First of all, I want to say that I have been one of Derek Paxton's biggest fans ever since Fall From Heaven came out. That mod was genius. Derek basically took an existing game and made a mod so good that playing the mod was better than the strategy game itself. And not just ANY game - this was a SID MEIER game. So Derek, if you're reading this, I just want to say that I'm a great admirer of your work and although Stardock's launch of Elemental was suboptimal, they certainly picked the right person to solve their issues.
That said, this isn't exclusively a fan-praise post. I'm writing about a significant flaw in Elemental, namely, the game's battle system. I'm smart but not a tactical genius, yet somehow I find myself routinely defeating armies that are alledgedly three times my power or more. This is a problem. A more significant problem is that battle isn't very INTERESTING - it's basically slight variations of "march your forces up to each other and have them attack as much as possible, first strike has a a mild advantage." Yawn.
The following are my suggestions for improving tactical combat significantly to make it more strategically challenging, but most importantly, to make it more FUN. Having been a programmer myself at one point, I'm cognizant that there are only a limited amount of resources that you can sink into any given problem, so I've tried to limit my suggestions to changes that would be easy to implement.
1) Interesting Terrain Part of the problem is that terrain in Elemental doesn't DO anything other than give the occasional +10% modifier. And even then, those terrain pieces are always off to the side, never in the center of the battlefield so the marginal advantage that they give is offset by the fact that you have to pursue the terrain. Why? Making terrain more interesting will give players much more interesting tactical decisions to pursue. The trick is that you have to throw terrain right in the thick of the battlefield, where it actively effects the combat. You also have to make the type of terrain dependent on the tiles that the two units are in before combat occurs.
For example, suppose that moving through swamp terrain costs double the action point expenditure. Armies with lots of archer units will favor engaging in swamp terrain, since they can turn enemies into pincushions while said enemies are slogging through the swamp to get them.
Likewise, suppose forest terrain blocks arrow, giving a signicant penalty to hit a unit in that terrain. That would result in infantry units favoring forest terrain for the cover it provides, and they would take more circuitous routes (both on the overland and on the tactical map) to stay in the trees.
Hill terrain could have areas of higher ground, which confer an attack bonus to units that have higher elevation than their opponents. Furthermore, going uphill costs an extra action point. Suddenly, hill become great places for defneders to fortify and establish bottlenecks.
This are all interesting terrain features that would lend a much more strategic element to tactical combat, and would also force players to consider the overland map when planning their battles. But why stop there? You could throw in interesting random elements on the map as well. For example:
A carnivorous plant that is immobile on the tactical map, but damages any unit that starts in a square adjacent to it.
Boulders and tree trunks can provide cover from ranged attacks, giving units that hide behind them a significant bonus to defense against ranged weapons.
A healing monolith that restores 1 hp per turn to units that stand next to it.
A river that units cannot pass through except in shallow areas where the river may be forded.
Not only would these elements all make tactical battles more interesting, but they lead to all sorts of interesting possibilities for new spells. For example, an Earth spell like "Boulder wall" (summons a row of boulders in an area of your choice) or a Water spell called "Liquid Terrain" (turns an area of the tactical map into swamp terrain).
2) Interesting weapons and armor Lets face it, weapons as they are now written don't give you many choice. There's damage, and then there's more damage. Some give you a bit more combat speed, but that's a questionable choice since every attack you make results in you taking damage as well. What you need to do is make weapons with interesting bonuses and penalties, so that arming your troops will no longer be a simple cost-benefit tradeoff but a legitimate tactical choice. For example, here are some suggestions that I have to make weapons more interesting.
Reach weapons (such as halberds, polearms, and longspears) allow you to attack enemies from one or two squares away. Furthermore, if you are two squares away, enemies can't counterattack unless they also have a reach weapon. This might at first seem disadvantageous when compared to ranged weapons but since melee weapons only cost 1 action point to attack (rather than 2 for ranged attacks) then reach weapons have an extremely effective killzone unless an enemy is fast enough to dash in close.
Impact weapons (such as mauls, clubs, etc) not only inflict damage but knock the enemy back a square if the attack inflicts enough damage. Having the ability to inflict forced movement enables you to make more more interesting use of battlefield terrain. For example, if the carnivorous plant from my terrain example were used, you could push an enemy next to it, causing them to take damage.
Threatening weapons are quick weapons (like daggers, rapiers, shortswords) which enable you to take advantage of openings in combat. A unit with a threatening weapon "threatens" any square that it can attack in melee (typically just adjacent squares). If an enemy unit moves from one threatened square to another threatened square, then the unit which is threatening the second square inflicts a small amount of automatic damage on the enemy unit. This allows you to set up chokepoints even on the tactical map, stopping enemy units from getting to your soft targets.
Having these weapons would result in your choice of equipment being a much greater part of the battle. Furthermore, monsters could be made more unique and interesting by giving them or more multiple weapon qualities. For example, an giant could have both the "impact" and "reach" qualities, allowing it to push units around the battlefield from two square away. A hydra could have both the "threatening" and "reach qualities", making it a horrific threat to melee combatants.
3) A AI that uses strategy in tactical combat Right now, the AI is woefully unprepared to deal with human opponents. While it's commendable that the AI targets weak units, it never calculates combat speed to see if it can CATCH the weak units. This results in easy wins for human players simply by running a weak but quick unit in circles while archers do the rest of the work.
What you need to do is have an AI that thinks in more general "big picture" terms and asks general questions to determine a specific strategy for that battle. For example:
"Do we have more artillery?"Compare ranged attack strength of AI army to ranged attack strength of enemy army. If it is greater, then instead of engaging enemy units, have them go to choke points and only attack enemies that try to get by. If it is lesser, than try to engage in melee as quickly as possible, using areas of cover as a path to reach the enemy.
"What dangerous units does the enemy have and how can I best respond?"Dangerous units are units that have a very high attack strength. If they have low defenses and low movement, then have archers target them while spreading your melee units one space apart and going after them (this stops them from using the "run in circles" technique. If they have high defenses and low movement, have your units focus on low defenses targets first, and if the high attack strength unit gets close, have your units use all of this movement to run away. This results in the enemy wasting its most dangerous unit chasing yours around the battlefield.
"Do I have regenerating creatures?"If so, use regenerating creatures as melee combatants. Send them to the front line to fight until they reach half their hit points, then have them run to cover as quickly as possible and move through cover to the rear lines until their wounds heal. Then send them forward again. Repeat as needed.
There are also a few strategies that should be used for overland AI. For example, I always send a few low-level heroes in combat with my really tough armies, even if the heroes don't have the weapons or armor to engage the enemy. In combat, I simply have those heroes hide in the back while my army destroys the enemy. This lets the heroes grab a share of the XP and level up quickly, so they are always far more powerful than AI heroes. Well, why not have the AI use a similar strategy. It would be really invaluable, especially in the early game.
Anyway, these are just a few general ideas for making tactical combat more interesting. Elemental is a great game in principle, but boring battles really detract a lot from the other great elements of the game, and that making some significant changes to make combat more interesting will result in a lot of happiness among your fan base.
Great ideas! I would take a look at the mods section here, a lot of folks have worked hard to make the game alot more interesting. The healing monoliths and carnivorous plant ideas are neat. Good post!
I agree with all this stuff. Also I would like to see stuff like dmg bonuses for spears vs cavalry etc.
I've harped on this before, but can I suggest line of site? So you can't shoot arrows through trees, and area spells can be more tactically viable so you can drop them next to a tree someone's hiding behind, or even an environment that reacts to certain elements? (Fire spells scorch the earth, water spells make mud and alter terrain, etc?) I know the latter is more complicated. But the line of site just seems like it would be an easier implementation.
Check out Updated Weapons. I think the mod address some of your concerns from point 2.
the problem with the terrain and the battlefield is that ranges are effectively unlimited, the resolution of the battlefield grid is so low and there is no deployment phase.
in the example you give with archers preferring to fight in swamps because it slows movement... i just can't see it working. i mean, if you have the swamp tiles off to the left so you have to move there to make use of them then you'll have to move there first (which will take you twice as long just like the enemy) during which time you will not be shooting the enemy but he will be shooting you (and probably more importantly, casting damage spells). the only way i can see it working is if you just start in the swamp in the first place, but in that case it's a strategy map decision, not a decision you make in the battle. as for infantry taking a circuitous route through forests to avoid arrows, given that you start about 6 squares from each other, if you had forest three squares to the right then you'd be effectively doubling your journey length to make use of the wood (unless you travel diagonally, but then you get less benefit). therefore the benefit of the woods would need to be MORE THAN 50% missile immunity to be worthwhile (you're not protected as you travel to and from the wood). and while you're taking this cicuitous journey you may also be the target of spells or monster abilities that slow you down (it is so hard to predict this stuff since you almost always have no idea what these units can or are likely to do). most people would just ignore the terrain and go for the safe approach of making as many attacks as possible as quickly as possible.
so the bonuses involved would have to be huge and i'm not sure the simplified battle mechanics can handle it. even if it is worthwhile you'd quickly get a situation where whenever you had forests at the side of the battlefield, you'd always end up using them. ie, it's so difficult to imagine a system where sometimes it would be worth using the trees and sometimes not, and working out which was true was actually difficult.
in games like total war that at least try to model real combat (without a grid and with so much variation in unit numbers, unit stats, gently sloping terrain and the inability to measure distance) then this stuff works, because the numbers are too complicated for the player to guess at, so they end up using real life logic instead. but the combat mechanics in elemental are so simplified and the whole idea of the huge grid squares and all units taking the same amound of space, no line of sight and treating diagonal and orthogonal directions in the same way, it is far too easy for the player who knows the basic numbers to game the system. worse still, the model is so far from a real battle that anyone who did attempt to use similar tactics to those they might use in real life because they don't know how the numbers work, will be ripped apart because the mechanics are nothing like reality.
to put it plainly, compare the complexity of the strategy map game with the complexity of the tactical battles game. the former has lots of practically inestimable variables that forces most of us to use our imaginations and apply real world logic. the latter is so simplified that the optimal solution is both easily apparent yet completely unintuitive. height provides a bonus in real warfare because of the parabolic flight of projectiles and the fatigue it causes troops running up it. saying +50% ranged damage is not the same.
if you want more weapon variation (that makes them perform the way people expect them to) you will need finely graded stats for weapon reach, maneuverability, speed, damage, weapon skill and armour piercing even if they are under the hood (and we all know that brad does not like ANY mechanics being under the hood). if you want terrain to do what people would expect it to in real life you will need a reasonable facsimile of how terrain works (ie non grid based movement, line of sight, variable unit footprint). not all of these are feasible for this game. how do you balance strategies that involve flanking and careful unit placement when there is no deployment phase and rearraning your forces takes two turns during which you're being shot at and by the end of which the enemy will be on top of you?
good mechanics that model real behavious will lead to real strategies. trying to retcon existing mechanics to do what we expect to them by applying % bonuses will always result in failure.
Sethai, I think you might be greatly misunderstanding what I'm saying. You're talking about swamp and forest terrain always being on the left and right, so it's impossible to use the terrain. But one of the points I made was that terrain should NOT be on the fringes of the battlefield like it is now - it should be flat in the center. If you're on a forest tile when the combat starts, then there should be forested areas all over the combat map, not just off to the sides.
You seem to be thinking in terms of terrain solely being advantageous, and weighing the advantage that terrain vs the disadvantage of moving towards it. (Which is the way the current system works, and the reason nobody ever uses terrain is because the disadvantages in terms of spent turns always outweigh the marginal benefits.) My point is that terrain should be both advantageous AND disadvantageous, and it should be dropped all over the battlefield. This forces players to change their strategies from battle to battle to take terrain into account, because the placement means it can't be easily avoided.
As far as your realism points, I think you're vaguely seeing what I'm trying to say, but grossly exaggerating it. I don't care about "realistic" combat, I just want combat to be more interesting, with more variation in tactical choices. My examples of different weapon qualities are easy changes to make which make the game far more tactical. Why do you feel these changes have to occur "under the hood?" Each of these mechanics is very simple, and all you need to do is add one section to each weapon description with weapon properties (if any). Then just add a section in the hiergamenon about what weapon qualities do. That's pretty straightforward and there are no hidden mechanics at all.
To everybody else - thanks for the advice! I'll check out some of the weapons mods. If you have any suggestions on specific mods, please let me know!
It is already possible to make larger, more interesting tactical maps, although it would be better if the game provided them. But as long as the AI is acting like the women of the Batley Townswomen's Guild, there really is no point - the AI will rush you irregardless of the terrain and start swinging. So I would hope that the AI gets massively improved, and then the rest can/will follow.
Well Stuie, based on the current maps and weapons, there aren't too many tactical choices the AI can make. Even if they do fix the problem where the AI chases a weak unit in circles while your archers kill them, the outcome of the battle is still basically a back and forth slugfest. That's why I feel better terrain and weapon design need to happen at the same time as the AI improvement.
I have an idea. It sounds like a lot of us are unhappy with the combat AI. Why don't we turn this thread into a list of suggestions for sneaky things we do to win in combat, so that the devs can see what good tactics are like and program the AI to mimic them?
For example, one thing I do is have a unit with very high defense and a lot of action points (due to a fast weapon like a dagger or shortword) stand next to a unit with very high offense and low defense. The high defense unit attacks incoming units first to burn up all the APs that they have for counterattacks, then the high offense unit attacks when all those counterattacks are gone.
Another example is to form a retreating wall. Basically I wait for the AI to be adjacent to me, hit them until I have one action point, and then retreat a step. This forces them to use up 2 AP moving forward to reach me, leaving fewer attacks that they can make. Therefore I have a much higher chance of initiating the final blow in the skirmish, where the AI can's counterattack.
Another thing I thought we could do is list some weapon properties that would be simple to implement (such as the ones I suggested above) but ALSO make some suggestions on how the AI should exploit these weapons tactically. For example, any AI unit with reach weapons should use a variant of my "retreating wall" - when they are attacked in melee by a unit that doesn't have reach, they need to retreat 1 square before attacking, so that they can't be counterattacked. Similarly, any AI units with impact weapons would identify which squares are dangerous terrain at the beginning of the battle and attack from an angle that pushes enemy units towards it. AI units with threatening weapons are best at holding chokepoints.
Basically I think that if my suggestions get implemented, a good strategy for the AI would be to look at the map at the beginning of combat (as well as after any terrain altering spells are cast in combat) and identify which squares have positive effects, which squares have negative effects, and which squares are "chokepoints" that need to be held to stop melee units from getting by. These tend to be the fundamental tactical issues in any 4E strategic combat. Because right now, like Stuie said - we're basically fighting the Batley Townswomen's Guild.
I guess I was thinking that if they had to pick one thing to improve, I would hope it would be the AI, since we can't change the AI. The maps and weapons we can mod.
But you're right: all three are better off being addressed in conjunction.
Cheesiest thing I do in combat is wait for the AI to attack, and position my units in such a way that the AI will run out of action points when they reach the square(s) adjacent to my units. I also take advantage of the 10% boost in defense squares, positioning units so that the AI will only have non-bonus squares available from which to attack. Thus, I always get the first strike, and the opportunity to use whatever special abilities I have available, and I almost always ensure that the AI has no defense bonus. As the defender the AI should almost NEVER move to attack; it should seek out the best defensive position and let the player come to him. This of course would change if the player had a lot of ranged units/spells.
I'm beginning to think the challenges we see with both strategic and tactical AI are in some way dependent on the memory ceiling Brad mentioned in his dev journal (i.e. fixing AI issues could be difficult when being forced to consider affect on available memory). Here is a link: https://forums.elementalgame.com/405282
With that said, I recommend posting tactical AI suggestions in this thread (which Brad stickied himself and is monitoring): https://forums.elementalgame.com/404541.
I'm still optimistic we'll get this all ironed out but it could be painful until the memory issue is resolved.
Stuie, you raise a very good issue about the movement and action points exploit. One easy improvement to the AI could be the following rule: don't move right next to the player's melee units UNLESS
A ) you have enough action points to still attack after moving next to them, or
B ) The player has significantly more artillery than you.
This would stop easy exploitation of AI units ending their turn right next to you without attacking.
Honestly, this is not completely universalizable to all situations, though it is probably something for the AI to consider. If you consider an AI unit which has a large defense compared to the median attack of the enemy forces, moving without being able to attack is possibly a good move depending on what this particular unit is attempting to do. In general, tactical combat might be made better by simply adding some type of goals to each side. This might be something similar to what you have in the TW series where attackers have to destroy all enemies in a certain time frame and defenders simply have to survive. If in a tactical battle the attackers had only 10-15 turns to kill the enemy, the attacking side would not have the luxury of simply waiting for the defenders to attack nor would they have the time to kite enemies with exploitative tactics. On the other side, the defending AI could be designed to both take advantage of these limitations as well as focusing on taking defensive formations.
my position is this: if you want people to be able to use intuitive tactics and for them to work, then you will need a certain amount of realism. if we simplified the strategy game's economy so that, for example, all units cost the same amount of gold, then it would lead to ridiculous situations and strategies with no resemblance to real life (which would make the game unintuitive, and uninteresting). tactical combat is no different. good mechanics (inspired by how things work in real life) allow people to apply their intuition to situations instead of crunching the numbers in their head. this means interesting intuitive combat. saying "this should happen" and then working out how to retcon the system is putting the cart before the horse.
we need mechanics like
- facing. units face in the direction they last moved and can turn on the spot by spending action points. facing matters in combat because (realism) you can't defend yourself from a stab in the back. this is why the henchmen always come at bond one at a time. but that doesn't mean you should slap on some arbitrary "-50%" defence when flanked (that no one will remember). treat it like something else you can't defend yourself from: an arrow. this means no counter attacks against units attacking from the rear.
- weapon reach. if your weapon is longer than the other guy's, you attack him before he attacks you. what makes sense: ie, realism. weapons should have a reach stat. if you have longer reach you attack first, even if they're charging you or it's their turn. so just like in real life, a spear is a massive advantage in a short fight, less so in a protracted battle.
- weapon mobility. determines how flankable a unit with this weapon is. a unit with a sword might have a mobility of 4 so he can counter attack anyone attacking from the three squares infront and either flank, whereas a pike might have a mobility of two (so he can only counterattack against the square infront and one of the diagonals (whichever of those attacks him first). if you like you can extend this even further and say "no dodge chance" if your mobility is massively beaten.
- zone of control. units adjacent to each other are in their zones of control. if you leave the zone of control you provoke at attack of opportunity from units facing you. this is a free attack you can't counter. this puts you at a disadvantage if you show your back to the enemy in order to turn tail and run.
- charge bonus. how much your (non-counter) attack value is increased on the turn you move into an enemy's zone of control. lances have great charge bonuses, and charge bonuses are doubled by being mounted.
as you research weapons you shouldn't necesarrily get better attack values. you should get move varied and specialised weapons like longswords, pikes and greatswords. attack is more increased by strength, enchanted weapons and experience. a better longsword still has the reach and mobility of a longsword.
these kind of mechanics are implementable, but there are also alot of them (that's why many games would conceal them under the hood, though you don't have to). but crucially, they do what people expect them to, so they don't need to be understandable.
when it comes to terrain, the argument i was making is that it will always be tough to do properly when we're confined to an orthogonal grid system at a tiny resolution where all units are the same size. even if you put the terrain bonus tile in the middle of the battlefield, it DOESN'T create interesting tactics. the player just thinks "i will be going first, so i can move into the fence on my second turn, so i will win." because the grid system is so crude, the player can instantly work out what will happen several turns in advance. tactical thinking REQUIRES complexity so that the resolution CAN'T be calculated in advance, so the player (or AI) has to make a JUDGEMENT call - just like in the strategy part of the game. because the movement system is so coarsely graded and lacks all randomisation, it will never be possible to design a map where it isn't immediately apparent to the player what to do. if terrain as it is is significant than it either assigns a random advantage to one team based on their start location, or gives the player an "auto-win" button against the AI.
the new combat system will, if i recall, establish an initiative system instead of players moving all their units in the same turn. that might help in adding strategy, especially if there is an element of randomisation. that way the player can have a reasonable guess that he will reach the fence first and can make a judgement call to make a run for it and risk exposing himself, but he can't be certain.
With the mechanics of the game as it is, it doesn't matter if you have a "strategic choke point" and put your spearmen in it so they can't be flanked and present a wall of spears to any attacker. because there would be no flanking advantage anyway, and the units just take turns to attack and counter attack. it generally doesn't matter whether you attack all at once or together, the damage done is always the same in the end. facing, flanking and reach are your best shot at making terrain worthwhile, not assigning a random bonus to a certain tile.
Sethai, that is the best thought out write-up I've seen on ideas on improving the tactical combat - the thought of playing combat as you describe it would be awesome.
If Stardock can take a look at those suggestions, and see where/when implementation of mechanics such as these can be made, it would make for a much more engaging experience. Maybe this is more expansion material, it seems like a fair bit of work and testing to implement well - but putting some of those suggestions into the game be a dramatic change for the better.
The community is full of awesome suggestions - if Stardock can implement the best ones a few at a time, make the AI aware of them, and get it running smoothly (thorough testing) - I can see the Elemental platform incrementally developing to a better and better state. The game is already fun to play - but with steady improvement, it has the potential to become a classic.
Realism can help make a system more intuitive, but it is really not necessary at all. Most space 4x game have combat which supports completely unrealistic weapons and tactics, yet these games can be highly intuitive. The truth is that a system only encompass a set of familiar rules, which Reality based rules are the most familiar. From the stand point of familiarity, the tactical combat in Elemental encompasses a set of familiar rules, but does not include some rules that the average player would probably expect. Thus the tactical combat is not really unintuitive, but the familiar tactics of the average user are not immediately implementable due to these missing familiar rules. Consider ZoC for example. This is not exactly a realistic mechanic and is not necessarily a standard rule for a fantasy setting. Many tactical fantasy games have no concept of a true ZoC, yet still allow for a rich and fulfilling tactical experience.
Yet, in general, a game being immediately intuitive is nice, but ultimately less important than either it being fun or generally engaging to the user. It is from this point of fun and engagement that tactical combat changes should be based, and honestly some of the suggested changes, like expanded terrain considerations or weapon reach, do not necessarily hit this mark. The most simple way of engaging the player is through real choice expansion.For instance, simply adding a block command to compliment the attack command or allowing units to sprint at the cost of not being able to attack. These types of changes would have a dramatic impact on how the game engages the player, as the player would be asked to contemplate his next action instead of simply being asked to pick how far to extend his weapon with respect to weapon reach.
The only thing I think that really would improve the tactical battles is unit initiative. Instead of simply maxing out weapons and armor and the size of the party, it will have more strategy knowing that lighter armor may even get two turns before a heavy armored unit gets a turn.
For example the decision of not max armoring archers in order to have more turns or higher initiative. Right now I just max armor everything because there is no advantage not to.
I said the only thing but I lied, also allow us to set the initial unit placement before battle begins.
Those 2 would make it SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much better and more interesting. Now how simply it is to do it with the programming I have no idea but these two would make it fun to battle without even changing anything else (except bugs of course like hang ups).
P.S. This would also open up the opportunity for possible ambushes (not allowing the defending army to set up units pre battle) and more magic spells affecting units' initiative.
Realism is pointless. Turn based combat is in itself an abstraction so you're forced to abstract further. A better guiding idea would be what makes for a fun and interesting game. Particularly since it's supposed to be a war of magic ..
@OP
Good ideas. Only problematic one is terrain. I'd agree it should be more influential on the battle, the problem is it's a fine balance to strike. Making it central incurs a risk of a player losing a battle purely because the terrain disadvantaged their army or handed their opponent an advantage, which if the player has no control over it can make it seem arbitrarily unfair.
I agree; it would be lame if either side randomly lost a battle due to unexpected terrain coming up. That's why I think the terrain should be determined by the two squares that the units design themselves in at the start of battle. So for example if you start in a swamp space and your enemy starts in a forest, then approximately half the battlefield (on the side that you start in) would be swampland, gradually becoming forest on the other side of the battlefield (where the enemy begins). This would turn the navigation of terrain not just into a tactical choice on the combat map but ALSO on the overland map. For example, "The city I'm attacking is located primarily in forest terrain... I better leave behind the archers and take lots of infantry on this one" or "my archers could defend this square much better if I elevated it to give them an attack bonus." (Casts Raise Terrain.)
While I do like a SMALL element of randomness, I think that should be limited to the occasional placement of some random element on the map, such as the carnivorous plant or healing monolith I mentioned earlier, perhaps a few standing stones or fallen tree that can be used as cover, etc. Too much randomness would totally screw up the tactical aspect that we're trying to achieve.
@ dabrownsrphat
Your initiative/armor idea is interesting (I'm not completely onboard yet but it's definitely intriguing enough that I like thinking about it). I spend a lot of time in my original post trying to explain how adding unique traits to weapons could lead to more interesting choices (and as Sid Meier once said, the key thing in strategy games is having multiple valid choices) but I completely neglected to mention armor. If we also gave some armor a unique trait (ie, leather armor has the "Light" trait, meaning you get an extra move with that unit sometimes) then those lead to an even more interesting tactical choices (for example, if you were using my weapon traits idea above, you could have fast units wearing leather armor and using "reach" weapons as hit-and-run skirmishers). And it would also make sense for archers to be lightly armored since you want them to be able to retreat from combat quickly.
i'm just saying that asking "what might happen" and basing your mechanics on that is probably better than basing them on the predictions of goats intestines. or whatever the alternatives are. i say realism, maybe common sense would convey what i mean better. either way, i'd rather someone criticise my actual ideas and say why they're flawed rather than my philosophy that combat mechanics that bear a passing resemblance to PEOPLE HITTING EACH OTHER will help people use the tactics that make sense to them, instead of gaming the system and working out that maneuvering and using terrain are basically pointless because of the lack of mechanics.
Because we're trying to limit our suggestions to things that are reasonable and fairly easy to program in order to increase the likelihood that the designers will actually TAKE our suggestions. Your ideas are great and I would love to see them in a game, but let's be honest, that level of realism isn't going to happen anytime soon.
Have you ever played Dwarf Fortress? Extremely realistic game if you can get over the lame graphics, to the degree that when a dwarf is hit by a pickaxe it actually calculates the point of impact, figures out which skin, muscle, and or bone areas are penetrated, and gives the dwarf crippling injuries based on that. You can build water traps that gradually flood a level based on the CPU's calculatation of the incline of the terrain. The trouble is that once your fortress grows to a certain degree it becomes extremely crippling to CPUs which can't handle that degree of processing power.
I don't get the feeling that your ideas are getting knocked because they're unappealing, just that we're all trying to give suggestions that would be realistic from the perspective of a programmer actually doing the work, whereas you're calling for a degree of change that would require actual magic in real-life to program.
Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic has good terrain. It has elevation, it has cover, and it has movement modifiers.
Remember though, Age of Wonder: SM is not only the third iteration of the AoW series, but also has an extremely different focus. As someone recently put it, AoW is designed to get you to tactical combat and to make tactical combat as interesting as possible. Fundamentally, AoW is a series of war games, where as Elemental has a war game element. If they spent the time and effort in Elemental to make tactical combat have all of these new systems, they would have little time to work on quests, cities, diplomacy, techs, dynasties, resources, etc. At the end of the day, all of these changes are not really even necessary to making tactical combat fun. Consider for a moment that Shining Force was a fun and engaging tactical game, but doesn't have anything even remotely resembling realism, complex terrain, facing, or cover. What it had was distinct units which all had specific combat roles with strengths and weaknesses, which promoted the use of combined arms. As it is currently, every unit in Elemental is fairly similar with only very slight distinctions between one weapon and the next. Thus, there is not reason not to simple rush to the hardest hitting weapon, and then just slug out combat until you are victorious.
I don't entirely buy this argument about Elemental. One problem I have with quests, is that the majority are combat related. Simplified combat really creates boring quests. It also creates boring boring strategies for me. In my games, I don't worry much distinctions since my characters tend to focus on melee. I get the heaviest armor and biggest weapon and wander the map. I don't know about other people, buy my sovereign is almost never in the home city but out trying to level bruiser style. If diplomacy made more sense (the current form of political capital really bugs me), if dynasties meant more and did more, if the terrain were interesting to explore, if building cities was more sim and less, "eh," to me, I might buy into it. Right now the game is just okay, but gets boring fast and feels empty. I can't remember the last time I ran it either since nothing new has turned up but mostly fixes. It's a game I really want to like, but just can't. To me, the Total War series from Shogun to Empire feel more fleshed out.
I hate to say it, but I agree rather strongly with Sethai. I think he makes some valid points. Even if we could mod in ideas mentioned, how would one mod the AI to not act like a jug-eared goob? I think this is all a hold over from excessively combat mechanics like what is in GC II. Why Brad appears to prefer very simple combat mechanics for tactical battles in games, I don't know.
Total nonsense!
King Arthur's battles have all the features that Sethai has described:
- different kinds of terrain on the tactical map where different units have different modifiers: light infantry is strong in swamps while cavalry/heavy infantry is weak, faery units are strong and fast in forest, heavy armored units fight better in the open...
- you can (you'd better actually!) change the disposition of your troops before battle
- you can order your units to change formation according to situation: loose = fast and less prone to arrow-damage, tight is better to fight, wall-like is better to surround an enemy unit...
- units have passive and active abilities: cavalry can charge (it's somewhat buggy and not well-implemented but the idea is here), pikers are armor-piercing, some high-morale units are fearless,... and you can choose some more when the units get enough experience
- attack bonus when flanking enemy exist, as bonus when attacking with 2-3 units from different directions. Facing has meaning.
It can become a little confuse once the units are fighting (because they can't disengage until they have either died or killed the opposing unit) but it really mimicks what a real battle would be. And it's much FUN, particularly with the commanding knights and their magic spells.
How long should we hear things like "It's too complex" or "It can't be done" or "It wouldn't be fun" or "The engine can't do it"?If some unknown studio can put out such mecanisms and have them work fairly easily and without much hassle, it's our duty to tell Stardock to be at least on par, be there turn-based or pausable real-time battles.
Much more tiles, fortifications of cities, different terrain, real tactics, epicness.. WE WANT THEM!
Here is a screenshot by the way. (and it's no disrespect to post it since I bought the game on Impulse). I really think there are many cool ideas in this game that could improve Elemental (and not only the battles).
I think I'm going to be sick from all the butt licking and brown nosing in that ^ post.
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