Elemental Beta 3 Walkthru » Forum Post by Frogboy

Great update! Like it!

2. A tough unit (i.e. your sovereign) should not be going around founding cities. You should have to secure the area first. NPCs and Creatures are going to become far more hostile in subsequent betas (in case you wondered why so many NPCs are wandering around, in Beta 1/2 they’re neutral. In Beta 3 they’ll start claiming unprotected cities as part of their new kingdom and monsters will start to target nearby defenseless units).

By any chance that Monsters will claim unmprotected (or outright attack) cities, so it become their new lairs? This will make the world even more 'living'

Instead, players will be able to maintain N enchantments where N is based on the caster’s essence.

When I've N enchangement & N essence, when I then used up 1 essence which enchangment will be lost? Is there an opportunity for player to choose which enchantment is lost?

Mana Regeneration is a player stat rather than a unit stat and defaults to 1 per turn.

What other factors affect the rate of "Mana Regeneration"?

Moving a tactical tile uses 1 tactical point. Casting a spell uses 1. Attacking uses 1.

How Tactical point is acquired?

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With Brad's mention regarding the Limited Edition, whats the deadline for pre-ordering it? As I understand it, they will only be making enough to cover the pre-orders. I've pre-ordered the basic edition, and I'll admit I've been sitting on the fence in regards to preordering the Limited Edition. Having access to beta 3 will probably push me over in my decision making process, and I'll admit a taste of the game will largely factor into that decision. That's not to say I don't plan on contributing my fair share of feedback/bug reports, but I do have some personal self interest in seeing the beta build as well .

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Tactical battles are designed to be quite short. Our goal is to have them default to being over in less than 3 minutes. However, we hope (though no promises by release) to make a scaling option so that these can be extended or shortened at player request.

This part I'm not too sure about. Everything in Elemental Screams "EPIC", but 3 minute battles? That's quite Anti-Climactic, especially if you've worked all game to raise a Massive Army to have a grand Last Battle. It wouldn't feel very "Grand" or "Epic" if it was cut short for arbitrary time reasons.

I say let the battles flow Organically. By this I mean let them take as long or as short as they need to (For Single Player). If that battle only takes 3 turns to win or loose, then so-be-it. If the battle draws out to take 20 Turns, so-be-it. Don't forget that the player can hit "Auto Resolve" at Any Time, right? If I manage to work hard and get a huge army of 20,000 Soldiers marching on my enemies last capitol, and they have a large amount of soldiers, I'd like the battle to be glorious....not over in 3 minutes.

For Multi-Player, That's When You Should Limit the Time of Battles. Why? Because unless it's only a 2 player game someone will be waiting around. In those cases then yes, battles need to be over rather quickly to keep players from losing interest and leaving the game.

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I think he says by "default". So there will be massive battles, but not by default. Like in MoM : in the end game, even massive battles were quite short (3 minutes can be a long time)

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Quoting Rogue Knight,

reply 63

Sounds like you guys are continuing to make great progress on the game and are incorporating lots of great changes!

It may be a bit premature to question this choice (since we don't have the Tactical Combat system yet to play around with), but I'm really baffled as to why the "combat speed" stat would control movement in combat as well as number of attacks/spells cast. All of the units will already have a separate "movement" stat that controls their movement on the overland map. The "movement" stat tells you how quickly the unit may travel over a physical distance . . . why not use this as the movement stat in combat as well?? "Combat speed" seems like the perfect stat to use for number of attacks/spells, but it doesn't make sense to have it also control combat movement.

Simple example: a mounted unit is fast and should be able to cover more ground on the tactical battle map than an infantry unit. But that shouldn't also allow the mounted unit to attack 2x or 4x more often than an infantry unit. Combining number of attacks and combat movement into a single stat combines two very different and unrelated concepts in a bizarre and unintuitive way . . .

Yep, I too don't understand why a caster with a sword (with +1attack Speed) should be able to cast more spells than if he doesn't have a sword. And why someone with a swords could move faster than someone without one.

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joasoze

Join Date 02/2006

+39

This game is progressing fast now. I just hope they get some CTD crashes fixed soon. I have not been able to play the game for the last two versions. Have reported my problems and given crash files.

Its incredible if they can get this game out in two months. Still, I expect that they will have lots of stuff to do in patches. Go Stardock!

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Waves hand...re: threshold for tactical battles.

Sorry for the big and bold, I think this is important.

The thresholds either need to be adjustable during the game, or they need to be able to be set as a percentage of total units, not a set number.

There is already an option for that, and it doesn't require a restart when changed.

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3 mins is longer than you think.

The Tactical battles in SoTS also last about 3 mins and sometimes even they can drag a bit (usually when people start fleeing.)

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Players set a threshold of how many units need to be involved on both sides in order to bring up the tactical battle screen. So it’s quick battle automatically until that threshold is met.

I would much prefer a different method of Auto Resolving.

With strategy games in the past, I have always given up on auto resolved battles, as about the most anoying thing is taking casualties in a fight you could have won better yourself. If there is a threshold, I will end up setting it to tactical battles whenever there is at least one unit on each side.

I'm especially interested in battles such as 'a few heroes vs an army' or 'an army vs a dragon'.

So, instead of making a threshold about how big the battle is, instead bias the auto resolve to deal with the battles that are boring. For each battle that is about to happen, work out what the auto-resolve results would be, and then, when the player is comitted to the battle, let them either accept the auto-resolve result (eg have a button that says 'win with 10% casulties', or 'lose with 80% casualties'), or to actually fight the battle themselves.

This way, players get to auto-resolve the fights that are prety much fore gone conclusions, and fight the interesting ones, where tactical changes make a difference.

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Quoting ,

quoting post

When Elemental is released on August 24th, that is really only the beginning for it. Stardock, as an independent studio and publisher, has the luxury of being able to decide what it works on and the world of Elemental is where we plan to stay for a long while. There is so much that is possible to do.

And yet, some people ony cares about their orcs and elves.
So... Elemental MMO? (Elemental Societies? Channelers Online? World of Elemental?...) Elemental RPG? (Elemental Nights? Elemental Siege? Channeler Age?...) Elemental Adventures? (The Secret of Elemental Island? Simon the Channeler? Day of the Pentacle?...) The Elemental Machine?

#1 Random Maps are in. Yes. Finally, we have finally made available the random maps. The random maps in Elemental use seed maps that we craft ourselves and then randomize them up. [Originally our random maps were created fractally and while this may work well in a traditional strategy game, it does not work so well in a game like Elemental because of the vital need for choke points and “fantasy” stylings we had in mind. So we worked on the randomized map generation until we got something we liked except that each map took approximately 5 minutes to generate. It’s something we’ll probably release in the future still.]

[5 minutes... is it creating the universe or what? ]

Most spells won’t require a shard (the most powerful ones will, the big game ender types will).
Controlling a shard increases a player’s essence ability (i.e. mana cap increased).

Can we get a list of things that make Essence the super stat? After so much change I must say that I'm not sure if it's so special anymore. maybe it has become a regular extra stat?

Spells can be queued up for learning.

Queued? That's... a weird concept for spell learning?

Taking a city means taking a city. The map will include houses, buildings, etc. If the city has city walls and such, it’s even tougher.

The day we can battle for each section of the city (canon or mod, preferably canon), that day is going tobe epic. Meanwhile, sounds very good to me that city tactical battles are to be more interesting.

Tactical battles are designed to be quite short. Our goal is to have them default to being over in less than 3 minutes. However, we hope (though no promises by release) to make a scaling option so that these can be extended or shortened at player request.

I still remember those 1+ hour battles planned... Does that mean that massive armies are supposed to last in battle as much as a bunch of punks? (with no scaling available) As long as the result is fun, I won't mind how, but somehow had an expectation of the biggest armies taking more real time to resolve their battles against similar enemies.

Special Unit Abilities. As players go up in levels, they eventually can choose special abilities such as Swiftness, Superb Range, Alchemy, Arch Mage, Famous, Berzerk, First Strike, Extreme Endurance, Epic Leadership, Greater Courage, and on and on and on and on…

Very good news.

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Quoting Cauldyth,

reply 27

quoting post
Tactical battles are designed to be quite short. Our goal is to have them default to being over in less than 3 minutes. However, we hope (though no promises by release) to make a scaling option so that these can be extended or shortened at player request.

Pretty please! 3 minutes seems a little short for my tastes, but maybe that's just an average corresponding to only a few units per side. I'd love to see major battles and city assaults that take 10-20 minutes to play out.

I absolutely agree.

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Argh...EGADS! [The forum is slow again. ]

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Tridus

Join Date 03/2008

+110

Quoting marlowwe,

reply 65

I'm a little worried about tactical battles. When I first heard about Elemental, tactical battles were one of the aspects of the game I was looking forward to the most. Last week I read that the auto-resolve feature will be (or try to be) as good as playing a tactical battle out. This disheartened me because, from a designer point of view, what is the point of having them in the game in the first place if you can auto-resolve for optimal results? I would change the tactical battles so that a player who was better at the game could always achieve a better result than auto-resolve - in other words auto-resolve would always be a sub-optimal option. This encourages the player to play a core part of the game. The fact that tactical battles are hard capped at 3 minutes was the nail in the coffin - I really hope this is changed as I think this totally makes the battles a cursory and irrelevant part of the game.

Isn't that just going to lead to people doing tactical battles in fights where they really shouldn't need to, just because auto-resolve is deliberately cripped and causing casualties that shouldn't exist?

That will just annoy people, and will turn into a knock against the game with it's "poor auto-resolve".

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Quoting Annatar11,

reply 14

Obviously you guys have been working on it for a while and are better judges, but a 2-3 minute battle seems less than tactical. As long as there's enough opportunity for beneficial unit control (meaning, not just charge the enemy head on), it should be good.

I too am very interested in this. 2-3 minute tactical battles would make sense for multi-player, but for single player when my army of thousands clash with their army of thousands, a 15 minute tactical battle should not be out of the ordinary.

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Quoting Tridus,

reply 88

Quoting marlowwe, reply 65I'm a little worried about tactical battles. When I first heard about Elemental, tactical battles were one of the aspects of the game I was looking forward to the most. Last week I read that the auto-resolve feature will be (or try to be) as good as playing a tactical battle out. This disheartened me because, from a designer point of view, what is the point of having them in the game in the first place if you can auto-resolve for optimal results? I would change the tactical battles so that a player who was better at the game could always achieve a better result than auto-resolve - in other words auto-resolve would always be a sub-optimal option. This encourages the player to play a core part of the game. The fact that tactical battles are hard capped at 3 minutes was the nail in the coffin - I really hope this is changed as I think this totally makes the battles a cursory and irrelevant part of the game.
Isn't that just going to lead to people doing tactical battles in fights where they really shouldn't need to, just because auto-resolve is deliberately cripped and causing casualties that shouldn't exist?

That will just annoy people, and will turn into a knock against the game with it's "poor auto-resolve".

Can you give me an example of a fight which a player "shouldn't need" to fight? I think I know which ones you mean, but I think it would be best if you gave an example.

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Quoting Tridus,

reply 88

Quoting marlowwe, reply 65I'm a little worried about tactical battles. When I first heard about Elemental, tactical battles were one of the aspects of the game I was looking forward to the most. Last week I read that the auto-resolve feature will be (or try to be) as good as playing a tactical battle out. This disheartened me because, from a designer point of view, what is the point of having them in the game in the first place if you can auto-resolve for optimal results? I would change the tactical battles so that a player who was better at the game could always achieve a better result than auto-resolve - in other words auto-resolve would always be a sub-optimal option. This encourages the player to play a core part of the game. The fact that tactical battles are hard capped at 3 minutes was the nail in the coffin - I really hope this is changed as I think this totally makes the battles a cursory and irrelevant part of the game.
Isn't that just going to lead to people doing tactical battles in fights where they really shouldn't need to, just because auto-resolve is deliberately cripped and causing casualties that shouldn't exist?

That will just annoy people, and will turn into a knock against the game with it's "poor auto-resolve".

Can you give me an example of a fight which a player "shouldn't need" to fight? I think I know which ones you mean, but I think it would be best if you gave an example.

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Quoting Thiryn,

reply 83

3 mins is longer than you think.

The Tactical battles in SoTS also last about 3 mins and sometimes even they can drag a bit (usually when people start fleeing.)

Sword of the Stars is not a valid game for comparison, especially since the 3 minutes is a hard limit in the options (which can easily be extended). The way its system works is battles can easily last 30+ minutes when you've got hundreds of ships constantly reinforcing.

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Seems great! Not sure about the slots for enhancements but we'll see....

I'm much more concerned over a possible "slippery slope stack of doom" that the differential of combat ratings may turn into. Why have several small armies all around the map when the enemy who got 1 big army will steamroll you and get bonuses as well??

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Tridus

Join Date 03/2008

+110

Quoting marlowwe,

reply 91

Can you give me an example of a fight which a player "shouldn't need" to fight? I think I know which ones you mean, but I think it would be best if you gave an example.

My Sovereign + 10 peasants against your 3 peasants. In a tactical battle, I'm probably not going to lose any units in a fight that lopsided. In a good auto-resolve, the same thing happens. In a bad auto-resolve (either becaues it's just inaccurate or because it was deliberately designed to be inaccurate) it charges my units in one by one and I lose units for no good reason.

This kind of thing happens all the time in games with both auto resolve and tactical battles, usually because getting auto resolve right isn't easy (especially in games that use shortcuts to save CPU time like AoW). Deliberately screwing it up so I have to manually control every fight is just going to slow the game down.

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Quoting marlowwe,

reply 65

I'm a little worried about tactical battles. When I first heard about Elemental, tactical battles were one of the aspects of the game I was looking forward to the most. Last week I read that the auto-resolve feature will be (or try to be) as good as playing a tactical battle out. This disheartened me because, from a designer point of view, what is the point of having them in the game in the first place if you can auto-resolve for optimal results? I would change the tactical battles so that a player who was better at the game could always achieve a better result than auto-resolve - in other words auto-resolve would always be a sub-optimal option. This encourages the player to play a core part of the game. The fact that tactical battles are hard capped at 3 minutes was the nail in the coffin - I really hope this is changed as I think this totally makes the battles a cursory and irrelevant part of the game.

Autoresolve is what AI uses against AI, therefore it should be the best possible (Frogboy vs Frogboy). A bad player would benefit more from Autoresolve than going tactical. A normal player (same level as Frogboy) should notice not difference (not actually true, as Tactical control could change which casualties, possible retreats...). A good player will get no real use of Autoresolve if he wants to maximize victory (skill superior to that of Frogboy).

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Tridus

Join Date 03/2008

+110

double post

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Questions about the tactical battle setup, is there a "Unit" limit for the battles or is it just going to scale the maps appropriately? 3 minutes to complete battles? Really? I'd be fairly disappointed to amass an army and end up in a large conflict with thousands on both sides only to have it end in.... 3 minutes. It makes me feel like there's going to be a lack of thought involved in the tactical battles, rather than planning out the conflict you can just throw your guys in and it'll be over just like that.

This of course assumes we'll actually be able to recruit groups of units of a substantial size eventually. I intend to pretty much play exclusively on the obnoxiously large maps offered via the 64-bit version eventually, it's logical that conflicts on those campaigns would escalate to these epic proportions, even if your army of thousands is composed entirely of groups of 10 guys, in a world that large it should be possible to amass that.

I was so hoping this battle system wouldn't just be another HOMM setup, oh well. Everything else about the game sounds/is amazing and everything I was hoping for. I was even having a bit of FUN playing your evil horrible broken painful beta

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The game is shaping up just as good as i hoped. Stardock deserves a big thumbs up on this work. It's nice to see a company that actually has a good head on it's shoulders .

"Players set a threshold of how many units need to be involved on both sides in order to bring up the tactical battle screen. So it’s quick battle automatically until that threshold is met."

Just be sure to put that dragon creature dude as counting more than 1 unit if you get my drift.

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Quoting Tridus,

reply 94

Quoting marlowwe, reply 91
Can you give me an example of a fight which a player "shouldn't need" to fight? I think I know which ones you mean, but I think it would be best if you gave an example.
My Sovereign + 10 peasants against your 3 peasants. In a tactical battle, I'm probably not going to lose any units in a fight that lopsided. In a good auto-resolve, the same thing happens. In a bad auto-resolve (either becaues it's just inaccurate or because it was deliberately designed to be inaccurate) it charges my units in one by one and I lose units for no good reason.

This kind of thing happens all the time in games with both auto resolve and tactical battles, usually because getting auto resolve right isn't easy (especially in games that use shortcuts to save CPU time like AoW). Deliberately screwing it up so I have to manually control every fight is just going to slow the game down.

I don't think we're really disagreeing with each other - Wintersong has the right idea of what a proper auto-resolve feature looks like:

Autoresolve is what AI uses against AI, therefore it should be the best possible (Frogboy vs Frogboy). A bad player would benefit more from Autoresolve than going tactical. A normal player (same level as Frogboy) should notice not difference (not actually true, as Tactical control could change which casualties, possible retreats...). A good player will get no real use of Autoresolve if he wants to maximize victory (skill superior to that of Frogboy).

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