out! As far as suggestions, I can't put my finger on anything specific but something does not feel right with the cities. The buildings seemed hard to distinguish in the 3D view when they get built up. I am still learning what the buildings look like and will probably get used to it later on.
Research needs some fleshing out which I am sure is being taken care of and added as time goes on. I would really like to see a visual branching diagram of all the technology available, doesn't have to be in the Technology screen itself. It could be accessed from the info guide at the top right or in the manual if one is to come with the retail box.
The HUD is a good idea and I would hope it will be customizable. I believe it would also help to be able to toggle it on and off easily from inside a running game as opposed to on the options menu. Just in case things get cluttered you could switch it of, make your move and turn it back on should you need to.
Visual faction distinction is an issue at this point, but I can't think of a way to do it better than what is already been done.Other than locking each faction to a certain hair, eye or skin color. And horrid deformation for the dark oriented factions.That seem like it has been done to death though.
As far as resources, I like the different metals, for making super light weapons and armor. Also I was thinking about resources that if gathered would have + and - effects like an herb that increases sight or magical ability while slowing attack speed or map movement.
I was also thinking a single thread or a questionnaire to report or ask about the hardware resources of the machines we are testing on. It seems like it would make things easier for the developers to have one place to look up that info instead of chasing through the forum.
I hope this helps, back to testing and thanks guys I can tell this is going to eat up a lot of my time!!
Requiring adjacency is an awesome idea. I think it would be better to limit the adjacency bonus to one time only, in order to keep down the odds of players having to demolish a bunch of buildings in order to reorganize. Not fun, just annoying.
1 per faction improvements are fun. I'm surprised you didn't mention 1 per world though, similar to Wonders in Civilization. Was that skipped on purpose, or did it just slip your mind?
I really like the idea of merging improvements. Keep it to ones you can build unlimited of (like houses) and give it a slight bonus in order to encourage smart planning. The bonus might be too strong or necessary if you could merge *anything*. It seems sort of pointless to have merging without a bonus.
I like the general way the tech tree is presented in galciv 2 and civ 4. The main changes necessary would be color coding it so you could see what is green/yellow/etc to you, and perhaps finding a way to show how many breakthroughs it will take before an non-researchable item becomes red. When looking at a tech, you really need to be able to hover over or click on the buildings it unlocks and see what they do.
Something like the civilopedia where you can browse everything, and jump from hyperlink to hyperlink would be nice too.
Besides colors, banners and logos I can't really think of much to differentiate them. Maybe spiky armor on some factions, some have a little drummer in the corner of the tile, different idle animations? No great ideas.
The obvious one is rare forms of mounts. Horses may give +1 to movements speed, while an elephant would give +1 to attack, and bears would let you auto-win every combat.
Resources that allow you to recruit rare forms of creatures. Dragon roosts, troll cave, brigand hideout, etc. Maybe have a low level adventure tech unlock an improvement to place over them, and then different resources would require different minimum levels of adventuring tech. This may not be necessary with magic like charm creature or quests, but may as well mention it.
Rare form of metal that gives bonus attack vs magical/titan/summoned/x creatures.
Historical sites that are specific to your Elemental world. Perhaps controlling the site where a titan fell or some such would give you prestige. This would be a nice way to make the world's history pop out more and feel relevant. If I knew more about the world I'd give more specific suggestions.
Sorry if I repeated what others have already mentioned.
#1 City Improvements:
Possible salve against micromanagement hell would be to have cities without a building under construction give something else instead. This is how MoM and Civ operate, but it could be quite flexible... With an Elemental Twist!
A city with nothing under construction could:
Automatically increase road construction speed (Builders have to go somewhere)
Produce more Guilders, Population, and/or Material (Abstracted "goods" production)
Expand Territory (in the form of little tiny houses popping up all around your borderlands)
Or my personal favorite: Slowly reduce the time it takes to build future buildings (as in, the game abstracts turns where you are not micro managing, and the governor "builds" buildings according to either the NPC type or player decided Governor personality. For example a town that the player doesn't want to bother micromanaging could start "building" buildings that the AI would naturally build in that town, in effect reducing the build time for the turn that the player gets around to managing the city personally. If the player doesn't get to the town for a really long time, the governor could stop at "1 Turn" build time for that building, and move on to another building.
To clarify, a scenario using this Governor Pseudo-Build plan:
The town of Arguile is one of a dozen in Emperor Yestin's Empire. Yestin is busy managing his capital's construction plans, troop movements, designing new armies, exploring dungeons, meeting with foreign leaders etc. After a dozen turns of action and intrigue, Yestin notices he has not checked on the city of Arguile in some time.
Under Arguile's building list a Lumbermill has 1 Turn build time and a Palace has 4 turns build time. This represents the time the Governor decided to put into pseudo-building these improvements. Since Yestin's empire cannot afford another palace right now, Yestin decides to go ahead and build a Lumbermill, a Merchant and a Library.
The Lumbermill gets built in one turn, costing the normal price, and the next improvements take normal time. The Palace still has a 4 turn build time, but for now those turns the Governor spent pseudo-building it are wasted.
Under this system, a player who micromanages every single city all through the game will get maximum efficiency by building every single improvement as soon as it is available, but the player who doesn't want to can leave some of his cities unattended without too much waste/guilt, as long as he eventually gets around to looking at the town.
#1 City Improvements/#6 Other types of World Resources
Here is an idea that breaks away from huts, etc. and also contributes other World resources to play with.
I'm sure many craftsmen lived where they worked as many were poor. Let's assume your population lives within the city limits in each of the businesses built there i.e Armory, etc. The 'caps' on population would not be based on available tiles and the housing built on them. (Huts would be removed.) Instead, there will be limits based on necessities like food and water. Now the game already provides numerous options for food, and to that we would add wells and springs. Wells would be limited in number like other facilities, but upgradeable in the same way. Also the World would be randomly populated with springs which would provide the ability to support a larger population. They could be dealt with in the same way mines and other scattered tiles provide bonuses to your people. They would need to be found and guarded but would add more exploration and strategy to the gameplay.
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