Let's play Elemental: War of Magic on the official forums!
(To show all my noobitude at the game and people who are curious, how the game is in it's current state. Also, I'm bored.)
I do like the title screen. Though, with 8 buttons to press, it really doesn't fulfill Jon's idea of simplified yet.
We play on a small map, called Stardockia.
Our custom Sovereign CariTwelf is a tracker (gives one more move on the map) and attuned (gives +2 mana each turn) both those can't be seen. We take the mobility spellbook for fun teleporting later on, the combat one just because and max strength and constitution, to be able to inflict some pain later on. I also chose Adventurer for even more moving around.
I also choose Tarth as my race, for obvious reasons. I also make sure to set every AI to Hard (two steps above the normal difficulty). Yes, you have to set each AI seperatly, or else only the first one will be different and the other AIs will be still on normal. I don't play on ridiculous, cause I'm a big wussy.
That is my starting position, not very good, but at least one shard is there to get some mana later on.
As usual, Janusk joins us in the next turn. He is a champion, that is, an unit that can level up and equip items which we can buy from the item shop.
I'm building a beacon of hope, which gives us prestige which increases the rate at which people come to the city. Marked with a big red ! is fertile land on which I'll build a farm. We need the food of the farm to be able to build houses, which are needed increase the number of people in the city. People are needed to build buildings and are also the main source of income.
I visit the shop to buy a pair of Travelling boots, to further increase my movement. Later on we will be able to buy much more stuff from that shop, if we have researched it and have the gold to spare. Capitalism, Ho!
While exploring the lands I meet Relias, sovereign of Altar. While he may sound nice, he always declares war against me, so don't be rused by his nice appearance.
After some more exploring, I meet my first wandering champion, who I immediatly recruit for 70 gildar. While he's not cheap, he gives 1 tech knowledge per turn, which allows me to jumpstart my research.
I immediatly start to research military, to get some basic equipment, since I didn't choose any in the beginning. In 15 turns, I'll have something to fight with besides my bare hands.
Meanwhile glorious Frogosia has built it's first workshop and has now started on a hut, to increase it's capacity for people and thus our gildar income.
We also had gotten a quest from an Inn to clear out some rats, which Janusk promptly did, we now have to return to the Inn to get our reward.
I wasn't careful, so I was suprised by a roaming wolf. Though CariTwelf survived with only 1 hp left, she got enough experience points to advance a level. I put all of them in Intelligence, since casters need a high Int score to be able to teleport later on.
Lucky, with 50 Gildar you can buy quite some armour.
And we also married Janusk, in the hope of many spellcasting babies in the future.
Frogosia levels up after reaching 15 population. I choose the Tech bonus, since having better stuff is much more important then being able to research the few spells I want fast.
I start to build a pioneer to get me another city soon and also build a study, to increase my research. I want weapons so I can show Altar, why red wasn't the best colour to get.
I also finished the rat quest, which gave me about 100 gildar, which is clearly imba so early in the game. As soon as we've finished researching that equipment, we will buy some very good stuff for our Queen and her husband.
The study gets finished, which doubles my research output, a second study gets planned.
Ah, the joy of military research breakthroughs. Next I start researching Magic, so I'll be able to harvest the power of the shard next to me.
What a women most loves to do. Shopping for armour and weapons. Capitalism, ho!
CariTwelf goes from an useless, 3 attack, 0 defense sovereign to a mean 13 attack, 6 defense battle queen with only a bit over 100 gold spent. I also spend some gold to get Janusk some new stuff. Interestingly, in the current version, men have 2 more cloaks available then female chars, which is not suprising, given that men usually are more worried about their looks then women.
Janusk is with 9 attack, 5 defense only slightly weaker.
I take a slight detour to kill a similar wolf as before, not a scratch on me now and the wolf was dead in 2 hits. We're prepared.
Janusk got attacked by a bear. He killed him easily with his spear and leveled up. I increased his strength and constitution a bit, to make him a little less emberassing to be married to a warrior queen.
Time to die, Lord Relias!
Defending the city is his spouse with an impressive attack of 11 and an even more impressive cleavage.
We kill her easily. We not only gained a new city, but also enough exp to level CariTwelf and Janusk up. I put the 3 points gained in Int for CariTwelf and Const for Janusk respectively.
The war is now over before it even has begun. My research champion in the north will kill Altar's pioneer before it can escape. I'll heal up my pair of super units and then will march towards the final enemy city.
While waiting with my units in the conquered city to heal them up, I researched Shard Harvesting, which allows me to build an air shard, which will give me 2 mana per turn. Stockpiling mana, for future teleporting uses. I start researching civilian techs now, so I will be able to build up those newly aqcuired cities.
I also finished building an arcane laboratory, so I can now start to research new spells.
Teleport, oh you sweet teleport, instant moving in your own territory for only 16 mana. Although it needs at least 19 intelligence to be able to cast it. It allows you to defend a large amount of cities with only a small army, since you can be anywhere, anytime.
And the last enemy city got conquered by my... pioneer? Oh well, I set my pioneer some turns ago to those tasty resource places and forgot about him, and he promtly walked in to the undefended enemy city and claimed it for me. Yay.
6 Gildar to spare him? I don't think so!
Bears? No match for my new, 10 attack, 6 defense, units.
Lookie, what do we have here? (This city suddenly appeared in the fog of war, even though I hadn't rediscovered that area.)
Oh, he found some armour, how cute.
Too bad for him, that my armour is better.
Guess he should have been willing to give me more then just 6 gold.
An overview over my land. 4 cities now. The fourth is a bit to the north and with it I should be easily able to control the whole peninsula now.
What my cities are doing.
And that's it for today. I rushed one AI, because it just started too close to me (and it tried to settle on my resources and it declared war on me in my last game) and to be honest, there is not much the AI could have done against it. The item shop coupled with some luck in finding gildar on the map is just too powerful. Also, the equipment technology gives you such an advantage, thanks to it's 9 attack oak spear and the set of padded armour, that any enemy who doesn't research that first and equips its unit with it immediatly, is just dead.
But not all hope is lost for the AI. There are still 4 players left that I haven't even met yet and since they'll had some time to build up now (it's turn 42 now) we will see what happens to them. Soon.
Muahaha.
PS. this is my first let's play here. So any criticism is welcome. Pictures too big? Too small? Too heavy? Too much text or not enough? Not enough snark or too much? Does it need more lulz? Feel free to shoot.
I don't mean to stray to far OT here, but is there a way to provide a list of names for your races cities? Innuaallwaseert is probably a nice enough name for a city, but I'd just prefer to be prompted for Raleigh, Columbia, Myrtle Beach etc. if I had my druthers.
Thanks for posting this. It's interesting to see how others play and I look forward to seeing more turns.
One thing, Sovs can cast any spell no matter what their intelligence. The min only applies to heroes.
oops
Good stuff! An Elemental AAR.
Encore! Encore!
Don't build a beacon of hope first because you end up with it just sitting there being useless why your pop cap is maxed. Your build order should be something like workshop/study/farm/hut/beacon of hope, workshop/farm/hut/study/beacon of hope. You change the order of workshop build if you find materials in a goodie hut. You can start with hut first if you choose the farmer trait for your sovereign. Growing population fast is the name of this game. I try to never hit a pop cap ever.
One last comment... you said "I put all of them in Intelligence, since casters need a high Int score to be able to teleport later on." I wasn't aware the sovereign had any minimum requirements for any spells. Can someone confirm that? Heroes yes, but sovereigns no. True or not true?
Tis true sir tis true!
True.
Wonderful window into your playing style. I always love to see how other players have fun in Elemental. Thanks for opening this window for us.
i haven't played in a while (waiting for the the tac fixes), but I recall reading that SOVs, unlike heros, have no mininum IQ requirement to cast specific spells. However, some spells have their efficacy (damage affect) based on the IQ of the castor. So a higher IQ translates into more damage when spell is successfully cast.
Intelligence for Sovereigns affects damage from Arcane Arrow (50% INT) and Spell Blast (30% INT). Stone Skin provides defense based on caster INT (25% INT).
I usually load up my Sovereign on INT because I use those spells, but you don't have to do that. You only need one champion with a high INT for these spells.
This is really good. It makes me want to get this game. Is there more to come?
Nice post. A couple others have said it but your sovereign can use any spell regardless of INT level.
Hmm... What mod is it that makes your are of influence colored like that?
Yes, your Sovereign does not have any INT requirements to cast spells. All other champions do, including children. However, it is worth noting that INT still affects damage on spells, even with your sovereign. So if you are going to make a lot of use of combat related damage spells, increasing your INT will be a positive. Most of the time for me, in later game time (after about 200 turns), my sovereign will sit back and cast in combat while various solder units handle actual combat.
Tarth influence is green normally. If you go to your Options screen, look and see if you have 'Use Smart Player Colors' turned on.
With that on, you are blue, neutral are yellow and enemies are red.
With it off, each kingdom uses its own color for marking.
Oh... and you tell me now?
This is disappointing. Since the effect of strength and dexterity is kinda low, charisma isn't really needed since gold is not a problem, you can put all points in to stamina... which isn't really needed, since there is a spell to make you immune against magic and armour is so strong, you won't ever get damaged anyway.
Ah, it took me forever to find some time to continue that game. Let's see where we left off:
It's now the 42nd turn and we've defeated Lord Relias, Sovereign of Altar in a very early rush, conquering 3 cities in that process. Thus I overextended myself slightly and we're actually in the red with gildar income for once (0.1 gildar per turn... scary ). So, first we'll start to build up our cities a bit to fix the money problem. Since in Elemental, people = money, we just need to make sure all cities are growing, that should solve our problem fast. Also, we should research a diplomacy technology very soon: trading. Trading gives caravans, which are only slightly overpowered. Each caravan arriving in a city gives that city a 10% boost in gildar production.
Having 4 cities atm, means that I can boost income in each of them by 30%, by having 3 cities trading with the fourth. While there is a limit to the amount of caravans (I think 1 per city level) it's not balanced at all. Even with only a lvl 1 city with almost nothing in it, you can boost income in your biggest city by 10% by sending a caravan with it. This means that city spam with lots of caravans makes a lot of gildar. Our next target: Get filthy rich.
Meanwhile, we kill some random monsters wandering in our territories. It's somewhat important to keep your cities defended with some armored fighters all the time, else some random spider may decide to raze it all by itself.
10 attack, 6 defense gives a combat rating of 11.
4 attack, 2 defense gives a combat rating of 9?
Not even close. Those 4 attack can never ever hit through the 6 defense of my warden, since defense is damage absorb and attack is max damage, meaning this single warden could defeat an entire legion of those Darklings, without breaking a sweat and of course without getting a pay rise. We're still low on gildar after all.
Having said all that... our fearless warden actually gets damaged and hit for one hp... I wonder if there is a rounding error or something in play here? Kinda strange. Or I understand the combat system wrong... which is more likely I guess.
Nevertheless, all other hostile critters (2 spiders, 3 more darklings) get swiftly annihilated by other Wardens defending the cities and brave Janusk.
Gold. Oh my precious gold, must have. Next step in research is the Civilization technology brank for harvesting then.
And another city levels up. Since we now know about caravans each giving a 10% bonus to Gildar production, the gildar production bonus is not that good. Random guardian unit is... well... random... and iirc, the only thing that changes is its hp, while it's stats are always the same and quite low. Arcane and tech knowledge my seem to be about even in value, but there is only a limited amount of spells you really need (Teleport which we're researching at the moment and magic immunity for units later on) there isn't much of a need to get them very fast since you get them soon enough. Tech research on the other hand starts somehow fast and then slows down drastically. Thus we will always and for ever more chose the tech bonus.
Each research done one of the five branches increases the cost of research in that branch by quite a lot and also increseas the cost of research in all other branches slightly too. Because of that, later on our cities will spend most of their time on building research buildings, to keep up with the ever increasing cost of sweet technology.
Also, you see that? Gold mine incoming in 3 turns. Kachiing!
Wohoo, it's a girl. In only a few turns (more over 60 turns or so, nothing spells grand strategy then having to wait so long to get useful offspring) we will have another unit that can cast spells without the need to get enchanted. At start, only your sovereign can cast spells, all other recruited heroes need to be imbued with magic by your sovereign. Each imbuement costs 1 mana per turn though, so you should only cast it when you need to use spells and then quickly dispell it again, so not to lose too much mana in the long term. (Yeah, min maxing... ) Offspring is good in that, they don't need to be imbued and thus save you a bit of micro management.
We're a bit low on materials (which is needed for most buildings and basic unit equipment, but not champion equipment) so I decide that chopping down the few remaining old forests in this devastating world is the right thing to do! Those trees didn't survive the cataclysm after all, only to not be used for something good. (Which is, saving me gildar, since one old forest is about equal to 4 workshops, saving me 4 guildar per turn.) I'm always a bit low on materials, since you don't need too much in the long term, mostly early on, so I don't build too many workshops, occasionaly starving me cause of it.
And we meet Capitar. A quick look at the faction power graph shows me, they're rated at 8 while we're rated at 16. Our early rush helped us quite a lot then. (Imo, rushing is op atm. Capturing enemy cities should give you some short term penalties, else, rushing is always the optimal strategy. Also... am I the only one who thinks of Cylons, hearing that name?
Time to kick our economy in overdrive. Caravans cost nothing to built and when they reach their target city they give tasty gildar bonus. There is no gildar like free gildar!
17 attack and 3 defense. That Verm bandit is quite a dangerous one. A bit of luck with my rolls and thanks to Janusk's thrusty defense he easily defeats him, with only 6 hp lost. Tbh though, I saved before it, since I was quite sure to lose Janusk to that attack. ecline:
Meeting such high attack enemies means, our defense is still too low. Our next target should be military technologies to improve our armour equipment as fast as possible.
At the same time we're building up our cities to get more people. Inn's are constructed everywhere. An Inn gives one prestige. Each prestige point a town has, gives it about 1 more person growth per turn. Making sure that prestige increasing buildings get build early and that there is always enough housing, so that the population doesn't cap out in a city, assures a fast population growth, giving lots and lots of gildar through tax.
Oh, oh Janusk got in trouble...
Guess not. All attackers hat 4 attack, but Janusk also had 4 defense...
Armour, with enough gold, soon our champions will be formidable protected. We will continue to stay in the warfare area of research, to get horses and better weapons for our champions.
Obviously I chose the tech bonus again.
And we meet the last faction. The guys with the really horrible skin problem. They aren't as friendly to us as the Capitar, since they're an Empire faction, while both Capitar and I are Kingdom. Also, Magmar boasts a rating of 26, compared to my 24 and Capitar's 18.
I decide to build a town in the swamp here. While it's not a very good place to build a city (only clay here which gives 3 materials per turn), it has a nice stratec position. It's close to Capitar, near a choke point, allows me thus to equip champions near the border and will serve as a staging ground for any attack and defense against capitar. Capitar is expansing quite aggressivly at the moment. An additional city also means, more caravans and thus 10% more gildar income in my bigger cities. Ie. you can't never have enough cities.
Hm... the Capitar are eager to go to war. We're not though.
We still need much more gildar to be able to fully equip our champions and also some more military research to have good stuff to buy in the first place.
Magnar dares to threaten us? I order to execute the messenger... which sadly isn't possible. ecline:
Guess, we settle then at laughing at his puny threats.
You can't handle a little humour, can you?
Should have joined forces with Capitar early on... so much for showing mercy. Hah, won't happen again, Magnar the third!
Currently Magnar has a rating of 36 while ours is 33. Looking at the graphs we see that population, gildar income and army strength is about the same. They do have a sizable lead in research though, both in arcane and tech. Guess, only chosing the research bonus doesn't help much, when we haven't build many research buildings yet...
On the other hand, we now have a net income of 28.3 guildar per turn. Since Magnar doesn't seem to want us getting rich with building our cities up, we have to get rich by taking his cities then.
Change of plan: Focus on research now, get some more equipment techs, then use our gildar to equip our champions. When we have some champions equipped, we will attack Magmar. Till then, let's hope he doesn't plan to attack.
Let's take a quick look where our sovereing is...
Upsie... guess she's a bit outnumbered... and not equipped at all to deal with those units...
...
Woosh!
And back in to friendly territory, miles away from those dastardly Magmars. Ah, I just love teleport.
The War Staff gives a nice 15 attack.
Some Magnar units show up on my border:
My sovereign quickly dispatches those 2 observers.
Some treaties with Capitar will increase our research and income substantially.
CariTwelf rides out to harass the Magnar. In about 20 turns of war, those 2 sentinels killed earlier were the only units Magnar sent to attack us... and then we kinda attacked them on our border first.
Our early focus on gildar and later investment in research begins to pay off. Net income has increased to 52 gildar per turn, while research has almost trippled, making our research even higher now then Magnar's.
Nice town you have there Magnar and some nice units, would be a shame if something would happen to them, yes?
Magnar has a sizable force defending this city.
CariTwelf is hugely outnumbered. We're also in enemy territory, giving us attack and defense penalties while giving the Empire units a bonus to their stats. I totally forgot about those to be honest. Doesn't look good for me.
It's now turn 95 in the game and yes, Worgs are just cool mounts. Not as good as a pegasi, but definitely cool.
Next update will be tomorrow or on sunday, should have some time then.
Yeah, not much point in buying constitution for your heroes. It's a bit of a crap stat to be totally honest. Basically pick int if you want the hero/sov to spam arcane arrow, and strength if you want to spend less money on weapons. Charisma is fine if you want to pump up a city with a lot of huts rapidly -- stick a bunch of charisma on the farmer heroes and sit them in a city.
I personally usually pick the gildar bonus for most cities, since you really don't need all that much research to hit 3-4 turns even on late game techs. Plus it's basically an extra caravan at each level up. Typically I'll use the capital and two other cities (preferably with gold mines) as gold pumps and direct all caravans to them.
I almost never pick research level-up bonuses until later in the game. Since my capital is usually busy building housing non-stop, it is the caravan-spam settlements that build my workshops and studies - and I don't bother leveling them up until late in the game, if ever (usually when libraries become available).
I kinda made a house rule for those, so I won't city spam that much to minimize this (almost) exploit.
Sadly, the AI always declares war against me, so I soon conquer so many cities that I'm soon the biggest again.
In last update, our heroine was trying to attack a well defended enemy city by all her awesome self, slightly overextending her capabilities perhaps....
....
Ah, whom am I kidding? She won of course.
One enemy city down, power rating gone to 53 and Magnar rating sunk to a low 44.
After loading the save game to continue though:
Eh? Tarth 33 and Magnar 29? There seems to be something strange in how these ratings are calculated. (And a turn later, those numbers reverted to the old 56 for Tarth and 43 for Magnar, guess those values get saved wrongly).
Anyway, we won a crushing victory. But I didn't plan to go to war, so let's try to make peace with Magnar.
Even for all my gold they refuse? We just killed a sizable chunk of their army and conquered a city of them...
Guess, that means extermination for them then!
The newly conquered city gets attacked by Magnar troops...
... just to get slaughtered.
Houses! Finally an upgrade to the old huts. Instantly our crafty workers upgrade 40 buildings in our cities at once. Those carpenters are fast!
And another enemy city has fallen.
Wohoo, more bling for our champions.
Heh, Magnar peasants against our mighty champions. That's no fight, that's just futile.
And another city is about to fall.
She's got a nice red cape. Red from all the blood of those poor defenseless Magnar.
An oasis, a fire shard and wild horses. Quite the nice enemy city that was.
Ah, who have we here? Magnar the III. Let's talk about peace again. You're hopelessly outclassed by my superiour champions. (2 of them only... but still enough to destroy your armies).
Eh...?
Uh...
This is all your might?
Victory!
This was quite the disappointing war... first they declared on us and never really attacked us, then we conquer their cities with CariTwelf one by one, giving them chance to make peace twice... and then... he just dies.
Guess that's it. We now control over half of the continent, have double the power of Capitar. Our current income is almost 100 gildar per turn and rising fast. Research, both arcane and tech is also double of theirs and could easily be increased even more. It's now turn 114 and we've basically won the game. Oh, as for our offspring... it wouldn't be another 100 turns till the first of them grows up, making them kinda... pointless.
Bliiiiing!
There's so much more stuff to get and research, but what for? Defense being so strong, it makes well equipped champions just invincible. I hope Kaleb will push some major armour nerfs in v.1.2, else, the game is just too easy now, since even if one doesn't research armour and limits itself, there is just not much fun for me, when I know, I'm always just one tech away from being invincible.
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