How much damage can you actually do in the first 50 turns of the game?
A LOT OF DAMAGE. How about owning 5+ cities and 2 of them opposing forces capitals?
Just in case you haven't done this yet -
I was quite surprised at the vulnerability of all the starter towns within the first 50+ turns of the game. So much so, it became apparent the only way to protect your town is to keep the sovereign in it. Because random placement is always a crap shoot, you'll sometimes have multiple opponents within striking distance of your primary city very quickly. With a solid early game sovereign, you can become near indestructible by mid game through pure commander rush tactics against the AI. In multi-player, the unmanned city falls, will probably panic the player and force him to porcupine/turtle tactics attempting to reclaim the lost city while you run rampant.
The RTS formula works very well here simply because of the "Commander" running around the field d-gunning everything. (Commander reference from Total Annihilation) Granted you aren't moving lots and lots of little units like a zerg rush, but you are moving some pretty substantial units early in the game. Summons and sentinels.
Expand explosively, always take the champion option early for the city upgrades and keep researching civics / magic to expand your summoning and keep the people fed.
Once you have 4+ cities under your command, not costing you a dime in pioneer funds and actually producing money, you're rolling. Consider turning up the war machine. Conquest victory isn't far away.
My sovereign of choice for this has an Earth/Summon blend for magic. The AI doesn't always pick the best locations for the cities and lowering/raising the land early helps a ton.
This has been a really good time in Beta 3C. Keeps you moving quick, keeps you on your toes, everyone hates you early making it as it should be. You vs the world.
Give it a shot. (lord help us all if you play around with the magic trees and pull teleport instead of raise/lower land. It's like cheating)
-AceQ-
I tried this yesterday.
In fact, I tried it with a magic primary sovereign, and raised an army of peasants as fast as I could. Crap-rushes, commander rushes, and zergs are all effective in early-game elemental.
Honestly? I think it is awesome. It is possible to build up a single uber-city, and defend, or you can build up multiple small cities, and hope that you can win the rush game.
Forget balance; asymmetric games are MUCH more fun than symmetric games. Even in multiplayer; somtimes I want to be the "top-dog" that everyone else aims for; and sometimes I want to be the underdog who has to win on guile alone. Balance is WAY overrated, particularly for strategy games. Balance of Power is a far better paradigm than pure strategic balance.
It's great fun for sure. My only complaint, you really can't defend your own city without the sovereign for many, many rounds.
Remember there was little to no attempt to bother with balancing for 3C. Be assured this shall not be the case by retail .
The whole tactic is a little "starcrafty" for my tastes. I personally would want to get away from having specific "builds" and more to having Grand Strategies. I think Elemental's scaling will allow for both kinds of games, I hope.
Anything to avoid the "rinse and repeat" of something like Starcraft, it just gets old to me. I prefer the whole Civilization or Age of Empire approach to warfare and tactics. Lots of long term planning, implementation, revision, and, finally, execution. I like the strategery of it all.
I seems assured that when the AI becomes a tad more concerned about his Towns, you will not be able to do that as well or as easy. Map size makes a Huge difference as well. Takes more than 50 Turns to just find the buggers.
Does the game have a wall-based combat which greatly favors the defenders when trying to take a city like Age of Wonders or Total War series does?
If no, introduction of it would alleviate this problem--as well as make city-taking generally more difficult, complex, and fun.
I actually wouldn't say Total War really favors the defender all that much - if anything I might say the opposite because you can just siege them while their numbers starve, forcing the defender then to become proactive, while there's no realistic option (mods excluded) to account for the fact that the besieging army would also be starving. The only reason TW really favors defenders is because in actual battles the AI tends to be completely brain dead and do things like stand outside the walls screaming, "Shoot me!" while the archer towers whittle them down.
Age of Wonders though, yes. Still one of the best combat systems for a game of that style I can remember. Maybe I'll go reinstall it...hmmmm...AoW 1 or 2....hmmmmm....
As of right now, units get a "hitpoint" bonus when in fortifications. I hope this changes.
I meant just in terms of tactical battle.
That's it? Yes, I certainly hope that changes. How hard is it to draw in a wall that attacker needs to break down before attacker melees can get to defenders?
I know Frogboy is sick of hearing this, but everything I've read about this game looks like it's being rushed.
well combat in 3c is still basic we have to see in some day
also we ahve morale incoming i guess the units defending could have a starting morale boost playing home and viceversa
Well it seems a bit early to worry about anything combat related since combat is broken in 8 trillion ways right now, so its not like a valid ground for comparison or anything. I mean right now who cares about a wall, archers obliterate everything?
Darn, I just thought that my archers were AMAZING. Way to ruin my thunder.
@Epaminondas73
Have you tried the game yet? It's not perfectly balanced or complete yet but it's fantastic so far despite all it's problems.
Starcraft never had a commander unit. It always had lots of little units. The idea that your Sovereign is so powerful is something to consider. He CAN walk through just about any defense you can build very quickly early in the game.
If this was Starcraft, you could also build lots of little units and stop the assault. In this scenario, you can only hold back your commander or somehow gate him to the city to defend it as all other units are inferior.
This idea isn't applicable in Civ or other types of build up style games. When you have a commander, there is the strategy of rush always lurking.
Still fun to do once in a while.
How do you balance a complex game with many options in only a month?
A month is pretty much a lifetime in Stardock terms.
I don't see this as desirable at all. If you want an asymmetric game, have settable handicap rules where one player starts off with more. Concluding a majority of games by mid-game is indicative of an imbalanced approach to the sovereign. Hopefully this shall be changed shortly.
I believe that it was mentioned that a lot of the development that went into Elemental was in making it highly modifiable easily. With this infrastructure in place, changes, even major changes, can therefore be achieved with comparative ease.
Even if it wasn't highly moddable ... what a game dev team wants to be done can be easily accomplished/ balanced/ rebuilt once the groundwork is done.
That being said ... due to the high moddability of elemental, not only can the original dev team radically change the game within the blink of an eye ... but also your average joe modder.
That ... plus the fact that (due to less hard coding) those radical changes can be rather far reaching.
Whilst that's good to know, I don't think it justifies complacency.
Reviewers will judge the game based on how it comes out on day one, and if everything hasn't been done to make it a success before relying on modders and post-release updates this may reduce sales and ultimately harm the chances of the game becoming a financial success.
Which in turn means reduced motivation to improve it, and no chance for an even better sequel in the future.
So yeah, as many radical changes before launch as necessary I say. Flying penguin mounts for all!
The problem is that often you won't have the teleport spell since you won't get much spell research done at first. So maybe that spell should be a starter spell?
Quoting Ephafn, reply 21If this was Starcraft, you could also build lots of little units and stop the assault. In this scenario, you can only hold back your commander or somehow gate him to the city to defend it as all other units are inferior.The problem is that often you won't have the teleport spell since you won't get much spell research done at first. So maybe that spell should be a starter spell?
And getting the Teleport spell right away would be OP as it allows the SoV to take with him/her as many peons as you can make in the first 15 turns. Talk about a Rush tactic. POOF! Were here, you die... LOL
By "Starcrafty", what I really mean are strategies that rely on specific builds and which are very "gamey". As much as pro-players hate it, a little randomness goes a long way to stop this kind of thing.
I've been playing with a combat only sovereign and taken out the entire map without using another unit or casting a spell.
Obviously, I hope the ai will be better at some point and beat the crap out of me if I try that.
My biggest concern is that cities early on are so worthless that it's not worth building one but far easier to look for a prey and take it instead. You save all the gildars and materials for building basic city infrastructure, which is alwyas the same anyway. You only lose the opportunity of choosing the site of the city, but if you get rid of a neighbour (even a minor civ), it's probably worth the tradeoff.
If minor civs get their strong defender monsters back in, then this will be less of an issue, and building a city will actuaally be a worthwhile option (considering the enemy channeler defends his first city correctly).
But since you should have to protect your city, you should either have teleport spell learnt and wander about picking goody huts, or you stay in your capital to defend it. Staying in a city should provide it with some bonus so it's a viable alternative to adventuring.
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