After buying the game on day 1 I have finally finished my first game of Elemental. I have been having a good time with the game since ver 1.07 was released and had a full day to really play today.
First the things I really enjoyed.
-Despite what some on these forums have been saying, I fought out every tactical battle where I did not massively outnumber the opponent in every stat. The tactical battles have a good premise but I feel that some sort of initiative system is going to be needed.
-I found magic to be very useful, but more vareity between the elements would be nice. Attack spells seemed to consist of an AoE attack and a direct damage nuke for each school. Only the Air and Restoration trees seemed to stand out. Summon spells were awesome, perhaps too awesome. Some of the giants are nearly unstoppable if you summon them with multiple champions. I think a limit of 1 summon of each type per faction would help balance this out.
-I found food to be a major problem around mid-game. However, once I started razing conquered cities which took up alot of food and provided little other resouces, I found I did better. I honestly felt the "war-torn" nature of the land by having to prioritize which city improvements I could build due to food shortages. However, as a kingdom race (Tarth), I felt the Adventure techs were 100% nessasary to have any kind of population growth. By end-game most of my cities (~12 at endgame) were level 3 with my capital ~4.5 and very little food (~2-6) left over. I liked having to make the tough decision to raze a city for the overall good of the empire.
-Loved the dynasty system. My sovergien's children caused pure havok late game. I felt that they were actually worth the investment of time and money to develop them.
Now to the bad.
-About half way through the game, I created a party of longbowmen. From that point, I was able to pretty much decimate any opponent without having anyone in my army being touched. I have read people saying that the archer classes are overpowered but I believe it has more to do with the "attackers go, then defenders" system. I knew that I would likely be able to unload on any enemy before they had a chance to attack my archers so I created a class with every +attack/-defense type of jewlery I could. My archers had -14 defense but were not hit once in over ~150 turns. Some sort of speed atribute (perhaps combat speed could be used?) to determine the order of battle would take archers down a peg, but they may need additional changes as well. Perhaps using archery as an attack type that could be mitigated by shields? Although it was fun at first, there is really no counter to any group of archers above party size at this point.
-Attack animations are much too slow. This is a problem in both tactical and map screen battles.
-Resource placement is a little too imbalanced. I defeated 4 factions on a medium sized map and never saw a single resouce for arcane (w/ever the magic resourse is called).
-The AI makes some questionable decisions. After taking two cities from Relias, he stormed into my teritory with a very small army. His faction was much larger than mine at the time, but because he was killed in my teritory I defeated his entire faction without ever having to move to the southern half of the map (which Relias controlled).
-Quests seemed to dry up much to quickly. I did every quest that I could get my hands on in the early/mid game, however, I did not do a single quest of any kind mid/late game. I was researching adventure techs quite often in the early game. Once I cleaned out the "strange huts" there seemed to be little in the way of questing. It would be cool to have some more epic style quests that add some sort of armor, weapon, or ring drops that really make your soverign powerful.
Overall, I really enjoy the game as a whole. There is a ton of potential because this game already has that "one more turn" feeling. Just hoping that my feedback can add to the conversation as a whole. As a few others on these forums have stated, Elemental is already a really good game in my eyes. However, with a little bit of love this game could become a classic.
on the subject of longbowmen, I think the problem is there are no 'weak' ranged units. The moment you get archery, you take such a massive power jump there is little point to build anything else.
Archery should start with like, slingers or something to that level. Something that is only really good when in mass, of if there is a wall of units in front of it. (Slingers in MoM pretty much died in one hit, and did peasily damage unless you had like a full army of 9 of them)
It should take a significant amount of research to reach where they are currently.
I agree with the spells. There really is little in the way of diversity, and there is no bonus to specializing. Right now you should get all the spellbooks (or most of them) then skip half the spells because they are elemental alternatives to others. Even a minor alternate effect would be enough to make them at least 'feel' different. Adding a 'slow' effect of some sort to water attacks. maybe a stun to a wind or earth spell... that sort of thing. maybe the fireball/flame dart, rather than just completely ruining 'flame dart' from ever being used again once you get fireball (I find myself rushing fireball since its only like level 3...), very their cost a little but give one of them a damage over time 'burning' effect. (I would raise fireball's mana cost and give it the damage over time, but I could see it being the other way around)
Forgot to add my issue with channelers/champions. I believe that champions/channelers should have some sort of innate magical resistance. It is much too easy to nuke an enemy channeler to death with magic before they even get a chance to react. Sovereigns as a whole seem to be a little too light on hitpoints making it really easy to bring them down with ranged attacks. Perhaps -50% magic damage should be an innate trait for all sovereigns and something like -25% for children and champions would help out here. Hit points do not seem to scale well in the mid to late game where party and squad size units can have around 60-100 hitpoints fairly easily. Perhaps the offensive capabilities of channelers could be lowered while raising their defense and survivability.
I'm a little confused how you could find archers so worthwhile. The best bow cost 40 gildar, 2 materials, and adds 6 turns to the base training cost for an attack of 6. A War Hammer (which is at the same tech depth for kingdom), on the other hand, costs 24 gildar, 1 materials and 2 metal for 24 attack. The speed penalty is offset by the bow costing 2 AP to fire while the hammer only costs 1 to swing. If you run across a lightly armored opponent with 4 armor, the bows expected damage output per shot is 1. The War Hammer's is 10. There's really no comparison, in my experience. Things that die before they get to your archers collapse as soon as the come within melee range of the war hammer wielders. Slap a breatplate of some sort on the war hammers, and they're also practically impervious to enemy ranged attacks.
I liked archers as well in my first game. Then I started using melee and discovered just how imbalanced they were by comparison, especially against anything wearing any sort of armor.
The issue is when you lump a bunch of them together. The attack/defend seems to be
The 8 archers with 6 attack and the defender has say 20 defense
So when I attack, it isn't 6 attack vs 20 defense 8 times, it is 48 attack vs 20. So essentially I can kill almost anything before it gets near me if I can build an army of channelers and longbowmen parties.
If I use war hammers or something like that, then it becomes 192 vs 20! In this scenario, all I have to do it sit and wait for the ai. The ai will run forward, stop at it's maximum movement right in front of me, then I get first attack and slaughter it. If not on the first swing, the the second and will have suffered at worst 1 attack vs. 2 I inflicted.
It would also help if there was a we-go system when each side attacks at the same time. Otherwise whoever goes first can wipe out a major portion of the other force before they can lift a finger.
Counter-attacks should be limited to the # of combat moves you have, just like the number of attacks are limited.
As a whole, I too, love the game. Hate the performance drops after turn 150 or so, though.
To add something to this conversation:
- In tactical combat, attack/counterattack should happen simultaneously. An example would be melee fight in MoM, or any tactical fight in, say, Heroes 4, where archer unit responds to archer unit if they fight each other.
- Stacking archer units, and melee for that matter, as unit of consisting more than one being should be handled as MoM did. Hitpoints got added together, and when the unit was hit, figures perished and when the unit was healed, they came back. Damage should be handled something like, if the unit 4 figures each with attack power 6, it would shoot 4 arrows each with 6 attack power and "rolled" separately against defending armor. If a figure had died, then it would only attack with three arrows and so on.
- Dynasty, and offspring, is what I look forward in every match I play. Still I think the maturing takes too long, as I feel I have to hold back and wait to see my sov's kids in battle.
- Ever tried equipping your sovereign with Cedar Longbow, then assigning level up points in strength only and reading books of +attack strength and equipping the appropriate items? I easily managed to increase the sovereigns attack strength to ~110 and to shoot 3 times per turn. Needless to say, the wandering level 9 drake I encountered dropped in one hit.
- Why does strength increase ranged attack power? I think that forcing some weapons to take advantage of dexterity instead of strength would add one tough decision when developing your sov. Ranged weapons and "small" melee weapons come to mind... Of course, almost every rpg works that way already so it's nothing new. At the same time, heavier armor should result in penalty to dexterity.
- I want more unique items and I really want to create items! As all my champions already equip a Cedar Longbow, I'd really like some different looking bow with different stats on my sov... Badass looking, and I'm ready to take on a lengthy quest for it if it's really unique, as 1 per game or even less!
AeroWreck
The attack/counterattack - In principle, I agree with you. There are a couple of issues though.
Stacking units attack - That is what I was eluding to, but should have spelled it out. I agree with you.
Offspring - Perhaps you can look at their base traits when they are 8-10 and then assign training paths or points to round them out as more of a warrior, channeler, etc?
As to stacking equipment and such, I believe they have nerfed that. If they haven't capped reading the same book over and over to get +1, they should.
I can see a strength for longbow as they have a huge draw. Actually, I would like to see strength as a factor of equipping units (which has been posted, I am sure) and dexterity for your combat speed.
BoG,
I agree, number of attacks per round should be capped at their movement or whatever is cooked up in the future. In Heroes 4, being as simple as it is, there were ranged units that had 2 attacks per turn. No matter how many ranged/melee attacks any unit had on their own turn, each unit only counter-attacked once on other player's turn. That might be a bit extreme though; maybe make 'em attacks depend on dexterity or other stat as suggested before?
Ranged attacks first; That I can support.
About resurrecting the dead, I agree, MoM style was maybe too streamlined. But replacing the experienced dead with novice new figures should at least be possible. Also, mixing units to a group should be considered. I haven't played GalCiv2 that much, but didn't the fleets work this way?
Vague decisions about offspring specialization sounds like a great idea, and still does leave room for randomization. A choice-decision here and there when the infant is growing up, slight possibility of dying succumbing to disease... Maybe able to steal a sovereign's child for ransom or to be raised as a rival kingdom's heir... Would make for some interesting relationships.
I didn't stack equipment on my sov, only had one of each available. Read some books of course, there are some that give + 1 attack and then there are the better ones that give + 8. You don't need much of those though, because if you got strength at 30, you'll already get your base attack bonus multiplied by three. so bow + amulet of assault + ring of might + ring of berserking already gets you to Ap 12 times 3, read a couple of +8 books and a few +1's and you're at 100 Ap in no time. And even without the books, 30-40ish is quite formidable ranged power too.
Also, why bother imbuing champions from your sov's essence? Just cycle the Ring of Essence through them and move it to another one after level up.
Strength bonus for a bow isnt that bad. You can draw a bow further with high strength.
Whether it should count as much as a melee weapon is arguable. Perhaps to make advantage of very high strength you need more costly bows?
Or maybe a minimum STR required to wield a specific bow? Then, use DEX to determine AP multiplier? This isn't anything new either.
Trust me, as the game is, you wouldn't enjoy it. At all. Your precious level 10 hero with 20-odd hitpoints against the ogre warchief with 187 attack, with simultaneous turns... Yeah, there's only one way that's ending. As is, you've got a chance since the attacking unit goes first, especially if you attrite the sucker with archery beforehand, but else you're going pure ranged, or spending mana continually for the 'Deflect' spell, or you're using high hit-point squads to absorb the damage, but then either having to wait really really long for them to heal, or having to spend mana to heal them up.
It'll only become practical with a complete combat redesign.
Yes, I agree. So here I would welcome the rest of "old" abilities like first strike, armor penetration, life drain and such.
Overall, the whole combat system needs to be reworked.
HOMM made it so that arrows just weren't effective against some types of unit in a common sense sort of way.
Arrows vs units with shield=little to no damage.
Arrows lost 1/2 of their strength if shot very far or over tall units/walls. Or doubled in strength as they got closer (is your glass half empty or half full).
Arrows vs certain units = little damage. Treants, Hydras, etc
Calvary could get to archers in 1 or 2 moves.
Initiative meant that it was not just one side, then other side but that certain units would just move fast no matter their side.
I don't need a HOMM clone, thats what HOMM 6 is for, I just was tossing suggestions.
Oh and pls fix the archery animation and pause before attacking again. Its like 10 second pause between attacks.
While I don't think copy/pasting another game's combat system is the real solution here, I think a good way to go about things would perhaps be to instigate two changes that interact with eachother for tactical combat.
I: Unit Action Point Differentiation
Units with progressively heavier armor need to have penalties to their action points. This simulates them being slower on their feet and slower to attack. An unmounted, lightly armored (or unarmored) skirmisher might be able to move three, or even four spaces on his turn. A heavily armored knight in full plate? Maybe one. With a single swing from a powerful weapon. If that. Weapons too, need to affect this, to get away from the peasants-with-warhammers thing.
This does two things: 1: It encourages things like cavalry. The bonuses a horse provide to a heavily armored soldier should more than negate the movement penalty, turning them into a mobile, mounted terror that isn't clumsy and exhausted by the time he actually reaches his foes.
2: It spreads out combat speeds nicely, for my second point. At the moment, humanoid units are too same-y for my idea to work.II: Unit Attack Order is by Total Amount of Action Points.
Basically, instead of it being "my units have turns, then your units do," all units are placed into a pool and each get an individual turn based on their amount of action points. Units with a higher amount of points get put on the move "queue" quicker, so not only are they more mobile, they can use their abilities more often.
In practical terms, that means that a lightly armored foe would be able to outmaneuver and even outflank a heavily armored opponent to get to the meaty bits, and it also means that combat doesn't devolve, like it does now, into figuring out the most effecient way to eliminate your entire opponent's army in a single turn, while minimizing their chances of retaliation. However, the lightly armored/armed unit would still have to face the counterattack of the heavily armed, armored knight, so it doesn't have a free pass.
Here is an example to how this whole thing would play out. Your opponent has a line of longbowmen (Bows would need some rebalancing, perhaps taking twice the amount of AP currently to fire). These longbowmen, still terribly powerful as they, due to their light armor, get to take their turns very quickly compared to your heavily armored, slower footman, will eventually tear your main force to pieces before you even can get them close enough to do damage.However, you were smart enough to include a few parties of very lightly armored, mounted skirmishers in your army!
The skirmishers, armed with damaging close-range weapons, are even more mobile, with more action points, than the longbowmen, and are able to close in and wreak havoc on the line of archers before they are cut down themselves!
This is just an example, but it's just scraping the surface of the kinds of situations you'd have to account for. Trained horse archers would be absolute terrors of course, but perhaps a training multiplier could exist that makes them extremely expensive for their relative attack power, kind of financially offsetting their abilities.
These changes not only open up a lot of tactical possibilities in combat, it makes the whole process more fair and, as a whole, engaging.
The way I imagine archery could be improved is by making:
Damage and to hit chance depend on distance, unit experience (like in AoW, the markmanship trait), weapon used (i.e. crossbows have no distance penalty, etc), terrain (the higher you are, the more likely and harder you hit), defender stats and equipment (shields, high def, etc.)
Range attack have a range limit, so that you can´t attack from half world away.
My CtD issues were cleared up with the 1.07 patch, and I was also able to play a full (albeit short) game over Labor Day. I had a good time with it over all, and I'm looking forward to playing again. That said, here's what I noticed:
* missing info cards in the tech tables (building and unit info) * some pointer fussiness when selecting tiles for viewing or movement * character pop-up info didn't consistently update when mousing over different portraits
Some UI observations:
* placing the mouse on a unit counter in the main map causes a popup info card to show on the right side of the screen. If the unit is underneath the portrait, you can no longer access it. This is annoying. Suggestion: flip the info card to the left side of the main screen if your pointer is on the right side of the map.* there doesn't seem to be a way to select a tile when a unit icon is on that tile. Suggestion: if this is to keep us from changing the tile properties (building on it, etc), grey out the build options. I'd still like to be able to see the tile info if I forget how much food an apiary produces, even if I've got a soldier sitting on top of it. * having the rotation direction flip depending on whether the mouse is on the top or bottom half of the main screen really throws me off. If it's just me, no biggie, I'll get used to it. It's logical to have it that way if I think about it, but it's not intuitive for me. No points off for this one**, but having an option to make the rotation direction uniform would be nice.* having a tech tree a la GalCiv2 would do wonders for my ability to visualize what I should be doing to get where I want. Pretty please? I'll give you bonus points***.
Combat observations:
* I have yet to find a horse/warg tile, so I'm not sure what effect cavalry has on the flow of combat, but between archers and infantry, infantry is generally toast before they can reach the archers. This may be intentional, as archers do provide a huge advantage over infantry in reality; but if it's intentional, the AI shouldn't be so eager to send out their unsupported infantry to become pin-cushions. * Units generally seem pretty fragile, sovereign and hero units especially. If high fantasy is the feel you're going for (which is my understanding), sovereigns/heroes should probably be a bit sturdier. Caveat: My game was ended by a decapitation strike on the enemy sovereign, and I hadn't yet researched the recruitment techs. The heroes might get stronger, but that still leaves the sovereign as a unit I would much rather keep off the battlefield once archers are regularly employed by the AI. How about an Air spell to foil arrows? Assuming one isn't already available, that is.* Per others, how about the ability to replace dead soldiers from a party/squad/company once a unit is in a town owned by their sovereign? Taking a hit to overall experience of the unit wouldn't be out of line, if that were an option.
That's what I was thinking during play. It may all be moot with the planned changes to the UI, etc. already in the works, but take it for what it's worth.
** Like celebrity weddings, the point's don't matter.
*** The bonus points don't matter either. Like a politician's promise.
I agree completly.
Start using Caravans. Send them to your cities that are producing food. The farther away they come from, the higher the bonus.
Dragoaskini... that was rude of you...why don't you quit being rude and educate us with your superior game mechanics knowledge? (rhetorical)
It's already being handled that way. Having the sum of ATK and DEF shown on the units is just very misleading. That sum, the 1dN system and a couple of bugs where units reduced in size do more damage than they should is just causing a lot of confusion. Check this request thread for more info.
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