I'm as big a critic as the next at Elemental's failings, but I think it's a fun game and I personally find tactical battles a real joy. They are simple but exciting, and I often find them challenging. I'm the kind of player who will never understand every system in a strategy game perfectly, so maybe I'm who Normal difficulty was made for. In other words, I'm not one of those hard core strategy gamers that wants the game to be super hard and much more complex.
So change the game as you will but please don't turn tactical battles into some big mess. Everyone here is clamoring for Elemental to be Master of Magic and while I have a lot of fond memories of that game, what it really was was a game that kicked my ass and had a lot of great ideas but was too hard and complex for me to understand or enjoy them all.
Keep up the good work!
ok if you actually played masters of magic that would mean your atleast 30 so you should have enough brain power to figure stuff out. right now the tactical battles are super simple, posess zero challenge.
its not even close to the games strong suit its its weakest link.
Most fans of this type of game WANT a complex game. The problem with 98% of today's games is that they are far too easy and generally no longer require someone to need any semblance of strategy to win. MoM was a great game because of its tactical battles, its complexities, and its challenge (which really wasn't that hard as I recall).
Some of us actually like to get our behinds handed to us so that we have to come up with a new strategy or learn new tactics to handle situations differently. Perhaps one game you were too aggressive when you had a weak defensive position and it cost you. Perhaps in another you had a strong defensive position but failed to be aggressive enough and now you are trapped. Learning to adapt to your situations and take advantage of favorable conditions is what these types of games should be about. If you win every time you play, you learn nothing, and the euphoria of victory becomes short lived when you realize you didn't really accomplish much by beating up on an easy AI.
I agree, I love the combat and the game
If they can fix the slowdown in late game turns on large maps then man I will be a happy camper
Its a joke right? I found tactcial combat as it is now pretty tedious and boring. I will make it simple for you. Most AI units move at max two tiles.... position your infantry units equiped for maximum damage 3 or 5 squares away. Use archers to wittle them down while they are advancing, or to take out thier ranged units (if they exist, which often times they don`t). When they reach square 2... or 4... they would have probably used up all thier action. Focus on one unit at a time and kill them.
You can win 80% of the battles with that tactic, usually without loosing any units! Is it really entertaining to do the same thing over and over again?
The only entertainment I get from the tactcial battles is fighting units that teleport or use magic because ocassionaly something happens that I didn`t expect, but those are less abundant.
? When Master of Magic came around (as far as i remember 1994) I was about 9 years old and played it a lot. Never thought it to be that difficult to understand. The concepts behind were easy and accessible.
Though today I wouldn't be real satisfied with the tactical combat, back in 1994 that was just as awesome as it could get. Can Elemental beat that old game in terms of good designed tactical combat? NO.
But at least Elemental tactical combat is better then the one in Hammer of the Gods (1993) but we have it now 2010!
Since Master of Magic tactical combat evolved a lot. So the MoM tactical combat is NOT state of the industry. There is the whole HoMM Brand + Kings Bounty & Armored Princess, Age of Wonders 1,2 & Shadowmagic , Master of Orion 2, Disciples 1+2+3 to name a few and these are just the ones that featured the same setup of tactical combat: a quick, accessible turnbased sub system embedded in a strategic war game frame.
But then there so many others that refined tactical combat.
All these turnbased war games since the 80s (Battle Isle Series, Panzer General Series, Age of Rifle, DemonWorld, Massive Assault, , Battle for Wesnoth...).
Of course worth mentioning are the turn based squad oriented games like Chaos Gate, X-Com 1&2&3 and Jagged Alliance 1+2 or the UFO Series...
And that's just the turn based ones. So a lot has happened.
Then offering us a tactical combat mechanic that can't even beat such an old codger like MoM is... sad.
Listen, this is a turn based strategy game. You're lucky that there's tactical battles at all. Most TBS just calculates a die roll, you see an animation and that's the battle. The last thing Elemental needs is to have tactical battles turn into some over complex 'Final Fantasy Tactics' thing. Please Stardock, do not over-complicate tactical battles. They should really be for eye candy anyway, GC2 and Civ are just fine with no TB...I think people are forgetting they're playing a TBS and not Starcraft II.
Is it the game to blame if the player insists on doing something dull and repetitive?
Now that I can play them without white screening every third time, I don't find them too bad. There is a lot of room for improvement but judging by the fact that Stardock has been busting their humps to fix the bugs that made it into the release version gives me hope for the future. Additional skills for the various skill level troops would make the game a lot more interesting. The various damage types having different levels of armor penetration, and the ability to imbue weapons or use fire arrows and that sort of thing could add a lot to the tactical battles with hopefully comparative ease rather than trying to overhaul the entire system to use hexes.
reply, refresh, refresh, refresh, back, re-enter... double post, heh...
Most? Well we could play a forum game in which you name the turnbased games without tactical combat and I name the ones with tactical combat. Let's see who racks up more game names.
Anyway so you telling me that tactical combat in Elemental is just eye candy? So why the hell do we have it at all? Because at the time of development Brad told us how much dedication they will put into the tactical combat and that they want it to be good. For me that was a major selling point and I guess for a lot of others as well. And now as we have the game and can play it, the devs simply didn't delivered it.
A game is the sum of it parts. Sure GalCiv2 worked without tactical combat because all its parts fit togehter and made a good game. Elemental had some good (but ill balanced) areas and a game part which is just not good. And this game part drags down the whole game.
I understand that SC2 is an RTS...that's why I said that it seems like some members of the forum are forgetting that they're playing Elemental, which is supposed to be a turn based strategy game. It's about Kingdom building, not detailed tactical battles. TB's are there to add some fun, but they don't need to be super complex. They're fun as they are.
Lets aply Ocamm's razor to tactical combat in its current state - what it adds to the game?
The answer is nothing, it's just slow autocombat since no tactics involved here (pun intended).
BTW autocombat is strange why enemies are able to rin to my army in 1 turn while in tactical it takes them few turns. Once it's fixed there will be no need to use tactical at all. So why it's here in the first place???
Now once once you have some diversity in tactical combat some tactics, then I can see why it's needed
any of you stop to think that MP will add complexe tactics to Tbs? i mean after all a player is not gonna do the same thing a AI does and each player can have defrent tactics he employs.
Not once it was stated the primary goal is SP.
i had been hoping for more rts style combat but i guess thats down the drain since way back
it would have made this game epic though...
mind showing me that statement?
So right now I see a lot of people trying to ram down the OP's throat the idea that the game needs to have a more complex tactical system regardless of whether the OP likes it or not, yes? Please take note of the last line in the 1st paragraph up there in the OP, and accept that this person doesn't want a more complex system. There are also other players here and elsewhere who have said the same, and I don't think it's fair to belittle or talk down to this person just because they like the system as it is now.
So now, trying to take into consideration that there are, as astonishing as it seems to be to some, people who want a simple tactical system, how would you change it so that is more fulfilling to those who want more complexity, while still keeping open the ability of players to have a simple system? Makes things a bit more challenging. To me, the solution to this I'm actually hoping to see is for either Stardock or some modding team to come up with a tactical battle mod package for those who want greater complexity while still leaving the base game alone for those who would rather have a simpler tactical game.
Dull and repetitive moves games. ever heard of Farmville?
Kings Bounty Armoured Princess has the best turn based battles I have ever played. That game is pure CLASS. Elemental is waaay behind in that department
Still I trust that Elemental will evolve and become a better game in the years to come. I am enjoying it sofar, but the potential for improvement is collossal.
Agreed with Ichirou989. Mod it in (ias much as you can) or request it as an option/expansion if you want more complex rules, I like it as it is now. As the OP said, for folks like us we enjoy it as is. I'm tired of people saying "make it like this game" or "game x has this awesome feature so you should put it in elemental". I personally own and love most of the games people here keep referring to, and if I want to play them I will. but I'm staying up way too late playing Elemental (not my other games), bugs and all, and loving it.
I vote leave the tac system mostly alone.
Oh, and for the person who was saying someone who's 30 should have the brain power to figure it out, you ought to remeber that if the OP were 30 (which I beleive was refuted) then they likely would be time limited, and not brain limited. I'm personally about fed up with games that want me to spend hours learning their new systems. instead of having fun. Thanks to stardock for respecting my playtime, I say. And as much as they take care of their customers, I'm sure they'll try to work in some complexity. Just hope it's behind a checkbox.
Brain power peaks at 21-25 and decrease steadily then
I agree with that. I would really like some more tactical battles variables, that brings it closer to say, final fantasy tactics. If that can be attained with modding tools that devs provide or people mod themselves, i will be happy, and then the OP can be happy too. Still, like someone said, whats the point of putting tactical battles in for the single purpose of eye-candy? Cuz it dont look that good. Its nice, but thats not why i play tactical battles, i view it sort of like a chess game. Thats why its called tactical battle and not hmmm zoom in to the battle or something?
At the OP, I will say I like that it is refreshingly simple. But it needs to be more compelling. I say, make the combat mechanics simple, then add a whole bunch of modifiers and and speical abilities that make it interesting.
Actually, wished they removed morale. It's a bit unintuitive as opposed to the rest of the game.
Sure
https://forums.elementalgame.com/387333
Sure, there are folks who will enjoy it, and for them it's fine as is.
But taking Brad's word
"Q: I want to know more about tactical battles
A: Without putting too fine a point on it, Elemental’s tactical battles are designed to be fairly similar to Master of Magic’s tactical battles. If you liked those, you’ll probably like these. It’ll be an area getting the most refinement over the next 30 days and beyond since we hope to release mini-game modes that let players just play tactical battles.
On a personal note, I don’t like tactical battles normally. However, I do like MoM’s tactical battles and I do like Elemental’s tactical battles."
And the current state they not similar to MoM not even close. I like MoM's tactical battles and I don't like those in EWoM right now.
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