Loosely speaking, here are the 5 different technology paths and what you’re supposed to accomplish with them. Our challenge is to make sure each of these 5 paths are meaningful on their own as well as can be mixed and match to create an endless combination of strategies.
During the betas, we have been turning on and off different trees in order to get a sense of how effective any given path is.
The purpose of this journal entry is to discuss with you guys things you think would be interesting in these 5 areas that have not been present in existing betas. Some of these ideas will make it into the RTM version, others will make it into the release (day 0) version and some may make it into the future.
First, let’s recap the 4 victory conditions since ultimately all objectives lead to one of the 4 conditions:
Imperium/Civilization
The world has resources. And your territory expands as your influence grows to make use of these resources. This tree allows you to increase your utilization of these resources. The most important resource here is Gildar (gold).
Adventure
There were a lot of resources before everything blew up. More than that, there was a lot of really powerful stuff out there that’s now gone. The purpose of adventure is to give players access to increasingly powerful items and resources that will aid them in their pursuit of one of the 4 objectives. Also leads to the Master Quest. What you are looking to do here is to build a band of powerful champions armed with magical items you have collected.
Warfare/Conquest
Other factions have resources and stuff you want. Take it from them by building armies of increasingly lethal weaponry and defenses of your design. The most important resource here is metal. You need it. Others may have it. Might makes right.
Magic
Besides giving players access to the Spell of Making eventually, the spells you learn can help you achieve any of the 4 objectives when used right. The key resources here are Arcane Knowledge (how fast you learn new spells) and Essence (the maximum amount of mana your casters can hold).
Diplomacy
Sometimes you don’t have the stuff you want and you don’t want to have to conquer everyone. Diplomacy lets you do this. Diplomatic Capital is the resource here. The more of you get get, the more people love you. Trade others to get more of it and they’ll like you even more or trade it away to get other resources or get others to attack each other so that they’re too busy to get after you.
So there you have the basic game mechanics of Elemental. And on the surface, it’s a pretty straight forward game. Of course, actually accomplishing your goals in the game is another thing. And over the course of the next several years, the depth beneath the surface here will increase.
Few Thoughts.First, I want to give my +1 to the idea for more kits. Scout kit, medic kit, archer kit, knight kit, etc. More kits would be really nice to see in game. I don't consider my units different units if they have swords or spears, I consider my units different if they actually do something unique besides damage; like aiming parrying with swords and dismounting with spears. More kits would add to the illusion of unique units more then different armors and weapons add to the illusion of different units.Second: Some mentioned the idea of breaking the forge into different pieces that you have to acquire to be able to put it back together, I like this a lot; but to go with the story line a little better; you could just have keys that allow you to access the vault to the forge scattered across the world. So in otherwords you could have various keys spread out across the land that you need to collect. This might lead to some cool gameplay in which you have to hunt down the keys in order to win. But the only question would be, if you could kill someone to get the key, why not just win by defeating your enemy instead of collecting all the keys? Well this could be solved by having the keys maybe be geographical locations that you must claim. Like 5 locations that you must control in order to open the vault. That way there is a visual que as to who is about to get the vault and there is no question when the screen pops up saying: You Lose.Third: Visualization for enchantments. I want units or city's that have been enchanted to glow or something, so it is a visual que to me that they are something special. If you hover your mouse over that unit its enchantments should be displayed.Fourth: Health bars in tactical battle.Fifth: I have always found diplomatic wins to be too easy with computers. Sins, I would play on one of the hardest settings and just pump technology into diplomacy and then when someone started to attack me I would offer a piece treaty that they would have to accept because my relationship was just to good to say no. I then did the following to the remaining players and would win faster and easier then through military might. I fear winning this way will also exsit in Elemental. An idea that I have would be this: You don't win if everyone is allied with you, rather you win by having more influence over another player's people, more so then they do. They may act freely, but if you place an order on their troops they must do a roll vs your influence and their soveriegns influence to see who they will follow. So only one soverign wins in a diplomatic win, namely the one who is emperor and everyone else follows. Something along those lines.
Fairly solid atm, maybe a little tweaking needed here and there. Far bigger issues with othe research types imho though so i'll not go into this tree.
Okay as it stands, needs more levels, preferrably due to having a larger variety of techs. Whatever happened to Assassin's Guild etc? Deemed too boring? How about this, just an idea.
One example of a "range" of new techs using this idea.
Assassin training. Allows design of a 'hero assassin' unit. Requires a special item in the designer (e.g. Poison kit, similar mechanism to with Pioneer). Can only be built individually. Now i see three main interesting options for these:
a) Function as a normal hero (i'd prefer Not this option)
Function just as a normal unit but very powerful with a special ability (poison unit or somesuch).
c) Function as a "semi-hero". They can't be given essence but they level up, which improves their special ability. Ability example, "assassinate. 50% chance to insta-kill unit with mylevel*10 hp or lower. Failure results in 75% chance of assassin death".
I strongly feel there should be more variety pre-research. You should be able to At Least build ranged/non-ranged units and possibly mounted without research. Atm you have to do a good bit of warfare research to have Any differentiation between units. Early-game the armies all feel far far too cookie-cutter. My main thought for this is that before research the weapons available should include:
1) Sword. Middle of the road.
2) Spear. Plus damage to cavalry.
3) Bow. Very important imho to allow ranged/melee to be an option in armies from the start.
4) If cavalry available from start. Axe. Bonus vs infantry. Disadvantage vs cavalry.
Later blunt weapons could be more effective against most armour, bows could have a 'piercing' effect, etc.
Unsure. Split spell-books up more perhaps? Definitely needs more techs too.
Basically the larger the amount of interesting treaties you can put in here the better. One interesting option i think could be Dynastic-Victory, e.g. my prince marries princess of Magnar. Our sovereigns both fall in combat. Now we both share the royal family. So if i win, Magnar wins. If i lose, Magnar loses. Some sort of "royal alliance" treaty, a little different from a standard alliance.
You've reached the end? I wrote a lot! Thanks .
Diplomacy seems to be focused for games with many factions. Having played a few games with only 2 or 3 total players, it honestly offers very little. Add to this if the game is a 1 on 1 with real players, they probably will have no intention of having relations, since they know who they have to kill to win. Outside of a very few technologies, it basically lowers the game down to just 4 tech branches.
I don't know if small games (2 or 3 players) just isn't a big focus, but I hope the diplomacy tree grows to include things that would play a part in these games. Be it interactions with minor races, "traders from abroad", in other words, random event of people just show up on shore and want to trade, etc.
I understand the tech trees aren't fully built, but it seems right now that the ultimate aim of the diplomacy tree just wont fit for a 1 on 1 game.
I think this is an excellent idea. Diplomatic Capital should be able to used in many non-standard methods. To recap your points as bullets:
I think some of these ideas would really help out the Diplomatic tree.
Another idea for diplomatic capital is to force the opponent to allow you to surrender. Your units may have to give up equipment (don't know how that would be implemented) but they cannot be killed (the soldiers respect you too much to massacre your people). This might be used to save (ransom) your heroes if they get into a situation they can't win.
For diplomacy, if you surrender aswell, perhaps there is a better chance that the enemy will ransom your troops back to you with the price decreasing in accordance with how much diplomatic capital you have.
Those are solid ideas.
One possible use for diplomatic capital. With higher amounts of trade and higher diplomatic capital gives you a chance of stealing a tech from the other civ along the Imperium or Warfare lines. No tech trading still, but a way to gain techs peacefully.
Champion units:
I'd like to see more differentiation between champion units, with some of them coming with special abilities like increased damage against a particular creature type, increased movement or defense on a specific terrain type, immunity from attack by certain creature types, resistance against damage from a particular damage or magic type. I'd also like to see some Fallen and magical champions.
It would be nice if the above champion specializations were linked with their backstories so that reading the backstory made sense. Champion-specific quests, again, linked to their backstories, would also be nice.
Finally, champions should be able to level by using their skills, instead of only by fighting. Merchant heroes should be able to level by trading, farmers by obtaining food or finding or creating food resources, inventors by discovering new technologies through quests or by remaining in a city with research-specific buildings and resources. Those (+guildar, +food, +research points) skills should be an option to increase with a heroes leveling points. Right now, the game forces you to have every farmer/trader/researcher hero become a combat hero in practical usage.
Super agree on that final paragraph.
Also would be nice if a combined adv/diplo tech allowed you to more or less put out 'want' adds that resulted in a champion of the 'wanted' type to be have a chance of spawn either from the population, or from migrating to you. Make is costly to post/maintain (like 200g and 10g a turn to have your bards sing the virtues and desirability of say a Merchant Mariner) and a small chance each turn you 'produce it' to pop a champ.
One thought ... Make Diplomacy affect city influence area? That would make Diplomacy extremely valuable.
Another posibility would be to intentionally make a tech more of a 'supporting' tech. e.g. You can have spells for everything .. so 'Spells' becomes a supporting tech that can ... summon warrior (warfare), Build roads (civ), or make people like you (diplo), adventure (gratn champs a bonus) ... rather than making magic and in and of itself. As someone else said ... you need shards for magic anyway ... which means you need conquest. Although, if that is your thought, it would probably be just as easy to conquer the whole world with magic.
I hate that I am making suggestion like this now when you are 3 weeks from 'Gold' ,,,
I like this idea as well. Perhaps as the city increases in level, the champion inside also increases by level (perhaps 2 levels for each city level increase) which also increases the champion's bonus level.
If this was the case, then these types of hero's would be great assination targets using your built up Diplomatic Capital. Of course any Assination attempt would have to carry a cooresponding blow against a nations DC if the assination failed.
I envision something like this. You have a selection under the diplomatic window that is Assinations, on one side you have various Assassins of different level requiring either Gilders or DC (or combination) to hire. The higher the level, the greater abilities. On the other side are various known Champions (perhaps you have to learn of these by espionage). You select your Assassin then yiour target. At some point, the assassin finds the Champion and a tactical battle starts with the Assassin getting the first blow. If the Assassin wins nothing further happens, you lose the services of the Assassin (they are one shot hires) and the Champion is dead. If the Assassin fails, then you get to spend DC to cover up the incident or the Sovereign that owns the Champion is notifed.
Just thinking out loud.
I feel the NPC Adventurers are underdeveloped. Several posts have discussed how they could wreck havok for the player.
I envisioned Adventuring would allow the player to commission NPC parties much like Columbus received backing from queen Isabella. Higher levels of adventuring would allow the pursuit of greater spoils. The upfront resources allocated to each adventure would determine the likelihood of success. This would inject a risk/reward model and satisfy those who like to gamble.
Thoughts?
These are both great ideas, with a lot of interesting possibilities. Diplomatic capital could be used to train special units, use abilities, 'buy' champions, you could lose it for killing champions or declaring war on a friendly kingdom. Rewarding diplomatic capital for honoring an AI ally's request (and losing capital - i.e. paying your ally a penalty - if you don't help them) allows the AIs to actually manipulate humans for a change, rather than the other way around; and it applies perfectly to multiplayer as well, where you can reward your allies with capital if they aid you, or receive the capital they are penalized if they choose to refuse aid and thus break the treaty.
The key is that you link capital to something with concrete value, like the ability buy champions or build special units, and then human players will be influenced by the offer of diplomatic capital (and the penalty of losing it) as easily as AIs. It would basically be a currency (a measurement of honor and respect among nations instead of economic power, but a currency nonetheless) used equally by players and AIs and even neutral NPCs to influence each other, to buy and sell treaties/alliances/aid/neutral NPCs/special units/special abilities/etc - which is I realize how it's already supposed to work to some extent, but there are many more possibilities not yet realized, especially its applications to human-vs-human diplomacy (such as the ones Sarudak mentions above). Again all you really have to do is give diplomatic capital some concrete value outside of buying AI player goodwill, such as gaining champions or training special units, and it suddenly becomes something humans will fight and trade each other for too.
I think it would be nice to have the final results of all trees available even if their victory conditions are disabled (possible exception: Conquest). I remember MOO3 had a set of technologies that, if Tech Victory was on would let you win the game once you had all of them, but which individually gave huge bonuses to certain parts of gameplay. Something similar would be nice. So, creating--or finding--a Forge of the Overlord doesn't make you automatically win, but might make some factions cozy up to you, might make other factions ally against you, and in general give you some huge advantage or set of advantages.
I would like to see the AI randomly pick one of the four areas of conquest, for each game restart, this would really add replay value because the AI would have a different goal in each game. In too many games the AI is either a single script or only has a single goal so it does the same thing in each in every game.
Maybe have diplomatic capital, if sufficient to get a peace treaty, make the treaty forced?
The AI could use this to stop the human frmo wiping it out fast.
Agreed.
I like the idea of champions and your sovereign gaining some exp. while they are in town. If your champion is stationed in town and using his bonus let him earn 1/4 or 1/3 exp point per turn. Have some of the buildings built give an increase to the above rate. Maybe the adventurers guild adds another 1/4 point, the school could add a bit more for research types, a farm or grain silo for farmer types.. . After all they are your representative(s) and supposedly earning their keep. This wouldn't overpower as the gains would be modest and would help if a faction were pursuing a research victory or the like.
Your Sovereign should boost the prestige of any town he/she is in by 2 points anyways, gold should go up 1, along with any material type stuff, research included. Everyone just picking it up a notch to please master. Of course the traits chosen could then play off and effect these numbers. The Sov should also gain a point of exp a turn in town, maybe 2 points with palace and step it up more with some of the other towers and things. Charisma would affect these numbers too, in a similar fashion to how the other stats boost corresponding abilities. (Your so damn appealing, how can you blame the populus for worshiping you)
You would be gaining if your play style has your sovereign running the kingdom from the seat of his power, but not at an accelerated rate. The diplomacy tech tree could provide a place to improve this as that kind of represents the business of running your empire/kingdom. You would still want to get out and explore or quest or conquer, and when you do so experience is gained as it is now.
Adventure tech should unlock an actual Champion that has petitioned to see you, he/she understands your vision, and is going to see it through, well for a small stipend of course. That champion would happen automatically when you hit adventuring level 5-7 or so, the champion could be based off of whatever tech category you have highest at the moment, or a crap shoot based on your 2 highest tech categories.
If Civ is highest maybe you get a farmer or miner or materials guy with a 15-20% bonus.
If Warfare is, you get a warrior with light armor and a longsword equivalent type weapon maybe his ability boosts party damage 10-15%.
If Magic is, a wizard with say 2 essence (enough to cast the weakest spell) and a spell research bonus of 10-15%
If Adventuring is, an Adventurer with leather, a short sword equivalent and his own (non-trade-able) Steed.
If Diplomacy is, an administrator with a 15-20% gold bonus, and maybe a bonus to your diplomacy activities.
Quests and goodie huts above level 2 should only spawn outside the area(s) of influence.
A some magic that affects your area of influence would add a nice immersion factor.
My three cents!
actually this could be really easy to implement. instead of them generating influence they could make it so that if you use the fortify ability on top of a resource then it would deny them the resource, and make your units stronger to resist attack. like park them on on top of a gold mine, and have them fortify it. they would set up defenses and become stronger, also they could create awesome tactical maps with gold mines or lumberyards in them to represent this.
All trees need work but I personally I find the adverturing tree to be the most underdeveloped. The others are more standard so I think the issues and solutions will be more clear for those. The adventuring line though needs more than just lowering the cost of hiring heroes and finding/opening new quests/goodie huts. Some ideas:
Could have techs that allow buildings or some mechanism to draw heroes to you or spawn new heroes. Right now heroes kind of run out. They should be a constant presence throughout the game both great and small and you should have some way of incouraging them that your kingdom is the place to be. You shouldn't have to stumble on them in the wild, they should come to you most of the time and offer their services. You could even have a mechanism for luring heroes away from other nations. People might not like that but it could be interesting as long as you are careful with it. That could even go in the diplomacy tree to help spice that up.
Techs to improve heroes in some fashion. Maybe it could be the line that controls what items are sold at the store for instance instead of basing it on weapon techs like I think it is now. With time the store could sell unique items that are beyond what you see for regular units. Could also have it open up training buildings that your heroes could train in and gain experience, improve stats or gain special abilities. I've seen you mention that units can gain special abilities when leveling up, what about making some of these abilities things you would have to discover through research?
The current quest/goodie hut unlocking isn't my favorite in the world (I don't like things popping out of thin air for the most part and don't like having areas locked unless a key is involved). I would like to see a different system than the one currently in place but I'm not sure there is time to change this. Whether big changes come or not you should definitely continue to have techs that help generate quests and help you find interesting locations. One easy change that fits with the current system is to allow some quest locations be persistent and occassionally generate new quests instead of always creating new quest locations. I've seen others suggest this and think it is a good idea.
What about some type of monster training? It would be interesting to be able to raise wild creatures for use in battle. Think of the monsters as powerful heroes that don't gain levels. Not sure if that fits in this line but maybe. Would like to see more fantasic armies, humans are kind of boring as I see them all the time already.
WARNING: Massive Idea Dumping Ahead
One thing that I don’t like about the current model is how the Civilization tree is currently the only way to produce significant amounts of resources and research. I like how the Adventuring and Diplomacy can be used to accumulate gildar and materials, but I think this capacity could be expanded. I think that you should be able to support an army without significant Civ investment if you have that investment in other trees. In addition, the Civ tree is practically necessary for research. Again, Diplo and Adventuring can accumulate research, through tech trading and those caches of ancient knowledge (which there need to be more of).
One of the questions that has come up pretty often here is: how can small players fight big players? I think the answer is champions. Champions are tiny, concentrated packets of awesomeness. I think that all branches of the tech tree should have champions. Adventuring/Warfare of course have their combat-oriented heroes. Already in the game there are merchants, scholars, administrators, royalty, and so on. However, they become almost useless mid game because unlike combat champions, they don’t level. Even on turn 100, that merchant is still making 2 gildar a turn, while the combat hero is off killing dragons. I think that somehow performing their duties should give them xp and that their key abilities (making research/gildar/whatever) should be tied to their stats, like charisma for merchants and intelligence for scholars. That way late game you have some extremely valuable professionals. In addition, I think there should be a diplomatic hero type, maybe royalty or else a new type, who runs on Charisma, gains experience from making negotiations, and gives a bonus to diplomacy. To beef up the Adventuring tech tree, you could add techs that unlock tiers of experience (ex. 1-5, 6-10, 11-15), and perhaps a late-game repeatable tech that, on completion, spawns a random moderately strong champion at the gates of your capital and asks to join you (maybe for a fee, maybe not).
For the Magic tree, it has two great flaws: First, that it has to divide content between arcane research and technological magical research, and second that almost everything it does is for the benefit of a single champion, your sovereign. The way to solve the first problem is to make the magic tree do something unique and valuable (more magic items is a good step), and the way to emphasize the second is to make investing essence in champions more appealing, and creating wider opportunities for magic outside of combat.
The combat system right now needs more rocks-paper-scissors. It should be constructed in such a way that some units are inherently better at fighting other types of units. For example, when fighting a dragon, it should make more sense to bring a few good adventurers than an army. Perhaps the dragon has a large AOE low-damage armor-penetrating breath attack that will not faze high-hp champions, but will wipe even the largest groups of low-hp soldiers off the board.
One of the foundations of the fantasy genre in general and also Elemental in specific is that the world is untamed and has many dangers hiding in it. The betas have done a pretty good job creating this feel, but there is still more that can be done. I think that large areas of land should remain untamed even into the late game, and that the game should discourage and even prevent development of some wild areas, through powerful monster attacks, uninhabitable/useless land, and large patches where there are no or very few resources. This will prevent the game from feeling like one big developed chunk (like it does in late game Civ) and allow interactions between multiple players and monsters in the wilderness, and space for quests.
Finally, an idea I stole from Sword of the Stars. As called in that game, “Grand Menaces”. Late game, perhaps after one of the high end adventuring techs or quests that note that they “awaken imprisoned beings”, the world gets a small chance to spawn powerful monsters that roam around the countryside destroying cities and probably require special tactics to defeat. They should be so powerful that hostile players should seriously consider teaming up to take them down. I think this would seriously add to the epicness of the game.
i don't really like the idea of being able to support an entire civilization with just trade and magic. i think you should be able to win, but wouldn't this sorta make civ obsolete? no i think its fine the way it is. you can already invest in magic so much and have lots of summons to go into combat for you.
On Diplomacy:
I'd like to see you be able to spend Diplomatic Capital for diplomatic actions you have researched. Kind of like spells.
Examples:
All diplomatic actions may be resisted by the amount of diplomatic capital you have, if you choose to spend it to stop said action. Maybe a message pop-up saying a diplomatic action is being performed against you with our diplomat estimate 55 - 125 capital has been spent to accomplish this (more accurate if you have tech and/or specialized NPC diplomats). Do you wish to counter?
Diplomacy as simply a relation bonus seems like such a waste of the system as you have defined it "to get stuff"
This is really really important. I can not stress this enough, when every little corner of the map gets carved up we loose something I think. Please listen to this Man(or woman)!!
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