Runner1978

Join Date 02/2006

[moved] Where's the elements in Elemental?

Below you will find the original post. This thread has been moved to the ideas forum. I will try to keep track of the ideas posted so far in this first post.

Ideas so far:

Give monsters specific strenghtes and weaknesses (fire, ice, water, ...)
Give units specific strengthes and weaknesses based on the equipment they have (e.g. strong metal armor gives strong lightning weakness)
Give global elemental bonuses to units if appropriate shards are owned (units can be trained with +2 fire sward if owner has two fire shards)
Intriduce global spells, based on the elements and modify them based on owned shards

[original post]

I must admit that I feel disappointed with the (lack of) depth to the tactical combat and everything tied into it. Especially by the fact that the game doesn't contain what it had in it's title. The only presence the elements have in the game is 4 classes of linear bonuses you can get for some of your spells. That's it. The units don't have element specific weaknesses or strengths, even though it could be easily integrated with the designer: Give your men shiny metal armor and they would be very tough, but totally weak against lightning and cold. Give you men padded leather jackets under the armor and they'll be good against cold at least, but become very slow. And so on.

In the tactical combat there is no hiding behind walls (so far), archers are so weak it doesn't make sense to try to set up choke points to cover them, etc. The comparison with Age of Magic looks better for AoM.

Generally, there are also no other tie ins with the elements in the rest of the game. Or am I missing something?

I totally like the switch between cloth map and close view. I wish more/all strategy games had something like that.

elemental

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I have to agree here. The combat balance is totally shot, the shards are nearly useless, and magic in general is the same.

Lord Hammer units are easy to obtain almost immediately and are massively overpowered to the point of making my Sovereign obsoltete right away.

This game was at least 2 months of gameplay testing away from release. I don't even care about the crashes.

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There are several ongoing discussions about making both tactical combat and magic more fun Feel free to participate with your ideas!

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I agree. Don't just whinge, make suggestions. If your here saying this it means you paid for the game so tell the developers what you want and thus ye shall receive.

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Quoting MichaelCook,

reply 3

I agree. Don't just whinge, make suggestions. If your here saying this it means you paid for the game so tell the developers what you want and thus ye shall receive.

I believe I just did? I want balance. I want the things in the game to not be broken in terms of it's basic game mechanics. I just told them that.

I did pay for the game yes. I should have "received" on launch day. Ergo the Gamers Bill of Rights.

Feel free to tell me to "stop whining". I don't care, the game is incomplete and needs fixing. The OP and I posted several fixable issues in his post and my comment. After we did, you said that was "whining". Thanks.

Do I need to post the programming logic that I think should be used to fix the broken combat or to lower the power of the Lord Hammer for my complaints to be "valid"? Do I need to detail 20 ways to make shards useful? I don't think so. The game devs know all this already but the game was rushed out the door.

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I also just made very specific suggestions, about the different types of armor coming with different kinds of weaknesses.

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I agree, tactical battles, the world map, and even towns need to be affected more by elements. As far as not being ready for release in the game-play and balance area I never mind. It is really interesting watching things like this evolve and learning the changes step by step. I got SoaSE after both expansions and everything was "well balanced". Awesome game but not fun playing multi-player with people who have had years to practice the mechanics step by step. Balance is a hard thing to iron out, the guys do a great job. Give them some time and enjoy the process.

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The downside would be that half the shards would be useless to you. But that could be fixed... There could be special shard temples to research that would let you use any shard you came across for the non-elemental magics. For instance, if you were water, earth, death and summon and you ran across a fire shard you could put a death or summon temple on it to use it for that purpose instead. Perhaps it could even tinge your death spells with fire damage effects, or each element could have a special stat affect on summons:

Air shard summon temple = faster movement or more attacks.

Earth shard summon temple = higher health.

Water shard summon temple = higher defense (they dodge better).

Fire shard summon temple = more damage.

Similarly, enchantments would get bonuses based on the shards you have temples on, as would life spells.

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I'd also make item availability dependent on shards. Have two fire shards? You can equip your units with +2 flaming swords. Have an earth shard? You can build buildings faster. Have an air shard? The hit probability of your enemies drops, and/or their field of vision drops (because of the constant wind into their eyes).

Essentially, being up against an enemy who possesses two fire shards and two air shards should be a dangerous task: their units do lots of fire damage and you can't see or hit them that well. On the other hand, you have 4 water shards, which neutralizes fire damage on your units and you can flood their lands (lower land costs only 1 mana because of the 4 water shards), drowning units and cities alike. Can't see or hit them? No problem, just drown them...

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or should we perhaps move this thread to the mod forum? Anyone willing to pick the ideas here up and make a 'Bring the Elements into Elemental' mod.

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Quoting arentol,

reply 7

I would like to see the elements be more MoM like. Perhaps the more elements you have access to the less powerful they are, making it a bad idea to have more than two. Same thing with the non-elemental ones, life, death, summon, and enchantment. The more of those you have the less powerful your spells in each, again making more than two a bad idea.

The downside would be that half the shards would be useless to you. But that could be fixed... There could be special shard temples to research that would let you use any shard you came across for the non-elemental magics. For instance, if you were water, earth, death and summon and you ran across a fire shard you could put a death or summon temple on it to use it for that purpose instead. Perhaps it could even tinge your death spells with fire damage effects, or each element could have a special stat affect on summons:

Air shard summon temple = faster movement or more attacks.

Earth shard summon temple = higher health.

Water shard summon temple = higher defense (they dodge better).

Fire shard summon temple = more damage.

Similarly, enchantments would get bonuses based on the shards you have temples on, as would life spells.

I like this idea. Have special equipment if the owner has good warfare tech and magic shard tech. When devs start putting more monster content in the game make some have specific weaknesses as well. Add in some quests that you need some basic elemental magic to complete and I think we are off to a great start on making it "Elemental"

Also agree this should be moved to the "ideas" forum

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Wanted to cut and paste this snippet I posted in another thread but is also relevant here. I am just hyped about the idea of improving the elemental aspect of game play.

There is a lot of work to be done making synergy between the systems. This is what I have been thinking of most as a blanket improvement since I started playing. Defiantly expected more of this out of the box.

Examples....

1) Random quest x might need to have a princess released from an icy prison. Only suitable tactical fire spells will break the ice barrier. She rewards you with the water/air protection amulet that her captors gave her to stay alive in the icy cell. (Which means protection from element stats would have to be in the game. are they? I haven't seen it yet and I think that would be an automatic)

2) Random quest y village needs 10 swords of a specific type which you need to get from the military tree.

3) Kingdoms have ratings on how much they lean toward a specific element. Upped by things like using spells, getting nodes, doing element specific quests. High ratings earn abilities to learn element specific techs in research trees.

a)Instead of harvesting if you have earth affinity you can get "one with the fields" which gives a slightly higher bonus than harvesting.

b)An option might unlock in military to develop cold-steel weapons if you have air and water affinity. They might have combat speed improvement and a damage bonus against fire.

c)High fire affinity and an evil faction unlocks techs in the magic tree like "Lava Moats". You can build streams of lava on non mountain tiles around your city that make any enemies entering them take 5-10% HP damage.

d)water affinity could unlock research to give you access to notable locations your water transports can explore.

e)air affinity in the diplomatic tree unlocks "The Brotherhood of the Winds". Empires who enter the brotherhood together get increased goodwill, some air bonuses versus hostile kingdoms, negative impacts if they attack each other.

Note it doesn't need to increase the complexity for casual gamers just basically adding a ton of "whoa that is a neat touch" content unlocked as the users naturally do what they are doing already. Wish I had time to mod because this game seems like a great sandbox to play with. Game-play content/balance would be a great job to have on this game IMHO.

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Lol, speaking of elementals, I never got a better spell then "summon minor X elemental". Where is my MAJOR elemental?

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