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.
In regards to update #1 (and understanding full well that we're still pretty early on with little of the combat system in place ), is there going to be a point to using shields for units? As it stands right now it seems like the only benefit for using a shield is a reduced cost for producing the unit. Will we see things like this expanded a little? Will different armour types and accessories (like shields) give us benefits to different kind of damage types?
Equipment will have abilities attached to them as well (just not in yet until the tactical battles get going). So for instance, shields have a block ability (they have an N% chance of blocking certain types of attack).
would it be possible to include little flags on the naval units(if this is true already then chalk it up to me not using naval units yet) that depict which faction they belong to? like how pirates have the skull and crossbones flag. i know it would be small proportionately, but when the units are larger it would show off nicely.
Rare resource/place whatever etc - Fountain of youth: coming here gives you a potion that when consumed returns a champion to the age of 20! this could actually be very useful since people do age in the game, and you want to keep your kick ass warrior son around a little longer.
Been a blast of a beta so far.
Some improvements that have been mentioned a thousand times:
Quests - more different types of quests. I hate escort quests and the options are plentiful. However, the quest interface needs adjusting. Can I suggest the quest interface be made to list all teh quests for your kingdom with the hero and the originator of the quest listed. If you havea couple going it gets confusing and you forget who needs to go where.
Also do the inns respawn during the game? I like the random quests that just appear in cities too, that's cool. Can I suggest a building that attracts them to the city; unless of course the pub already does and I just didn't know it yet.
Unit design - Will there be more unit types you can train instead of peasants? I know you can design your own units, which is fun, but for the new player it's difficult to see beyond the peasant. I must admit it is nice to create a building and suddenly see generic new units appear without needing designs for them.
Cities - Good stuff. The City interface needs improving somewhat in terms of mouse over of buildings. To demolish some of the earlier buildings you have to keep clicking on random buildings since some won't show their name. Also are some buildings pre-requisites for others? If so it needs to be made clearer maybe with a visual flowchart accessible through the Heirgammon. Ic an't tell if you need a study for a school etc. Which incidentally isn't such a bad idea
Also I like the zoom in function and find it more useful, however it always zooms in too close, is there anyway to set the zoom distance dynamically in the options? Or even better make it fit the entire city in with teh surrounding squares visible.
Loot - Is it possible to get item loot from npc's you kill? When groups of NPCs rampage through the land hoarding those lovely bits of loot it would be nice, if you can't afford to recruit them, to get the goodies from their corpses. Thanks.
Research - I really like the research. At first I wasn't amused with how much there is but with another 3 trees there is no hope of getting all the research done in one game. My only concern is that this needs to be balanced so that you don't get "must haves". At the moment gold can only be gained through economics and then farming is essential for city growth so there is little benefit in deviating from these. Things like the weapons in logistics should be streamlined and maybe consolidated and other things added for entirely enw abilities to make them balanced.
Keep up the good work and can't wait for teh next revisions!
well i assume that since we can't research adventuring the quests are the very simple 0th level quests. when you research the adventuring more complex and rewarding quests will pop up.
Sounds good. No idea what is in adventuring but if that's the case it would be vastly better than my idea.
Actually on that note are trees going to be interwoven so that for instance in this case to get maximum benefit you need aadventuring research and also entertainment in civics to build the pubs? That would be brilliant.
I'll admit first that I only skimmed the other posts, so if any of these ideas have been put forward already, just consider this a vote for those ideas
#1 City ImprovementsI'm definitely in the camp with those that don't like the idea of adjacency bonus structures. Building a city in Beta 2 already feels like a chore to me, and anything to reduce the tedium would be welcome. If you do go down this road, my suggestion would be to allow booster buildings to have a radius of effect rather than forcing adjacency.Regardless of the choice of adjacency bonus vs. citywide bonus, there may be different types of boost (production efficency boost, processing boost, distribution efficency boost, etc.) and only the best single effect of each type would apply. So for example if you had a "Compost Landfill" that would apply a 25% production efficency boost to food, a "Watermill" that provided a 25% processing boost to food, a "Small Warehouse" that provided a 25% distribution efficency bonus to multiple resources including food, and an "Iced Storage" from the magic techs that gives a 50% distribtion efficency bonus to food, you total food bonus would be 25+25+50=100%.
I don't know how specialized you would want to make this, but the idea could be taken further, to different types of each resource. So, intead of just generic "food" there could be separate buildings for grain (farms), fruit (orchards), and meat (ranches). With map resources (fertile land, pastures, etc.) it could make different cities feel very different depending on the strengths of the land around them.
Obviously I only used food production as an example, but similar schemes could work for other resources.
#2 ResearchI understand that a lot of the techs are still being worked on, so things like the "duplicate" leather armors, and the strange daggers-only tech don't really bother me right now. In terms of display, I think when you are choosing from a list of techs to gain, you should be able to easily see what the tech gives you, and at least which common techs it leads to. I think it has already been said, but the fact that I can build caravans is nice, but what does it mean? I like the list of structures and/or items that the tech provides, but the tooltip should give more information than it currently does (I assumed this would change but it can't hurt to throw it out).
I like the idea that has been put forward for different grades of the same item. For example, bronze, iron, and steel weapons and armor. Of course, wooden weapons and leather/hide armor shouldn't get left out, but maybe are more common (or guaranteed?) early picks that will tide you over until you can get 'proper' equipment, or for units you don't care much about... peasant levies and the like.
This would tie in nicely with #6 regarding map resources, so we can be assured that on the map (somewhere) would be the copper ore we need to make bronze, the iron ore to make iron and steel (with the proper techs). However, there may just be more exotic materials out there to forge weapons & armor with: mithril, adamantium, stardockium... it may not be appropriate for all units due to cost, but the option would be there for your elite.Regarding the magic side of things, I'd like to see "techs" in the magic tree that also can improve units. So, a unit's weapons could be magically forged instead of, or as well as, being made from different material. This way, someone that "went deep" into magic could still make effective combat units, I'm imagining a lightning-charged wooden spear vs. steel armor. It may take a particular elemental shard to allow the production, or maybe that just makes it easier.
#3-5No comments at this time.#6A few quick ideas, in addition to the ones above:Metal: gold, silver, gems for an economy boostResearch: ancient ruins (maybe even a rare ancient library for a big boost)Something from an older game I liked, Conquest of the New World: world features (rivers, tall mountains, etc.) that can be named by the player upon discovery for a little more flavor.I also like the idea of multiple purpose resources, maybe with a choice that has to be made: use the material or get gold for trading it, etc.
A little scatterbrained but hopefully there are a few good ideas in there
Oh yeah - the game start as it is right now your too advanced- try to add a few levels of earlier technology. Wooden and bone weapons and stuff - than move on to basic metals, and than more advanced metals (so wood/bone than bronze, than peg iron, than iron, than steel, than some mithiril-equivilent, etc.) - This will give you a lot more resource types too which can be required for other things.
Hello,
Im not a big fan of alot of the civ-style game city management mechanics. It gets real tedious when you have to constantly have all of your cities build a granary, research lab, barracks, etc... It's ok when there are a few cities, but when you're far down the tech tree and you build a new city, its annoying when you're looking at 40 different buildings to build there, etc...
How about only having a few cities like this that are really big such as a New York or Tokyo size that need lots of attention when it comes to building, and then you have smaller towns that are just generally upgraded? So you could start with a small town that is just upgraded by alloting points to basic things such as research, military, etc... Once your population in a given town is large enough (say 1,000,000 people) then it becomes a major population center, and you have to start actually constructing specific buildings.
I just purchased SOASE and really like the way your planets are upgraded. You just click a button that upgrades the planet as a whole, and thats it. I dont want to have 12 cities where I have to build houses just to populate my citizens, as that should be something they should do on their own. It just becomes too tedious. I also dont want to have to build barracks just to be able to train peasants to use sticks! I would rather have a rather small selection of building types to build that have many upgrade levels.
Anyways, I hope this all makes sense.
A cool way to expand on this for late game is for these early tech resources to become a cosmetic component in later pieces of armour or weapons. Like in the beginning of the game if bone was a starting resource (and really, why shouldn't it be in a post-apocalyptic world) the player can research bone knives or spears. In the late game bone is used for something like "ornate bone longsword". The bone at that point doesn't add much if anything to the weapon, but maybe the model has a hilt that's all bone-looking or something. This would prolly work better though with armours, like "bone-plate armour". It could give the plate armour a really cool bone-ish vibe.
EDIT: In reply to Jamie Slaughter, are we really going to be running into situations though were we have 12+ cities to manage? If the beta as-is is any indication I've maybe built three max before conquering computer players cities. Of course this could also be me failing at expanding <.<
Definitely need more things to do with your Sovereign every turn, I found myself skipping way ahead waiting for buildings and techs because there was nothing to do but pick through trash heaps and escort the nobility!
Am I missing a secondary purpose for the merchants, inventors, etc that we come across? Aside from the adventurers they are certainly not anything I would do anything with other than send them to the nearest city and leave them there. Why not just have these people disappear either after hiring or after adding them to a city? Toss them in a screen showing members of your royal court or retinue or whatever, as it is they simply clutter the quick select bar in the upper left.
Lastly, the military techs bother me lol. It really doesn't make sense that simple things like longswords, daggers, spears, axes, etc, would need to be "uncovered" by researchers. I think that all of the basic armaments should be available from the start. I could see needing to research more complex things like armor, or the figuring out the mechanics of a crossbow, or even the processes for smelting/mining for rare metals and advanced alloys to improve the basic weapons. Even research for more exotic versions of the various basic weapons would probably be appropriate. It just seems a major stretch of the imagination that someone who knows how to make daggers and has seen a sword couldn't simply make a longer dagger! Or maybe a dagger on the end of a long pole! Or a two handed dagger!
I just won my first game, it ended when the leader of a another kingdom died, attacking one of my cities,
1. City Improvements:
It seems every building just gets you more things (weapons, food, armor, etc.) or (money, points(research, spell), etc. Some suggestions for City Improvements.
- Guilds to help train npc's in their area of expertise or ones that could help you get a new npc (builder, theif, healer, etc.)
- Training Area to help training/upgrade of army units, maybe allowing a highly trained to become a named npc.
- Alchemist building to produce random potions at random intervals.
- Book Shop where a skill book for sale would show up at random intervals.
2, Research
I was surprised how fast research went after a few building improvements, I was able to complete the research tree in a very short time once I had two cities, new levels only took 10 or 11 turns each. I think research should be a little exponential where each new level cost much more than the other.
This hasn't happened in a game of elemental for me either. I was just thinking back to MOM, MOO2, CIV 2-4, Gal Civ, etc... It gets to where you have a gazillion things to build in mid to end game whenever you found a new settlement/city...
For example- When I found a my 8th colony in MOO2. By now I've gone through a fair ammount of the tech tree, and so now I have to queue up a bunch of buildings. It just gets very tedious to have to constantly go through all of your cities and make sure youve got everything queued up, etc... I would rather just have a few areas of improvement that I pay to improve such as Military, Population, Farming, Mining, etc... So I can look at a city and when I have enough resources just pay to improve its level in a given area. Certain specific buildings should be specific and monumental. It would be like how you improve your worlds in Sins of a Solar empire. I would like to watch my cities expand by themselves with me as the all powerful sovereign just directing them.
I dont want to have to tell each city I have to build housing for its citizens. If I want that, Ill play Sim City as that involves only 1 city. I know some people like this way to play, and I have no doubt that this game will rock however it turns out, but if I had my druthers...
Cities - Adventuring with my sovereign is very fun, it hits that “turn based strategy game in a RPG world" feel. That being said, I am all for a cities visuals being a more personal/RPG experience; the city is an extension of yourself and should change depending on the choices and upgrades you choose. If this is an RPG world and we are going to spend a lot of time in it I want my city to look like it belongs to me and my type of play style, just as in a RPG.
I also feel like city build is much to bland and tedious. building a city right now requires basically build the same three buildings over and over every turn or so, it only gets exciting when you can build a temple or a town hall and even then those building don't do much more than your average farm.
Adventuring - generally fun, but I do not understand all the NPC running around. Why the hell are they out there? I can kill them for a little experience or gold or recruit them but there are so many it is not even an exciting encounter. in a post apocalyptic world people should be rare to come by and dealing with them should be meaningful and exciting. I suggest decreasing the amount of NPC by around 75% and to make recruitment more meaningful and exciting, for example: it would be nice to find a NPC and in order to recruit him you are given a choice to pay goal or do a quest for him/her, after one of those tasks are completed he/she can join you on some sort in retinue or royal court, that either travels with you and helps you on your quests boosting your own stats. Another example is if you are not into adventuring so much you can send the recruited NPC to be housed in some sort of royal court at your city where they will give your city specific benefits rather than stat boosts in an adventuring party. i feel like adding these things would make me really feel like i was in an RPG world where choices matter and effect your character/personal growth
Final note - Elemental has a good art style, feel and ambition to it but needs to find its defining qualities. when I think of the future release of Elemental and ask myself "why do I want to play this game?", I think of a sold and simple turn based city building game that has a magical way of making you feel in control and in a RPG world, mainly by through the advanced customization options of your sovereign and cities, and also through a world filled with interesting places, items, and people to explore and experience.
First time posting on this Website, just like to say how awesome this game is already. I have a few suggestions/additions that i think would be great to have in the game.- UI1. This may not be so important early on in the game when you have 1 or 2 settlements that are of a small size, but when you have large settlements with multiple buildings within them it will be more applicable. When i have many cities i sometimes forget what buildings i have placed in what city and i cant always tell by their model, yes you can enter the building mode and check what it has, but that takes time, i propose that when you have selected a city and you wish to know what building model is doing what, when you mouse over it, a UI screen pops up where your mouse is giving a brief description of that building, its name and what its producing, rather than having to enter building mode and check what you have or dont have, then having to add up all of its productions this would be much more easier.2. I have seen this in a couple of games and i really like it, it would be nice if the GUI could be scaled to a particular size with a scroll bar in the options menu, perhaps when you play you like to see more of the playing field on your screen than the UI, so not having the inconvenience of the UI being turned off completely, it would be better if you could scale down its size and it still be available there on screen, if you cant see whats in the UI then you can scale its size up allowing for more information to be displayed.- UNITS1. I had a neat idea of a Unit that could be in the game while i was battling a troll. I had a couple of enemies around me and my party of troops was sure to die from one of them, so as i battled the troll i thought to myself, what if i could get the troll to fight for me??? Then the idea sprung in my mind for a Unit that can control Neutral Monsters, like some sort of Monster Wrangler if you will. He would start at level one like all Units, and gains more levels by Wrangling/Taking control of low level Neutral Monsters, thus allowing him to take control of larger/higher level Monsters like Troll Leaders etc etc, effectively giving you control over the Neutral Monsters to help you Battle your enemies.2. This idea/suggestion applies to Units as well as Buildings to some degree i think. When training Units and when i have multiple Settlements, i sometimes lose track of what Units i have created in what cities, and so i have to go through each one and look, once i find the Unit im after, i then have to click on him then tell him to leave that city to become operational, my idea is to be able to setup Rally points for Units, each city that has the ability to train Units can set Rally Points, that way, i can setup and area where i know all my Units will be holding when i want them.- OTHER1. Not sure if this suggestion/idea should be a UI or GAMEPLAY suggestion, so ill put it in its own category I usually play in the Paper Map height and its harder to spot Natural Resources and Stones like Iron Ore and Fire Shards or whatever they are called, so i was wondering if it was possible to make these more obvious as they are quite important so its a bit unfortunate if you miss one because it just looks like any other rock out there. Thanks for reading, im sure to think of more things, hope this was the right place to post this....
A good way to quick indicate unit strength would be the standard streetlight system of green, yellow, or red on the unit card title, a map overlay would be nice as well. This would have to be in relation to the selected unit though.
Cities: I think cities should have an actual gate, enemy armies should be limited to attacking via the gate tile unless they have units to deal with the walls.
I think enemy intelligence should be tied directly to your technolgy, Ie. special buildings and unit abilities. Without these you would see just red green or yellow, no stats.
Resources: I'd like to see a fertility resource, hehe, not that the girls in this game need it. It should be turn / area limited, and rare. Ie: for a number of turns so long as your spouce is near it, all births will be twins.
A bit off topic: I think you should consider adding a movement posture mechanic to the game. Ie. aggressive or defensive. You can only attack while in the agressive posture, units suffer a movement penalty and gain an attack bonus. Defensive posture grants a movement bonus and a chance to evade an attack. Switching postures should take a single turn. I say this because at this point, its too attractive to just kill unwanted neutral npcs for Exp. and to keep them from the enemy. This would give them a fighting chance against players who were out to farm them. Also, some nice spice for the player who is trying to recruit that sexy adventurer who just switched to aggressive posture at his approach. Will she join or attack. A few high combat npcs should be spawned in aggressive for every game.
Anyway, I'm sure u get the drift of it. Some neutral ai work no doubt, but also something for the ai to work with
Unless ofcourse they are designed to be an exp resource, if so, I would feel kinda bad running around telling everbody to come to me for shelter and then killing them. In the very least killing them should impart a serious prestige penalty. My apologies if this has been touched upon already, I missed beta one and those discussions
And counters! I think the cloth map should have a use counters option. So you can see multiple units on the same tile.
A great game! cant wait. GO FROGBOY!!!!
Just one suggestion about resources:
As far as I'm aware we have materials and iron, which gives some differentiation between weapons. I assume you can also enchant weapons so they can hurt creatures that may be immune to normal weapons, or highly resistant. Is there a material like Mithril, or Adamantium, or whatever, that is rarer than Iron but can create magical weapons in themselves (i.e. without enchantments)?
Looks awesome so far, by the way, though the game lacks the "fun" factor for me, primarily, I think, because magic is missing currently and that's the part I think I'd enjoy the most.
the ongoing consensus that city building is currently monotonous is exactly what I was pointing out in my post a while back. But I suppose it was likely too lengthy The bottom line is IMHO: do away with constructing any buildings that you are going to be building in every single city. Make the player only build structures which are in some debate as t owhat you would actually do. For example, the farms and houses. Everyone is going to build them. Allow the player to build 1 additional square out, and fill in the remaining areas dynamically with houses & farms. The higher the population gets, the denser the houses could get, & they could kinda squish around any new building you place.
Building these "spamalot" buildings has been the tedious, work like part of every civ style game ever created. If it isn't a choice, it should be assumed I want it done. & how much you want to spend on growth should be as simple as selecting it from a drop down menu for each colony.
Here's a big one that I found while playing.
I wanted to switch my game music seemlessly. But what I had to do was turn off the game music, and then just play my Winamp. And I know that several MMO's and other games have a built in music player, that either utilizes one of those music playing programs, or is one of it's own.
But I think that would be really cool (even if it's a feature update after the game goes live.)
Cause there are times, when I'm exploring that I want to listen to some soundtrack, and then when I'm getting ready to battle monster, I can play a couple "Monster" songs, and then when I'm going into bigger battles, I can quickly switch my music to something a bit more epic, like the Lord of the Rings Soundtrack, or the music soundtracks from the Warhammer 40k Dawn of War II (Awesome soundtrack by the way.)
And so on. I realize this is an "Interest" aspect, but I got burned out on the game music almost immediately. And prefer my own sound tracks. I would just like to have such a feature if possible. And figured, maybe there are others out there who don't want to have to manually switch it out.
Damage types are great, but what about unit types and special abilities? I'd like guys with pole arms to stop mounted charges, but I also want guys with bows & daggers to get crushed by mounted charges. And eh.. It might be cliché, but I'd like dragons to breathe fire, golems to be impervious to magic, swamp monsters to be able to move unseen & ambush stuff in swampy terrain, and so on.
...
The GUI needs to scale, or have a "blind old bat" option. My screen is some distance from my face and I play in 1920x1200. Font below size 22 gets annoying.
Hero traits (as in multiple) & heirlooms would be cool. Mr. Handsome The Heroic Administrator would be a much cooler guy if he had a couple of traits like "is handsome (charisma+2)" and "is brave (morale bonus)" and "is a good administrator (production +% when in a city)". Or he could just have a pile of magical heirlooms conferring him similar bonuses. The cool thing about heirlooms would be that they could be stolen, destroyed or even cursed. The cool thing about traits is that they could improve over time if the possessor does relevant stuff (administrator administrating, brave guy rallying troops, etc), and that offspring could inherit them.
And speaking of stats, I know you looooove your 0.000000001 modifiers beyond all reason, Frogboy. But seriously... It is BORING! I don't mind that a level-up gives my char +1 too something. But don't make it +1.0 when we're talking about stats ranging between 10 and 15. "Whooooo! I just increased my strength by a 150th! Tremble before me, world!" is something you won't ever hear from a sane person. I can't speak for anyone but myself, obviously, but I very strongly suspect it's the sort of thing most people get anti-excited about. Please let meaningless, fractional increases die with GalCiv2. And with fire too, just to make sure.
NPCs wandering aimlessly about the wasteland seems a bit.. silly. Why aren't they knocking on doors? If I were them, I would. Why wander about the wasteland when you can seek out competing city-state'ish factions that require your services desperately, and hire yourself to the highest bidder?
I am so with you on all these points I was going to write them myself, but thanks for saving me the time!
Just to elaborate on the "wandering NPC" comment. In MOO2, the player was periodically presented with opportunities to hire NPCs and could accept or decline the offer. I would prefer to see this type of system in place rather than wandering characters. This also removes the silly feeling of chasing some character all over the map talk to him/her as they wander around. Another possibility to handle this is attaching hiring opportunities to "goodie huts" around the map. It would make sense for a sovereign to travel to Nomad camps, inns, and even dangerous places where adventurous souls might congregate. This could also be tied to quests - for example after escorting the nobleman perhaps the player is then presented with the opportunity to hire him as a money generating NPC. This to me would feel more natural and thematic than seeing a dozen characters just aimlessly moving about the map.
Oh and finally: It is very annoying to get ganked three turns in by a wandering monster with a combat value in the 100's.
Well the wandering characters wouldn't be so bad if they actually did anything.... Make them go from town to town buying items (and making you tax revenue in the process), visiting dungeons, etc. - Whatever it is they are supposed to be doing wandering out there - base their activities on their "class" - so scholars might be roaming from library to library, etc.
Obviously early in the game ...
Speaking of early game- imo there really shouldn't be "Scholars" in the early game - the types of heroes you should be running into should be survivors from the wastelands - it shouldn't be until the game has advanced and "civilization" has returned that you should start seeing real scholars - perhaps something like [refugee] camp elders and stuff could provide research?
Oh and one more off topic point - the "dead" terrain doesn't look dead enough - it looks more like a desert than anything- there was just a "world ending" cataclysm!!!
Didn't read all messages, but, what about conditionnal technologies ?
By conditionnal, I mean that they would only be shown in the reasearch selection if a special condition is fulfilled.
For exemple, "ressource exploitation" techs might only appear when you have such a ressource near one of your city.
=> you have bees near a city, XX% chance of having beekeeping tech show when you get a civilization advance.
=> you have horses => XX% chance of having horse riding as a warfare advance
This would prevent players from chosing some cool looking tech ("horses, cool !") and then realizing that there are no such ressource in the map or near their empire.
And if a ressource is unique, the tech will then be unique too.
I'm probably in the minority here...but I like the current city building system. I can make the cities the way I want them.
My first city does follow the standard formula...Workshop, Gardens, Hut, and Study and that does get a little annoying. Perhaps the first city you found should have a unique center that's 4x4, turns out 1 research, and one material, one prestige, and has enough food/housing to make it to lvl2 on its own. This is the first bastion of civilization you've founded in the wasteland after all, whether or not you choose to build your palace there it should hold some significance.
I really don't understand the complaints about having too many buildings to place. The process while a little clunky is simple and effective. After my first 2 cities were built up, I had enough food production to create a city between a coast line that stretched up onto some hills, consisting mostly of housing, research, military and economic buildings. You know what? It looks pretty. Having that fortress plopped as high up the side of the mountain as I could get it with the the chain of estates leading from it to the town center was a rewarding end before the beta crashed out.
But what I do get is frustration with the UI. Its very hard to tell what buildings I have already placed. Civ's cities while boring, and having cluttered UI's, presented all the info when you clicked on them. I could tell in a few seconds exactly what buildings such and such town had.
I just had another decent thought that I think would add a lot of flavor and uniqueness to the game. There could be a few un-destroyed temples or statues dedicated to old Titans or King/doms that could add prestige or bestow a special benefit to a town that was founded near them.
Also a couple more mounted resources that I haven't seen mentioned: Mammoths & Mastodons & Tigers/Sabertooths
Heroes:
Sovereigns really, really need to start with a base speed of 2 or 3. I've found the game unplayable as anyone but the tracker hero, because in the first few turns, the world is basically passing you by. Even then, leveling up movement speed was by far the best strategy for hitting goody huts. And even then, I wouldn’t accept escort quest because the princesses have a movement of 1. A hero with 10-12 movement is essentially broken. Make speed higher initially, but limit it more at the top end.
Creeps:
As other people have said, way too many epic level creeps. I want a pyramid of creeps. Low level creeps should be plentiful and very active, with lots of spawn points. I want to be able to use these to grind out a few levels on a hero. As the hero levels, he’ll be able to hit the lowbie creep spawnpoint, or start working on medium level creeps, and then medium level spawnpoints, and then a rare few high level creeps. I don’t want high-level creeps nuking my starting city, should these guys should be sedentary. I want this to keep my hero occupied as I’m exploring, meeting other civs, and building cities.
And last, I want just a few epic level creeps sitting on stashes of epic weapons and on the elemental shards – these really shouldn’t be undefended. Epic creeps I better not face without an army. A big, mid-game army. While MOO3 was a terrible gamer, one of the things it did right was that you knew exactly where the Orions were and that they were some tough but beatable bastards.
Garrisons:
Meh. Garrisons. I hardly built defensive armies, and I think you need more lowbie creeps and lots of them in order to encourage players to think defensively -- see above. Otherwise, why bother? I’m also not loving the soldier/squad/company divisions. Maybe this will make more sense when tactical battles come out, but it seems useless now.
City building:
This is the big one. There are a couple problems here. The first problem is that you said you don’t want to have a research city, and an economic city, and a farming city. That’s fine, but it requires a paradigm shift on your part. If you don’t want players to build one-shot cities, then don’t give buildings or heroes that give a % increase to some aspect of the city. Seriously, clear them right the hell out. If you give me 3 buildings and a hero that give +75% research in a city, then you better believe that that city is going to have every lab, library, holovision research institute, university, AI, computer center, and school that I can possibly build in it.
The second problem is housing. Housing in new cities sucks. Sorry, but it does. The first thing I have to build in every new city is a hut. Except in the first city, in which case I have to build two farms and then a hut. That’s not fun because I have essentially zero choice as a player. A hamlet should be able to grow on its own to size 2. I think the way to solve this is that empty housing attracts people, so that if I do build housing in a level 1, it’ll grow faster into a level 2. That gives the player a real decision to make – do I build a house and shoot for level 2 faster, or do I build the market so I can have some more gold?
The last problem is the building sizes. Four-square buildings are just the same as singles, only bigger. Even if you give hefty incentives for building a four square, they are not interesting. Get rid of them. Or actually, get rid of most of them. I don’t want four-square research institutions or markets. I do want to continue to build around four-square mines and orchards that were on the map when I built the city. That’s cool. And my palace (and any other one-off, suitably epic buildings) should be four-square. Everything else should stick to the one-square. One last thing: If you make this change, I think four-square buildings should still only cost one square of size.
Now my one-square-only suggestion does make city building less interesting. Here’s how to make it more interesting. Some buildings (farms, foundries, barracks) should get bonuses when they’re placed contiguously. So if two farms are next to each other, then both get +5% food production. If three, then 8%. If four or more (in any tetris shape you want), then 10%. (Note: If you don’t do diminishing returns here, then you get research cities again.) Now, to balance this, other buildings (markets, housing, town halls), become LESS effective when they’re placed too close together. Now you have a balance of things you want to keep apart and things you want to keep together that makes for tough decisions when you lay out a city. That's what I want.
EDIT: And in order to discourage spawl, which would otherwise be a cheap wayto avoid the problem, make buildings cost more as they're placed farther away from teh city center.
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