Greetings!
We have a Monday update for Elemental beta testers.
This will be the last beta prior to Beta 4 which is the modding beta.
Here’s what’s new:
************
* Gameplay *
+ Settlements have a Maintenance cost. 0 for the first, 1 for the second, 2 for the third, and on.
+ Significant strategic AI changes
+ We no longer require technology pre-reqs to builds on resources (if you find one, it’s a bug and you should let us know)
+ Attacking a city now automatically brings up a tactical battle, as long as either the attacker or defender.
- New system for determining the cost of a tactical action.
- Tactical moves should take 2 actions, everything else should take 1.
+ Units in tactical battles now counter attack when attacked with melee attacks. Countering costs action points. See next point;
+ Units in tactical battles now have their action points refunded every time initiative switches, AKA when mode switches from attacker to defender turn, or from defender to attacker turn.
+ Units in tactical battles can no longer move after attacking, (this effectively separates each unit’s move phase into moving and then attacking, or just attacking). Casting spells is unaffected, you may always cast spells.
+ Groups of units now have their hitpoints, attack strength and defense properly increased.
- added code so that when applying a modifier with attribute "AdjustUnitStat", and that stat is Essence, if the target unit has no essence to begin with, then not only will they be given the essence, they will also have their mana refilled. This is so when you imbue a champion with essence, they become a spellcaster, but for example end up with 0 mana out of 5 otherwise. If we decide my code of filling up their mana in this scenario is too much, then it's easily taken out.
+ Added message boxes for when a caravan tries to start trade with a city that it is at war with, tries to start trade with a city their home city is already trading with, and when they try to enter their home city
+ Also prevents movement in these cases, the last two would leave the caravan sitting dumbly on top of the city it failed to make a trade route with
+ Changed GetCitiesWeTradeWith to return the cities we have trade routes with, instead of just ones that the world checks are connected passively by roads
+ Added IsTradeCity
+ GetHarvestMultiplierFromTradeRoute checks for the trading cities being under siege or at war before returning the multiplier, fixes bug where warring or sieged cities were still getting food trade bonuses
+ Also added a 10% bonus to the new "crappy road" level that was added after this function was first written, so it didn't have a bonus before
+ Your sovereign can now found a kingdom, even if they already have done so once, if they have no cities and no pioneers, to combat early-game issue of if your first city is attacked before you can train a pioneer, not being able to have any cities
+ Added support for blunt weapon type
+ Added support for Blunt and BluntTwo animation types for BattleIdle, Attack, AttackKill, OnHit, and Dodge
+ Added< AlwaysInTileCenter> tag for unit types
+ This will prevent the unit from moving in tile during attack animations
+ Used by dragon units and larger creatures that don't need to move
+ Changed requirements for UNIT_ACTION_FOUNDKINGDOM in IsActionAvailableToUnit, are now allowed to found a kingdom even if you already have if you have no cities or pioneers
+ Hooked up, sized, and positioned a lot of the new spell particle effects.
+ New music playing while at war with a major faction
+ Allows setting of the ChooseFactionWnd background based on the faction
+ Allows for setting of the background image in XML files
+ Added storage for the Choose Faction Background
+ Added changing the music to the "At War" music when your AtWarWithAnyMajorfaction status changes
+ Removed favorites system from the spellbook wnd, and removed the spell tab from the unit context
+ The cast spell button in the spellbook wnd is now easier to hit, and when moused-over if disabled, will explain why a unit can't cast the selected spell
+ Added strings for tooltips explaining why a spell can't be cast from the spellbook
+ Disabled the spells tab in UpdateUnitTabs
+ Removed per-pixel hit detection on the cast spell button, makes it much easier to press and get the tooltip to appear on now
+ Hid the favorites button under all circumstances
+ Cast spell button is now hidden if the spellbook is accessed from the kingdom screen (no spellcaster selected)
+ Cast spell button now has a tooltip explaining why a selected spell can't be cast (including that the spell isn't known yet, that it is a tactical spell on the main map, as well as the other reasons CUnit::CanCastSpell would fail)
+ Added a reason case to CanCastSpell to explain if a spell can't be cast because it can only be cast once and has already been cast, instead of saying "498237492 cooldown turns left"
- Added a quick way to put spell casts in tactical battle reports. Will need to spruce this up and make it driven by the string file later in the week.
+ Added a "Trade Routes" section to the city details lorebook, lists the cities a city has trade routes with, if they have a caravan making runs on that trade route, what the food bonus from the route is, and if it is currently suspended because of siege or war
+ Removed some hardcoded strings in message boxes I found
+ Added ability to specify a tile to move the camera to when a message box wnd is unhidden in CMessageBoxData
+ Added strings for new caravan message boxes and city info
+ Moved some hardcoded strings I found into here, too
+ Made city context tooltips use signed integers, so that when e.g. prestige goes into the negatives when under rationing, it doesn't show up as a huge number
+ Added UnhideAIMessageBoxWnd_RejectedCaravanWar, UnhideMessageBoxWnd_CaravanExistingRoute, and UnhideMessageBoxWnd_CaravanIsAtHome
+ Removed hardcoded strings I found
+ Fixed formatting issues in CityLevelUpBonuses.xml and CoreSpecialWeapons.xml
+ Changes to SpellBookWnd.cpp
+ Added Cast Spell Button (replaced entry)
+ Added favorites button (replaced entry)
+ Updated SpellBookWnd.dxpack
+ Fixed tactical battle spell list excluding all spells but those marked as favorites
+ Also, because all known tactical spells are shown in the spell context, favorites button gets hidden when a tactical spell is selected in the spellbook, since favoriting doesn't mean anything
+ Fixed weird highlight behavior when favoriting a spell in the spellbook wnd, where you'd have to click on the current spell again to see whether it was a favorite or not after changing it
+ Fixed cast spell button being available even for spells the player didn't learn yet, once a castable spell was selected
+ Modified the Popup Dialog, PlayCutscene, OpenCampaignBook and SimpleConversation game trigger results to have the option of requiring a particular unit be alive or dead when they’re triggered, or they won’t show up. This allows us to display different things depending on whether a certain NPC is alive or dead at a given point. To specify the unit’s type name, use the “ReqUnitTypeName” XML tag. To specify that the unit must be alive (which is the default), use the “ReqUnitAlive” tag, and set it to 1. To set that the unit must be dead, set it to 0.
+ In UpdatecontextAreaFromSelection, favorites button is hidden when a tactical spell is selected
+ Also in UpdatecontextAreaFromSelection, cast spell button is disabled by default, unless a unit is selected and that unit knows the spell
+ Added additional context area refresh at the end of ButtonClicked when the favorites button is clicked, seems to fix weird highlight behavior when clicking that button
+ Added a message box that pops up when a game modifier unlocks a spellbook for the local player, so that there is some feedback that the player got a spellbook from the goodie hut besides the treasure def message
+ Also found only one goodie hut that was unlocking a spellbook, a tomb in Moriah's Tomb quest, and it had an invalid spellbook specified, so I changed it to match Moriah's spellbook's internal name
+ Added support for using the AI message box as a yes/no dialog, and changed the found kingdom dialog to use this bigger message box instead
*************
* Bug Fixes *
+ Fixed a bug that would cause some counter attacks to fail in tactical battles.
+ Fixed an issue that was causing the graphic of a unit attacking and tacking over a city after a tactical battle to remain visible on the main map. This would occur when the local player was the attacker, and they had other unmoved units off-screen.
+ After the attacking unit would take the city, the camera would move to the next unit before the attacking unit had the chance to be hidden, causing it to remain on the map until the garrisoned unit was moved from the city.
- Players should no longer be able to move onto mountains in tactical battles.
+ Lots of sanity checks in various places to prevent crashers
+ Fixed a bug where the tactical battle AI wasn’t picking new units to target if their old target unit had escaped.
- Small fix to the auto resolve logic for quick battles to be sure the function returns normally.
- in GetResourceProductionPerTurn(), added some else if's instead of having them all be if statements. Will save some string comparisons if the matching string is found early in the set of if-statements.
+ Fixed bug where cities were silently getting food bonuses from trade routes, even if the cities connected by the route were under siege or at war
+ Fixed bug where caravans wouldn't actually teleport through non-hostile cities while on a trade route, instead stepping through each tile of the city one at a time
+ Fixed "attracting 43238498019283 citizens" prestige tooltip when a city is under rationing, now says that the city is losing citizens
+ Fixed a bug where Empires could sometimes build resource hoards without the necessary tech.
+ When placing sovereigns for the first time, the game will now remove anything that is on the sovereign's starting tile.
+ Fixed sporadic crash on load by adding critical sections around info card background stuff, and having unit types wait until after xml loading is done before trying to find the info card background info from the name read in from xml, so that they don't search while the list of info card backgrounds is still being created
+ Fixed bug where BattleIdleBluntTwo animation type was interpreted to be BattleIdleBlunt animation
+ Fixed crash when applying items that had models that attach to a local frame on the character that is already in use by another item (ie, the Master Full Plate Armor)
+ Fixed bug where units had the wrong number of moves when removed from an army
+ Commented out code to toggle city improvements on/off in cloth map mode
+ Fixed bug where shadow decals would scale on zoom when scale on zoom option was off
- in ClearData(), moved GarbageCollection call above destruction of sector mapper. Was causing crashes otherwise in game-within-a-game
- fixed bug where you could double-click an entry in the load game wnd and it would click through to the title screen, putting you in a state of NEW game, and Load game, which will always lead to a hanged game save.
- added a critical section to a place where it was looping through players.
+ FillWithUnitSpells uses regular grab of all known spell defs if showing tactical spells, fixes issue where tactical spells had to be made favorites to show up in the spell list
+ Moved trying to find and set the info card background for a unit type to OnEndLoadData from AddStat, fixes unit types trying to find their backgrounds before they'd all been loaded in
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Known bugs:
- We still have a random crash bug caused by the road geometry. We’re “this close” to getting it but the unfortunate reality is, roads are going to cause random crashes (even if you start out on a map that has roads already).
- If we solve the above, we may release an update because it’s responsible for 90% of the random crashes.
- There are some seed maps that have hard coded monsters still floating around. We’re getting rid of these but your version still has them on occasion.
- We are close to fixing the problem with certain nVidia cards where the graphics are blurry or goofed up (affects a small number of ATI cards as well). Zee drivers, they lie!
Other issues we are ware of and working on:
- The technology trees haven’t been balanced yet
- The relations between factions is still fairly primitive
- There are still a lot of reported issues from beta 3B in this build since Beta 3C is merely what we were able to do over the weekend
What we are looking for from the Beta community:
The beta should be up within the next hour.
wow just checked the site for anything new didn't expect an update was thinking that this was a preview for beta 3c for this week but instead its for monday. if this game was given another year not sure what it would be like but i am sure it would be the greatest ever.
i am wondering if there is not too much... to many quests, too much loot etc... its just overvhelming...and honestly, with no game i had done so far i was doing a lot of questing... to be honest, most of the time i wasnt doing anything... the only thing i was focussing on is warfare and civilization...expanding cities, bringing them up, bringing ressources up, building armies, killing everything (while i started with some summonings)
for me
- bad balance between the techtrees, civ and warfare seem to be the only really important ones
- too many quests, too much loot
- too much to do anyway, gameplay needs to be tuned down...the way it is your simply missing a lot of stuff cause you are only focusing on the really important stuff (as you will with hard enemies)
- bad balancing between summonings you get early on and warfare/army development - i pretty much won every game by simply building an army with all the summonings i could get and attacking others very early
you are right about balance but wrong about what is op
civ was the most important in the past betas now its alla about adventure since its unlocks new quests etc
about quest spawns yeah maybe a bit too much, loot tbh maybe its random but i didnt get that much
naa its ok,
Quest feedback:
I'm underwhelmed by quests. Most of adventuring is wandering around, grabbing free loot. Sometimes you beat up weak monsters. Virtually all the quests/notable locations are 1-2 step at best with little flavor or adventuring to it - random MMO quests are far more detailed. The rewards from adventuring seem inconsistent as well - varying from piddling to outrageously imba. Mostly, the adventure system forces you to use your sovereign as your main scout, as a sovereign using game-start spells can one-shot several enemies a turn while gathering very useful loot and revealing the map. This is espcially the case given that there are a number of negative sovereign traits that only hurt you when the sovereign is in a city.
Even the flavor text for quests tends to be 1 or 2 lines at most.
As an example of an excellently implemented quest system might be King Arthur ('the role playing wargame') which i picked up on steam when it was on sale. There are many quests in the game, most of which are simple decision trees with varying impacts on your character and faction based on what you choose. You may or may not end up in a battle. Granted, none of King Arthurs quests occur in a randomly generated world, but there is no reason that Elementals quests need be so brief or utterly lacking in decision making.
For example, there's a quest to get a suit of armor that is basically 'Hey look, a suit of armor. Oh no, spiders! Yes I will fight them. Armor. Hooray.'
There are many many problems with this, and much better ways it could be implemented.
Here's an example decision tree:
Sample Quest - The Spider Tomb
Towards the end of a long day traveling the (ruined wastes/baking desert/blooming forests/whatever the terrain is), you spot an unmoving Fallen lying prone. Hastening to their side, you roll them over and discover a grim sight - his face is locked in a grimace of agony. The Fallen is most certainly dead. There are two puncture wounds on his arm and a partially torn map clutched in his fingers.
The map appears to be a mostly incomprehensible private code, but a drawing resembling a nearby stone outcropping is circled in red.
*Walk to outcropping
*Bury Fallen
*Continue on your way
You strip the Fallen in preperation for burial. You notice a small tatoo on his forearm - an infamous sigil worn only by the head of the infamous House of Whoever. His death will be news of great import among the Fallen, regardless of what unknown errand brought him to his death in this remote heath.
Digging the grave is hot work and you are soon exausted; strange, you are not usually this weakened by labor. Sweat streaming off your face, you sit and rub your hands on your face. A sharp stinging sensation startles you and with an oath you examine your fingers. The skin is discolored and sensation is largely missing. You hurriedly wash in a nearby stream, but the damage is done - you must have touched some poison while handling the corpse. Fortunately, its potency seems to have been diluted; other than your dizzy spell and general weakness you feel normal.
After resting and cleaning, you finish the burial and assemble a small rock cairn.
(Gain temporary +1 prestige in Fallen cities and +1 relations with Fallen empires. Lose a small amount of HP/mana - won't kill you.)
After circling the outcropping, you discover an almost invisible stone doorframe carved into the north side. The interior is utterly dark; you can see only feet inside. A worn inscription in ancient (language) proclaims this to be the final resting place of (Name), famed champion of the (Infamous House) a thousand years ago. A pile of sun-bleached human skulls proclaim it to have become home to far more than one corpse.
*Enter tomb
*Lay ambush (--> battle, but one spider is killed by ambush. Lose your move points for the next turn.)
*Leave
Fashioning a torch, you venture into the tomb. There is a single hallway sloping downward, unrelieved by decoration or torch-stands. Bones occasionally crackle underfoot. After several minutes you warily enter a small chamber. It appears to be empty, but something killed the Fallen man... In the center lies an ornately carved stone casket in the ancient style. A gleaming set of armor is racked to the right; a number of corroded weapons are displayed to the left. Sparing only a glance for the casket, you examine the armor; it is of masterful workmanship and decorated with arcane symbols. Judging by the weapons, the armor has somehow remained in perfect condition for generations. A chittering sound from behind causes you to whirl around; an enormous hunting spider cautiously enters the chamber from the only door. Chittering from the far-above ceiling answers the hunter. The Fallen man's death seeks you.
*Engage in battle
*Thrust torch at hunting spider and attempt to run past.
ROUND ONE. FIGHT!
*****
There could also be interactions with sovereign traits. A cowardly sovereign may be unable to choose some brave options, while a daring/stubborn sovereign may be unable to choose some cowardly options.
P.S. - Suggestion for Adventuring Technology - something that allows small parties of adventurers slip into neutral territory without being detected or triggering a war.
P.P.S. - I find the way quest popups unnecessarily cover up the whole screen to be irritating. I'm running at 2048xsomething resolution and most of the real estate is blank and useless. The way a single line of text extends across the whole screen also makes it hard to read. A compact well designed popup would be far better.
and one more thing, i strongly suggest some sort of upkeep cost for spells and summonings - my suggestion wheter the mana giving "things" give more mana that you can splitt up onto mana pool/spells or studying (similar to mom but just with 2 pools) OR that they give 2 different kind of manas from the start - a study type and a summoning upkeep type...
of course you could also use other ressources for the upkeep...
but i would like such a option WAY more then the one where you simply can only summon 1 type of thing... another solution (but only for summoning) would be that you need to sacrifice something to summon creatures (e.g. troops or so)
So your suggestion would be the unit cannot move IF THE DEFENDER SURVIVES? That sounds like it has all sorts of tactical goodness.
Wow nice, a new version! Time to start the testing!
Hmmm, I hadn't thought of that. That *could* be interesting. Or the attacking unit can move if defender survives, but the defender gets a free attack. Attacks of opportunity were an awesome thing in D&D. The rules governing those can probably be written in, but it is a complex topic and sometimes difficult for new players to get their head around.
Attacks of opportunity would probably be an interesting mod for someone to do at some point.
@ deadly shoe: YES! I love the king arthur quest system! (very enjoyable game until late (act IV), when the game keeps on spawning all sidhe armies. ruined the fun for me). The king arthur text boxes would be a great way to flesh out the quests, with a move to the tactical combat if a fight occurs. It would also be neat to have two types of battles.....one with your entire army, others with 'your sovereign and champions only'
wouldn't require too much work I wouldnt think....just utiilization of Stardocks' Random House buddies
Please don't burn out guys.
Just push back the release to february.
Hm, I was trying to offer a non-aggression pact to the AI, but I failed to give him some gildars in order to raise the "perceived value". Anyone was able to give gildars to the AI? Also, I cannot trade with the AI at all....nothing happens when I click [left/right/dbl click] on materials or gildars.
*edit* Right after I've made this post, I wanted to continue the game, and the game crashed...but before it crashed I've seen the "little trade window" which you can use to enter the amount of gildars/mats/etc to be traded.
It is so units with a high number of moves can't kite other units, and should most definitely stay this way.
The quests do seem a bit easy at the moment and it would be nice to have good and bad options for some more of the quests, the idea of using the King Arthur style system is great, it would allow a lot more creativity with out the need for lots of graphics and could give a lot more varied conclusions to the quests.
The closest thing I have played to this is Civ IV and that was a bit to much of a numbers game, it felt sometimes like I was just playing with a spreadsheet and although Elemental has the maths going on under the hood, it has much more of a soul to it that makes me want to keep coming back to it.
Speaking of which I must really get out of work asap so I can get back to playing and see what will happen in that next turn....
P.S. I love the graphical style and the little details in the animation.
Quest system feedback. My opinion.
I also feel that for something that is stressed in the game, the quest system seems to be a afterthought rather than a feature in the game. It should be easier to access the quest logs and currently I think the given quests are too easy and given too often.
Currently, I always seem to end up adventuring with my Soveriegn rather than hiring a Champion or if I do hire a Champion, I end up having him adventure with my Soverign. I think you need to find a good reason (beyond possible death) why you need to keep your Soveriegn closer to home or at your Capital so that players are encouraged to use Champions to adventure. Perhaps, only hired Adventurer's can accept quests and your Soveriegn cannot?
Just some thoughts. I definately think that Adventuring is a weak link in the game at the moment.
Oh, one other thought. Someone mentioned that the Civilization research tree is less important now since you can build on anything within your territory. I agree with this, but I think the way to fix this is to have technologies which gave you those abilities (like mining) increase your performance instead. So a mine built at the start of the game, withing your territory only produces 1 metal per turn, however once you research mining, this goes to 3 or 4 metals per turn.
Just a thought.
I agree with these ideas from nitey47.
Best regards,Steven.
Units with high moves could still kite, provided they don't engage? - however any unit could block for a turn, however weak it is
Couldn't research Caravans after 3C (.92) came down.Still in the Civ tree right?
Units with Moves left after Attacking, should be able to Move. They have been granted Moves via leveling for a reason. Kiting is a MP issue, not SP versus the AI. Don't like it at all.
Pace is better. Made me think, "Oh right! This is a Turn based game, What is the hurry..."
We need a "City %name% is under attack" warning pop up. Lost a City, with units in it, without any warning. Thought it was game over as I only had 2 at the time and no Food to grow my second city past 10 but a Pioneer solved that.
The City level pop up needs to be toned down (way down), or made Movable.
I have been assuming that any Bonus I pick/apply is only good if the City is actually generating points in that specific field of endeavor and is not applied GLOBALLY to my Kingdom? Is that right?
Inns and old Ruins are a bit over done. Re-use would be acceptable at this point. Zooming out to see 100's of white objects on the Map that weren't there 25 turns ago kills the immersion.
Creation screen was borked. Any Boots I selected only covered half the leg on the outside of both legs.
Will interject further tomorrow after some more games...
P.S. Enjoyed the on the fly updates. Very cool to see that screen.
That's not true. You can kite the AI just the same, which throws off the balance of battles by making them a lot easier than they are intended to be.
naa, problem is if heroes are much better at adventuring, everybody will simply end up playing a magic only sovereign that sits at home and focusses on summoning and enchanting
Please don't give them incentive NOT to fix the bug
well, i think it should be that a magic only sovereign isnt that great at adventuring
Diplo tree.
Just a small update: I wasn't able to reproduce this bug. The trading window works like a charm now, even after 15 mins of website browsing. Weird stuff...
agree
also dont forget right now ai is too much weak
in case of war havin g the sovereign to fight or not is decisive
i like this, right now civics is fallen behind again, with such a thing could become more competitive
Quoting Annatar11, reply 68Kiting is a MP issue, not SP versus the AI. Don't like it at all.That's not true. You can kite the AI just the same, which throws off the balance of battles by making them a lot easier than they are intended to be.
Why should I get penalized moves after I spent Level points getting them? When I attack and kill a unit on the first blow and have 4 moves/attacks left, they get totally wasted right now. I can't even use those moves to try and support my other units. Not good.
Just because the AI is to stupid to take some additional move points when leveling, we suffer this 1 attack and done nonsense? Bad Bad Bad
Example from last night. Faced 6 Spiders by myself (SoV) in version 3B. Using moves and attacks "tactically" I won with 3HP left out of 34(?) then crashed back to a frozen Strat. map. (bummer)
Boom! Down comes 3C and I reload my game and go right back to the same Spider fight. No chance in hell to win now as I am frozen on place as they move to surround me(SoV) and I die ugly.
No crash back to the map thought so that was a bonus.
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