About the weapons technology. Are we going to be forced to switch between different weapons because they are better? I don't want to have to swap longswords for katanas just because katanas are +3 instead of +2.

yeah?   so?  thats how it happened in MoM...   generally speaking by the time I started building units my population growth was so high that nothing short of settlers (which cost massive population) would stop growth.

I would imagine there would be several queues to which you could deticate certain amount of population.  Like in MoM, you basically had 3 catigories that workers could be in (each worker representing 1000 people).  You could have farmers (created food) or workers (they created production).   The 3rd kind was rebels, but they didn't do anything, they just took up space and you did not want them.

Now, I would imagine we have   A: farmers, B: smiths (create swords and armor), C: Trainer (train people and mounts, from here I guess you would lose guys when you built things), and D: Builders (create buildings), or something along those lines.   So that way you could balance your different queues.

I can see it being easy to pick the catigories if you base it on which buildings are related.  For example, you could not build swords unless you had a smithy (or upgraded form of it like armory or something) and you could not train troops unless you had a  training hall (or upgraded form of it, like war collage).  You can pick which establishments population would go into.   This could make the Que like a mini-sim game where you could population into other fields as well such as worshiping (or whatever they do to generate you mana), researching (helps research points to your spells), trading (adds boost to city income), miners (work in local mine for bonus income), shipwrights (builds ships) and so on.

This would really make that 'governer' mentioned in another thread an important feature, because many people would want something to auto-balance the queues for you while you were not micro-managing them. 

Upgrades of buildings (which I do think should exist, even if the tech-tree doesn't have it) should increase the efficiency.   So like a smithy is so-so, but an armory is better, and forge and smelter is even better.  

(more examples)  Training hall > barracks > war collage   ...   Stables > jousting arrena > fantastic stables ...   library > university > wizard school    ....  I guess building something like a forge would help the smithy and armory work, so bonus there even though it wouldn't replace the old building per-se.   a smelter would both help the mine (since it would process ore mined straight to tradable goods) and the production of weapons (would be able to take tradable goods and melt them into weapon meterials).

Things you couldn't build would either be A: bought at a higher price via fed-ex air (or whatever) or B: there is a default super-low production that lets you get the very basics that would be related to the trade rate of the town.

Actually, now that I think about it.  I want this!!  I think you should be able to assign population to different jobs avialable through what buildings are built there with a governer of some sort managing queues so you don't have any idoling population.   This is much better than the MoM system and does not sound much harder to implement (thats what sequels are all about right)

so thats my feedback

I agree, however I would like both to be options (I'd expect they do about the same amount of damage if both are well made) as well as other weapons that are made by either stardock or the fan community.

Brad - This is pretty much stating what has already been stated which is simple enough as it is.. what exactly did you want feedback on? The concept has been commented on already..

what I would like to know is how the combat mechanics work..?

Ok, first I'm a bit disappointed in the seeming simplicity of the stats involved in the system. While we don't know how combat will work out in the end, I really hope it's not as simple as in GalCiv with only attack, defense and hp and a bunch of special abilities or in CivIV. Combat in CivIV was imho always boring, since you only had some stats and some special abilities, which made combat very predictable and boring. But we'll see how it will play out in the beta I guess. I'm prepared to complain about it anyway.

Now for the system, imho it has one strange part in it. What's preventing you to train the paladins for the whole 9 days instead of only 5 days, since they won't be finished earlier anyway?

Why is the cost per turn for the whole 9 turns, when you only do stuff (training) during 5 days while you only wait for the rest of the equipment during the other time, doing nothing? What happens if it takes 20 turns until a certain sword arrives, do I have to pay gold every turn until it arrives?

Or is training required to use the armor and sword (as the order of arrows seems to imply)?

Is there a limit on training time?

"Is status of developed technologies stored in avatar? I mean once I got sword +9 it can be uses in another game."

Yep, in GalCiv ship designs were saved, and would be shown when you have the technology researched to use it. For example, a ship which had a basic tiny hull, laser I tech weapons and ion II type engines would be hidden until the player researched the laser 1 tech and the ion engines 2 tech. I would guess we will have similar systems in place for Elemental.

Frogboy, are there going to be limits as to what kind of equipment that men will be capable of equipping?  I mean, because it seems unlikely that we will be able to give a man three weapons and wear two suits of armour at the same time.  It doesn't seem terribly ambitious right now, only the most basic implementation of a very attractive feature.

Which isn't intended to belittle it in any way, as it looks to be great.

It seems to me that each peice of 'equipment' you add to a unit should increse the training time it needs.  Not only that but it should also increase the gold cost per day to train that unit.  That would help keep your 'industrial' power from being the only thing that determines the size and quality of your army.

If you give a man a spear, it doesn't take very long for him to learn which end is the pointy one.  All you need is a few days, an open plot of land, and a drill sargent to shout at them for a bit.  We'll say it takes three days and one gold per day.  So training ten basic spearmen would take the three days of training and cost thirty gold.

But what if we want something more then just a spearman?  What if we want to train...  A MYSTIC WAR KNIGHT OF THE GOLDEN ROSE?

Well, Knights use swords, which take more training then a spear.  Moreover, you have to learn one on one, you can't just have a drill sargent shouting at you.  So learning the sword takes five days at three gold apeice for cost of all those training masters.  (Sword: +5 Days, +15 Gold)

They also use sheilds, which take two days at two gold per day. (Shield: +2 Days, +4 Gold)

Next is the warhorse.  Remember too, mounted knights were the elites, the tanks of the ancient world.  You have to factor in not just the training for the knight, but all the infastructure needed, including the fact that the knight needs a squire.  So add a horse doubles the needed manpower for a unit (an invisible squire).  Learning to fight well on horse back takes a week at five gold per day (Horse: +7 Days, +35 gold)

Then there's the armor.  It takes a four days to learn to fight comfortably in and maintain your full plate.  We might be cruel and require another squire, but we won't.  Four gold a day.  (Plate Armor: +4 days, +16 gold)

Finally, there's the mystic spell book that makes them a Knight of the Golden Rose, allowing them to heal their allies and boost morale in battle.  We need monks to copy the books, libraries to maintain them, priest to train the knights, mystic ink from Dimension X.  This all adds up.  Plus it take quite a long time for a unit to learn magic.  Ten days at eight gold a day.  (Magic Book of Healing: +10 days, +80 gold)

SO.  All told it takes 28 days and ~150 gold to train a single Mystic Knight of the Golden Rose, as opposed to 3 days and 3 gold to train a peasant spearman.  On the plus side, a couple Knights would be able to cut through and rout an entire unit of peasants without even breaking a sweat.

Otherwise you could wind up with a situation where players are outfitting ALL their units with tons of cool equipment.  I'd say the majority of most players armies should be made of realativily cheep and quick to train troops.  It makes using awsome elite units like the MYSTIC KNIGHTS OF THE GOLDEN ROSE far more realistic and satisfying.

I'd like to add that i completely agree with this line of thought. Fintilgin is on the right track.

edit: Trimmed the quote, there ya go Tamren, merry christmas to you.

Yikes, please cull your quotes. Unless you are quoting multiple topics at once you shouldn't need more than 4 lines.

Tamren, I normally would keep my quotes short, but I felt that the entire point made as a whole was important, and that quoting a specific part was less optimal way of expressing that.  So I quoted the entire thing.  But lets not derail this thread with proper quotation ethics, you can always private message me if you think I'm out of line.

No matter what your reasoning is you don't need 46 lines of text to say "I agree with Fintilgin".

This is an important point. Until a soldier participates in his first real battle, everything he has learned up until that point will be nothing but theory. If he survives then he can start to build up real experience.

As well the training a unit has should determine what you can equip it with. I make a unit of spearmen and train them with both spears and longbows, they should be able to ditch the spears for longbows when the situation requires it. Defending a castle tower is a great job for a longbow but a spear wouldn't be very useful up there. The alternative is to attach units permanently to one weapon type, but in the above example that would leave me with an undefended tower due to my lack of deticated archer units. Not very ideal.

--

It would be nice if we could train units with different equipment on the spot. Using the castle example again, lets say I have only 1 unit of archers and 20 units of spearmen. The archers can man the tower but that will leave the walls bare. The castle armoury has enough longbows to outfit them all so I deploy the spearmen to the wall and give them all longbows. Since we have a unit of archers on hand we can use them to give the spearmen enough training that they can load and fire a longbow without shooting themselves in the foot. The walls form a hexagon and each face can support 2 units. Instead of 1 unit of archers defending the entire castle grounds we now have 1 unit of archers in the high tower and 12 units of green archers leaving 8 units of spearmen to defend the gate.

When the siege starts those novice archers are going to learn quickly. Even if they have poor accuracy the sheer weight of fire will have some effect on the attacking enemy. As an added bonus they retain thier spears because they are defending a stationary position. (lets just imagine they left them on the floor or something). If and when the enemy gains the wall using siege towers or ladders, those soldiers near the gaps can repel climbers with spears while the rest of the unit continues to fire thier longbows.

--

The combined arms approach is great because it lets you do so many things. If you were defending your multi-tile city in Elemental you could draft workers to be militia and arm them with a weapon that would keep them off the front lines such as crossbows since they are easy to use. The more arrows headed at your enemy the better.

The system we get will probably fall short of this ideal. But even then if we can avoid welding units to specific weapon types it would be a fantastic bonus.

frogboy said there was no 'super-cutlass' or anything like that, so your regular cutlass should never get outdated - is how I read it.   Just over time as you pour research into it, the cutlass would eventually get better (so those with a cutlass get +2 rather than +1 I assume)

Also, Frogboy?  What are you doing up at 2AM on christmas eve answering business questions?