Hey guys and gals, sorry its taken me so long to introduce myself here, been busy working on 1.1 content for you all. I am the 'less-exciting-than-Derek-Paxton' new Associate Producer on Elemental, Toby Sarnelle.
For a little quick background on me: I have been at Stardock for a year now, however, I was just recently moved over to the games team. Those of you who have been around here for the last year may have seen my posts in the Elemental Army forum, I was the primary developer for that and worked a lot on rest of the Elemental website (among other things). I'm a huge fan of all types of games from all genres and have been playing for over twenty years now. As a sample of stuff I enjoy, some of my favorite games of all time include Final Fantasy 6, Mass Effect, Dragonforce (for Saturn), Starcraft (and 2), Diablo 2, Sins of a Solar Empire and Civ4. Oh and I'm an enormous Penny Arcade fan.
Anyways, enough about me, I'm here to tell you guys about some of the cool new stuff I've been adding for version 1.1. The primary additions for 1.1 are that we are shifting to a global mana pool for all spell casting and we are integrating your population into your production further as had been talked about long ago.
With the global mana changes will come a re-organization of all the spells in the game (along with the creation of a bunch of new ones). Elemental spell books will again be picked up through research, we didn't like the idea of having them as initial Sovereign editor choices as they are so tied to whatever shards you happen to find in the world. Its never fun trying to guess what you will run into when making your character so now your starting spell book selection will be non-shard restricted utility spells and you can research the Elemental magic you need based on your surroundings.
The way global mana will actually work is similar to any other resource; you will be able to build magical shrines in your cities that provide a steady stream of mana that will accumulate over turns until you cast spells. Also in an attempt to simplify some of the confusion over spell damage and how it is affected by your INT we are going towards more flat damage numbers for spells which your intelligence will not be increasing. This should make it easier to balance damage numbers across spells and the rest of combat (another thing I will be getting to for the patch). Obviously this combined with the mana changes basically eliminates the old purpose of the intelligence and wisdom/essence stats. Going forward they will now be used instead as requirements for a unit to cast a particular spell.
Population as a resource. We have always tried to stress that Elemental is a game of individual citizens, unlike most other 4X's. This was initially accomplished by causing you to use a population of a city when producing a unit; the population of your faction is literally drafted into military (or other) service. With 1.1 we will be embracing that idea and applying to the rest of your city production with our new Specialist system.
Highlights of the Specialist system:
As a final note, in another attempt to reinforce the importance of your population, we are changing the way gildar is produced (and consumed) in cities across the board. In 1.1 your primary income is paid through taxes on your populace. For every citizen in your Kingdom you will generate a small amount of gildar, however, to help keep your income in check as you get larger and larger most of your improvements now cost a small amount of gildar per turn to maintain. Don't worry about paying twice, however, as buildings that require maintenance no longer have an up front gildar cost.
These are just a sampling of the changes coming up in the new patch, although they are our (well my) biggest focus at the moment. I'm also planning on going through and trying to balance armor and weapon values among other things.
Anyways, back to work!
-Toby
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honestly I would like to re-evaluate how a lot of stats work. The idea behind the static spell damage is both simplification for users along with scaling issues. The problem being that as you get more and more powerful spells the modifiers would get out of control. Either that or there wouldn't be a feeling of sufficiently improved spells from one rank to the next. The problem you are talking about could be fixed if STR scaled your damage in a different manner (think a + bonus instead of a % modifier). Also ideally you want your magic to not just be a parallel swap for using a weapon of different type, the mitigation of it can be applied differently plus you have range and AoE goodies that come with spells. If we balance the numbers correctly it will be fun and balanced (not just with other spells but also with weapons and armor and creature stats and the like).
Satrhan: The big limitation on new cities is the city level. The required level for structures to be built is being tweaked all over the improvements so your bigger cities will still feel important.
Changes to the faction creator are not planned for this patch but I will try to see what it will take to get it some love in the future.
It will cause you to lose the population of that city from your global total, you will still be able to use the buildings you have already made, but will not be able to construct anything further (even combat units) until you get more free specialists (similar to Starcraft). This brings up another point: if you end up spamming cities just to get a ton of citizens and don't spend building things to protect them (keep in mind its always harder to defend 3 cities than 1) enemies will be able to snipe out your supply lines and halt your production in times of war.
Also keep in mind we are trying to make sure the numbers are balanced for various styles of play. I am making sure there are tangible rewards for people who get high level cities while at the same time giving people who do like having a larger number of cities some reasons to do so. Someone gave the example of two magic based factions always having the one with more cities come out on top specifically; that shouldn't be an issue as a higher level city will be able to make buildings that can push out potentially 3-4 times the mana as a smaller city would.
I'm a little skeptical on the static spell damage myself.
I'd like to see an caster's INT/ target's WIS relationship affect spell saves for more or less damage.
Also, I'm a little worried people will shun the low lvl spells due to irrelvancy in the later part of the game, or in MP everyone rushing will mean only low lvl spells matter.
Firstly, it's so great of you to actually take the time to answer all these questions being thrown at you, and I think that is very highly appreciated by everyone here, (even by those who might be considered to be in the troll party).
Having said that, I'm not too excited about having my champions lifting mana from my sovereigns' magic bag. Brad had mentioned that the sovereign will have some type of omniscience, and will be able to cast spells from anywhere, and even in tactical battles that the sovereign is not physically involved in. It makes me wonder what the advantage of imbueing champions will be if they will be using up the sovereigns' mana to cast their spells anyway. My guess is that their only benefit will be to provide additional opportunities to cast spells in battle (if you haven't run out of mana yet, as they don't bring their own).
I would have preferred to wait longer for an improved game engine, but I guess that just means waiting for an expansion, so no biggie.
First off, glad to be able to help I think the idea now is that when you are imbuing a champion you aren't actually so much giving him spells to cast as you are making him/her a conduit for your Sovereign to cast magic through. Thus, they aren't taking your mana when they cast a spell as they aren't actually casting the spell, their int or wis is simply telling you how powerful of magic they are able to channel from your Sovereign. I will admit to not being the person who most knows about the reasoning/lore of the situation, at least not yet, but this is how I gathered the thought process was through our meetings.
Yah thanks alot for taking the time and coming to have a chat with the few of us who are meandering around the forums. You guys have a great game here, very excited to see where it goes. I think i'll enjoy the new magic system, it's nice to have modifiers effected by stats but it's hard to balance that way, if you have it so spells are unlocked at x intelligence it's much easier. And yay population is important!Good work Toby and keep it up! Take care.
Hey Toby
The changes sound great.. but what abotu the technical fixes for 1.1? Will we finally have that out of memory error fixed? Will the random self renaming of cities to enemy faction city names also be fixed finally? and finally will the END TURN not functioning after a few hundred turns also be resolved?
As right now these CONTINUE to be the issues that prevent me getting any enjoyment out of what would be game I wand to adore.
regards
Of course, our programmers are always working on ironing out whatever bugs are found or reported. As I'm working on the new features being implemented right now that's all I've been focusing on here (plus while I can help find bugs I usually cant help fix them as much). I have been told that some of the memory issues we have been having as a result of tactical battles have been fixed along with a handful of other bugs.
Also as a note, if you run into stuck turn bugs often you can save your game and reload and it may fix your issue. Obviously this is not a real/final solution but it can sometimes get you through for the time being. Plus the save games are useful for our devs to try and find out what's causing them to happen.
Thanks Toby for explaining the thoughts and rationales for 1.1.
Before this thread I was awaiting 1.1 with a mixture of trepidation and cynicism. We hadn't really been given much concrete information. Now I am really looking forward to it being released.
I especially like your objective approach to big-picture concepts within the game. It shows us that instead of patching the 'urgent' you are focussing on the 'important'.
I'm also really heartened that you are not promising the patch on a specific day and are stepping back from the 'end of month' commitment. Take your time and get the bugger right - please. Many are seeing 1.1 as an acid test and it needs to be right - even if it takes a longer time to release.
You titled yourself in the opening post 'The less-exciting'. Mate, you are the best thing to come along here in a long time. Kael's appointment also bodes well for the game. But I think that with Brad. the three of you together will achieve great things and steer Elemental away from the rocks.
I'm excited again.
There is no reason why you couldn't have both.
Level 1 Flame Dart damage: INT * 0.2 + 10
Level 4 Flame Bolt damage: INT * 0.4 + 15
Int is a bonus for either, which is kinda cool because your specialised casters (who have access to the better spells to begin with) are always better at magic without requiring any tacked-on bonus / trait system.Damage-wise, the flame bolt will probably be superior even if used by a "lesser" caster but your arch wizard might get away with using the cheaper / faster Flame Dart which could have tactical advantages, like completing the cast before the slower and more powerful Flame Bolt. Due to the wizard's high INT, even the far less "scaling" lvl 1 spell might get the required job done just fine.
I wouldn't just drop INT scaling off the table entirely but adjust it to the spell level so low tier spells cannot simply be scaled up to compete with the big guns - except in "expert hands" or when using them for their tactical advantage of being faster / cheaper.
Everquest uses such a system where (most) spells scale with level but higher level ones are always better because they scale on an entirely different base and magnitude. It also introduces hard caps, which means translated to INT, Flame Dart would only consider a maximum of 15 INT while Flame Bolt could benefit from INT values up to 22.You might tie that to the "required INT to cast the spell" so a 15 INT required spell could benfit from INT scaling up to [required INT * 1.333]. Some firm rules would make the system more transparent.Effectively that allows scaling, which differences the spell casters from the dabblers, but the hard caps keep the scaling in check so a spell doesn't fly off the handle, doing way too much damage for too little mana.
The spell damage "calculate" formula would require a MIN( a ; b ) function to limit the "benefitial" INT (and maybe shards as well). Not really taxing for your coders, I'd imagine. And seriously - it's a lot easier to balance spell damage if you know beforehand what range of values you're working with.
People who take themselves too seriously always rub me the wrong way.OMG I'm so important that any joke about myself could only mean a mortal insult to my divinity! Right. Get a room with yourself. And stay there.
Stop having good ideas Gazz_, because as of 1.1, INT is a global resource, and you're hogging it all up!
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. - Albert Einstein
If the scaling of a^b^c created the problems, it might just have been done the wrong way. Taking an axe to hack it off might be overreacting.That INT plays a role in spellcasting is pretty stylish and I think it should stay in - just not in the limitless way it uses now.There should be a point in the life of a low level spell where it just cannot get better any more. When you reach the limit of what a 9x19mm round can do, it's time to develop the 7.62x51.(okay, so I'm playing Jagged Alliance again = )
Improving your sovereign's INT could be used fo fill the gaps between "damage spell levels", smoothing out the progression between them although ultimately it should be your goal to research bigger calibers to do wholly different magnitudes of damage.(Note to self: Sovereign "Concentrated" trait to increase the "max INT that can affect a spell" by x % - a really simple twist to the spell formula...)
With INT being a requirement for a spell, you have the perfect tool to assign a damage or usefulness range to a spell, already knowing at which level it will be surpassed by the next tier.You see, "grinding INT" just for the next tier of spells but seeing no increase whatsoever until you hit the magic number is just meh. No reward, not fun. But it should be!
Just add a stat that allows units to take avoid taking damage from spells, and have INT make the spell caster better able to overcome this resistance.
Would a higher spell damage (through INT) not automatically achieve that result without introducing an entirely new system?
In AoW, the damage does not scale and is fine. The problem comes when a unit has its resistance bumped up to where it is virtually cannot be hit with magic. And why have resistance? Because it is easier to balance magic against weapons when there is a resistance stat. It can be done without resistance, but I find that in most games without a RES score magic is either way overpowered or nerfed to where it is not terribly useful.
This brings up an interesting point about city spam. Say I am on a penisula which is large enough to house 10 cities packed to the brim and has a bottleneck mouth. Then I need only build improvements in such a way as to make the 1 city at the mouth block for the defense of all the other cities. I think my ultimate point is that strategically, 3 cities are not necessarily harder to defend than 1. In this model, city spam is not curbed but forces a player to merely continue towards simple optimization of land and resources instead of moving towards strategic choice.
This brings up the interesting point that enemies can go through your cities without fighting the garrison, at least they could in 1.07, I have not heard anything about this having changed.
I don't see how specialist will work with current combat system. If losing units (happens even when you win) will result in population loss, and population isn't over-abundant resource then combat will be 100% done with summons. Various summoned elementals are already strong, now there will be more reason to use them.
Summoned units have a mana maint.
I don't think it is necessary to have a system where int scales dmg for spells Gazz, I think you are over complicating something which is rather simple. I am not saying that the system you are proposing is bad, but I don't think the way they are proposing it is bad either. If you think about it, INT is scaling spell dmg because it is giving you access to more powerful spells which translates to more dmg. I think it may be even better to balance it this way in all honesty. There really is no need to make something more complex when your getting basically the same result but in a different way.
Ok, how about this as an idea.
Spell damage would be flat dice roll damage, but opponents can save vs spell to change effect high caster int makes the save harder, high target wis makes save easier
Flame dart: does 2d4 damage. If saved 1d4 damage
save is INTd2 versus target WISd2
Personally I think that is a good step towards a more MoMish system. But I'm gonna keep bugging you about the mana sharing Brad.
If it's as Mr. Sarnelle has kindly informed us, that imbued champions and offspring will be acting as conduits, does that mean the only magical benefit of focusing your offspring on magic and paying mana maintenance on your champions, is to have more opportunities to cast your own spells in combat?
If so, it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it could be quite easily a heck of a lot better, as you have already engineered the game mechanic to suit this need. Leave the individual mana pools for imbued champions and offspring, but just tweak it a bit. Have their mana fully regenerate, either after every turn or every combat, depending on what works out to be more balanced, and have their mana limit increase as they level up, by a factor that depends on their INT or WIS score.
It's very simple from a gameplay perspective, and to implement it would be relatively easy and I'd wager quick as well, as it's mostly there already. It would make it worth it to players to invest in mana maintained imbues, and magic focused offspring, as well as distinguish your Lords and Champions.
If you don't do it, I will never play Elemental again for the rest of today (maybe)!
P.S. When you get around to adding unit abilities properly into the engine, would you consider giving champions and offspring some sort of Element related magical ranged or melee attack?
i'm pretty sure you pay the population to create the unit, but after it is created it doesn't interact with your specialist pool: It costs population to create units, but not to heal them.
It's been said before, but bears repeating: Thanks so much for being so responsive to community feedback and questions. It's great and one of the many things that will keep me buying pretty much any game Stardock publishes.
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