Elemental: The Master List

ScottTykoski

Join Date 03/2001

+132

Elemental: The Master List

The Latest, Greatest Pile of Player/Reviewer/Internal Feedback

Well, here it is - our list of feedback as compiled from several review sites, this forum, other forums, and our own Q/A team. There are a few more sites I need to pick apart, but in general I feel this covers many of the egregious issues (but feel free to note anything we’ve overlooked...we want to be as thorough as possible).

The ‘Major Issues’ are the ones you’ll be seeing fixed ASAP. Ideas/suggestions will be re-prioritized and completed as proper solutions are determined.

- Major List (Crashes/Stability/Etc.) -

Late game Slowdown!!!!
1. Tweaking LODs on tile designs so they fade out better
2. Any code tweaks that improve this
3. P:\Ken\Elemental Testing\Aug28\AutoSave.EleSav
  1. late auto-play game from Ken, 30k turns in
4. Slowdown between turns
5. Feedback
  1. “my only real gripe (other than the balance tweaks, and improvements to the tech tree and magic system *grins*) is with the "end game" slow.... churn....... of............. death..................... “
  2. “the game just become VERY slow. I have good computer, I do not think it should slow down like that. More over, it seems that it just hits some kind of barrier, like in 20 turns around turn 150 it converts from OK to run game, to nearly impossible to run.”
  3. “Is anyone else's games slowing down by the time they get to turn 100? This is on small maps and without fail after awhile, there's a slight delay to everything I'm doing. Unless I zoom to cloth map mode I basically have a half second lag to every command I attempt which is super annoying.”
Memory Leaks
1. On Win7-64 machines with ATI Cards...
  1. “Now that the game has bitten me, I am getting the 'out of memory' error on my very beefy new home rig. It's Win7-64 and an ATI card. This needs to be fixed.”
  2. “I started getting the 'out of memory' error after about 300 turns.This is the ATI+Win7 thing, right? ”
Alt+Tab Crashes
City Details List
1. Paul gave his dxpacks to me for this screen, so I can look at hooking it up when I’m done with the data.zip app (charles)
XML Fixes
Console App for making Data.zip
MP Specific spellbook
1. No Tactical Spells
2. Low, High level strategic counterparts to former tactical spells
MP Specific ADVENTURE trees
1. kingdom renamed “Exploration”
2. empire renamed “Exploitation”
3. add quest related techs removed and stitched up
Magic Calculations / More Exciting magic system/ Mana Regen
1. build do min-max damage, not 0-max (Bruno), DONE NO CHECKED IN.
2. feedback
  1. “The schools are not sufficiently distinct from each other. Mana regen is too slow for pure casters. The damage done by magic scales poorly against more advanced squads.”
  2. “the spells are boring beyond belief although I did like the spells that you could cast on your cities. However, the tactical spells are all the same with a few minor differences between them.”
  3. “Mana regeneration 1 mana / turn makes tactical magic system pretty much useless later in the game. Most of my battles are might focused because of mana regeneration limits. I expect to use at least one tac magic per battle, yet the current mana regeneration system makes it impossible. I believe I was able to use tac magic effectively in about 1 battle out of 90 battle fought due to this limit.”
Late game Stuck Turn-buttons
1. Some are reported to be fixed by disabling auto-explore
2. others are thought to be caused by auto-resolve battles not playing properly
3. Feedback
  1. “Finally had a gamebreaking bug actually - Dunno what happened, the game isn't locked up or anything, but if I try to advance to the next turn nothing happens, reloaded the game a few times, looks like I'll have to see what my autosaves look like.”
If the user places a building with a ‘x per city’ limit, they will be able to keep placing them if you dont click off or reselect another improvement (Anthony)
1. “When building just about anything, I find that the cursor 90% of the time will not reset, and I can build a second copy of it (doesn't matter if it's a Faction wonder, Royal wonder, whatever) in the same city.” (http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=73945&page=26)
Gold from treaties isn’t properly given to the player
1. https://forums.elementalgame.com/393881
AI Improvements
1. Protecting its Sovereign / No Suicide Attacks
  1. “So I head up to his next city...it falls quickly...enemy king was inside and has been ejected on one side....he's in my territory. Attack again and he dies....War ends, much larger empire collapses...they really need to make sure the AI protects its kings if this is going to be magic bullet way to win a war you shouldn't be able to”
  2. “My current game is going well so far, although three empires fell to my sword by sending their sovereign into my territory without a strong army at their back. Silly AI.”
2. Ships?
  1. “I've heard player's mention that there's also no tactical battle yet for boats either, but this doesn't seem to be an issue since I have never, ever seen an A.I. ship -- it would make me think twice about carrying my doom stacks if I did.”
3. Using Magic More
  1. “ I hope Brad teaches it what to do with magic sometime. It ain't gonna make me gnash my teeth helplessly if it doesn't take advantage of the game mechanics...Just one spell immune bone ogre would have beaten me fair and square. Just one! My troops were so terrible even a deflected, hasted unit or two wouldn't have saved the day. They had three of the buggers!”
4. City Building
  1. “...I saw one [AI city] made up entirely of 13 houses. It's food production was completely in the negative and they had the little fish sign over it. There was no reason why it should have had that many houses and absolutely NOTHING else.”
Sound Cutting Out in Late-Game
1. “I have still sound issues and graphic issues as well. After about 2~3 hours playing, all the music completed phase out.”
2. Sound cuts out then crash (https://forums.elementalgame.com/394320)

- Minor List -

A pioneer on a boat can build a city in the water
1. “I loaded a transport with a pioneer, noticed that the pioneer could still build a settlement so I did. On water. Couldn't make any improvements, but I could make units.”
Upgrade paths for Minor cities
1. 3 levels, or the full 5 levels of upgrade options?
2. Crystal Mining Settlement
3. Ore Mining Settlement
4. Arcane Settlement
5. Technological Settlement
Teleoprt Spell Confusion/Bugs
1. Can’t use the teleport spell if the leader isn’t casting it
  1. “I cast the spell to give another leader spell casting ability.That worked, he got 6 mana. He is in my killer stack with the sovereign. I made him active and tried to cast teleport, because the whole purpose was to save all the sovereign's mana for combat that I was always using to teleport. He spent the 5 mana, but the stack didn't move.....”
2. Only your territory can be targeted, even though it says “Friendly”
  1. “...it still says 'friendly' in the description. It doesn't go to territories with non-aggression agreements, so I can't figure out what the difference is.”
Random Crashing, apparently from Caravans
1. “But I think there's a pattern now. Seems like every time a caravan gets killed and has already established a road, that the new caravan (under some bizarre bug, I assume) is so fast it gets to the trade target instantly once I dispatch it, and that somehow crashes the game.”
BASIC, SHORT, TUTORIAL
1. “There is a reasonably long learning curve involved here. However, it is far less than the curve for a "comparable" game like Civilization.”
Stacking of Items (Scott)
1. can no longer quipe INFINITE # of items - handled both in the CChampion level (see Equip Accessory) and in the UI
  1. “ There is no limit on the numbers of magical things you can equip on a hero so you can (for instance) put on scores of things that let you take more actions in combat which really distorts things.”
  2. “My hero units can wear infinite numbers of amulets, rings, and other packs... In time, my one hero unit wiped out everything in the map. (the hero wears 100s of amulets and 100s or rings)”
2. probably want to discuss the proper ‘slot’ system that we want to eventually use (2 rings, 1 pack, etc, etc) for but now this beats the ‘no limit’ system in 1.06
  1. “...no i don't need d2/wows lame equipment pane. A better UI and definitely 2 rings/1 ammy are musts, but frankly, the whole hack/slash/action genre has been using that same weak UI forever now”
Difficult to determine if a tile is a ‘Beach’ when docking a ship
1. Should have icons/some way to identify beaches on tactical map
2. “I discovered that there are places that look like beaches but which aren't considered beaches. ...seems they show up where two different types of terrain come together.”
3. “...my plan to load a pioneer on a ship and then go found a city along the coast doesn't seem to be working, [I can’t dock and unload the Pioneer] even when there is a slope available.”
Opponents Placed in order of first available Starting Position
1. The problem with is this that, in general, map makers will place starting positions in relative proximity (1, then 2 nearby, then 3 near that, etc) expanding outwards.
  1. “so for every map does the player start in the middle? it seems like im always in the middle blocking off all the countries from each other so nothing ever happens”
2. We need to COMPLETELY RANDOMIZE the starting placement of these races.
Misc
1. “I built a transport boat, had it leave the city... into a land tile. It was stuck forever.”
2. “I built a city a tile or two away from the water. I could only build stuff on the 4 squares between the city and the water, no matter how large the influence was.”
  1. This may be the “cannot place a building x tiles from another city”...perhaps not being notified properly?
3. ”The first summon that the "evil" tech tree gets (names are escaping me ATM) has a move that hits the entire field for 10 damage - it's way OP but I'm not complaining. The first couple of times I used that ability, however, the entire screen got covered in stretched-out particle-effect-looking artifacts.”

- Bugs -

Stacking with an Enemy unit instead of Attacking Them
1. “Any reason I would get an attack icon and then stack with the bandit instead of killing him like I need to?...Went away when I rebooted and reloaded....”
AI will not accept a treaty, even though they say it’s cool
1. “How do you get trade treaties to work? No matter what I do, he says the treaty is not acceptable...Istart off purposing the trade and its not balanced. I add gold until the "sounds good, I accept" button lights up. Then when I click it, he says he can not accept. I have even added over 2x the gold needed to make it acceptable. People have said they get this to work. What am I missing?”
2. “If you don't hit "ok" on the gold popup then even if you see the gold on the menu with the trade treaty it doesn't seem to apply it.” <-- I thought this was alright behavior, if you don’t click OK the deal cancels and reverts to what it was before, should it not do that? (from Sarah)
Resoln “Death Worsiping” Ability not working, or not displayed properly?
1. “ I still don't know what the death worship does for the Empire of Resoln. It says it gives a 10 HP bonus, but to who or what does it give it to.”
Twitchy Mouse
1. https://forums.elementalgame.com/392527
2. “The game has odd mouse and hotkey problems and reminds me of the Disciples 3 release in that manner.”
3. “Yeah, the mouse gets all wonky and only wants to move barely one unit portrait over.” (talking about the city context ‘stationed units’ medallion list)
City Build List Listing Buildings Incorrectly?
1. “I have yet to divine why some cities are allowed to build some improvements and not others. That is especially frustrating when, for instance, I have specialized the cities by building them near map resources like lost temples, only to find out that even when they reach level 4 or 5, I cannot access the temples in those cities, but can in cities with no arcane labs even yet built!”
Unit Designs remain available from Game-Within-A-Game
1. “Another bug, I presume, is that when you start a new game you seem to still have access to some of your unit designs from the previous game(s). I could train Kingdom peasants while controlling an Empire sovereign/race. Plus I think it even showed the option for party without me having researched it, though I didn't have the resources to try if that worked.”
Build City Camera Weirdness
1. “...the camera bug is the one that happens if you have city zoom view off, where you click somewhere and it just pops your building somewhere else. I think the connecting resources to your city is by design, because if they are connected they are counted as 'part' of the city and roamer NPCs can't demolish them.”

- Ideas / Suggestions -

Random Events
1. “These are needed. World-cracking, terrain deforming, and devastating random events that make the turns more than just waiting for your troops to finish so you can send off a third army to the front, down to as mundane as...you get a new fertile tile. Random Events are a staple [in 4x], not because they are "cool,"...but because they give some rather jarring aspects to the game that players need to react to...”
2. “We definitely need random events (it's shocking that it's not in here already)! ”
Battle Improvements
1. Damage Calculations
  1. “A lot of games use 1DN rolls, they are quick, easy to implement, and WRONG.” (https://forums.elementalgame.com/392880)
2. Attack and Resistance types (blunt, piercing, fire, lighting, etc)
  1. need to be properly listed in the UI
3. AI
  1. “The tactical AI also doesn't work well and just seems to pick one target and ignore all else while beating a path to it.”
4. Formations
  1. “... the initial formation cannot be changed by the user (or perhaps I was just never smart enough to discover how)... The ability to start a battle with your archers at the rear, melee forward and hero where you need him would be a very nice improvement to the game.”
5. vs. AutoResolve
  1. “And yeah, the auto resolve sucks big time. I've actually lost archers in scenarios where only a couple of slow enemies were involved.”
6. Overall Feedback
  1. “Tactical combat is too simplistic. It needs more decisionmaking. Different damage types (and defenses against each), zones of control, attacks of opportunity, etc. Right now, it's just 'ranged guys in back, infantry up front and rumble'”
  2. “ wish there was a way to speed up animations during tactical battles. Autoresolving is not an option, since that almost always results in some unit taking damage. Clicking through battle after battle watching my longbowmen mow down enemies gets old. Is there a way to speed up animations?”
Champions
1. Leveling
  1. “I really liked how Heroes level up in games like AoW or King's Bounty. I like being able to choose new abilities to further customize them as they level up, not just adding a stat point here and there.”
2. Overall Feedback
  1. “....Champions are really, basically totally uninteresting. It costs too much gold to kit them out so that they can actually battle against anything (and even then, they will still be in huge trouble against any sort of mid/late-game monster). No decisions in upgrading, except whether to make them mages or warrior. The only point in the game when they are really useful is in the start to explore. Meh.”
  2. “This is one of the reasons why NPC warriors just aren't that useful. If you get a NPC adventurer up to level 7, no matter how well armed and armored he is, or where you've put his points on level up, he is just not going to compare well to some stack of 12 regular units with their stats all added together.” (discussing the strength of unit groups)
More Uniqueness to the Factions
1. people like varied text, saw folks comparing Procipinee’s attitude towards the fallen in comparison to Relias
  1. “I don't get the complaint that the factions aren't "memorable". They each seem to have their own quirks to me. Procipinee opens every first contact with an Empire with something equivalent to "I will f***ing end you!", and seems to be the most likely one out of the Kingdoms to go to war. Her text alone seems to infer that she's one crazy zealot toward's wiping the Empires out. Though she's as friendly as she could be toward's other Kingdoms.” (http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=73945&page=29)
2. ask for unique buildings, tech, units, spells, etc.
  1. “I'd like this more if the kingdoms weren't all so samey”
  2. “One thing that I think they should have taken from Alpha Centauri is the way that the voice overs for the various techs and wonders really fleshed out the factions. Right now it feels like the world isn't exactly generic fatasy but not really fleshed out either.”
  3. “Also, I still can't believe that every goddamn unit you can produce (that I've seen, at least) is a fucking human with a different outfit. GC2 had a bunch of different chassis' (is that the right plural form?), games like Alpha Centauri had plenty of different base templates to build from...but this seems to just have "human" to build from.”
  4. “Well... if you research the right upgrades, you can unlock the ability to create darkling and ogre and spider units and stuff? But you can't modify them. That's all I got. I do hope more crazy races are in the works.”
  5. “Some basic simple visual differences between different faction towns would just be nice. "Tarthans" I think are the most distinctive faction but their towns don't seem very "Tarthan", and neither do much of their game mechanics.”
UI Improvements
1. City Building
  1. “it is often hard to figure out why you cannot do something, such as construct a building. The lacking element does appear in red font -- but *all* the material requirements appear in a (very slightly darker) red font.”
  2. need to show the Queue and the city resources at the same time
2. Diplomacy
  1. “Is there a way to see how many turns there are left in a non-agression treaty?”
3. Unit Design
  1. “The costs/effect of various pieces of equipment are all over the map--so much so that it's actually kind of a chore to design anything, because you have to spend all sort of time trying to determine if there is a cheaper and more efficient way to build a unit with exactly the same stats. Very often, there is.”
4. Tooltips / HUD
  1. Better, more informative tooltips when rolling over resources in the top bar. List the cities producing the +X resources per turn, if applicable.
  2. HUD listing what’s being built/trained...status bar to reflect it, turns to complete
  3. Empiretree: rollovers on the little squares to display the unit/building it’s affilated with
Cheesing the System
1. Demolishing housing after leveling up
  1. “...is there any downside to destroying all your houses once you have reached city level 5? I've not done it, but since cities only need houses to level up, I don't think it would be a problem. Obviously, this would likely be considered a bug, but I'm still curious if it's possible.”
  2. “you will need something like 10 houses to get your cities up to 1250 in population (max level), but once they hit level 5 you will have capacity for 2000 pops, but since there is no point in having a high population beyond going up in levels, you might as well start demolishing all those houses to make space for some more interesting buildings”
2. more
Dynasty System
1. Numeric Kids Ages
  1. “Right now, my 25 year old sovereign has a 21 year old son. Amazing!”
  2. “I think they should just change the numerical age to a descriptor, like "child"; "youth"; "young adult" etc, if that's what they are after.”
2. Children Stats
  1. “The dynasty thing is just... weird. Had a son grow up... he had 236 mana, regenerated 8 a turn, but had 6 INT and 1 Combat Point.”
Strength of Grouping Types gets Out-Of-Control
1. “Squads get *very* powerful. I don't think a champion-centric strategy is viable after the first half of a game.”
2. “A company needs to be handled in combat calculations as 12 individuals where each individual gets some sort of bonus for being part of a larger team. Treating it as a single mega-unit is both counter-intuitive and has a nasty impact on the rest of the game.”
3. “Beyond re-designing the way mob bonuses work, combat desperately needs to separate the to-hit & to-damage mechanics. But if we're in the armchair designer corner, I have a couple of pages worth of things I'd like to see included, like rules for what units can actually target, how unit morale and army morale are handled, and many, many other things. Basically, I'd like some proper wargame mechanics instead of the "simpler & more broken than Disciples 3" mess we have now.”
4. Lots of Damage Calculation Feedback here...http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=60936&page=13
Item Shop
1. UI Improvements
  1. Need to be able to see what equipment the selected guy has / change in stats with the selected shop item
  2. “Do I really have to remember what items I have equipped when I go shopping? Really?? Because I can't.”
2. Item Costs
  1. “Item costs are all over the map and need a balance pass.”
Overall Balance
1. Traits
  1. “The trait (talent?) "Organized" lets your Sov's army travel the same speed as your Sov. That is amazingly good from the start, but it gets ridiculous towards the end. Give your Sov a mount and a few magic items and, boom!, the whole army gets 7 moves. Traverses a medium map in a few turns.”
2. Archers
  1. “bows need to be nerfed....[I play with] squads of bows, long or short, and a single hero. (Add an elemental or two if you need it.) Works a little bit too well.”
  2. “People who are saying Archers are too effective must have never seen catapults. THOSE are severely overpowered. Archers, however, seem to rarely kill anything.”
3. Combat Calculations (Glass Cannons)
  1. “On first glance it looks reasonable: attacker generates damage between 1 and their attack value, defender reduces that by 1 to their defense value, and the defender takes the difference (if any) as damage. The problem is it is not unusual to get units with attack and/or defense in the 100s *but* it is almost impossible to get units (especially heroes) with that many hit points. That means if your super duper level 20 fighter with 100 attack and 100 defense runs into something like a troll the troll can kill them with one blow OR do no damage whatsoever.”
4. Resource/GH Placement
  1. “....half the time your starting location does not have ready access to a gold mine. This is such a crippling strategic drawback that when it occurs you would be better off immediately starting over”
  2. “Resource distribution seems off. There's far more materials than one will ever need, since the game puts heavy leaning on the necessity of gold. There needs to be more of a favoring for other resources to make it worthwhile for you to plant a city next to that Old Grove and get those extra materials.” (https://forums.elementalgame.com/394334)
  3. “I see posts about maps being devoid of resources, and others about there being so many its too crowded (I have had both experiences in different patch versions).”
  4. “There's definitely some weirdness with a lot of the things that spawn on the map. I had one game where my early adventuring and picking up the junk on the map led to me finding 3 sand golem flutes or whatever they're called within the first 5 turns. I pretty much just killed every civilization I encountered without issue Most of my other games though, I never find even a single one.”
  5. “And yes I'm about to start a new game and construct my cities like bananas so I can actually have cities that produce resources. I bitch out of love.”
  6. “I've gotten around this by typically building my cities in a crescent shape. Or bananatowns if you prefer. The only time I've had to include a resource has been when one of the discovery techs plopped one too close to a city, or I've accidentally linked a resource through the camera bug.”
    1. Scott Says: I’ve heard of people making these ‘banana-cities’...what does this mean, how does it help with resource gathering?
5. Starting Placement
  1. “...perhaps it was an odd coincidence but in the 8-10 times I tested it I started every game in the dead center of the map surrounded by enemies (when I had four enemies). Never once was I on the side or a corner.”
Content
1. More Items
  1. “It is almost all for melee fighters with only 2 items for archers and *nothing* for spell casters.”
  2. “Yes, the higher end hammers completely demolish anything. I'm starting to feel that the unit design system is actually leading to somewhat stale gameplay because there are no real special abilities to speak of. Every new tier of gear you get is just flat out better than the previous tier. Once I unlock lord hammers and master plate, there's no longer any decision making.” (http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=73945&page=29)
Flesh out Advisor System (Janusk Improvements)
1. https://forums.elementalgame.com/394229
2. “...redefine the methods of Janusk-addition. Make the advisor a chargen choice (you could even associate a cost to it, so players could opt to not have an advisor if they so choose), and for those who opt to have one, increase his reputation considerably so that female sovereigns can't get married eons before male.”
Minor Factions / Neutral Cities
1. “On the note of Independent Factions, let's make them a little more useful, shall we? Right now they exist just to be conquered. They should have faction-specific items available....The imperative thing is that these are unique, including the faction-specific ones. Right now there's no unique flavor involved in these things, why buy from these entities when you can tech up the magic line and buy them from your own places? “ (https://forums.elementalgame.com/394334)
2. “Next to do for them, make it capable to recruit mercs from them.”
Random Loot
1. The Lorebook talks about items dropped by creatures...we need those in the game!!!!
  1. Wolf Pelt icon
  2. Skath Fin icon
  3. Drake Tooth icon
  4. Dragon Egg icon
2. TreasureDefs held and used by UnitTypes
3. Feedback
  1. “Getting gold from killing things is well and good, and the main way I fund my growing empire as well. However it would be nice if we got random drops now again.”
  2. “Something besides gold, Killed a creature that in its description that the scales from this creature were sought after to make armor... would be nice if they would drop some... even if it took 10 or so to have something made from... would be better.. .. ”
  3. “Make this true if I kill a sovereign who had hoarded night stones .. not my fault he came to raid stuff in my territory... ”
Item Forging
1. I would like to see the editor revamped as something that could work in-game for item creation, taking ingredients and making cool stuff (without having to be in the workshop).
2. Feedback
  1. “... adding a forging system would be a help, and I believe you are working on that for enchanting items and such?”
  2. “Item creation..... was looking forward to being able to enchant stuff... Sigh... ”
City Spam
1. At one time we had discussed a ‘Governing’ or ‘Administration’ ability that dictated the # of cities you could have, or total level of cities, or something...still a possibility?
2. Building Limits / Razing Options when Conquering
  1. “There must be also some kind of mechanism to prevent building so many cites. Even when you conquer new ones, you should be able to destroy city because it is too hard to maintain or something. Because maintaining 10+ cities is ugly.”
  2. “Oh, and you guys mentioned razing cities....how do I do that? I hate capturing all of these minor civ cities that can't grow past size 1.”
Summoning
1. Feedback
  1. “Summoning [should] be done in a city that have a Summoning Circle...Summoning Circle can be researched from the Magic Tech tree...Summoning Circle [should require] at least one Crystal to be 'linked' to a city (within the city area of influence)...Can only summon creatures related to a 'linked' Crystal”
Post-Victory
1. “Am I the only one who wishes you could keep playing after "winning?"”
2. “No hiscore-list or playback?!? I want to bask in my glory, dagnabbit!”
Notable Locations
1. “Elemental's system of having Notable Locations and NPC heroes materialize on the map when you research some completely abstract tech is just sort of weird and unthematic. Getting a new level in Notable Locations or Heroes is sort of like putting on the glasses from They Live. Suddenly, powerful heroes everywhere! Or, as in Tom's Figit post, skyscraper-sized haunted castles right next to your capital. And if you aren't on the leading edge of the research for these things, you end up exploring a map that is filled with cool things that you aren't allowed to interact with, which is just sort of frustrating.... If you want to walk in to an ancient ruin and take a stab at a Great Drake with a unit of spearmen, MoM is perfectly willing to let you try.”
2. “I agree with a lot of your points, but I have to disagree here. I really love the way Elemental handles the notable locations, I love that I reveal more as I delve deeper (Oooh, there's an unintentional pun) into the Adventure tree. It gives an advantage for pushing hard on that tree first at the expense of some of your others. Just a matter of preference, though, both systems certainly have their merits.”
3. More back and forth on the matter at...http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=60936&page=13

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Zaroter
Natathel
_PawelS_

That list looks like months of work.

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Magic resistance could be only produced by champions with magic capability. Then the army's resistance would be the amount of magic power that the champion has divided by the number of soldiers in the company. This would do several things. It would make champions more worthwhile. It would make Imbuing champions worthwhile. It would limit the size of armies so that they dont grow super large. It would also make magic as epic as it should be for this sort of game.

If regular armies have no magic, a magical soveriegn should be able to decimate them unless they are protected by another sovereign or champion. Regular armies versus regular armies or champions would use defense, but any magic versus non magic would be fairly one sided. Summoned creatures of course would have some magic resistance as would magical creatures like dragons.

Magic armors would of course protect against magics.

I think these ideas would greatly enhance the magic system and make it feel more epic and useful. I'd like to see spells that chain together as well. Certain spells that require a previous spell or two cast prior in order to cast. And other spells that can only be cast as a group with several Champions simultaneously.

Adding to my previous post, Imbuing magic should be element based. So you would have to imbue a champion several different times in order for them to have all of the spells available. Each time would increase their essense and decrease the sovs, but to sacrifice say 12-20 essense per unit would balance out the strength of magic.

These were posted in another thread. I'd like to see magic seem as epic as the title of the game suggests. Its good to have regular armies, but I'd like magic to be a large focus. Also, the magic system should be self correcting so that it is balanced. Anyway, thats my thought on improving the gameplay mechanics

Here is the link to the original post: http://forums.impulsedriven.com/393732

Adding to post: Caravans need some automation. They get destroyed and rebuilt so often, it would be nice if a single way point for a caravan and all of its successors would be established. Also, when a caravan is defeated, a message box came up that asked if you wanted to replace it yes/no. Then, once it's built, it automatically picks up where the last one ended off, going along the same way point path.

Even better would be caravan guards, so that a caravan wont necessarily be destroyed instantly.

More terraforming options. Things like plant/destroy forests, lower land into waterways, Summon full mountain ranges instead of one at a time (or a multiple turn spell cast that immobilizes the character performing the spell).

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RE: DEAD SOVEREIGN SUCCESSION

Have some kind of reversed Golden Age, the whole kingdom mourning for their lost (Beloved?) Soveriegn and some anarchy (No production, loss of buildings / troops) within the lands for a few turns.... And Definitely hand over the reigns to the next in line (Taking into account all diplomatic possibilities! Family feud & and a kingdom split in half? ! )

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Am I the only one who feels sad not seeing any significant Magic improvements listed?

Having minimal damage will make it a bit more useful, but thats not proper solution. As long as you keep doing rolls vs DEF, it will suck.

And no Global Enchantments or any Magic Diversity either.

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I would love to see the mortality of sovereigns, so that descendents could take over the throne (why else would we need to know who was 1st, 2nd or 3rd in line of succession?) - and for dynasties to continue spawning to the end of the game. One issue that currently exists is the reproduction of identical offspring, and other NPC's - I am married to Lady Sculla, and another identical Lady Sculla has spawned later in the game. And I have two grand-children, married to identical twins of the opposite genders. This just breaks your immersion in the game, and your own story.

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Yes, exactly! If you were able to choose who took the throne (and they were not first in line), the other siblings might well feel aggrieved, and plot or revolt against their faction - perhaps defecting to another faction, to do so from a distance.

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Quoting BlackRainZ,

reply 146

They already said they fixed this problem. It was mentioned in a different post where one of the SD Team found what was causing slow FPS over cities and got a noticeable 20-30fps increase or something.

That's good to know. But do we have to wait for a big patch with all these other additions/fixes, or will they give this a hotfix, like they did with the archer thing after 1.05? I honestly have no opinion of this game, because I can't play it beyond the point where there's more than one city on the screen. There's alot of us, and for us this issue is as bad as the issue some people had with the game crashing.

I've had the game since it came out early, and I haven't played it, not really. I check how it runs after each patch, but that's it.

Hotfix, please!

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the fact that death worship does nothing is listed. yet influential, civilized, great warriors, and brave all also do nothing. additionally civilized doesn't even mean anything as establishing cities doesn't even have a cost.

i hope all problems like this are lumped under "xml errors" ? because theres a bunch more too!

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Quoting ,

quoting post

- Ideas / Suggestions -

Battle Improvements
Damage Calculations
“A lot of games use 1DN rolls, they are quick, easy to implement, and WRONG.” (https://forums.elementalgame.com/392880)

Champions
Leveling
“I really liked how Heroes level up in games like AoW or King's Bounty. I like being able to choose new abilities to further customize them as they level up, not just adding a stat point here and there.”

Overall Feedback
“....Champions are really, basically totally uninteresting. It costs too much gold to kit them out so that they can actually battle against anything (and even then, they will still be in huge trouble against any sort of mid/late-game monster). No decisions in upgrading, except whether to make them mages or warrior. The only point in the game when they are really useful is in the start to explore. Meh.”
“This is one of the reasons why NPC warriors just aren't that useful. If you get a NPC adventurer up to level 7, no matter how well armed and armored he is, or where you've put his points on level up, he is just not going to compare well to some stack of 12 regular units with their stats all added together.” (discussing the strength of unit groups)
more

Strength of Grouping Types gets Out-Of-Control
“Squads get *very* powerful. I don't think a champion-centric strategy is viable after the first half of a game.”
“A company needs to be handled in combat calculations as 12 individuals where each individual gets some sort of bonus for being part of a larger team. Treating it as a single mega-unit is both counter-intuitive and has a nasty impact on the rest of the game.”
“Beyond re-designing the way mob bonuses work, combat desperately needs to separate the to-hit & to-damage mechanics. But if we're in the armchair designer corner, I have a couple of pages worth of things I'd like to see included, like rules for what units can actually target, how unit morale and army morale are handled, and many, many other things. Basically, I'd like some proper wargame mechanics instead of the "simpler & more broken than Disciples 3" mess we have now.”
Lots of Damage Calculation Feedback here...http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=60936&page=13

Combat Calculations (Glass Cannons)
“On first glance it looks reasonable: attacker generates damage between 1 and their attack value, defender reduces that by 1 to their defense value, and the defender takes the difference (if any) as damage. The problem is it is not unusual to get units with attack and/or defense in the 100s *but* it is almost impossible to get units (especially heroes) with that many hit points. That means if your super duper level 20 fighter with 100 attack and 100 defense runs into something like a troll the troll can kill them with one blow OR do no damage whatsoever.”

Especially these ... please no more Attack stacking + Defense stacking (treating companies as mega-units), as well as no more TOTALLY RANDOM DAMAGE and lack of HP scaling for Champions.

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Quoting Mortenart,

reply 157

RE: DEAD SOVEREIGN SUCCESSION

Have some kind of reversed Golden Age, the whole kingdom mourning for their lost (Beloved?) Soveriegn and some anarchy (No production, loss of buildings / troops) within the lands for a few turns.... And Definitely hand over the reigns to the next in line (Taking into account all diplomatic possibilities! Family feud & and a kingdom split in half? ! )
Yes, exactly! If you were able to choose who took the throne (and they were not first in line), the other siblings might well feel aggrieved, and plot or revolt against their faction - perhaps defecting to another faction, to do so from a distance.

I would make different methods of succession part of the civ tech tree. So if you unlock "succession", you could then alter the line to agnatic succession, partible inheritance, equal primogeniture, etc. Each would have a benefit and a detriment. And, of course, suddenly switching from one to the other could cause civic chaos and even civil war.

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Murteas

Join Date 08/2003

+44

One thing I didn't see mentioned that surprised me was Truly Random Maps.

Hopefully, we'll see some additional spells as well.

as well as additional creatures/monsters and

more diverse tech trees for each faction.

.xml file details (more mod examples)

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How about the option of having heroes join a squad to get them more survivability mid-late game just like you do in Dawn of War?

Squad gets bonuses from the leader, leader gets strength of the numbers thru his squad...

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Quoting cephyn,

reply 149

you guys are like animals about this and forget they already said they got something for this.

Yeah crazy us, wanting to be able to play a game we purchased. I saw a post where they said they managed to get an additional 10 - 20 fps. Hardly a victory when the map is F**KING STATIC. No need to do physics, AI, or anything else in real time - just the rendering of (simplistic but nice) graphics.

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Ideas and Suggestions:

If this hasn't been mentioned yet The monster resources (dragons, ogres, drath, etc...) you can get in the game should be upgradeable and/or the units should have the ability to level up. At the moment they are not worth the cost of training. Maybe click on the resource and pay X amount of gold and/or resources to upgrade. This would allow additional units from the resource with new abilities and/or new stats.

Hopefully I have just missed this somewhere in the game.

About grouped units, besides making them more balanced they should be able to readd units to the group after taking losses in battle.

Magic spells seem to get very very sparse at levels 8 and up. Need alot more spells and please give me an alternative to summon demon. Maybe summon angel?

One of the things I like is the unique buildings. Would be cool if you guys added more. Makes the cities more unique. My idea for a building would be a golem factory that you can get from the magic research tree. These guys could be built without losing people in the city and they would cost more materials and metal than gold. Maybe golem upgrades could be worked into the magic research tree and as rewards for quests.

With research I would like to see the tech trees deepened and widened.

Diplomacy would have more teeth if research gave additional diplomacy point income with most of the research. Also maybe put in an ability to hire monsters in the diplomacy tree along with the paridens allies and the other tech.

With the deepening and widening of the magic research tree I think the additional magic books combat, summoning, life etc should be split into different research items. Gaining one of these should give you a several unique magic spells at every new level.

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I don't get it. This list is huge. The "master list" is basically a brand new game.

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Quoting Krelk,

reply 73

Quoting trollkhan, reply 67yeah this game is not finished, why release ?????

i fell stupid to buy a game completely unready to be sell

Quoting Rune_74, reply 72A troll who actually puts troll in his name:)

Well he's got a point. The game really doesn't feel finished. I'm kind of suspecting it needed another 4 months of development to clear up the bugs and make the game mechanics make sense and cohesive.

Doesn't really help things, though, does it?

It's out. Saying it shouldn't be doesn't really do much.

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Quoting Dual_CoRed,

reply 166

I don't get it. This list is huge. The "master list" is basically a brand new game.

well, at this early stage Elemental is probably more platform than game.

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It still bothers me that "Wisdom" at character creation becomes "Essence" in game. Also... no undead? No models for undead, at the least? C'mon... throw us necromancers a bone, already .

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Quoting TheProgress,

reply 164

Quoting cephyn, reply 149
you guys are like animals about this and forget they already said they got something for this.
Yeah crazy us, wanting to be able to play a game we purchased. I saw a post where they said they managed to get an additional 10 - 20 fps. Hardly a victory when the map is F**KING STATIC. No need to do physics, AI, or anything else in real time - just the rendering of (simplistic but nice) graphics.

And its probably less then 3% of the players having the problem. No way to know for sure of course. But LOTS of us are able to play our game just fine.

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Mana Regen:

I like the fact that you have limited amount of mana in the first half of the game. There could be a level, tech bonuses to sovereign mana regen. Attributes that you could choose for your sov/children/champions.

Attributes:

Have different kind of to choose from when you reach certain levels. Stuff like magic resistance, +10% against ogres/dragons/.... Some of these could have a radius for your other troops so your champions would have a purpose in late game too. Maybe you could have a tech that allows you to assign your champions to a party, so he would grant his bonuses to that unit.

Starting locations :"Never once was I on the side or a corner.”

In my current game I started in a corner, having mountains and sea blocking my advance, could only go east thru a mountain pass. Nice map.

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Reading through all this prompted me to add an ohbytheway.

People posting complaints here seem to fall into three categories:

1. People who cannot play the game due to stability/compatibility/hardware issues which may indicate that the game was not yet optimized for their particular platform combination.

2. People who can for the most part play the game and have gripes about gameplay issues, AI, UI, balance, programming glitches, unimplemented features, etc.

3. People who have suggestions on how to improve the game with additions/changes/mods.

Some of course are a combination of these. In my earlier post I was more or less in groups 2 & 3.

Here's my suggestion: Tackle the game's problems in the same order: 1, 2, 3. First get everybody able to launch and play the game consistently, no matter what their platform and hardware. Second, deal with the game's bugs and glitches, including AI and similar issues and non-working features. Finally, work on adding the neat stuff and making changes that people want just to make the game cooler.

If you spread your programming resources out too much trying to tackle all three issues simultaneously, I fear that too many people in category 1 will suffer at the expense of those in 2 & 3. Group 1 paid for a working game and deserve it.

If you have the means to split programming resources, I'd suggest something like an 80%/15%/5% spread of them over these three categories, at least until the majority of #1's issues have been mostly dealt with. I'd think that the goal is that 95-98% of all game purchasers should be able to play the game if their rigs are reasonably mainstream. The 2% to 5% that can't play a stable game after all you do, may have their own rig issues including OS, BIOS, drivers, etc which they have a role in fixing too. Give them some good leads based upon analysis of their failure logs.

I really want the game to succeed and want all my fixes & changes addressed some day, but to be fair, since my game basically works now, I do not want to get my less urgent needs met at the expense of those purchasers who can't presently play what they paid for. I can be patient but they may not be able to be much longer.

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For me at this stage performance is stopping from enjoying the game at all. and honestly. I really hope this is going to be hot-fixed and ASAP. I havent really been able to play at all to find the other bugs, and no thanks Id prefer not to be relagated to cloth map

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Quoting BoogieBac,

reply 5

ObjC: Are you playing in windowed mode, but at your desktop's resolution?

A big one to add that I didn't see: (1.06) After saving and re-loading a game where any of your squads have lost members, those lost members are never replaced, i.e. the maximum hitponts of that unit is permanently reduced.
Already fixed Will be in the next update.

ZOMG give this to me now! This is the single biggest issue I have with the game right now (aside from, y'know, not actually being able to finish a game). Give me this and I'll at least be able to enjoy running around with a big army treading on people's toes instead of dreading a random crash that will reduce my slightly bandaged uber-army to a rabble of useless solo troops.

Also: Give us the current XML files! The ones that are actually in data.zip (also, don't use common application extensions if you're not actually using that data format, that's just sloppy) so that we the people can go through and fix all the typos and mismatched InternalNames ourselves without having to wait for the next patch.

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Hi guys, been really busy so didnt get to add to this list but i didnt see:

1. Allience does not work, i.e if war is declared on me my allies don't declare war on aggresor. Also A.i have never allied with other A.I, maybe because they know it doesnt work lol.

2. The randomiser does not work properley, i have checked the core files and their are a load of NPCs, quests and goodie huts that are never spawning in my games. Not sure if these are campaign only as i havn't started it yet.

Great work so far guys keep it up.

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A comment on the item stacking:

I suggest 10 rings (10 fingers!)

2 bracelets

1 pack (2 with mount?)

3 amulets.

Or better yet, make the limits moddable

Sounds about right. The 2-ring 1-amulet suggestions I've seen seem a bit too much. One pack seems fine because "pack" sounds big & heavy, but anywhere from 5 to 10 rings and from 3 to 10 amulets.

OR..... permit just ONE of each TYPE of ring & amulet, and have lots of different types, including some rare and hard-to-find, and some very expensive. So, after you get a ring that increases movement by 1 for 200g, there is another one you can buy if you are desperate that also increases movement by 1 but costs maybe 2000g.

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