[Beta 0.86] tesb's feedback thread

bugs, suggents and gameplay mechanics

from Elemental Forums

I wanted to wait with my feedback because i knew that the lat beta was seriously missing on important elements such as AI, therefore i waited for the second beta. It also gave me hope to the see that the developers got rid of certain gameplay mechanics that were just broken, instead of just 'fixing' them. I am speaking of the caravan system of course. Anyways the beta is still very rough and there are certain gameplay mechanics that will keep the game a balance mess until they are seriously reworked. I will come to those after a short list of bugs and small suggestion.

 

 

Bugs:

  •  In my games the borders of wildlands do not go away even if i defeat all monsters including the boss monster . This happened to the fissure wildland and the old empire city wildland, i did not try other ones.
  • Tireless march will stack up if you have multiple champions in one army, for example if you have an army with 4 champions ALL units will get 4 moves which also has a big impact in the combat map (such as making enemy archers useless).
  • I can build forest and normal drake lairs with the empire although the tooltip says i can not. I can also build those units.
  • The routine that draws the route that a unit will take when you give them a move order can use huge amount of cpu resources if the way is complicated. Just stand next to a long mountain range a give a unit a command to move to the other side of the mountains.
  • There are still crashes after long periods of gaming (win 7 64bit + 4 GB) and it will nearly always crash after loading game from within a game.
  • Forests still have there outlines even if i deactivate this option in the menu
  • when zooming in from the clothmap, forests will sometimes be grey, like they are in some fog of war. In this case i have to zoom closer before they are colored again.
  • Combat sometimes is still stuck and i have to use the autoplay (within tactical combat) feature to deal with that issue. It is a rare issue though.
  • In the late game scrap golem armies will spawn in water

 

Small Suggestions:

  1. The movement path dots should be colored differently for every turn a unit takes, for example they are green for the first turn, then red for the second, then blue for the third turn and so on. Currently you do not know how many turn a unit will take for reaching its destination.
  2. There should be a game option where i have to click again to confirm a move command, i.e. the first click is to bring up the movement dots and the second click is to confirm the move order and only then the unit will move.
  3. There should be some indicator so i can see how long it takes until a treaty expires.
  4. Please rework the fallen terrain, it is really hard to look at for longer gameplay sessions.
  5. For the love of god please fix the loot tables. In my last game my sovereign found a titanic maul in combat, in the very early game (i did just finished teching to leather armor). A good weapon and armor drop can win you the game because there is nothing stopping you at all.
  6. Please make better artistic indicators for land that can be settled. Currently i can only know if i select a pioneer and hover over the settle button. I would love to see which spots are good for city placement, by just looking at them. In civilization you could tell good city locations just by the terrain.

 

Issues with core Gameplay mechanics:

It seems to me that there needs to be major overhauls to some of the mechanics and issues listed below , because currently their combination makes no sense gameplay wise. They might be nice ideas on their own, but as soon as you combine them it leads to horrible gameplay.

 

 a) Champions and Taxes:

This combination of gameplay mechanics is the current game breaker for me. The basic issue is very simple to grasp:

 Champions are a viable alternative to troops, but cost no upkeep.

This leads to the fact that i can consistently run on no taxes, enjoy high production and research while being totally competitive in military terms, even ahead mostly. No matter how good the ai will be eventually it will always be just a little toy and no serious threat, because it makes the big mistake of building units, therefore it needs taxes, therefore it will be behind in research substantially. You also do not need any military technologies, besides leather working, until very late in the game because once champions have leather armor they can find their own (and much better) equipment as well as being a big revenue stream on their own (all the useless looted items you can sell). This means i can focus more on economy technologies, so any ai economy will be a joke after a short amount of time. Once my economy is ahead and a threating (although i never met one) ai declares war i can usually surpass their military technology level in a couple of turns because of my superior economy/research.

 

b ) Building maintenance and taxes: 

Again a very simple issue, most buildings that increase research and production cost maintenance which means they are worthless. For example at first i often made the mistake building workshops, lumbermills and research buildings in most cities until i realized i have more production and more research when NOT building them! The reason is simple: If i do not build them i don't have to pay any money thus can keep taxes low and therefore have more research and production than with those buildings. I usually end up with one city that has all production buildings to pump out troops or wonders just in case i need them. The rest of my cities have only buildings that cost no maintenance, for example merchants, inns, pubs, farmers markets (a very important building to spam) ...

This could be fixed by giving maintenance to growth and unit training buildings, such as inns, pubs, command posts, etc. and remove it from production and research buildings. Currently in my games i make ~50-100 gildar a turn with no taxes and enjoy much higher production and research rates then my rivals although i have less cities.

 

c) Champion placement on the map:

To me the idea of placing champions on the map is very bad in itself. First you can simply kill the opposite alignment champions which not just denies them to the enemy (as if the ai would ever research the necessary technologies to get them), but you also get their weapons, which can be a real game changer. Secondly it also makes it very luck/ map dependent on what champions you can get. If you end up with a bunch of high level champions and fast tech to the recruitment technologies you can steamroll the map. I much prefer any other mechanic where champions can be bought off map,  e.g. in an inn and there would be technologies that limit the amount of heroes you can hire as well their starting level. If a champion has too many negative perks from loosing combat you (and the ai especially) should be able to retire them.Alternatively give neutral champions at least escort armies and don't let them drop their weapon when defeated.

 

d) The 'kill a champion to get their spells' spell: 

Sorry i forgot the name of the spell, i think it was steal soul.  Basically you sacrifice a champion to get their spells. In my current game i made a custom caster sovereign and gave him as much talents as possible and NO spells levels. Then i recruited 7+ heroes with spells leveled them a bit and sacrificed them and thus is got a powerful death mage, earth mage, fire mage, ... super melee mage steamrolling super sovereign. The basic problem is that you can not just get the basic (apprentice) spell level, but if you sacrifice the champions in the right order you can get to higher spell tiers and you end up with a sovereign that may be only be level 8 but has as many talents as a level 20+ sovereign and is a master of melee and magic.

 

e) Maul, especially on bears:

this only applies in the early game, but maul is much too powerful on bears. It just sucks to loose important champions or units in the early game to one bear that keeps on mauling. I would prefer if it would no just decrease in accuracy with each strike, but also in damage as a quick fix. currently it is very random and a bit of bad luck can have a big impact because you encounter units with maul mostly in the early game where your own units have too low a level, i.e. hit points to survive this bad luck. It is not that bears are too difficult to beat, it is just that with a bit of bad luck you can loose important units. In the late game a champion with maul is absolutely overpowered, but this is another story.

 

f) Tactical combat: 

Tactical combat has seen a big improvement since the last beta, just because maps now scale in size depending on the clashing armies size. However it is still not very tactical at all. I agree with the developers that the pace of combat needs to be fast, i.e. not taking longer than 5 minutes and the current beta does very well on this. On the other hand it could be made a lot more tactical by some small adjustments like:

  1. All units have one default counterstrike (can be improved by equipment/talents)
  2. Give certain equipment inherent tactical qualities, for example spears could give you first strike, i.e. their damage is calculated first even when counter-striking, shields could ignore one ranged attack per round, magical staffs have damage over time effects (fire) or reduce initiative and movement (frost), maces ignore a certain percentage of armor, ...
  3. it would be nice to see terrain modifiers and especially line of sight for archers, i.e. you can't shoot units behind trees.certain units could also act this way, for example a drake could make friendly units behind him not target-able by archers, because he is so big.

 

edit:

 

g) Faction diversity: 

I am not necessarily speaking of the difference from faction to faction but the difference between empires and kingdoms. To me they play very much the same with some minor differences. Where are the unique tech trees? Why can kingdoms settle on fallen land and empires on lush green lands? Currently the differences are not really noticeable in gameplay, besides some diplomatic modifiers etc. the gameplay experience between the two should really be different in my opinion.

 

5,061 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Well-stated issues with the current game, and all of which I'd fully agree.

 

I still think a lot more life could be pulled out of both the tech tree and the building tree to give it that FFH2 "feel" of more vastness, excitement, and choices but that's another story. Regardless, all of the above issues need to be taken care of.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top




The movement path dots should be colored differently for every turn a unit takes, for example they are green for the first turn, then red for the second, then blue for the third turn and so on.
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I agree


please fix the loot tables.
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Better loot should probably just be defended better. And yes I agree, it is likely that all loot is currently randomized within a single array. Loot should instead use different arrays for different tiers of difficulty. (ie loot within a Wildlands would be a higher tier than loot found at starting area)

If I can kill the bearded Man of awesome with endless weak mooks, I still want the +1 vorpal blade. Just make sure its guardian is decent enough that the investment is equivalent to the reward. (like how killing 5 dragons + dragon lord is investment enough to win the game)
 


Champions are a viable alternative to troops, but cost no upkeep.
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Personally I don't see them as a viable alternative. I see them as useful generals, nothing more.

 


 because it makes the big mistake of building units, therefore it needs taxes, therefore it will be behind in research substantially.
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You can make units that cost no upkeep, or at least a fractional upkeep. Due to all the extra production lying around, producing 0 maintenance units can be really awesome. And the extra production is there because there is no good alternative to producing units (or not producing units) in the early game. All you have is Yes I want a unit, or No I don't want a unit. Thus if you can make 0 maintenance units, you have won the game.

The fact that your champions can eventually compete with the other factions, without relying on armies, is probably indicative that these factions simply do not have enough options to build (and that those options are not as optimal as your method of play), therefore they either spend many turns not building anything, or they build stuff that costs undue maintenance.

I laugh at the Barracks which is +1 maintenance to produce more units .. most of which cost maintenance. Say jim, do you want to pay money so that you have to pay more money? Yes sir and may I have another!

Currently the weakness behind a play style dependent on taxes is that taxes simply don't do enough. And maintenance is probably too high for a lot of the currently available options.

 


Again a very simple issue, most buildings that increase research and production cost maintenance which means they are worthless. For example at first i often made the mistake building workshops, lumbermills and research buildings in most cities until i realized i have more production and more research when NOT building them! The reason is simple: If i do not build them i don't have to pay any money thus can keep taxes low and therefore have more research and production than with those buildings. I usually end up with one city that has all production buildings to pump out troops or wonders just in case i need them. The rest of my cities have only buildings that cost no maintenance, for example merchants, inns, pubs, farmers markets (a very important building to spam) ...
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This is very interesting. I haven't tried it myself but you seem to be confident in its success. Makes sense though. At face value it seems to say "hey, sell all your items if you want an economy!"

But maybe the goal is to force players to only build such buildings in cities that need them? As opposed to being able to spam stuff everywhere? If that is the case, then I think teaching the AI to almost never build these buildings, but only in the most extreme of cities, would be a good idea.



To me the idea of placing champions on the map is very bad in itself. First you can simply kill the opposite alignment champions which not just denies them to the enemy (as if the ai would ever research the necessary technologies to get them), but you also get their weapons, which can be a real game changer. Secondly it also makes it very luck/ map dependent on what champions you can get. If you end up with a bunch of high level champions and fast tech to the recruitment technologies you can steamroll the map. I much prefer any other mechanic where champions can be bought off map,  e.g. in an inn and there would be technologies that limit the amount of heroes you can hire as well their starting level. If a champion has too many negative perks from loosing combat you (and the ai especially) should be able to retire them.Alternatively give neutral champions at least escort armies and don't let them drop their weapon when defeated.
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I'd prefer it if ALL champions were gained through questing. But I am of the opinion that if you kill it, you EARN IT. Therefore, Champions should ALWAYS drop their weapons and/or items. You shouldn't kill something for no reward, even if it gives you exp.

Possibly having another mechanic (like Inns or MoM's fame system ... or even a summon hero spell) for heroes might be an interesting alternative, but I like how the heroes are already in the game, and we just have to go out and find them.

 


Sorry i forgot the name of the spell, i think it was steal soul.  Basically you sacrifice a champion to get their spells. In my current game i made a custom caster sovereign and gave him as much talents as possible and NO spells levels. Then i recruited 7+ heroes with spells leveled them a bit and sacrificed them and thus is got a powerful death mage, earth mage, fire mage, ... super melee mage steamrolling super sovereign. The basic problem is that you can not just get the basic (apprentice) spell level, but if you sacrifice the champions in the right order you can get to higher spell tiers and you end up with a sovereign that may be only be level 8 but has as many talents as a level 20+ sovereign and is a master of melee and magic.
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I really like this spell, and all of its abilities. I would be sad to see it disappear or be nerfed.

 



this only applies in the early game, but maul is much too powerful on bears. It just sucks to loose important champions or units in the early game to one bear that keeps on mauling. I would prefer if it would no just decrease in accuracy with each strike, but also in damage as a quick fix. currently it is very random and a bit of bad luck can have a big impact because you encounter units with maul mostly in the early game where your own units have too low a level, i.e. hit points to survive this bad luck. It is not that bears are too difficult to beat, it is just that with a bit of bad luck you can loose important units. In the late game a champion with maul is absolutely overpowered, but this is another story.
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If anything I think the "Berserker" weapons need to be buffed, as Maul (imho) doesn't seem to be very powerful until level 20 or so. At least in my experience. I'll agree that a bear's maul is very powerful, but see this is where trained units come in handy :)

(I guess we could put a weaker form of Maul on bears though if it becomes a problem. Or stronger versions for Champions. Either way, I haven't seen a good use for Maul since 0.77)

 


All units have one default counterstrike (can be improved by equipment/talents)
Give certain equipment inherent tactical qualities, for example spears could give you first strike, i.e. their damage is calculated first even when counter-striking, shields could ignore one ranged attack per round, magical staffs have damage over time effects (fire) or reduce initiative and movement (frost), maces ignore a certain percentage of armor, ...
it would be nice to see terrain modifiers and especially line of sight for archers, i.e. you can't shoot units behind trees.certain units could also act this way, for example a drake could make friendly units behind him not target-able by archers, because he is so big.
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For one thing, spears already give a percentage ignore of armor. Not sure why they chose spears though ...

I agree that "mage" weapons need more difference from Archers than "ranged attacks that CAN be resisted by cloaks"

Line of Sight is interesting ... Advanced Wars used it. MoM did not. Total War barely uses it (only for gigantic battle maps).

I think it could be something fun to explore, but I think it is already too late to explore such a thing in this installment.

 

one natural counterattack is something to consider ... maybe for only certain weapons, like spears and swords. Or as an addable talent (similar to charge)

Equally, IGNORING counter attacks could become a new talent, if counters became more common in melee. (maybe an ability of certain polearms?)

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

annoying multi-quote bug ... :(

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Personally I don't see them as a viable alternative. I see them as useful generals, nothing more.
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viable in the sense that you can use them to clear out monsters and defend your own in the most important phase of the game: the beginning. highly leveled troops can be really powerful, but in the start of game i prefer no taxes and champions to get the job done. also high levels casters will destroy any army (fireball, blizzard, dirge of c., ...). the only alternative that can stand up in any shape to them are recruitable monsters such as drakes. The main impact on the game, to me it seems, are taxes. set them to none and change your strategy so that whatever you do, your taxes stay at none and you win the game. It would be interesting to see how the game changes if taxes would be stuck at normal and you cannot change them. in general taxes have a way too big influence on the game currently.

 

better loot should probably just be defended better.
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the problem is that as soon as you get a good weapon and armor on any champion you can steamroll most of the map (may be not all monster lairs, but certainly the ai). even if loot would be good protected it would just mean i would focus everything around getting this loot to win me the game. on of the problems is how armor works, because it does reduce damage percentage wise, but in absolute values. If the damage reduction would be a decreasing percentage function of the armor value (look at warcrafts 3 armor system) there would be no more 'oh i got a new armor that reduces all enemies damage to 1 so let me steamroll you with one units' moments. another issue is that units and champions get too powerful when leveling up, if you choose the right stats for them.

 

you can make units that cost no upkeep, or at least a fractional upkeep
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they cost no upkeep for a reason, because they are terrible in combat.

 

(I guess we could put a weaker form of Maul on bears though if it becomes a problem. Or stronger versions for Champions. Either way, I haven't seen a good use for Maul since 0.77)
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like i wrote it is only a problem in early game where units have too little hitpoints and armor to survive a mauling bear that gets lucky. the other overpowered use is a champion with high accuracy, for example if you get to a high level and get the champions armor, there is one item giving +1 accuracy per level if i remember correctly. you may not deal the typical 100+ damage per swing as compared to a +100% damage from strength weapons but you will nearly never miss and deal more damage in the end. i agree otherwise maul and the associated weapons are mediocre at best.

 

 

regarding tactical combat:

currently the units are just move and attack and i think it is good to keep active abilities as few as possible. but you can have a lot more combat depth by giving items different passive effects (maul is a good example here). this would also lead to much better army diversification in comparison to the current combat where you just look out for the best stats.

the one natural counterattack should be universal disregarding items and abilities. there is a good reason why similar games had this.  If you fight melee with melee in MoM both sides takes damage the same is true for the civilization series as well as the homm series. i don't really know why it is lacking in elemental.

 

 

For one thing, spears already give a percentage ignore of armor. Not sure why they chose spears though
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yes i know and i agree it does not make that much sense on spears. it would fit much better on blunt weapons.

 

 

I really like this spell, and all of its abilities. I would be sad to see it disappear or be nerfed.
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i like it too, i just wanted to bring attention to the fact that it can easily be exploited. 

 

Possibly having another mechanic (like Inns or MoM's fame system ... or even a summon hero spell) for heroes might be an interesting alternative, but I like how the heroes are already in the game, and we just have to go out and find them
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MoM had fame, AoW had roaming heroes that visited you, in HoMM you could build taverns to recruit heroes, ...

personally i liked the HoMM implementation the most, because you were not map dependent. image if the ai would be actually smart for a change and go out and seek and target out champions to kill them (like i do). the game would loose a lot of fun this way, because the only (high level) heroes that you could get are the ones within your borders and thus save from ai attacks.

  

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

If champions were tied to quests then other Allegiance factions couldn't kill them. (one way to have a map-dependency without the potential unfun you describe)

 

And yea I'd be fine with 1 base counter attack for all melee units. I think one version of Elemental, at some point, had this. (maybe a stage of WoM?)

 

I'd like more unit traits for 'Mage' units and 'Cavalry' units.

there really isn't much in-game point to having horse-archers, but Knights are fun. I think Knights could be even more fun to build if I didn't need to give them the "Scout" trait but had mounted specific traits I could give them.

(currently Charge and Scout are absolutely necessary for a fun mounted unit)

 

-> I think charge should change from 3 move and 3 initiative to 2 move and 3 initiative.

Also I think charge should be an activated ability, not something that only happens on the first turn.

 

Not sure how I feel about Impulsive trait ... but I think there could be design alternatives that make the game just as fun for Champions without impulsive.