Greetings!
It's the rest of your post that was the problem.
Assumption #1: Assuming that MP has anything to do with anything. The combat system is going to be the same for both, which mode it's played in is irrelevant.
Assumption #2: That battle length can be "voted on". What if there is no pre-game battle length setting? "Okay guys, we can't fight for longer than 10 minutes, so uh, if 10 minutes are up and one looks like he's losing, just surrender, k"?
Assumption #3: That the developers who advertise their game's moddability as "you'll be able to make new games with it" somehow don't have to concern themselves with making sure their engine (and yes, tactical battle mechanics are part of the engine) works outside of the "sweet-spot-in-our-campaign" spec within reasonable boundaries.
I don't think you actually understood what I was trying to say to the other poster.
He linked the length of combat to the current balance in the beta in terms of the size of armies we can produce. I just pointed out that you can't design a combat system based strictly on the fact that "on a tiny map, it takes over 100 turns to get 10 okay-equipped guys so battles are small". You have to design a combat system that works well for small armies, and scales pretty well for reasonably large armies, especially if you're going to encourage people to create new games with your modding tools.
Multiplayer has absolutely no relevance here.
On big battles: You can always just imagine that one troop in the game counts as 1,000 men/creatures... then you're set
I read that the target number of cities in Elemental was going to be about 4-5 per player.
I also really enjoy Disciples II, which has a limit of 6, yes 6, units per army. I'd be fine with a 10 unit limit, especially if a unit is basically a tile placement, which could have many troops grouped in it. Very few TBS games (if any) use much more than 10 movable pieces in a tactical battle.... gets too bogged down.
Please re-read the quote in Post #134 as that was the point I responded to. Not sure what your on about above....
Nail on the head. A lot of arguments in general are being made without thinking them through. I'm purposely staying away from specifying a set length of how long it "should" take.
A set battle time length for various achievements (taking a city, defeating a 10,000 unit army, etc) is meaningless and unimportant. What is important is having a system which scales well from small to large armies, maintaining ease of control and ease of implementing the tactics.
What people should be arguing for is not for "Taking a city should take 30 minutes!", but for "The combat should feel natural and last long enough to make the player feel in control of his armies and provide him with a feeling that his choices mattered." There's no magic set time where this is accomplished, the time it takes to accomplish is a result of several factors: map size (most of the time in tactical battles in Total War games is spent on just moving), UI controls (unit groups, quick access to important functions), pacing (how long it takes to move, swing, etc), and unit stats (if every unit you can design on average has 100hp, but any weapon you can get on average only does 5 damage).
Only unit stats is visible to us now, so complaining that "3 minutes is too short" is premature. If it feels natural in its implementation, then there's nothing wrong with 3 minutes. That's what the concern should be about.
Nothing in the post you quoted from talked about mods, and in fact nobody else was talking about mods. So, "As to the mods.." in your post was most certainly not referring to what you quoted in #134.
Don't take the "3 minute" thing so literally. All we mean is that we're aiming more for Master of Magic combat length rather than Rome Total War combat length, for example. We want you guys to feel in control, and for your tactical decisions to matter. What we don't want is for tactical combat to drag on while both sides "go through the motions".
Unlike those other games though, in Elemental, Each Individual Soldier will be counted for On Screen. You Won't see a picture of a group of Knights with a little number that says (1000 or 500) that counts as the number of actual soldiers. We won't need to use our Imaginations to envision our troops and with todays level of technology I don't think I should have to.
In Elemental if all of your units combined equals a total of 10,000 Individual Soldiers/Creatures/whatever, All of them Will Be Visually Displayed On Screen. This much we already Know for Sure and it has been stated by Frogboy him-self.
Units will be counted as Companies/ Divisions/Parties etc etc based on the players level of Warfare Technology. This has already been seen first hand in a previous version of the beta where the Warfare Tech Tree has been available to us. One of the things I remember researching was the ability to group my units by "Company". You do this when you make units in the game, and it takes those individual soldiers from your cities population. I would expect a Maxed Out City (Level 5-6?) to have at Least 10,000 people in it. If I have 5 or 6 cities of that size and a thriving economy I would fully expect to be able to field a Army of 10,000 men.
The 4-5 City Count would only be on Medium or Small Maps. As they've already shown, Huge Maps will undoubtedly have Kingdoms (or Empires) so large they will control vast areas of land. I can see my-self having 10-20 cities easily by Mid to End Game on a "Large" or "Huge" Map. Now THAT is EPIC (to Me).
Can you clear up the confusion about number of units in an army for us while you're here?
How many "companies" could be in one army to bring to the field?
I have to pitch it with the guys here who are saying that you've got to be really careful not to confuse zillions of cities/units with epic.
There are epic battles in mythology that were 1v1 e.g. Hercules vs. Cerberus.
A game that is bogged down in 2 hour turns and managing 20 cities tends to feel, to me, more like work than like epic.
Civ IV, for example, suggests the minimum number of players for a given map size... I think it is 12 players for huge. That's because the designers are very aware that the way you expand has a sweet spot, and that's around 7-9 cities in Civ's case.
It's already been said that a "company", "squad", or whatever else counts as a unit. If they add something like a Legion with 1000 soldiers later, that is still a unit.
So if the army limit (aka stack limit) is 10, then it's 10 "units".
Indeed, we're trying not to take it literally, we just want to make sure the battles scale well for when we Do have Lots of Soldiers for the Epic Last Battles. When you think about it though, "Going Through the Motions" is a matter of Perspective and Opinion. Anything from founding a new city to casting the most devastating spell in the game, after you've done it enough times, can be considered "Going Through the Motions". Eventually any and every game mechanic, no matter how cool or innovative or exciting, will get old eventually.
That's why all those people who don't want to play through each battle need is the option to Auto Calculate at Any Time they want, which Frogboy already said was going to be possible. That's why it's pretty pointless to be listening to anyone who's saying "Whaaaa, I don't want to fight long battles"...So DON'T, just Hit Auto Calculate and be Done With It IF THAT'S WHAT YOU WANT. Personally, I WANT to play EACH AND EVERY BATTLE MY-SELF. As long as both groups of players have the option to do it the way they want then any personal opinions are completely irrelevant. If someone isn't smart enough to realize they have the ability to end the battle any time they want then that's their own stupidity and Not any fault of the game's design.
If you're tired of playing through a long battle, just end it. If you want to play through a long battle, then play it. Just don't RUIN THE GAME by TAKING AWAY the Players Ability to Chose which one to do. This way Everyone is Happy.
Exactly Right!!! This puts the choice where it belongs, in the Individual Player's Hands.
Yay I was right. Thanks for the update!
Exactly. That's why You can End the Battle Any Time YOU Want. If you don't want to play through those long battles, YOU don't have to . Just hit Auto Calculate which you'll be able to do at ANY TIME. See what I'm getting at here?
There's No Need to gimp the game for those of us who DO want to play through the long battles when those who don't want too don't have too.
As I've said, I believe 3 times now, autoresolve is not an option for a serious games unless you can't care about losing units.
It can never play nearly as well as you can manually... no game has ever been able to get autoresolve close to as good as manual play.
Except of course that auto battle will tend to give sub-optimial results compared to running tactical combat, so in a tight game that's not actually an option.
When did anybody ever advocate removing the ability to do the battles yourself? The problem is people asking for absurdly long battles. No battle will actually last that long unless someone is extremely slow in deciding movement (which is fine), or the combat system is designed to just take a really long time (which is not fine). With tactical combat in most other games, your typical combat is a few minutes long. These hour long battles just don't exist in reality very often because as soon as you have to do it regularly, it switches from fun to mind numbing tedium.
And that's pretty much the stated design goal. Typical combat will be a couple minutes long, and that keeps the game moving. But since there's no hard limits, on the off chance huge armies collide and things take a while? No problem. It's just not a goal to make horribly long battles the norm.
You're not really advocating choice, though. You're advocating tactical battles only for people who want insanely long tactical battles, and no tactical battles for everybody else. "Oh just always auto resolve" is not a real solution to the problem any more then "oh just disable magic" is a solution to a problem like fireballs being too powerful (not that they are right now).
I'm sorry Nuemcy, but you (like me) are addicted to commas. This makes things very difficult to understand. You have the benefit of knowing what you were saying when you wrote it. For the rest of us however; it doesn't make any sense. When writing something professionally I ban myself from the usage of comma's. This tends to fix the majority of the issue you and I seem to share.
This is true, but also as I've said, like three times now, you don't have to play through the Entire Battle. Play it until your enemy is "almost" destroyed if that's what You want, then hit "Auto Resolve" and you won't take massive losses as long as "Auto Resolve" is done right. As far as I know, making sure the "Auto Resolve" is "Done Right" is a pretty big concern for Frogboy and the Team.
I play games on the highest difficulty level I possibly can. This means I usually cannot afford to lose a single unit unnecessarily, much less have to worry about an AI inflicting "massive losses" on me. I know quite a bit about AI and especially if there are spells and such involved, autoresolve will never be able to get anywhere near manual, intelligent, play.
Wish it weren't true, but it wasn't an exaggeration that I've tried this on over 30 TBS games and it has never worked where I can use it except in the most massively unbalanced battles (maybe 10 to 1) where I can trust the AI to never inflict a loss on me, or where I had absolutely no chance.
Not at all, my friend. What people aren't understanding apparently is you can hit Auto Resolve in the Middle of a Battle if You want. This means you can control the battle long enough to make sure you're going to win without taking massive losses, THEN hit Auto Resolve so you don't have to "Mop Up". It's a choice given to the player.
I don't want each and every battle in the game to take forever, nor do I want each and every battle in the game to take 3 minutes or less. It's all about giving the individual player the ability to control as much or as little of the combat that they want.
When did anybody ever advocate removing the ability to do the battles yourself?
Earlier in the thread someone said "Why have Tactical Battles at All?" that too me sounds like someone wanting to get rid of battles. In a round-about kind of way, limiting combat to 3 minutes for a Large Battle might as well be like having limited to next-to-no control. I just think artificial limits are bad. Plain and simple.
I'd say an army limit of 10 groupings is pretty silly. Especially if a champion takes up one of those slots. If you do get into legions with 1,000 soldiers or whatever, it is highly unlikely that it will be worth having them take up a slot over 1,000 equipped soldiers. If it's a powerful mage, sure, but a combat hero will have no place on the field with limitations like that, or at all really. If they keep the numbers low, as they are in beta now, then you'll have a hero on a tile facing off against 10 regular soldiers, in this case the hero can likely win with the right experience and gear. However with a cap of 10 units, and 10 soldiers per unit, you're having armies with a max size of 100 in a kingdom building/empire building game, this is especially silly on larger maps. Why would a kingdom with 20-30 cities spanning half a continent field an army of 100 soldiers?
The only way around it I see is being able to attach the champion units to the legions or whatever as a leader, similar to what King Arthur: Roleplaying Wargame, does. That or just keep the army sizes so pathetically small that the term "army" needs to be used very loosely. As said before, we're at the point in technology where having to imagine that one unit on the screen represents thousands is getting to be a bit silly. Especially when there are already games released that represent thousands with thousands of units, all in real-time no less.
I feel I should expand on this with an example:
Battle:
Players Army: Sovereign, 10 Foot Soldiers, 1 Spell Casting Champion, 10 Archers.
AI Army: 1 Spell Casting Champion, 10 Foot Soldiers, 10 Archers.
I would play long enough to take out the AI's Spell Casting Champion and 10 Archers, then I'd hit Auto Resolve being quite confident that it would "Mop Up" those 10 remaining AI Foot Soldiers without killing my Sov or Champ.
That way, what could have potentially been a long or drawn out battle just got cut down to maybe 3 minutes or 5 minutes instead of taking the necessary 10 minutes to hunt down every enemy soldier or unit.
But you're just making an assumption that the 3 minutes is an artificial limit, that was already debunked by LTW earlier. Balancing map size, pacing, stats so that an average (meaning, "Most of your battles will be like this") battle takes about 3 minutes to play out is vastly different from having an artificial limit on a battle.
Just figure out who your target is customer wise and stick with it. Elementals development has weaved back and forth between stupidly (can you guess which camp I'm in?) casual and delightfully tactical with rich complexity.
One of the adages from one of old Aesop's fables goes "If you try to please everyone, you'll end up pleasing no one at all".
Being a fan of Master of Magic and the Twilight of the Arnor expansion I sincerely hope the tech complexity stays in as that is what I would enjoy the most.
That's true. I definitely understand that and what LTW said above did make me feel some-what reassured. That's why I agreed with you when you said "What is important is having a system which scales well from small to large armies, maintaining ease of control and ease of implementing the tactics.". That IS what matters MOST here. By following this logic it is obvious to see that a Small Battle would take 3 minutes or less, but, following that Same Logic it's obvious to see that a Large Battle would take longer.
That and Not Seeing a 3:00 clock counting down once I start a battle...LoL.
I'm not sure if this screen shot is still relevant, but it looks pretty "epic" to me. Maybe it will help allay some concern:
http://ve3d.ign.com/images/68233/PC/Elemental-War-of-Magic/Screenshots/June-4th-Screenshot
I think just chillin' out and waiting until we see what tactical combat will feel like would be the most prudent course of action presently.
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