Essence separate from Levels

Nah, Essence gained @ lvl up is absolutely ok. Gaining some essence / turn could work as an additional method. However I really like the idea of gaining essence via special sites/buildings or even creatures. Here is a post of mine, on topic.

And HERE is a thread I created on topic.

As you can see, there is a large cry from the Stay at Home sov community to completely detach essence from levels.

Hence this thread, to see how many people agree. I personally have no problem with having only one equal gain of essence for each Sovereign, however the thread I have linked to highlights my personal favorite system.

I do agree with you on the principle for having an Arena where people can fight for levels ... either only accessible every so often or potentially lethal for participants. Preferably both (have "safe" battles once/ 5 turns, and indefinite supply of "lethal" battles)

I personally would like to see an overhauled leveling system. Right now, it's not very interesting and is really just a mess of numbers. Divorcing essence from levels... or at least having it increase by the same amount each level, would go far into improving the situation for me.

i like that essence gain is derived from levels, but the way i would do it is by having an essence number and that determines how fast you gain essence per turn.

sovereign starts with 10 essence.

sovereign essence points = 1

you put .1 into it for each point you invest at level up.

each essence point is +1 per turn you get back.

so a sovereign with 1.5 essence points would gain 1 essence on the first turn, then 2 points on the second turn, 1 point on the third and so on.

do you guys think this is to much? unbalancing perhaps? or maybe there is alot more stuff you can do with essence that we don't know about. unclear right now i think until we know what more you can do with essence.

Yeah, we must wait 'till Beta2 or Beta3 even in order to give constructive feedback with regard to the essence system & balancing.

Hey Stmorpheus, I like your idea. I mean, its not options A,B,or C but it could be workable (assuming people can live with essence tied to levels).

One thing I would diverge on, though, is that 10 points of essence gen (what your character "starts" with, lets say) creates 0.1 essence per turn. Each additional point of essence (or each point of essence) adds +0.01 essence per turn.

Meaning, that if you used all 10 points on essence, your char would now be gaining 0.2 essence per turn. (1 every 5 turns as opposed to 1 every 10 turns).

Why not use the MoM system ? It was a good one, I think.

You have a "magical research" value, and you must split it between mana or maybe crystals ? or spell points ? or maybe split between all of that ? and increasing your essence.

For instance with 10 points of magical research you can do :

spells points (2), crystals(1), essence(5), life spreading(2)

or

spells points (1), crystals(1), essence (2), life spreading (6)

for each 10 points used that way in essence you gain one essence points. The next essence points cost 10, etc.

Magical studies wouldn't increase spell points but magical research.

So do you mean that you can place points into "magical research" upon level up (instead of essence) and then redistribute after level up?

Or do you mean start the game with 10 points -> maybe you are stuck with your choice from then on ... with possibly a chance to increase essence.

// In any case, I think we seem to agree that an essence "stat" as amount of essence gained per turn is favorable to gaining essence in large chunks.

In any case, the essence is permanent (or rather, using it is permanent) so there is no "essence regeneration" simply "essence generation" with the constant and incredibly slow gain of new essence

both of our systems are pretty much the same really, so its fine with me.  my only concern is with balancing it with the game.  we really don't know yet how much is to much or how little is to little in order to make the player have to think hard about what to spend it on in order to get the most advantage out of it.

Not at all.

My example would be instead of the actual spell points system.

Magical studies would give you Magic points. And you have to split it between several things like essence improving, crystals imbuing, spell points for learning new spells, life spreading.

I f a magical study gives you 5 magic points, then you have 5 MP to split. If you build 2 magical studies you have 10 MP to split, etc.

In MoM you earned Magical points (don't remember the name) and you had to split it between skill (it was a stats that said how many Mana you could use in one turn) Mana (how many Mana points you would earn in a turn) and Research.

And you had to choose : lots of mana ? But you didn't have enough skill to use big spells.

A high skill ? But you didn't had enough mana to cast them

A lot of mana and skill ? Too few spells to cast.

So .. choices.

True ... although this would tie essence into buildings even more-so than my thread.

And the current wisdom is that the closer it is tied with buildings, the more it encourages city spam. I think the idea behind this game was to separate city-spam from magical research as much as possible.

Maybe have a global limit on magical buildings? As opposed to city based? And gathering rare magical artifacts increased this limit???

I sorta-kinda might be a 'Stay at Home Sov' player, and I don't at all like the idea of making essence some kind of steady-accrual resource. I don't even really like the idea of buildings that might generate essence, even very slowly. Maybe it's partly because I'm confused about how and when the sovereign-gets-XP-from-his/her-units thing went away. Mainly, it's because I want essence to be special, and the general direction of this thread seems to want it to be an Elemental analog to just another mass-production commodity.

I'd prefer a direct model for spending experience points a-la the Hero System RPG; spending points at level gains is an OK compromise, and I like the idea that you can choose to invest all the points from a level gain in essence, nothing, or just a portion. That's the sort of 'simple' thing that can generate lots of variety in gameplay when connected to the larger system.

Not that I don't have some critiques for the current design myself. For me, the prime stat function of essence should be determining casting time for overland spells and mana-per-fight for tactical spells. Shards should be able to generate mana and mana pools should be unlimited in size. Essence misers should be able to burn through their mana far faster than essence investors; essence investors should have more and stronger champions and custom magic items, or at least more mundane resources (land & peasants). I've felt this way pretty much since the boards started despite seeing many different critiques and proposed alternatives.

I think the main idea behind getting rid of mana pools was that this encouraged people to simply hold a Shard for X number of turns to gain X mana, instead of having a steady access.

As far as how Shards and mana should currently be handled (other than Shards needed for certain spells) ... I think that ANY shard should give you, say, +50 max mana over your essence level. This goes away if you lose the shard.

This is not a bad idea. Reminds me of AoW's point distribution system between gained mana/turn & research points/turn.

However I am not sure that how could it be implemented in EWoM. Buildings are generating spell points, so it's pointless to spend any points on that. What do you mean on crystals?..as I see it could be distributed between essence/life spreading. When the Sov gains a level, he/she could distribute more points on these "feats".

So for example: Lvl1. Essence: 2 Life Spreading: 1 ; Lvl2: Essence: 3 Life Spreading 2. [Generated on every X number of turns.]

i think the main problem i have with the current system is that you can ONLY get essence from leveling up, and you can only level up if you fight stuff.  if there was a way to gain experience that didn't involve fighting things.  on that note, do you get XP by completing quests?  if not then i think you should.  this would help, i think i will start a new topic on gaining xp in different ways.

Well, I know in some posts of mine I have addressed the need for Quests to generate a significant source of XP.

As for alternate sources of essence, you can look at this thread I made.

Below is one of the threads that I think prompted this thread, in which I think there is pretty good discource on the merits and downsides of the various systems:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/382176/page/2

One of the big problems with allowing essence gain to be linked to level is precisely that it prevents turtling completely, and ties your sovereign into one or two strategies.

The gradual increasing of essence acquisition would be a tough thing to balance.  Anything that can snowball like that would be extremely problematic towards the late game.  Same thing with buildings and locations on the map that consistently generate essence.  I was under the whole impression that the goal wasn't to create an "essence economy" but to have decisions on how to expend your essence shape what type of nation, channeller and game you pursue.  The whole idea is to make a variety of playing styles viable, keep things competetive until the game ends (ie prevent the first half of the game always making the 2nd half just a mopping up action), and preventing the necessity of city spam and territorial acquisition to be successful.

There is people who doesn't like the idea of Sovereign death equaling the end of the game. People who doesn't like the idea of having a campaing because they only care of multiplayer and/or sandbox. Or people who... People can get very loud about anything.

I'm not saying that I'm against a debate about separating them but from my point of view, the system is quite fine as it is. Oh, it needs to improve and add things along as the different game mechanics are put into place (Beta 2). But to tie Essence, the uber mechanic of the game (bringing land to life, imbue non channeler heroes so they can cast spells, cast the most uber things ever dreamt...), into the RPG concept of character level is quite a control measure that I can accept and easily explainable.

Essence is life force which is an aspect of the bond between a Channeler and the Crystal Shards that hold the magic of Elemental. The stronger the individual, the stronger that the manifestation of that bond can be (if he raises the Essence stat, that is). Without that bond, no spellcasting is possible (altough if the character is a channeler, remains so for good even if he spends all his Essence doing stuff).

Just because someone want to have his Sovereign tied to a chair since turn 1 and still get Essence to do stuff without risking him into battle and/or because it isn't his style, doesn't mean that tying Essence to leveling up is bad. It only means that he need game mechanics that make viable such strategy. From gaining experience from the rests of the units (naturally to due to a spell) to gaining exp from using Traits based on staying at home, I'm quite sure that options can be offered.

Really, Stardock surely knew about this all along. Not all of them are warmongers, right?

Exactly. That's why I want someone who saw it happen explain to me where the 'old plan' of sovs sharing unit XP gains went. Or maybe the devs just need to step in promptly and say what we are seeing here is part of the game being 'crippled' for Beta 1 and that by Beta 2 we'll see XP connections between sovs and their vassals--regulars, champions, or both.

But I'm probably extra-sensitive on this point at the moment because my 0.32+ game is with Lady Porcupine as my sov, and she seems to get beaten to a pulp by anything else on the map and I haven't had time to try getting her some escorts or whatever it might take to let her actually be there for a tactical win.

Lol well .... in my mind a good sovereign has to have levels, and obviously to get levels you either need to fight, quest, or both.

There is a vast variety in ways that you can fight, quest, or both.

Ultimately, however, it depends on the direction the Devs want to take.

Experience sharing shouldn't happen.  It just seems contrived, difficult to balance, and makes it so you can have a combat sovereign without having to commit him to combat.  Leveling should be a reward for questing and fighting with your sovereign.  That being said, I shouldn't have to quest and fight with my sovereign if I don't want to, so leveling and essence generation need to be separated.  Now because you are questing and fighting you will have a much stronger combatant sovereign than I... that is your reward for that playing style.

Multiple problems.

First, detaching essence from level up nukes choice in what kind of character you're building.  If you want to be a tank from hell, you go crazy on beefing the hell out of your character by physical stat boosts instead of essence.  If you get essence separately, you've made no such sacrifice and no longer need to choose between them.  This is bad.  Building a character is only a meaningful task when you have to make hard choices between one aspect and another.

Second, while you become the godlike tank, you can give your essence to all those champions, building an armada of godlike tanks that can still use magic.  You can also run around founding cities, while still having a godlike tank.  More choice removed, you can always have a godlike tank for a sovereign.

In the end, the attempt to separate essence from leveling so that one can play a stay at home sovereign has backfired.  You now inevitably have a godlike tank as it levels and by virtue of getting stomped into a greasy spot otherwise, must build and use that godlike tank in an offensive manner.

It's much better to change experience gain from being something only done through combat.  If your city is getting bonuses for having the sovereign there, the sovereign should be getting experience for whatever activities he's doing to manage that.  Casting spells, researching spells, managing the estate, a small bonus from empire wide combat accounting for strategic planning involved, perhaps even magical means of gaining experience through the combat of your summoned beings.

Assuming we can get them to change this evil plan to have your sovereign survive death on the battlefield to warp home, direct combat should be the most effective means of gaining experience due to the risk/reward factor of playing the front line.  If they do go with such a wuss method it doesn't even deserve that as it's all reward and no risk.

ok how about this.  the sovereign is the ruler of his kingdom, so why not him making tough decisions about his kingdom translate into rewards, or maybe even FACTION experience.  say a prompt comes up about deciding to do 1 of 2 things.  go one way and you get some essence from it, go the other and you might get a something different.

faction experience - maybe even the faction gains experience(maybe each time a settlement goes to a new level the faction gains some experience) and you reach a higher faction level.  this wouldn't be as complicated as a sovereign creation or anything.  maybe you choose one reward per level.

gain a level and you could get: 20 essence points, +1 to faction wide production, food, gold(choose one) etc, maybe a random hero, 100 gildars or something like that.

maybe each time you reach a milestone you could have an extra nice reward.

Actually there is a problem with this level up -> get essence method. Sov dies = game over. Maybe it's not a huge problem for the player, but what about the AI? The AI is also forced to fight with his Sov all the time in order to get the necessary essence. I am pretty sure that Brad will create an amazing AI, but I am also pretty sure that it will make mistakes, just like any other AIs. So basically the current essence system = handicapped AI. This is my opinion. This is why I say, that there must be other ways to gain essence as well, without being forced to level up the Sovereign. The current system is far from being perfect.

Alternate sources of essence Here ... and none of them require direct action by the Sovereign, I feel like pointing out.