Stats

Now, one of the main troubles I see with stats is that they are very, very, VERY dull at this point in time. You grab dexterity for that extra 10% bonus to your defence, strength for that extra 10% bonus to your attack, constitution for that extra +whatever to your health. They're really yawn worthy in design, a purely linear evolution that only effects a single thing in the entire game.

My concept is to, instead, rewrite the current system to make stats effect a greater bit of sovereign design, instead of the currently simplistic character creation.

An idea on how stats should work:

Out of Combat / World Map / In Cities:-

• Strength - Should allow you to equip heavier items. I'll get to this later in the items section. I'm not sure what else strength CAN do. Maybe have certain "skill checks" in quests, and one of them is strength if you select a certain option?
• Intelligence - Bonus to research in any city the character is currently in, (perhaps in percentage?) gives a larger mana pool, increases effect of spells and (possibly) increases essence.
• Charisma - Gives the player the ability to recruit characters (including armies) cheaper, as well as allowing them to recruit more champions and field a larger army. I'd suggest a champion per three charisma, and maybe ten troops per charisma. Maybe have certain champions require a certain charisma. Diplomacy should also be granted a bonus from this. Gets rid of the concept of charisma being a "dump stat". Again, I'll add in the concept of "skill checks" in quests.
• Dexterity - What CAN this do outside combat? Maybe stop characters from tripping over any rocks left laying about? I really don't know. Possibly increase movement speed out of combat by a small amount?
• Willpower - Affects regen of mana (like it is now), aids in diplomatic battles (it is a battle of wills, after all), increases resistance to any mind altering effects that may be in game and decreases enemy's chance to resist your spells. This is probably as underloved as dexterity is. Any ideas?
• Constitution - First off, before anything else, let me DEFINITELY say this should effect essence. Constitution is your life force, binding it to essence in some way ( I don't really know how ) would make a lot of sense, as well as harming warrior types who are capable of, at the moment, just spending essence willy nilly as an useless resource because using it doesn't harm them like it harms mages. Okay, now that's over with, I'd suggest constitution effects health, poison resistance, equippable items and movement outside of combat (possibly altered by dexterity). At the moment, constitution is another dump stat. You put points in it where they don't have anywhere else to go. If it was to boost essence, movement, equippable items and health, then you'd have a far greater incentive to put stats in it. Oh, and I'd suggest renaming it Endurance, if it's going to effect movement speed too.

In Combat:-

• Strength - Bonus to damage based off weapon used. More on that later.
• Intelligence - Spell damage increased from intelligence.
• Charisma - A morale system would be nice, but we'll have to see when we get tactical battles. Amount of units a character can lead into a battle, maybe? If a morale system is in, maybe have it effect the morale of the troops as a finite resource? Say, 10 troops is the max a charisma of 1 can lead effectively, and over that they begin to doubt their leader?
• Dexterity - Movement speed in combat, accuracy (ie chance of hitting) of attacks (don't make it overly necessary, just useful enough to enjoy having), increases damage done by "piercing" weapons in addition to strength. Possible chance to "dodge" attacks, reduced by armour?
• Willpower - Effects the "energy / fatigue" of the unit. A new concept that means that massively powerful units can EVENTUALLY be overran by a massive army. Imagine you've got a dragon against a horde of spearmen. Without fatigue, it'll probably beat them no matter what. With, it'll eventually run out of juice and either have to flee (possibly with a chance to die) or attack and be backed up by others. Effects chance of resisting spells and increases the mental fortitude of the character.
• Constitution / possibly Endurance - Effects the "energy / fatigue" of the unit, as seen above. Should also effect health.

That's pretty much it for stats. Maybe they're not fully fleshed out (including the maths, I'd need to know a min and a max in terms of stats for that) but you get the concept.

As an addendum to the above, stat growth should never, ever be linear. You'll get super specialised (ie. in one stat) champions that dominate that specific field and are useless in the rest. This might not sound like a terrible thing to everyone else, but it truly annoys me when the best method for growing a character is to just give them one stat. Stat cost should either increase (might not work with the current system) or bonuses should decrease (ie. going from 1 intelligence to 2 increases it more than 10 to 11, and not just in terms of percentage either). This might not be the method Stardock wants to go down, and that's perfectly reasonable, but I think it'd work the best in any system you could think of.

Comments / criticism / opinions / ideas of your own? Needs more input.

Character Design

Character design is, again, rather disappointing. I like the sovereign appearance customisation, that's quite a bit of fun to miss around with, but creation and further design is rather dull. This might all be addressed in Beta 3A (or whenever we're getting sovereign skill trees), but you never know, so here're my two pence.

The points I'd like to address is the original "profession" of the sovereign (and what it should effect), the role of stats in creation and design and the bonuses and negatives.

In the current build professions do very little except add a minor bonus, and those bonuses vary vastly in terms of effect and usefulness. If the skill trees are effected by the sovereign's original profession then that's fine, but if they're not they need a massive overhaul. One of the best suggestions I've seen is that sovereigns gain experience / essence from actions associated with their profession. The more mines a miner builds, the more essence and experience he gains (exponentially increasing, of course, x^n, where n is the number of mines that player has built and still has control of). A warrior gains a bonus to experience gained from combat, a warlord gains experience / essence from the number of wins his troops gain, a bard gains it from how prestigious his cities are, a royal gains it from how many people he has control over etc etc. You should probably give sovereigns an innate xp per turn, too, and just applies these things as a bonus to it.

I think that deserves it's own thing, actually. Definitely give sovereigns xp per turn, no matter what. Really, this is uber important. Sovereigns should get experience per turn.

Anyhow, the bonuses and negatives should be effected by statistics. If I have an intelligence of 15, I don't believe I should be able to take the negative "Stupid", and similarly if I have an intelligence of 5 I don't think I should be able to take Organised or Brilliant. Not only doesn't it make any sense, but it also allows for hyper specialised builds that don't lose anything from their choices. Organised should require an intelligence of 10 or 12 maybe, to force players to make tradeoffs in order to take the especially useful bonuses. (And, no, those 10 points don't really count, considering I can get 15 from lowering my sovereign's intelligence to 5.)

I think that's pretty much all I have on character design. Comments / criticism / opinions / ideas of your own?

Items

Items need a major reworking. The entire system is just buggered. There's a single statistic for attack and defence, and it doesn't even take into account dexterity as an offensive statistic. Also, most (ie. almost all) weapons become useless when you unlock one higher up the tech tree. I don't believe, personally, that's how it should work.

Weapons

I think I'll address weapons first. Let's assume that weapons have two "statistics" in the real world, piercing ability and slashing / smashing (completely different, but similar enough to group together) ability. It'd be possible to break it up into slashing, piercing and smashing, but if we're going in that direction we might as well go for slashing, smashing, chopping, piercing, hacking etc.

Piercing weapons are mainly used to damage internal organs or cause major bleeding, whilst slashing / smashing weapons are used to break bones or cut off limbs. Piercing is more of a "critical hit" weapon system (ie. double to quadruple damage on certain rolls, multiple rolls used when a character gets a critical hit?), whilst slashing / smashing are more direct HP damage.

Weapons such as rapiers, daggers, arrows are piercing weapons whilst axes, battle hammers, bastard swords are slashing / smashing weapons. Short/longswords are capable of doing either (although piercing to a lesser degree), and weapons such as morning stars and flails do both.

Each weapon is effected by a combination of skill (dexterity) and strength (strength). The effects these have on user's attacks vary considerably between weapons. Skill mainly effects piercing weapons (rapiers, daggers, bows), whilst strength mainly effects smashing / slashing weapons (axes, battle hammers, bastard swords). However, this wouldn't work the same as the current multiplier system, as that just annoys me personally.

To see where I'm going with this, we have to use a few examples.

A dagger is a piercing weapon which is mainly effect by skill. It gains a minor (+1% damage per strength, maybe?) bonus from strength, but it's major bonus comes from the skill of the user (+2% chance of a critical hit per dexterity point and maybe additional damage on critical hits). In contrast, a battle hammer is a smashing weapon which is mainly effected by strength. It gains a minor or no bonus from dexterity (possibly no chance at all of a critical hit?) whilst it gains a major bonus from strength (+5% damage per strength). An axe would be similar to the battle axe, but would gain a lesser bonus from strength (+3% damage per strength) whilst gaining a small bonus from skill (+0.5% chance of a critical hit per dexterity point).

To see weapons within the exact same category, have a look at crossbows and longbows. Crossbows are useful for hordes of untrained peasants (Go Empires!), as they have a high base piercing damage (20 damage or something like that, wow!) and a fairly large range but gain absolutely no bonus from strength and only a minor accuracy bonus from dexterity. In contrast, longbows have a far lower base damage (5 damage, sad face), but gain a massive range or damage bonus from strength (+5% damage per point, +0.5 squares in tactical combat per point) as they're capable of pulling the string back farther and a large accuracy bonus from dexterity.

That's pretty much it. This is the part I've spent the least attention to, and probably deserves the most attention in game. A damage system like this is one of the major things the game is missing.

Armour

Armour, like weapons, currently has a single statistic. In my opinion, this isn't right. Along with any elemental / magical damage you gents are planning, there really should be more than one statistic, otherwise it just doesn't make much sense.

As an example, take chainmail and platemail armour. Chainmail protects a great deal from slashing / smashing damage (maybe not smashing as much, but it certainly helps more than flesh and can withstand more than platemail armour can) whilst being fairly weak against piercing. Chainmail is therefore more useful against hordes of swordsmen than it is against arrows, whilst restricting movement less than platemail. Platemail protects nicely against slashing / smashing (only slightly higher / lower, depending on whether or not you want to simulate platemail crumpling under the weight of a blow which can cause damage / restrict breathing), whilst being extremely protective against piercing damage. It does, however, restrict movement a LOT, meaning wearers are very, very slow in combat.

If you want to fit leather armour etc into this, they should be capable of good movement (faster than chainmail or platemail) whilst still offering minor protection (against archers mainly). More back lines / fast movement sort of gear.

I can't think of any other ideas for armour, but I think you all get the jist of it.

Comments / criticism / opinions / ideas of your own?

Final Word

I really am enjoying the beta (even if the heat problems are annoying ) and hope to see it evolve and be ready for release. I also really want some criticism / comments on my ideas, no matter how harsh they may seem. If it's a lack of maths though, screw you guys, I'm too lazy to invent an entire system without any context to really slot it into, since the entire beta is evolving so fast.

Comments / criticism / opinions / ideas of your own?