What the title says. Tactical battles are so simplistic that designing a specialized unit is, well, not really even possible. If I'm aiming for autocalculation, I design for getting the most efficient "unit weight" for my buck. If I'm designing to be effective in tactical battles, I just pile on as much whoop-ass I can. Get a new tech? Add additional increment of whoop-ass to all newly trained units. What. A. Timesink. Isn't this what we were all dreading from the start might happen? And now that Stardock has changed their tune on the significance of tactical battles, we can continue to expect unit design to be meaningless.
This theme runs throughout Elemental and is the biggest persistent flaw. There are plenty of decisions to make, but very often there are a few obvious "best" decisions" each game or, at the least, the best decision is very obvious. What does this leave us with? Lots of busy work.
Personally, I think unit design beyond minor cosmetics should be left to modders and the game should return to Master of Magic's tried and true method. First, make tactical combat meaningful. If you have to, go ahead and just plagiarize Master of Magic's tactical combat to a tee. In other words, give units conspicuous special abilities that have specialized relevance on the battlefield. Then, add plenty of core units in the game that certain races and civilizations have access to and that become unlocked when you gain a special resource or a certain tech (or can be hired as mercenaries as special moments). Then, use the modding tools to create a vast resevoir of unique units that can be shuffled into each new game to fit certain "niches." Some games you might see Lizard Man Spear Throwers show up at your city. Other games you might see Gnoll Grapplers trudging through the country side.
As of now, however, explicit unit design in Elemental is a drag and a source of imbalance: another feature that produces a burst of intrigue within a casual onlooker, but damages the game.
yeah that might be true... Well, you are still limited by costs and researched equipment of course.
What i miss most now in the unit editor is a face/hair/gender option. I now basically have to click 10 times to get a unit that looks alright.
But I still really like it though. I don't think it will be a big problem balance-wise. in fact, it may solve the entire problem forever, since everyone (I am talking PvP here) can make the same, and the their own, units! (omg pvp is going to be horrible... waiting for people to design their new warriors, lol, j/k)
Unit design in Gal Civ often saved your empire, at least on the more difficult settings. In this game...well, I need to look for the auto design option and turn in it off. I much prefer to go in and design my own units though it's not as big of a benefit as in Gal Civ 2. If you don't custom design in GC2 then you are making things more difficult for yourself.
This game needs some tuning though. There needs to have magic resistance, separate from defense, varied types of resistance at that. I would like to see damage and attack accuracy separate as well, but that's probably just me being picky. There also needs to be better archers. I have little doubt it will improve over time and I expect this game to become an all time great.
I can't help but recall that there was some original idea that the Tactical Battles were originally designed to be real time not turn based. If that is the case then a design philosophy limiting special abilities as awkward to deploy in real time might have been carried over to here. One could imagine a system like Sins of a solar empire where abilities could be set to automatic use but with the level of comodity that mana is here that would still be problematic. I think we all agree that the Tactical battle system is overly simplistic but when I think of things that would make I would want to make it more exciting and fun and epic in scope for me I can't help but cringe at the difficulty in finding balance inside the game. For example:Flying units: Can these be modded in or does it require 3d grid maps. Can these be balanced into the game rules or does the first guy to research flying arches march over all enemies who don't research archers or flyers but focused on armoured cavalry or stacks of zulu spearmen.
Magical boosts to troops: As an example a preasent troop given a magic wand each that works like had they been trained/equipped as archers, only they have a small mana pool from the wand or can charge off allied unit mana to fire. Mechanically it is not differenet to archers but one would have to balancce its relative research value to the similar archers weapon, and consider the damage based off the shard totals. Illusions and Invisibility: A key part of warfare that seems to be neglected is the ability to mislead enemies about your unit strength or hide key units from being attacked. It seems right now an army of archers is the ultimate trump to destroying soverigns on sight.
In all the very premise of the combat system bothers me with the attack counter attack system, I think I would have prefered something more akin to unit A attacks unit B, A compares its total of attack + weapon + fatigue + morale, against enemy B's total of defence + armor + fatigue + morale. If it is greater it does damage with a modifier based on home much stronger. If defender is greater the defender causes a fraction of its damage at the attacker, based on the ratio as well. But the current system of working out how to attack first and if you win take no return damage if you fail take a full attack, just isn't working for me.
Out of interest to those who are looking at modding, what do you feel is the missing foundations the tactical combat needs so you can build mods that feel the way you envision?
+ 1 million to the origional poster and pretty much everyone else who agreed and added to his argument.
This is just one of many areas in Elemental where there aren't meaningful choices to be made but it is a big one.
Strategy games are about interesting choices. If one choice is always the best one in all situations OR it doesn't matter which one you choose then that is a complete fail, D-, in terms of making a strategy game. This is the thing that Stardock seem to have completely missed and it is this which needs to be fixed.
No one is saying that feature is bad (I think). We all love it... the problem is that the unit design has little impact on game mechanics and people would like to see it have more of an impact on how the game is played. In otherwords your choices in the unit designer play a larger role in how combat is handled. Right now, regardless of what choices you make the end results are very similiar and bland.
You can design all the units you want, but you can't force the AI to build the right one at the right time, nor can you ensure it will make the correct upgrades when it does upgrades.
You also cannot force the AI to use your army.
You build a specified unit because of a purpose: When I build units, I ask myself "I make an archer with these traits because my 2 tanks have those traits". The AI can't be forced to reason it needs 2 Skirmishers, and Archer, 1 fire staffer, 1 cold staffer and a Hero.
Did you say the words? The RIGHT words? "Klaatu verata nikto"? I fear the Necronomicon and the Army of Deadites have woken...
gah, posted on wrong thread, forgot to check age.
-picard facepalm-
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