Here’s a video preview of Beta 3B.
I really like the look. I had decided that the idea for elemental was cool enough that I would play it no matter what it looked like, but I have to say that it looks very nice for not being a huge blockbuster videogame.
I have to admit, that even after seeing your responsiveness over the years on several games, it still amazes me.
As a software developer though, I have to say that it must be painful for some of your employees to see you sift through the forums and then schedule a 'design meeting" - "Oh no!!!!! Brad is coming with more ideas from those stinking forumites - Can someone please crash the forum!!!!!!"
As a consumer, I love your attitude and responsiveness. I'll continue to support Stardock as much as I can because of it.
/stardock fanboy mode
MAGIC....that is the main focus of my playstyle, and it probably will be even if I get 10 goldmines and no shards close to my first city, I just can't help it, it is the way I love to play. I don't mind losing though, so it won't bother me if I get ground to dust for making a stupid choice. I agree that the magic system needs to be streamlined and made more "exciting" for lack of a better word. I want to say "Yes! I finally got raise land, now I can ....." or "Fireball!!!!!!!!! Awesome, I'm going to go take that apiary away from Procipinee". I just don't feel powerful enough yet. Part of this is tied to the fact that essence is limited (this has been discussed a lot recently), but I will hold off judgement until the new build to see how magic is doing. I guess my plea is to make being a magic user exciting, terrifying, and fun!
UI .... Would love to see improvement to the UI. Need a HUD for figures on the screen (HP/ATT/Faction/etc.) Like to have more information immediately available on the main screen without having to dive into more menus. I'd like to have a way to see what benefits my race and faction bestow on me. Right click context menus on the medallions on the left side of the screen, build for cities, inventory for characters, move, cast spell, center on, etc.
Unless I've missed something I don't think I've come across anything thats about keeping your populace happy. Because of the larger cities that are being promoted now, I think that citizens being content should be an issue. It would also help slow down any uber cities that are dominating otherwise.
Considering most of the world is a wasteland and people are coming in from the wasteland where they can barely eek out an existence, food, shelter, and security are going to keep people happy. I don't think a separate happiness system is really required, the game is complicated enough as is.
(Besides, part of the point is to have uber cities. The best way to counter city spam is to make having a few great cities better then having 50 smaller ones where people are easier to keep happy.)
Agreed!
Seconded.
Somehow Stardock seems to have figured out how to make design by committee actually work.
As a developer, the thought of having the forums drive as much development as it does here, gives me the chills.
It's really amazing that you guys (the dev team behind the scenes) can crank out the work and not punch holes in the walls.
3 things
1)Agreed on the responsiveness and openness of the development process, it's really been something special reading developer thoughts and seeing so many tester ideas thrown around, responded to, and included in the game development. It's been incredibly refreshing to have such an open process and dialogue as well as illuminating. Thanks and kudos for all of this.
2)With resources having such an expanded role, and technology required to make use of many of said resources. Not having a lost library close at hand in early game and relying solely on the 1 research point from the basic building seems like it could potentially be crippling to all resource gain. It just seems to really ramp up the importance of that particular resource in early game in order to access the others.
3)Love the changes overall however, and perhaps increase caravan functionality by allowing trade routes between cities and resources as the way to link them to cities other then the closest? x% of the resources output shifts to the caravans home city, x based on distance, with further caravans going the same route adding x% more. Or some such system. Requires investment and time to fully change the benefiting city, but shifting infrastructure should require some sacrifice. This should perhaps should go in the ideas forum, but the 3b isn't out yet so I thought id throw it in here.
I second this as being an awesome idea!
Bear in mind that there is still a lot of work to be done on the AI. No point in fully developing it if it'll need redone for every one of these fairly major changes. At least I'm hoping we'll see good AI, ala Galciv. Curious to see how managing spell-casting sovereigns pans out. Hopefully in a good way
The improvementchanges with citystructures multiplying the research/gildar/whatever is GREAT! Together with the influence of cities it's looking TRULY GREAT! Much praise to the one who thought it up!
When the game was just announced, I wanted the strategic game to be about controlling points on the map (like the *points in Dawn of War and Company of Heroes.) It seems I'm getting what I wanted
Questions
I didn't understand what you said at 1:40 about "celshaded closest city".
If I send out a pioneer and build on a goldmine I guess I don't need influence? Hope not....
If the above is true, can an enemy with influence of the goldmine just "overwrite" my improvement and steal my goldmine or must they send troops like in Age of Wonders?
As a software developer though, I have to say that it must be painful for some of your employees to see you sift through the forums and then schedule a 'design meeting" - "Oh no!!!!! Brad is coming with more ideas from those stinking forumites - Can someone please crash the forum!!!!!!" [...]
I would imagine it was like Civ IV. If you culture-rush them and take a resource that they have harvested with a worker, it's yours to use now.
This new direction will certainly boost the importance of what you seem to want to be the core gameplay: territory and resources. Personally I think this version will be much more fun that 3A's garrison and forget it gameplay. I am curious to see how monsters will interact, assuming the aggressive option is enabled, with resources. Are they going to be attacking my lost library so that I need to have significant military presence in my land, or are they only going after cities?
My preference would of course be to have them attack my resources, adding a need to defend beyond chokepoints with light mobile units. Charm magic would also be useful here. One thing that will need to be done after a few months of gameplay is making spells for specific situations that we often come to in the game. We probably win't know what they are for a while though.
I thought of that of course. But still people do like to be happy and they wouldn't want tyrants, and we are talking about several generations after the game starts. Every strategy game with cities that I've ever played always has you doing things to make the people happy. I don't see how this one should be different.
These are really great changes. The map is really starting to look a lot more organic, and the 10 square spacing will help with that even more. I agree with some of the other posters that some of the resource points look odd when compared to the cities, but I am pretty sure that will be easy enough to change if we want to.
I am looking forward to this next build, but still not as much as beta 4 .
Ditto guys.
Are there game play issues with letting Pioneers build on resources outside your area of control?
Oh they do. That's why we don't se a lot of pics of them in the Office. They're always at a resteraunt or out playing with Frogboy's Bees or something. I'd bet that some days the office is a war zone...lol.
Normally, on principle of the theory alone and the realism it may add to strategic game-play I would have to agree with this.
For Elemental however, I think I'd rather Not have a "Happiness Modifier" for the population. In a strategic simulation I would like it, but this is a fantasy setting. On top of it being a fantasy setting, in this particular setting the world has been ravaged and mostly laid to waste. Food barely grows. Large and Powerful monsters roam the country-side. The townsfolk of Elemental should be AMAZINGLY HAPPY just to Have a City to live in instead of trying to grow food on a mountainside while dodging being eaten by a dragon. Honestly I think this would be the Only instance where I would argue for less depth in the game.
Also, another thing that really annoys me as a strategy game player is when I play a game but I can't conquer the entire world because once my empire gets to be a certain size people start revolting. I always thought these reasons were tacked on and arbitrary. In real life Loyalty can be guaranteed if properly motivated by money or by threatening people's safety. If not, you wipe out the population and populate the place with people loyal to you. They wouldn't get mad just because they live far away from the capitol of the empire (which is how most games determine a happiness modifier).
I do agree with the principle, in my opinion though I think this particular mechanic would be bad for Elemental.
I see that each resource in use has a tag that shows which city it belongs to. It's nice to have that info, but is not very accessible or instantly recognizable like the resource lanes between a planet and an asteroid belt in GalCiv 2. Would it be possible to draw a faint or dotted line showing the specific area of control for a city? It could represent the 'province' that is dominated by that city. To avoid cluttering, make it an option for the zoomed in view (not present in the cloth map). Or... when you click on a specific city, along with the heavy dotted line showing the border of the city, it also shows this province line.
Nothing game changing, but a cosmetic change like this would provide info on each city more quickly than hovering over every nearby resource.
In a tangentially related topic, what happens to a resource you own when it gets shifted to another sovereign's zone of control? Do we get the same asteroid miner faction flip mechanic as GalCiv 2, or can stationing troops or other factors, such as good relations or certain treaties keep the resource from flipping? Would this scenario even be possible?
edit: meant zoomed IN view, not zoomed out.
I agree. Happiness shouldn't exist in Elemental except MAYBE very large cities (especially unprotected ones). Prestige is as close as you get to 'Happiness' and it's primary purpose is to control growth rates and culture boundaries.
This is evidenced by the "Slum" improvement, which has a negative prestige cost.
Indeed, quite right. I noticed that as well but the explanation of the lands being wasted jumped out at me first as a main reason why they'd be Super Happy just to have a safe city to live in. As you point out though the mechanics already appear to be set up with Prestige taking the place of Happiness in a way which seems to work nicely. I could see it being related to whether or not the city was guarded or unguarded, but aside from that I would shy away from Happiness/Loyalty.
It's really looks much improved and I like this new direction. Seems to strike a well considered balance between building cities without spamming them and claiming resources in an intuitive manner.
Being a wargamer, the borders being close together doesn't bother me at all. Wars are meant to move borders. It gives each faction an established area that is like their nation and it helps to make diplomacy and border control more a part of the game, which considering how much potential I also see in the diplomacy system that is a great thing.
I too would really like to see cross-faction caravans and forts/border keeps. Also allow you to station troops inside of an allied factions border keeps. Both of these things would be useful for yourself and to help allied factions out and give the player some ability to assist them. In some of the early screens of Elemental you can see walls and keeps that are built near the borders of the faction territory.
That just made me think, it would be great to have a high level summoner spell that spawns tons of nasty monsters around the map and then build a big wall to keep them out of your own territory while they wreak havoc on the other factions. Anyway can't wait for tomorrow's update!
Well. I do still think that Prestige should be a little bit more variable than just a few buildings you can build. I like the Soverign attributes you can use to tweak around Prestige, but I wish there were more of them.
- Cities that you captured of a different race having a lower prestige, especially if you go to war with someone of their race.
- Cities with low or no defensive fortifications have negative prestige. Cities with large standing armies have positive prestige. (this is a way of balancing the currently rather-high upkeep cost of units).
- Cities with trade caravans get a 10% increase in their rate of prestige per trade route.
- More improvements seeing a prestige modifier. Smaller, but some plus, some negative.
- If a city has to "import" food, it has a negative prestige (speaking of which, it would be nice if there was some way to "disrupt" caravan routes to prevent the distribution of food)
And so on. If Prestige is supposed to be an important mechanic, there should be lots of ways to play around with it. More than just "build Temple, get 1 Prestige". It's the same problem that Essence currently faces. It's an important mechanic, but it's not well-enough developed in the character screen, and you have to be very very careful with its use (which is totally fine... but a caster-type Sov needs lots of mana to cast, which means he can't freely expend his Essence on other things, but a more warrior-type Sov can spend or imbue most of his Essence without too much of a worry).
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Also, will we have a "Steal Essence" from your champions? Get a Caster Child, and take his 3 Essence to your 1? It would be a natural way to generate more Essence as the game goes without endangering your Sov too much.
How Awesome would it be if you could Steal Essence from defeated enemy Sovereigns? That would be excellent indeed! Great Idea.
Well, I also see it as a steamroller effect (which is a good thing in my opinion, as long as it isn't too devastating). It lets you get up to 20 Essence easier to "win the game"
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