RavenX

Join Date 10/2008

+194

A Chance to do something Really Special

The Battle system, why go with old dull and boring?

I brought this up to some extent in the past and I've revamped the idea, but, I really can't stress enough how much of an Opportunity Stardock has with this game. As Elemental is still in the design phase, I vote that you completely start over with the battle Engine. Yes, even if it takes another Six Months to get the game out. What they have now is impressive, yes, I'm not arguing that. The fact is though that the Heroes of Might and Magic system has been done to death. With Elemental you have the chance to do something groundbreaking in this genre graphically. Here's my thought.

Keep it turned based, that's essential, but change how things are represented. Keep it on a grid but make the unit numbers Massive with the ability to use formations in battle. A unit of archers could have 100 men in it. The player can then arrange these men on the field across multiple squares. Two squares long and one square wide. One square wide and two squares deep. The variables could be many but would be used to present a different angle of attack for enemy units. Changing formations could take up a units turn in combat.

Also the men would be represented graphically proportionate to their actual numbers. If you have 100 archers then it will show 100 archers in the battle. It would look like a turn based Total War with the art style of Elemental. I think that would be amazing. Not real time battles, but turn based. This would also call for a Huge Increase in the size of the field of battle. Buildings could be placed or other things (caves, dungeons, etc etc) could be used as obstacles during battle or taken over and garrisoned and held like watchtowers or forts represented on the battle map.

So much more could be done with not a lot of work to what you already have. You wouldn't even need to change a lot of the coding you already have, you'd just have to revamp how it's visually presented. The art assets and models would all stay the same to what they are now, there would just be a Lot More of them shown on screen during battles. I don't even need to go into the strategic options and depth it would give to every battle, plus having that Epic LotR battle feel.

Please, Please Stardock, consider this idea. For the sake of your own game, the genre, and the players. You can do something Truly epic here with not much more work.

Here's a few Mock Ups to show you how it "could" be with More Troops shown on screen.

Original

A few more troops.

Bigger Armies

A few More then that.

A LOT More troops. Clearly at this point a Larger battlefield is required.

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Yestin

Denryu

Join Date 07/2006

+93

They have been working for over two years on various pieces of this game - you think they are going to start over at this point? do you really think they should?

Sorry I think it is laughable (sorry!) to even suggest that. Could anyone write two or three paragrapghs of ideas that would get a company to literally throw hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of development in the crapper?

Not to belittle your admirable goals and ideas, but the suggestion to go back to square one over them almost can't be addressed without being insulting.

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Quoting Denryu,

reply 1

They have been working for over two years on various pieces of this game - you think they are going to start over at this point? do you really think they should?

Sorry I think it is laughable (sorry!) to even suggest that. Could anyone write two or three paragrapghs of ideas that would get a company to literally throw hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of development in the crapper?

Not to belittle your admirable goals and ideas, but the suggestion to go back to square one over them almost can't be addressed without being insulting.

I'm not asking them to throw away all that coding time. The way I explain it they can keep all the code behind the turn based system. Changing how many of something is shown on screen is a relatively Easy thing to do. I wouldn't want them to start over completely no. That's not what I'm asking.

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Wintersong

Join Date 07/2006

+235

Only people at Stardock know how those battles actually work right now (if they do work) and/or how they plan to implement them. The only sure thing at this point is that the battles involve lots of 1 and 0.

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Here's a Mock up of what I mean. I used Photoshop to add in way more units.

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Wintersong

Join Date 07/2006

+235

That's an early design that if had few units was because... early design? In fact, there aren't supposed to be squares (one of the times that Frogboy commented about it, he said that). Plans on something like Total War pausable continous turns and that's all we know. And that he envisioned battles a la Lords of the Rings intro (biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig battles) so that's a hint to "many units in screen".

Tactical battles are still very away from us in the beta schedule... we still don't even know how to produce units and/or how they should be. So they might have some ideas of what they want (that may be something like what you propose) but they still have some time ahead to change details as the beta progresses.

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Not that I disagree with your ideas - formations of any kind, whether turn based or realtime, would be great - but the discussion is moot at this point. All we really know about the combat system at the moment is that screenshot (which I'm pretty sure a Stardock dev described as outdated somewhere) and some vague hints that almost seem to contradict one another. I speculated that those hints indicate a pausable real-time combat system, but again, that's just speculation at this point. We really have no idea, the combat system could already be exactly what you describe, or it could be more like Total War, or HoMM, or maybe they haven't even designed it yet.

The combat system is Elemental's most important feature to me (most of Elemental's features have already been modded into Civ4, take a look at Fall From Heaven and Fall Further mods.. the one thing that can never be modded is Civ4's terrible oversimplified combat) - so I understand how difficult it is to withhold combat related ideas, but there just doesn't seem any point to it until they actually tell us something (anything!) about the combat system and ask for feedback, for now Stardock's focus seems to be elsewhere.

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I like your ideal Raven x, it reminds me of the old Sword of Aaragon days where the battles were fought out on large maps. From memory if you improved your city's defences and infrastructor you would see the results on the tactical map with stronger defences and a denser/larger city. But I think it's too early to really get an idea of what kind of scale tactical battles are going to be fought in at this stage of the game. I mean at the moment just training a single person (unit?) to garrison each city is a big drain on your resources. But I hope in the end that we get the impression that we're fighting a war with tactical battles not just a skirmish.

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Quoting austinvn,

reply 6

Not that I disagree with your ideas - formations of any kind, whether turn based or realtime, would be great - but the discussion is moot at this point.

I have to disagree only on it being "Moot". Now at the early design phase is the Exact time to bring it up. If we waited until later when all the coding for the battle engine was done, then it would be moot because they would be less likely to go back and change finished code. If enough of us want proportionate army sizes and more units, I believe they'll put it in.

I worked up a Much Better example with Photoshop. Check this out and tell me it doesn't look a lot better then having relatively small unit sizes.

huge army

I like Massive unit numbers much more. The battle field its-self would only need to be maybe twice as wide as it is now to support truly massive armies.

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The pic you based your argument on is obselete and does not represent the battle system they are developing.

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Quoting Sarudak,

reply 9

The pic you based your argument on is obsolete and does not represent the battle system they are developing.

Where did you get that information? We don't know that for sure aside from the small tidbits Frogboy mentioned. I do recall him saying somewhere to "hide" the grid in the picture. We know units will have abilities and we can use spells in battle. What we don't know is how large the unit number can be in game. The latest Mock up I posted has a lot of units which can hopefully be accounted for in game when the time comes. A lot of people say they want Epic LotR inspired battles. That can't be accomplished with small unit counts.

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Raven X I support your cause here. 100%.

Small groups of characters battling is not War, it's like a D&D adventure. Not that there is anything inherantly wrong with that, but I think part of what made the Age of Wonders games less "epic" was the dramatically low number of units as an artificial way of enhancing the proportionate influence a Hero has on combat. At least in MoM you had a dozen little guys in a squad at times.

A big problem with over-abstraction is that it makes high-end units like Dragons awkward to balance. In MoM you would simply have the Dragon breath kill half the knights in a stack at once.

On the non-combat end: With armies of under 30, supply lines don't exist. Logistics don't exist. Mobilization of Kingdom resources for war doesn't exist. War doesn't exist.

A band of adventurers exploring ancient ruins is one thing, a kingdom's army is another. If Elemental is going the band of adventurers route, then we can end all discusisons of food requirements, caravans and other kingdom-sim notions. I'm not totally against that, MoM did a great job with it's small scale.

And now IS the time to talk about this stuff, Stardock is asking for input on their whole game. They have certainly not given any indication of having made a final decision regarding unit counts.

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Here's another work up with even more Troops. I know the lines get a little uneven. I couldn't maintain perspective without putting everything on a different battle field. (which I may still do just to illustrate)

More Units

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Quoting Raven X,

reply 10

Quoting Sarudak, reply 9The pic you based your argument on is obsolete and does not represent the battle system they are developing.

Where did you get that information? We don't know that for sure aside from the small tidbits Frogboy mentioned. I do recall him saying somewhere to "hide" the grid in the picture. We know units will have abilities and we can use spells in battle. What we don't know is how large the unit number can be in game. The latest Mock up I posted has a lot of units which can hopefully be accounted for in game when the time comes. A lot of people say they want Epic LotR inspired battles. That can't be accomplished with small unit counts.

It was directly stated by BoogieBac a long time ago in one of the journals. I'm too lazy to look it up again right now.

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You really bank on the idea that this isnt much more work. You might want to explain that, because as your problem with perspective would suggest, you're talking about a battlefield the size of those you'd find in a Total War, at least twenty times the size of the battlefield your example is using. Maybe more. You have to have room to maneuver if you're going to use any kind of tactics at all. Which brings up all sorts of issues, the least of which is aesthetic. Do we even know how a siege works? Dungeons? How will you balance the system? One unit spread over three squares versus one unit that occupies one, is the longer unit more powerful? Is it three individual units? Then why not just have three mobile units, why tie them up? etc.

Even if tying them up gave them some sort of formation bonus, only one tile is going to meet with the other unless they break formation. You could construct some obtuse system of formation clashing, but at that point you're way past six months' work.

Hundreds of units clashing in turn based combat is always appealing, but isnt always feasible or even logical, and I actually would not want to wait six months for this, even if plans were already laid out for it. The number of units per tile given as an example earlier in the process was almost exactly the number of units per tile you'd find in MoM.. which generally works out just fine. Six guys vs One ogre, depending on the guys, you've got yourself an even match.

Try to bear in mind the fictional setting, here.

Barren lifeless crap imbued with life by sorcerers so people can live on it.

To draw hundreds of warriors in plate and riding bears, from that, is a bit of a stretch. Maybe a couple dozen, tops.

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Quoting Raven X,

reply 10

I'm not going to hunt it down, but I pretty much guarantee you that battles will not look like that screenshot in the final version. They've stated a few times that in the later game they want thousand of soldiers, probably individually rendered. A lot of people are worried it might turn into fantasy: total war... for some reason. Read some of the old interviews and previews... they have information about that there.

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Denryu

Join Date 07/2006

+93

Now that I understand what you are asking for better, I can tell you that Frogboy has talked about tactical battles with hundreds of units involved.

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Denryu

Join Date 07/2006

+93

Here ya go, this was back in March but I haven't heard anything to lead me to believe it has changed significantly.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/342047

Frogboy talks about battles in late game that could involve THOUSANDS of units and yes you can zoom in and see each one!

That should satisfy you!

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Quoting Raven X,

reply 2

It's not actually an easy thing to do. The engine needs to support that number of units. They all have to be rendered. I don't know the technobabble, but no, it's a pretty difficult thing to do. Just having units that stretch across tiles would be a AI overhaul... or something.

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Quoting Raven X,

reply 12

( following is mainly just my tactical preference ... not ideas for predisigned automations ) -> and aesthetic for future trips to photoshop land.

Personally I would rather see the Cavalry on the flanks, the forward flanks, with some infantry in the middle as bait. Then a large infantry reserve behind all three groups, and the seige in the back, flanked by small defensive infantry cohorts.

The sovereign could either choose to stay with the reserve (near the seige) to issue orders, or ride out with the cavalry regiment.

Either way, The battle-map really does need to be much larger. I would suggest at least twice as wide, perhaps three times as long.

and for the record, I would be THRILLED if there was a fantasy:total war created either from this, or in the near future because of the ideas birthed here.

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Quoting Denryu,

reply 17

Here ya go, this was back in March but I haven't heard anything to lead me to believe it has changed significantly.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/342047

Frogboy talks about battles in late game that could involve THOUSANDS of units and yes you can zoom in and see each one!

That should satisfy you!

That was a Great read. Thanks for pointing that out Denryu Still, I want to see a battle with thousands of units. You have to admit though that original screen (not my edited one) of the army fighting the dragon doesn't look promising when it comes to large armies. Reading that post made me feel a "little" better. Still, I want to see it

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Quoting MagicwillNZ,

reply 18

Have you ever done any Mod work on a game like Empire Total War? I know how to hex edit the unit size in that as well in the base files. The variable string to increase unit size is one number. Though when you increase this size other minor adjustments must be made yes. Like damage and unit cost and upkeep modifiers. Those also are one number variables in a string. Once you have the engine written and understand it changing even major things can be done pretty quickly.

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Denryu

Join Date 07/2006

+93

I wouldn't base too much off that screen shot - that has been around for at least a year.

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Quoting Denryu,

reply 22

I wouldn't base too much off that screen shot - that has been around for at least a year.

True, and I would like to see more tactical combat related screenies. We've only seen 1 old screenshot so far, and frankly I don't like it. My biggest problem with it: the size of the battleground looks extremely small to me, hopefully they've changed that.

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Weren't battles going to be real time? (able to pause them, just like Total War?)

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Quoting VicenteC,

reply 24

Weren't battles going to be real time? (able to pause them, just like Total War?)

Huh?? Hopefully not....I thought it's turn based.

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