When I came by two years ago and said that Elemental was too bland, I did so because it was a game solely involving differently-hued humans fighting over some huts. It didn't really have anything to do with the AI or bugs or the core gameplay, it was the setting that needed the most help. That's exactly what people were hoping that Kael would bring with him from Fall from Heaven. We wanted a game where a race of fire-breathing golems were fighting against a kingdom of sentient spells in a floating castle while dragon people marched in from the sea to escape the deep ones in their underwater cities. After two years and Kael's involvement we got... another game where differently-hued humans were fighting over some huts.
A fantasy 4X is the perfect opportunity to be, well, fantastic. Weird and amazing and more variety than one could shake a stick at. Kael nailed that with FFH2, so we know he's got it in him!
Of course, it's not too late to add the weird and amazing and variety. I wouldn't have any complaint about buying addons for extra races, units, and features like flying, subterranean, or aquatic cities, because those things add the variety the game so desperately needs.
But this not a question for the forum but for a place like Steam where most players are.
As far as OP, I agree with him. I was hoping FE would have more difference with factions. I am sick of using clubs or spears at start no matter who I choose. The fire elemental faction should not use weapons at all, the ogre factions should use tree trunks or throw rocks and so on.
One of the things I argued over FE's evolution was that, if we accepted the devs' word that there were technical problems in adding more races and models, then FE should have at least compensated by surpassing MoM in other areas, specifically: magic.
Which, unfortunately, didn't happen (I think actually FE went in the opposite direction, with a somewhat anemic and overly random kind of magic, more based on spreadsheet-logic than fantastical effects). The game may be good and will improve but it never even DARED to shoot for greatness, imho
Everything is rigged to the same skeleton, lower bodies use the monster skeletons instead (the hybrids are effectively permanently mounted on their lower body). Animations are slightly modified in some places, but mostly I just used what was already in game. If you equip boots on a halfspider it will be equipped, you'll get the bonus, but no 3d graphics will appear.
It's not perfect. Far from it. But it works well enough considering I'm the only one doing 3d stuff at the moment.
A follow-up 64 bit version of Fallen Enchantress would make it possible to add the diversity most people want. Only then will we the devs be able to address enough memory for all the different models and textures.
One of the drawbacks of player designed units imo is that it allows you build mostly the same units no matter what faction you are playing. This might be realistic; the factions are basically just differently hued humans, why wouldn't they copy effective combinations? But it does remove any sense of cultural identity when you can build the same knights, no matter if you are playing Tarth, or Kraxis, or Magnar.
Predesigned units would help make factions more unique, but it would also limit the players ability to adapt to different situations and pidgeonhole them in a predetermined strategy.
I would suggest you try to add more unique units and more faction specific traits, as long as you are able to balance them so that most wouldn't either only be useful during a certain phase of the game, or so overpowered you should only use them rather than regular units.
Kael, please pay special attention to the emboldened suggestions above. Many of the game's current mechanics can be tailored to the individual races and factions with very little effort.
yes to both posters' points!
No need to sacrifice customization for variety.
You can just take the other route: instead of visual variety, make it skills/abilities variety.
I don't mind all Mage use same model with different color pallete, as long as Necromancer have different skills/abilities/spells/stats than Druids.
I may not do a lot of customizing, but it's there and I know it's there, which is one of the features that drew me to this game. So no, I'm not willing to let it go nor trade it for stock units.
I agree completely with the OP.
To be honest, I dont really care about the background lore, so to me Elemental is basically 8 slightly different skinned human factions. For this type of 4x game, it is far more important to have radical faction difference and unit differences or the gameplay suffers. I would sacrifice custom units in a heartbeat if it meant that each faction had their own unique units with special abilities. In a fantasy setting, the use of different races per faction instantly gives each race a unique feel, and adds huge amounts of replay value, as well as making for interesting opponents to fight. It doesnt just apply to units. You could have had different factions have completely different sets of buildings, or make use of resources in different ways.
I greatly enjoyed customising my spaceships in Galciv2, both for cosmetic reasons, and because the missiles/lasers/mass drivers game mechanic worked well. I dont think the same mechanic really works in a fantasy setting, and its a real shame that unit unique abilities were sacrificed for this.
I think Elemental would have had far wider mainstream appeal if it had gone with a multi-racial high fantasy faction setup, but I guess I will have to hope the modding community can come up with something more to my taste.
I would gladly give up player designed units for more variety. I suspect most players have their favorite builds and just recreate them every game.
FE is not like most space 4X games where shields stop mass drivers but melt to beam weapons. I don't see FE as a game where you "react" to what the opponent is building.
Besides unique units are the key to faction differentiation.
I know this problem. I have it with books. Aside the story, its always only paper and letters. So boring...
All bad jokes aside... are you all really that conservative? Not bored of the same high fantasy settings again and again? Elves, orcs, dwarfs.... i mean THIS would be boring. Sure, more unique units would be cool. But pls, no elves, dwarfs etc.
Oh yes please!!!
I'm unsure. I'd definitely give up some things for visual AND gameplay variety.
Examples of things I'd give up:
separate armor pieces
some magical equipment
-those two things are pains
I'd want to control promotions, weapons, suits of armor.
I think the level of customization in GC2 was great, but it doesn't work as well in FE.
Yes
I don't think we need to lose custom units. Several small things can be done to make units unique while retaining unit design. Besides how would we make custom faction without custom units?
1. More unit traits tied to race and faction traits. Some ideas here.
2. Reducing trait spaces on units to 2 from 3, so that units can't do everything at once.
3. Some minor graphical changes to armor. Every unit currently looks the same in armor. I know this takes up memory and time but there are some small things you could do that would make a big difference.
i) Add helmet decorations tied to race. These would be simple art assets that would be added to helmets in the artdefs. Like feathers, horns, horsetails, and Roman crests. So for example all Ironner helmets would gain viking horns.
ii) Changing the skins on armor so they change more in relation to faction colors.The color of your armour needs to vary much more depending on your faction. It needs to be in your face.
iii) Changing fallen leather armor so it isn't the same style as kingdom, ie Hellenic. Remove the leather strip skirt and replace it with something different.
iv) Vary armor art among the races/modeltypes slightly. So maybe Kraxis keeps the leather skirt but the other fallen lose it. Make trog armor more bestial through small things like skins changes or adding some sort of decoration.
4. More powerful and noticeable blood traits.
I wish there was a bigger difference in size between the different troop models available now. Currently the fact that Trog units are a fair bit larger then humans is barely noticeable. If we even had large and normal bodies that where noticeable different when in armor you could do a lot with that. You would really have to overemphasize it though so Trogs looked like ripped top heavy body builders. All the work put into making the model and armor models for large units is somewhat wasted.
Not even remotely. I would pay for DLC to increase the flexibility of created units though, add more flavor to them and more unique faction units. I spent almost as much time in GalCiv2's ship creator as I did in the strategic part of the game. A large part of my love of GalCiv2 is how fun it was designing my own ships. And selling them (or giving them away) to minor factions so that they could have a fighting chance against the larger ones. Being an arms dealer was quite fun. You'd be amazed at what happens when you give a race of evil squirrels a super-titan.
Heavenfall, reading that gave me a mental image that possibly just made my entire day. I want to see a halfspider unit wearing boots. Not just one pair, but I want all the legs wearing boots.
Four different pairs of boots, too! (Or maybe only three. Do half-spiders have 6 legs or 8, if you do not count the arms as legs)
Half-Spiders have half the amount of legs right?...
~ K
Or, their legs are shorter. Rabid demonic spider dachshunds.
Yes, lets put that aside because it wasn't funny and was a terrible analogy. I like the way you insinuate I don't like reading either, thanks for that.
are you all really that conservative? Not bored of the same high fantasy settings again and again? Elves, orcs, dwarfs.... i mean THIS would be boring. Sure, more unique units would be cool. But pls, no elves, dwarfs etc.
At this point, moaning about Elves and Dwarves has become a tired cliche.
As you didnt seem to understand my point about the lore being meaningless for faction differentiation, I will explain it further: In the civ games, you can play as many different civilisations. Each Civ has detailed background, which a player can read if they are interested in the history, but it has no bearing on the actual in-game play of a civ. What makes the civ unique are their specific civ bonuses, their unique units and buildings, and the unique portraits/dialogue of the leaders. There is an extra resonance because they are all based on actual real life civilisations, so it doesnt matter that they are all human civs.
Now with Elemental, the lore again makes no difference at all for game mechanics. However, the different factions are reskinned humans, with access to the same gear and without unique abilities. Its boring, and offers minimal replay value.
Imagine if they had ditched customisable units and had instead given each race completely unique troops. Each faction could have had some radically different units, which offered special abilities that dramatically altered tactical battles. For example:
Wood Elves Faction Units:
Elven spearmen (mithril armour gives increased movement. Centuries of warfare means two attacks from massed spearmen ranks when defending)
Elven Archers (weak and light armour, so reduced hp. Increased range and damage from Elven longbows)
Treants (Massively tough, but slow unit. Can root one enemy unit every other turn)
Dryads (alluring mischievous sprites can confuse one unit per turn, hard to hit, but not physically powerful combatants)
Unicorn cavalry (increased damage on charge. Elite Maiden cavalry riders immune to charm spells)
Elven Druids (healing nature magic, call lightning from the sky)
Elven ballistae (Fires 2 Metre long bolts that pierce through units)
Mountain Dwarves Faction Units:
Dwarven Tunnelfighters (Wields Axes and massive Tower shields. Greatly increased toughness and damage resistance)
Dwarven berserkers (Frenzied dual wielders. Immune to all psychological effects, fear etc, attacks twice)
Dwarven riflemen (High damage range weapon, short range)
Dwarven Stoneshaper (Summon rock walls, earth elementals, protective stoneskin spells)
Dwarven siege tank (Massively tough unit, built in cannon)
Dwarven artillery (Long range, explosive blast radius from shells)
Thats just a quick list of different units, but playing with armies like that would feel hugely different, as well as looking completely different too. Of course there could be a detailed background story to each different race, but my point is that such lore is irrelevant to gameplay, and does not help with faction differentation.
My juggernauts cried when you wrote this...
That said, you might be halfway right, I still don't think unit customization should go, because I like customizing my units.BUT, if each faction had more... something on unit designs, umber faction trait tried, same with magnar, but you can't build an army around being vulnerable to cold damage (except trying to remedy this).
Meaby the solution would be more traits similar to "Light Plate", and "Master Archers".Another solution could lie in designing a ton-load of traits, and spreading them equally between the 10 races (10 begins to sound like a lot of races )
Sincerely~ Kongdej
I personally like the idea of unit traits being tied more closely to faction rather than losing unit customization altogether.
Also I agree with some folks who have stated that armor pieces are not really needed, that full sets would do just fine, with different variations on a theme.
I would love to have more uniqueness by sacrificing the customized unit creation.
The other thing that I feel should be said here is that "unit design" isn't really a set of tradeoffs, it's putting the best stuff that you have on the units you're sending out. I only make 3 types of units: pioneers, a heavy defense unit, and a series of ranged units, either archers or mages, depending on the availability of crystal. That's usually sufficient to win, and win big. It is, however, not very satisfying in terms of lore.
Predesigned units force negative attributes to be taken, which increases tactical depth. If I'm going to wait 8-9 turns for a unit to be built, I'm certainly not going to design it with weaknesses. As we consider whether or not to scrap unit customization, it would be worth having the discussion of what would balance unit customization.
One easy one I could see is that, the more materials, crystals, etc, a unit takes, the higher the probability that the creation of the unit gets a random negative trait on it assigned when the unit finishes building.
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