A strategy game has to have interesting, almost painful, decisions to make. The opposite of interesting decisions is “false choice” - the illusion of a meaningful decision. A false choice is when you have to make a choice, but it makes no difference to the game or there is only one viable choice. False choices kill a game because they waste your time without being interesting. I heard this concept well discussed on a podcast that I wish I could credit, but I cannot find it.
There are several issues to work on, but my biggest disappointment thus far is that the tech tree seems like one big false choice. The game advertises five distinct research paths and strategies: civilization, warfare, magic, adventure, diplomacy. But squads are so strong that a warfare-based strategy seems to be the main (only?) way to win the game. All four other paths are huge false choices – at best, they are useful supplements to the warfare approach (e.g. you need just enough civilization to get the resources going). But it feels like there is only one way to play/win this game.
This is a shame because the other paths are where a lot of the fantasy/RPG flavor lie. Also, having really different paths to domination was a key, still unrealized, idea of the game design. Plus, they’re interesting; one of my gripes with the Civ series is that you are more or less confined to a single tech tree. In Civ, it seemed that just being ahead on the tech tree was more important than the order you chose things. The fact that most of the research paths in Elemental are not viable or interesting is really holding the game back.
First, I think there needs to be a substantial effort at rebalancing so that each of the 5 paths is a viable way to win the game … more or less on its own. For example, I tried an (almost) pure adventuring strategy in my first game that fell flat on its face. The champions are weak and could not leave my borders to get to the adventure locations because spiders and bandits would kill them. What good are adventurers that cannot stand up to some monsters? There are some good points here already. They made sure that adventuring brings a variety of rewards – I was pleasantly surprised when it revealed some new food sources. A variety of rewards helps each path be viable on its own, but you want each path to have its limitations/weaknesses as well.
Second, after each path is viable on its own, there should be some interesting ways to blend paths to achieve synergies. Blending the paths will open up more options. Maybe civilization/warfare gives you large but mundane armies whereas warfare/magic gives you smaller but more exotic armies. Here again, the game has the outlines in place with the unit design system, but tactical battles need to work better before this pays off. An adventuring/diplomacy path could consist of just one or two cities but with champions that go out to exert influence over allied factions (e.g. I’m thinking Gandalf and his circle of wizards who coordinated the free peoples vs Sauron). The possibilities are endless once you get these combos going. And, maybe some combos are not meant to work together if adventurers tend to upset the carefully laid out civilization, etc.
Third, the map and overall game situation should steer you towards a certain strategy or blend of strategies. The best games force you to adapt from game to game (depending on the map and opponents) and even sometimes within a game. There are some opportunities here: what resources are available determines which path you might go down. So, finding a cool resource might convince you to focus on or blend in a particular research path. But, there should be more ways to adapt your strategy as the game evolves. Right now, you mostly create your sovereign before the game. You have a few points to allocate as the game progresses, but I haven’t yet felt like they make much difference. What if your sovereign started out pretty generic and you could build/adapt him as the game went on? Do I allocate a point to him now to get the immediate benefit or wait until I explore a bit more to see if he will be a wizard or a warrior? What if questing led to a more interesting set of rewards and loot? Maybe getting some really good treasure might convince you to tailor a strategy around it? And why do we need to buy spellbooks only at the beginning? It would be more interesting to say “I just got this fire shrine – now I need to go off on a quest or whatever to develop fire magic.”
Shameless bump for my current thoughts on what this game needs.
For the most part, I agree. I mean I almost feel like there is one victory condition/path/tech. How do you win the game? RUSH rush like you were playing starcraft as zerg. The main key to victory? Spamming units, spamming cities, and crushing the AIs before they can react. If you slow down a but, do some quests, research non-war techs you suddenly realize that because your army is weak 100% of the factions in the game have decided to attack you. So much for diplomacy since the primary factor involved in who likes you is how big your army is. So... If you want a diplomatic win? Get a bigger army than anyone else. If you want a war win? get a bigger army than anyone else. If you want to adventure? Get that huge army so you wont be crushed before you can do any quests. If you want to win with magic? Well give up, you better use one of the other tactics.
So, you options are:
War win -> Large army/war
Diplomatic win -> Large army/war then ally who ever is left (mind you, you are powerful enough at this point to just kill them all off)
Adventure win -> Large army so everyone likes you then quest (mind you, you are powerful enough at this point to just kill them all off)
Magic Win -> LOL (This one doesn't worry me as much since there are plans to fix it but right now it is pretty bad.)
Please, give us some options aside from which sword/mace to use in our armies.
The OP makes some good points, but the biggest problem is that as long as conquest is a viable path to victory, you can't exactly let your guard down and hope to focus exclusively on one of the other victory paths, not unless the other technology branches allow you to build up some sort of strong defense so you don't always need a large standing army to fight off an invasion. For example, the magic path could give you magical guardians around your cities that you can level up with research into a formidable defense. Or maybe the adventure path could give you the opportunity to recruit NPC armies to protect your cities while your sovereign is off on his quests. These would be defensive units only since if you wanted to go out and conquer your opponents with force then you would be researching warfare and building up an army anyway.
Good post OP. I mostly agree. The tech tree is one of my biggest concerns at the moment after AI. I agree that it presents false choices, but disagree that there are 5 tech trees. Right now there is really only one tree in 5 flavours. The only choice is in the order you go down the trees based on your current priorities, but it doesn't take long for tech to be racing along and I would think everyone is backfilling to grab techs they skipped earlier. In other words, everyone ends up getting every tech if they end up playing long enough (and it doesn't take very long on normal pacing, a couple lost libraries and you are good to go).
The tech flavours don't feel very fleshed out (with the possible exception of the War/Conquest branch). There are no meaningful choices, real choices would be if for example I research the summoning spellbook then I am locked out of the enchantment spellbook, or if I go far down the War tree that means I can't progress far in the diplomacy tree, etc.
I believe the Adventure path should, fundamentally, NOT exist.
One thing is to research technology and see a mineral resource pop up (meaning: you didn't know that the mineral was useful). One thing is to research "adventure" and having LAIRS and DRAGONS pop up for no reason. Where were they, before?!?
I hate to summon again the comparison with MoM but...
You saw a lair with sky dragons and you stayed well the hell away, until you figured you had a chance. But you couldn't even wait too much since (as I recall) others could get to it first. This gave a sense of purpose, and a great feeling of accomplishment when you finally took down a monster who had been "taunting" you for the whole game.
Here what basically happens is that you "research" new dungeons to appear as soon as you feel comfortable approaching them. It makes absolutely no sense and removes the excitement factor entirely. Similar reasoning for heroes ecc. If I see a hero I cannot hire getting hired by somebody else, it might make me rethink my choices for the next game, etc. If I "research" heroes when I need them, well...
Actually I'm surprised no one brought up the issue before. O
Making certain research paths and technologies mutually exclusive is an interesting idea.
Agreed. In all likelihood there will be notable additions to the tech tree, especially with future efforts for game balancing. Someone mentioned about rushing and they are completely right. Excluding AI issues, I've played several games now where I've moved quickly through the tech trees at a quick speed, with warfare having the most diversity, civil have a moderate some, while the rest feel paltry in comparison.
Since Magic will need a good overhaul in some form, perhaps combining that into the tech tree would be somehow beneficial. Ex: Having landmass formation needing researched in magic branch before being studied as a spell. Now before anyone says it! I know that the spells currently are in a debatable situation, and my aim here isn't to branch down that road. Rather this is a concept for post "spell-fix" when there are both vast number and variety of spells.
Now this is simply my own opinion, but I feel such a dreadful lack of magic in the world. Beyond equipment and spells via channelers, an interesting proposition would be a tech allowing for a channeler stationed within a city to teach an individual spell or two to student mages/ soldiers. Of course they shouldnt have large selection or possibly even access to powerful spells, otherwise that would defeat purpose and meaning of the channelers within the world. But having "soldiers" and possibly even champions learn a firebolt or endurance would give incentive for putting points into intelligence. Doing so for non channeling champions at the very least would quell the argument of over their lack of usefulness in the world ( I remain impartial to that debate).
Earlier I was thinking of the adventurers walking the lands, and how I felt they were more like semi-neutral parties who kinda stood around. In terms the tech tree, it would be cool to "research" a way where adventurers had more incentive to explore regions, maybe even be able to buy and sell items they've obtained on the way (just like we do in any rpg). Stuff would show up in the stores not normally made, and we have adventurers possibly taking on monsters in countryside (esp if they were to creature level appropriate items certain percentage of time).
With brad giving AI attention for awhile, I'm certain that the diplomacy section will get a nice boost. Wouldn't make sense for it not to.
All things said, this is the coolest aspect of the game being so new. Its in such a state now of needing to further its depth that a great many ideas willl be necessary. And considering that the world is relearning everything, many of the very ideas out there can be implemented into the game, and unlocked through the research tree - thus killing two birds with one stone.
adventuring could be a viable path with really nice item rewards (unit help) and fantastic locations that give youre kingdom an edge (city help)
the slippery slope with making tech paths viable on their own is creating an environment where going all-in on one path is the best way to win.
Well said, but I think the biggest step to making civ, adventuring, magic and diplomacy valid tech options is to make their beneficiaries not worthless.
If getting higher level cities, gaining levels, getting higher level spells, or trying to up your diplomatic clout non-militaristically were not strategically retarded, maybe there would be a point to researching branches other than war.
I like the idea of making research paths (partly) mutually exclusive. This could be hard-coded or simply because you don't have enough time to research everything.
On a related note, since the research costs increase with each subsequent advance, it feels like you get into an area of diminishing returns as you progress in a path. While I understand some of the motivations, I'm not sure it has the intended effect on gameplay. One of the results is that you're always tempted to spread your research effort around to get the first, easier technologies. And, many of these are quite useful. Again, this tends to minimize real choices by forcing everyone to spread out ... and, we end up playing each game the same way.
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