Hey Stardock and any interested forumites,
So I didn't really participate in the Alphas and Beta, despite pre-ordering expressly for the purpose, but here are my thoughts on the design of this game. Not the technical aspects, mind, but purely the design.
The thing of it is, is that this game has a major, overarching problem that is plaguing it,s design: cohesion. There are a lot of features which, conceptually, are very good ideas. But, they are not well thought-out, in that there doesn't seem to be any idea of how they tie together, either within the aspect or in the context of the game as a whole.
For example, let us take the Character system. Conceptually, this is a great idea: you hire adventurers who aide you in your path to greatness. You equip them just like in a fully blown rpg, you level them and they become more powerful, they add to the storyline and you can even marry these adventurers to produce offspring. This is a great outline for how they should work, and is a good pitch to your boss.
But how do they fit in reality at the moment? They aren't much more effective in combat than normal units, they die easily and there is no way to recover them, they are expensive to recruit relative to their usefulness and at least early on equipment is too expensive to really deck them out, especially with how fast the rest of the game moves relative to their rate of leveling. The best uses for them is early on, since they are faster than training, and then later as breeders of offspring or imbuing them so that you can get more enchantment slots (enchantment slots are anther feature I could complain about for hours, especially since summons are so powerful, but I won't) to boost the size of your army.
In other words, this feature is not cohesive. It's as if it were designed in isolation from the rest of the game, and then slapped in just before release.
How would this be made cohesive? Well, for one, either leveling would be faster so character power increases more quickly, or the rest of the game needs to be slower and the land needs to be unclaimed for longer so they can grind properly (I favor the second, though leveling should be more frequent anyways to increase character power. The style of the game recommends a more dangerous world that should not be civilized fully until very late in the game, if ever. I was so surprised that there is no money or food maintenance cost for additional cities, considering how questing is so important to the game and there needs to be a lot of unclaimed land that all the heroes can move through freely).
In other words, the developers need to ask how this fits into the game, i.e. how it plays out when the game is in progress and how this contributes to player victory. Presently, a hero is just a unit you don't need to maintain who can be abused to get up to five powerful additional units who also do not need to be maintained. You can spend money and time making them tanks if you want, but they cannot get the HP or defense of a large group of normal units, and if you use them in combat you run the risk of losing them, and thus your massive investment in them.
The cohesiveness is also affected by the randomness of the game, which makes the game very unstable (and right now, ironically, is the only thing that makes it interesting). Taking the above example, heroes spawn randomly everywhere, and this is your main method of recruitment for the entire game besides children. Of course, since getting children is also dependent on this method of recruitment, and since child production appears to be random, that is also random. This means you cannot really build a strategy based on the heroes, since you cannot guarantee you will get good or well-equipped ones. Now since heroes are already so ancillary, this is mostly fine, but it's hell on the dynasty system: First you need to find a hero, then you need one of the opposite sex, then you need to have enough money lying around when you encounter one to hire them, then you need to grind until your reputation is higher, teleport to the same city, and marry them. And since the dynasty system is nearly game-breakingly useful, this means your acquisition of this tool is randomly determined.
This would be hellish if heroes were not abundant, especially with the high death rate, and so the developers made sure they were plentiful. But, of course, now there are too many, so you get tons early on to level in the hopes one or two survive long enough to serve some purpose, or alternatively for the bonus to research or resource production they provide. This is a mess, and completely undercuts the look and feel of the game, which is supposed to emphasize resource scarcity.
A good solution here would be to make heroes an exploitable resource. Have a building produce or grant access to them, or make permanent resource features (like inns or shops) where you can always hire them. Maybe even mix this with wandering heroes for earlier on, but make the wanderers stronger and cheaper than the ones back home so searching for them is worthwhile. Heck, quests should be treated like this too, as they are also a resource and one of the potentially most compelling parts of the game.
A simple inn improvement or resource, allowing heroes to be hired and quests to be undertaken, would not only make this feature more reliable, it would also make the game feel more fantasy-like. City inns are the traditional rpg source of both quests and heroes, and it makes perfect sense to hire them there. Add in a maintenance cost for heroes that limits the amount you can have, make them more powerful, maybe allow them to gain some more special abilities, and either allow them to be built from scratch in-game (via the sovereign builder, but with money costs instead of points) or add a hero editor to the workshop, and not only do you have a more useful feature that adds the game-play, but now you can further emphasize the rpg elements and add a more d&d adventurer feel to everything.
And how is this done? By integrating the questing and rpg elements into the city building aspect. By improving cohesiveness, so that actions in one area affect actions in the others.
It's really sad because, honestly, with a lot of improvements like this, this game could rival the tbs grand-master, civilization. You could have more routes to victory, more involving and subtle mechanics, and accommodate a much wider variety of play styles. This game really COULD please everybody, just by making everything useful, but non-essential as it is now. This game could be so much fun.
But all these pieces need to contribute, and as they are now they do not. Think about how pursing the disparate paths in this game is supposed to help the player down the other paths, think about what trade-offs and decisions the player should have to make when deciding which ones to follow, think about how the player can win by focusing on these paths, and think about how all these elements contribute to the look and feel of the game as a whole.
Very nice to read. And a quite a few interesting insights as well. Good job.
You know what I just realized? Why don't I have to build shops? I mean, I build a city, and then it automatically has all items available, anywhere in the empire. Why don't I have to improve my shops? Or at least level the city? That would tie character development into city building, and would make so much sense! Especially if Inns are added.
Agreed. This is another one of those areas that I have been crying about since Beta. NPCs are just stat lists with no real personality. Same for cities. How cool would it be if that big library you built would attract mages and scholars? You could then recruit some of these NPCs or give them quests to fulfill as independents. Same for the classic Inn example you have mentioned.
This would make the world feel more alive and would make both NPCs and cities much more interesting.
Exactly! But more importantly, it makes the game a game. It takes out random chance and replaces it with player choice.
And that's the root of the cohesion problem. There are a lot of things you can do, but you don't have to make very many choices. When I build a city, what improvements I select should be a choice, not a no-brainer workshop-market-archive-lab, and that choice should ultimately affect my ability to win. As it stands, I have no choices. The game is just a test of how efficiently I can follow the set path. Because there are no trade-offs or difficult decisions. One magic book doesn't make me better at one thing and worse at another by a great degree. Choosing magic over combat in my sovereign doesn't affect my route to victory.
Building that library above should be a choice. Do I build the library and attract mages? Do I bulid a barracks and attract warriors? Do I delegate quests or persue them myself, and what are the advatages of each approach? Those decisions are fun to make. Whether to cast flame dart for 2 or call lightning for 3 is not.
I like your comments about hero's and having an inn as a place to meet them.
That said, I would like to see the hero's exhibit a tad bit of a personality;a taste for loot, power or independence. Now I hire a hero and don't really care about them or interact with them. I would like to see the hero's give the player advice based on their specialty and intelligence. Perhaps a skilled cavalry warrior hero designs a cavalry unit for the player if they unlocked combat > mount tech. Or an archer hero gives his lord access to a design for an archer unit once Combat > Longbow is unlocked.
I would like to see some hero's leave the service of a lord if they are not compensated with new armor and weapons and/or gold - perhaps hinting at this with a cryptic comment popup. Others might ask to go out and auto-explore the lands - along with any troops you assigned to accompany them. If you turn down the request they might leave your lord's service. Likewise, in combat though most hero's should follow your instructions, if combat is not their forte and you send them into combat they might leave your service after the battle; if they survive - especially if they are a coward - i.e. a heroic merchant might be a coward in battle or a brave warriour hero might have a fear of spiders.
I would like the opportunity to use a hero as a spy and send him out into the wilderness to be hired by other lords and send information back to my lord by pigeon, wyvern or merchant.
Perhaps, allow lords to build an intelligence HQ building that automatically gathers rumors and information about the other lords and generate an intelligence report that is each updated each time your spy sends you an update about the actions of his lord. Of course, each time your your spy sends you an update there is a chance that he could be discovered. So, do you have him send you updates each turn, every 10 turns or every 30 turns?
In summary: I would like to see the designers make heros into "Heros" that stand apart from the standard combat units and interact with the player.
Some suggestion:
Heroes should have means to levelup in nonviolent ways. Those guys who give cities some bonuses - you just leave them there and they are useless in city defence even if you bother to equip them. I suggest make cities generate expirience for stationed heroes based on research output. We save knowledges - so let heroes come and read a book that makes them more beautiful Exploitable, you say, but XP gain can be very slow and capped by city level (f.e. max train level = city level + 1) so that stationed heroes would be MUCH weaker than wanderers but still could be of some use.
Another good addition would be special ability from time to time. I haven't played much so maybe there is a way to gain new abilities for units (or power up existing) but heroes would be much better game element if every N levels they could, f.e. chose between developing current ability and gaining new one.
Agreed players should have to make choices. Currently I build everything. There are no restriction that focus'es the player make trade-offs.
That said, building this choice into the game might be handled by making the number of tiles for selected improvements larger and restricting the number of tiles for each city level so that players have to make a choice. Example: A level 2 city only has 20 tiles, a level 3 city 30 tiles. That means that you must trade-offs and you can't build everything at once. If most improvements are size 1 then a player does not have to make choices, but if they are size 2, 3, 4, 6 then plays must make choices.
Edwin99, you ask for too dramatic changes that hard to manage and balance.
Another suggestion: let heroes ask sovereign for equipment. Something like "My current equipment doesn't much my status and we are happening to be near merchant AND I see you've got some spare money. If you give me 350 gold I can get myself short sword, cuirass, leggings and helm and will boost attack by 5 and defence by 3". That sort of things would let manage hordes of heroes easier.
Some very good comments here. Hope the devs take note.
So the best thing here for me is you summary at the end, because it is a perfect explanation of why heroes are not very fun right now: the behave just like any other unit. And aside from progressing a bit differently, they essentially do. This is equivalent to the "heroes should have special abilities" comment, as that attacks the same problem: heroes are a lot of work to build up, and they don't do anything special to make it worthwhile. That's a great observation.
I would counter propose, however, that a simpler solution would be to give heroes special abilities, and also tie some in to character traits, a-la Crusader Kings or the Total War Series, which influence their usefulness. If the artists can be spared, add text that follows these flavorings, though this might be more than it's worth. Finally, while this is an additional feature and I just lectured against those, a skill tree would solve the usefulness problem while also making leveling important, but here it might be justified because heroes need both special abilities and power progression to be an interesting mechanic. Having a character class concept of sorts, where certian heroes can only get certain abilities, would also help differentiate between individual heroes. This could even be tied into tech if we want to be different, with some techs unlocking abilities to tie heroes to research. These are not incredible modifications that change the core mechanics: all they do is add modifiers or give access to certain spells. But they would really help the heroes out.
Maybe not on knowledge output, as that makes research way too useful, but that sounds great to me. Definitely heroes should be able to gain experience slowly without combat. But taking that risk should allow them to progress faster, gain rare equipment and abilities, and gain additional stat boosts. I'm especially thinking of spouses and late-game sovereigns here, so they don't become completely useless.
Though an Inn could also solve this by guaranteeing access to quests at all times. But if you have a lot of heroes that gets tedious.
Actually, while we're brainstorming, quests need more flavor too. Know what questing system I liked the best? The one in King Arthur, the Role-Playing Wargame. The game sucked, but quests were amazing and worked really well for this kind of grand strategy game. Actually, the present Elemental system is very close, but less detailed. In Arthur, the quests were little choose-your-own adventure style vignettes where you read some story and then had to make a decision of some kind that affected the outcome, interspersed with encounters and travelling. The present system resembles this, but has no real choices that influence the outcome besides " continue or stop," and considerably less text. Give them this variety, and suddenly they are more entertaining. A small change that I'm sure has been mentioned, but a meaningful one I think.
Perhaps for a warrior hero - choose from: adventurer, infantry, cavalry or archer skill trees. Each skill tree would result in a very different warrior hero with unique strengths and weaknesses. The adventurer skill tree would give you a warrior skilled at exploring ruins and fighting monsters. The infantry tree could give you a warrior with you access to unique combat tactics in tactical combat but suffers a combat/morale penalty when exploring ruins and dungeons.
And to expand on your comment about quests - lets talk about brining entire army into unexplored ruins or dungeons. I would like to see the player forced to make a choice as to which units will acompany him into the ruins and combat therein. Let him only bring heros into subsurface ruins not mounted troops or a company of infantry.
It's alright, just needs an overhaul before it comes out of beta.
Precisely. We have starting abilities. Lets make those into classes!
Even with sovereigns. You give them all a profession. That begs for a small skill tree. Nothing too game-changing and hard to balance, just something to make the heroes useful for something other than enchant slots.
Thought: Empires should emphasize heroes less than kingdoms and focus on big monsters over levelled heroes. Or, at least, the player should be able to make this choice so they can have that Zombie Army they always wanted.
That's why we're upset, submit. This IS the retail version >.<
I think grimzag1 is right when he says that the biggest problem is that there is nothing tying all the different parts of the game. Well, at least we know which is the problem. And I hope Stardock also knows it.
The problem is that they will have to fix it by themselves because Python acripts are not accessible yet. Otherwise some of the groups that are creating mods could test some interesting ideas themselves.
Yes, cohesion is definately one of the biggest problems. As a matter of fact, I even wrote a fable about it! https://forums.elementalgame.com/393204
Anyway, I've been saying the same thing for quite some time, but I use a different phrase: Elemental lacks Consilience. In other words, different parts of the game don't have logical connections that serve one another. To the contrary, a lot of the game features are mutually destructive and limit one another. For instance, dynasties are a great idea but lose much of what they could be as a consequence of sovereign immortality. Another example is a detailed unit design interface but overly simplistic tactical battles. You might even point to the reliance of the game on alleged RPG elements and a "living" world, but then lean on setting abreviations like dungeons, inns, and massive towers which appear out of thin air with little rhyme or reason because... you reasearched adventuring??? (that doesn't help me get "absorbed" into a "living world.")
The Elemental Team can't have it all.
It's a shame that I am almost positive this was because they opted for user centered design, because it was such a beautiful and good idea. It was genuinely a good idea to let the users have feedback during development. The problem is, it sounds like they just pulled out ideas that sounded good without thinking them through as much as they should have in terms of game-play. Dynasties are perfect for this. Users said "lets make this more like Crusader Kingdoms" and they went with it without first subjecting it to a central idea of the game. It's like they had an idea shotgun and blasted features into the game without aiming.
And yet, these concepts actually CAN be made to work together with what would seem to be only small amounts of effort. That's the tragedy of it. The high-level design conceptually works, but the devil is in the details. Dynasties would be better if politics carried more weight, Magic were more powerful and harder to spread around and summon's weren't a flat rate based on casters. Especially coupled with the vulnerability of a sovereign in enemy lands, the Children SHOULD act as extensions of the sovereign's power, as opposed to normal heroes who should act more like shock troops and maybe never get magic at all.
But, I suppose the combined needs of building an engine, building the design tools and making the game was too much. By leaps and bounds, this is the worst case of feature creep I've seen in my entire life as a gamer. Heck, with the unstable release, it even out-creeps the equally tragic Spore :/
I really like the concept of the game but don't like the implementation. I want to like the game but the current version an unpolished diammond. game and doen't hold my interest. The battles are boring, encounters are alike and the ruins unexciting. The heros feel like cannon fodder and I can do everything (in the current version) without making a trade-off. There are no real hard choices to make and my people never revolt. As you said, no cohesion.
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