Winner Takes All

This or some iteration of this is a great possible solution.  Overall game flow is disrupted less, larger battles become increasingly more epic, and the ability to reinforce and retreat become possible and important strategic decisions.  All the while not sacrificing the potential of the tactical battles with arbitrary limitations.

The Winner takes all model, while simple and convenient, seems uninspired. Retreat should have drawbacks, but it is a common and important strategic maneuver.

Morale

It might be interesting if morale triggered various benefits based on events on the battlefield. 

Say a group of soldier has low morale, and their direct enemies become low on health, so the soldiers become reckless (lower defenses, higher combat speed) in order to finish their immediate opponents off.

Or your troops have high morale, and are fighting along side their sovereign when an attack reduces them to 0 hp. Because they are close to their leader and have such high morale they gain tenacity (the unit performs a final attack and then dies).

Combat Speed

I think someone mentioned it, but what made Sauron so dangerous was that one swing of his mace could send a dozen or more men/elves flying away, dead.  It was pure, terrifying power that could strike many with a single attack.  Combat speed is an important statistic to have but other methods of hitting multiple opponents in a turn need to be implemented alongside it. Perhaps essence could imbue someone with the ability to hit multiple targets and knock them away (keeping with the sauron example).

Randomization vs Richness

This one has me torn, the idea of a well thought out battlefield with a variety of interesting elements intrigues me.  On the other hand, I want to see the world in my battle field.  Choosing where to do battle is as important a choice as any other, and historically has been one of the cornerstones of victory. Your opponent wears heavy armor and depends on mobility? Fight in a muddy field, it'll slow him down, and make him vulnerable to ranged fire. I need to see the available advantages/disadvantages in a location before I fight so that i can give myself the best chance at victory.

Great idea.

Great ideas and thoughts so far on these subjects.
My takes:

Combat Speed: this is fine, maybe make it different from movement rate as the 2 could be not related. I see Conan having a super high combat speed allowing him to attack and defend a great deal.

AOW-SM does this in a unique and good way (IMHO). every attack or riposte (for defenders) uses up a certain amount of your 'Combat moves'. The more combat moves you have the more attacks you can make, and the more counterstrokes when you are attacked. for instance:

• Sauron has 5 combat moves per turn. (attacks or counter-attacks while defending)
• He comes upon a company of 15 elves.
• While attacking he attacks and rightly kills 5 Elves. (we can get into attacks that affect more than one creature another time)
• The next 'turn' the remaining 10 elves counter-attack. 
• The 1st elf swings and misses. 
• Sauron uses his 1st (of 5) counter attacks and knocks the elf back a tile and kills him.
• The next 4 elves all attack, 2 hit Sauron glancing blows. 
• Sauron uses his 4 remaining counter-attacks this turn to kill 3 more elves. amazingly, he misses one.
• There are 5 more elves left of the company who all attack Sauron.
•  Sauron has no counter-attacks left so grimaces and bears it, knowing all the remaining elves will be dead next turn!

This allows large groups (of cannon fodder for instance) to attack the large monster and get attacks in, but of course will lose quite a few units doing it.

Morale: like it sounds good, let's test and see how leaders, spells and more affect this.

WINNER. TAKE. ALL. I have no beef with long battles and look forward to them.

• I think there should be an option to retreat - at least for the attacker. This is where quite a few statistics could come into play:
• Retreat should affect one's morale. Maybe permanently drop a % or for a set # of days/turns or until new exp is gained etc.
• Retreat should affect your equipment. Look at classic retreats (Napoloen and Germans/axis in Ww2). HUGE amounts of equipment, supplies, and more were lost.These should be taken away from the surviving retreating forces. Some could even be swag/booty for the opponents. (supplies, some weapons that you could re-arm your units with etc.
• Perhaps one can only retreat once per turn.
• Attacker's and defender's movement rates. If the retreater has a lower rate, they should be impacted heavily: more casualties, more equipment loss, lower morale next turn etc.

Controlling the length of a tactical battle: Perhaps this should be a global setting one could change at game start.

Randomization vs. Richness. I am for RICHNESS. I hope there will an editor/options for creators to add new tactical maps to the queue or mix? I would - rather as FrogBoy does - want some excellent tactical maps rather than generic based on overland map. Maybe there could be some based on region type one could choose from. tactical battle in mountains. There are 5 "Rich" mountain tactical maps available. (I really like the option of being able to add more..)

Note: Repost for a new page, minus the bitchyness . To see the list of Quotes please see the reply on the previous page.

 

Quoting Frogboy,

Controlling the length of a tactical battle.  We believe that users should have a lot of control over how in depth they want their battles to be. Should a tactical battle finish in less than a minute or should they last 2 hours? How do we make it so that players can control this?

Before that Frogboy says this...

WINNER. TAKE. ALL. This is the part where we want to hear your opinions. We do ask that you keep an open mind on what we ultimately go with.  My opinion is that the attacking player has the onus to finish the battle in N turns. After N turns, the attacker morale starts to go lower and lower at which point the defender can come out and make mince meat out of them.  The question is, what should determine what N is?  Or should we allow retreating? Should we allow draws?  I’m against retreats or withdraws because it’s one of those things that allows the game to drag on. It’s a strong personal preference of mine that two men enter, one man leaves. (Your heroes will tend to escape though).

(The BOLD Parts are the REAL Important parts of what he says there)

 

---

By stating "My opinion is that the attacking player has the onus to finish the battle in N turns. After N turns, the attacker morale starts to go lower and lower at which point the defender can come out and make mince meat out of them." he goes DIRECTLY AGAINST what he just said saying "We believe that users should have a lot of control over how in depth they want their battles to be."...

There is a Direct Contradiction RIGHT THERE. If those limiting ideas are implemented then YOU DO TAKE CONTROL AWAY FROM THE PLAYER....PERIOD.

The only Logical Option is to simply Realize that THE PLAYER can CHOOSE to AUTO-RESOLVE the battle at ANY TIME. THE PLAYER decides how Long or Short a battle is. It SHOULD NOT be decided by some artificial time limitation.  

 

---

 

It's just like the debate going on in some replies in this thread about Movement Speed being Directly Applied to Attack Speed. Why is that exactly? Because , Again, they Chose to Simplify The System. They boiled it down instead of having two separate calculations for speed. Why not just include a new parameter called "Weapon Speed" WITHOUT US MODDING IT IN?

Now I hope Some of You people see why SIMPLIFYING THINGS IS F'KING BAD!!!!!! Dumbing Down a System and Making it Less-Complicated is BAD!!!!! It purposefully ADDS DESIGN FLAWS!!!!

Just because something is complicated behind the scenes doesn't mean The Player will be Bogged Down with Micromanagement. This is a Strategy War Game people!!! Treat it like one and stop turning it into a game of F'king Checkers!!!!

I've seen companies do this On The Inside. I Am and Have Been a PROFESSIONAL Beta Tester for MANY Companies. I know the "Real" reasons why things are simplified and it isn't Always what they tell people it is (No I'm NOT accusing Stardock of this, just saying I've seen it first hand). Some companies do it to make it easier on THEM-SELVES, because they are LAZY, or because continued Development Costs are Too Expensive.

That Can't happen here though, right? Frogboy has already stated, multiple times (even bragged about it) that with Elemental there is No Rush because of Money. They already have Tons of Money and are Making Money from Other Products so that means they can take As Long As They Want with Elemental. The game won't be Ready until they say "It's Ready", and not a second before...right?

So Why Not take the time to DO THIS ONE PART RIGHT?!!?!?!?! Next to the magic system this is arguably the Most Important part of the game. Don't F'K it up!!! If you do....I'll never buy a Stardock product again.

I'm still not happy about the ease with which you abandoned perhaps the most intriguing (IMO) aspect of the game (continuous turns)... but the combat better not be like HoMM or Kinds Bounty.  I don't care what you do as long as it is better than that drivel.

My friend, how many people who play Pen and Paper D&D can understand All the Rules just by playing it one time? Of course people aren't going to understand why something happens the very second it happens. At that point it's up to The Player to Learn, to Think, and to Adapt Their Strategy. That's why this is a strategy game and not Pong.

I didn't start out as a "Hard-Core" player. I became one by learning and adapting because it was Fun for me.

I'm NOT SAYING to make the combat system Super Detailed with options the "Average Player" won't use (or understand either apparently). Don't dumb down what could be an incredible experience because a few "average" (less than average in my opinion) people might not understand it at first. Gaming is as much a learning experience as it is a fun experience. Even when you're talking about something as simple as "Mario Brothers". You had to "Learn" to jump so you could get over that gap or that Goomba. In Gal Civ 2 you had to Learn how to put units on a transport and invade a alien world. You wren't born with that knowledge. If some-one can't learn how a Game works then they should either of not have bought it or done their research.

To me, in my eyes, if they add in these time limit ideas etc etc....they are taking "Shakespeare" and turning it into "See Spot Run".

Edit: As for the emotional part. Actually, in my private life, I'm going through some Very Emotional things. That tends to bleed over into other aspects of my life, like making posts on the internet.

OK, now I understand what you mean better. I didn't mean that all should be understandable when playing the game for the first time, there is always a "learning curve". The question is how to determine the "optimal" level of complexity, and I guess the one that the devs will choose won't be something that satisfies those that I call "hardcore" players. (Do I overuse the quotation marks?) But I'm sure there will be mods that increase the level of detail dramatically.

Btw I agree that attack speed should be different than movement speed (for example well-trained archers should be able to shoot pretty fast, but not necessarily move fast).

 

Didn't have time to read every reply in detail, but here are my two cents:

Combat speed: indeed Sauron has an area attack (special power) - please try to avoid to mix this up with combat speed. If you throw a fireball or call down a meteor you should be able to attack a lot of troops, but this could very well be a slow attack when it comes to combat speed. I don't think you should mix the two, especially since heavy attacks affecting several opponents (think a tail sweep from a dragon) are normally slower than say a single dagger stabbing doing less damage. If possible, please keep separate. The charm with small arms is that they are extremely quick (but do less damage).

Morale: sounds very good. Panic sounds good.

Terrain: great!

Winner takes all: don't like. Especially don't like the N concept if N is time based. All depends on how the battle is going, if attackers are slowly but steadily crushing their enemies it would be super annoying to have a break in the battle after N turns ... If you want a time factor, you would need to introduce stamina/endurance, for both sides. Regarding withdrawal: personally I loved the withdrawal system of AoWSM because it was tactical and created a lot of tension and panic fleeing with heores and troops (means: excitement). Please let us be able to decide ourselves if we want to take a big risk and let a hero continue to fight against difficult odds, or just try to get him out before it's too late. With winer takes all it is also annoying when the AI jumps on you and you know that you'll loose all troops but can't even TRY to save some key troops. To avoid that it drags on: use something like Total War, meaning you can hack down a lot of the fleeing enemies. 

Combined arms: great.

Thresholds: ok.

Control of length: as long as you can push autoresolve it's better that battles take rather long so you can really control what's going on. If you've had enough, press auto.

Random maps: yes please use random, fitting with the terrain, but wouldn't it be possible o combine random and premade: the background is based on the terrain (with some randomization of details possibly) but then you could also have some "premade elements" superimposed on that to make some of the maps more interesting and tacticaly challenging. More difficult things must have been achieved in the history of programming. I also like the idea that some key locations are based on premade maps (but only very few please, like for the campaign).

Also agree with Raven-X that you seem to go for many easy solutions so please try and make the most of the tactical battles and it will be great!!!  

Combat Speed - A systems that allows the player to convert total Combat Speed, a combination of Moves & Attacks, into one or the other, depending on the situation, would be perfect.

Example: Squad A has a 20 point Combat Speed (Move + Attack) If they are attacked, the saved Moves (that turn) can be converted to Attack use. Otherwise, if Squad A wishes to advance quickly, their Attack # could be converted into available Moves (at a rate of 2x) with a resultant .5x attacks left upon arrival.

Morale - Is always good. Just make it so I don't lead a bunch of easily whipped woosies.

Terrain - Curious about this one as currently we can't climb into the hills of a Mountain range. A must if done well as it adds HUGE strategic elements that are truly needed for EPIC to be known.

WINNER. TAKE. ALL. - Gotta go with the NAY crowd. Some form of Retreat/Withdrawal (with penalties) would be better. Troops preservation is huge as noted, and will make all out "rushes" have alot less appeal. 

Combined Arms - A no brainer. Balance is Key!

Thresholds - Just let em Fight I say! LOL!

Controlling the Length of a Tactical Battle - I know there is no Day/Night cycle but I think it would be cool to simulate that via Turns allowed before a decision must be made as to how to proceed.

Example: The armies of old would only fight during daylight hours, with some battles lasting multiple days. The reason was rather obvious.

So, lets say that the world of Elemental has 15 hours (arbitrary #) of light per day and that each Tactical Turn represents 1 of those hours.

Given that, then every 15 Tactical Turns a Pop up would appear for the players asking 2 simple questions:

1) Continue the Battle?

2) Flee the Field?

If Player A selects #2, then Player B's options then change to:

1) Persue the fleeing forces?

2) Declare Victory (and buid a Monument to yourself)

I read an expanded list of something similiar in here but You have Won, or can Rout if you want. Just be wary his reserves aren't waiting.

To bad we won't get the Tactiacl Battles this Beta level. arrrggghhhh! twitch twitch

 

 

 

Instead of apoligies, you could have saved us from your venting.


How many are those "almost everyone" of the otal people that will buy the game? How many from those that will enjoy the system (if it were to be implemented as commented)? I'm not saying that anyone here is right or wrong but if I'm to exxagerate as you do, I'd say that if a buch of people gets loud and are "almost everyone" in a thread asking to turn ELemental into an FPS, they would be right, am I correct? Or should Stardock just do what they consider best for THEIR game? (sometimes matching some players wishes, most of the time not as it's impossible to please everyone)

It's their game. They can make it a fantasy clone of Master of Orion 3 if they want. WIll Stardock make "mistakes" in this game? Probably, nothing is perfect. Master of Magic surely is still AWESOME and it's not something I'd consider ubercomplex (not these days, anyways).

Yeah, let's forget that this is a Strategy Game. You know, with Diplomacy, Quests, Research... In the grim future of Elemental, there is only war.

Then if you know it so well, shouldn't you show some more respect? Starting by the fact that Stardock doesn't owe us any kind of explanation of why they do what they do (preordering allows them to take your money, true, but in exchange of beta access... as you can provide feedback without that access), then continuing but they already saying (about some things) that they couldn't/can't do them for Gold because of time/resources. They don't give us all the facts, but surely they let us know more than most out there. I suppose some people never get satisfied with what they get. (which isn't always good)

Ok, my experience in betas is limited to those "betas" that are actually game promotions (like Champions Online, for mentioning one of the latests) so compared to this one... well, this one seems quite real to me. No, I don't expect it to be like if I were working for Stardock (which should be the only way to get what you comment) but even being a marketing ploy (that's just a side to it, I don't think that Stardock has ever denied it) it's more than just that and you should know that unless you prefer to keep your eyes closed. Galactic Civilizations II is a perfect example for me of what Stardock can acomplish.

Again sectarism. To be expected of people who only want a part of the picture. Sad but I don't have any hope for mankind anyways. I don't get an espionage system and here I'm. And I'll survive. And I understand that even if Stardock has the money to delay the game, they may have other reasons not to delay it too much (including "we can add that in a expansion"). And I must trust them on that and what they do. If I cannot, I better not spend a single euro on the company. (it's not like they are my goverment or something). Also, temper tantrum if they don't do things like you want? Very low. Luckily for Brad and company, they have guts.

Cool, I know how to give vent to my emotions too! I need more practice though. Not enough flames and probably only 1 person in the whole forum will get the point. Also:

WALL OF TEXT!!!

 

If it ends up being pre-made maps then there will need to be alot of maps, else it will soon get repetitive.  Creating hundreds takes time so they won't be an infinite resource.  When GalCiv2 was in beta there was talk of releasing hundreds of ship components, which is something that never quite materialised on the scale enthused about.  It could easily be the same with Elemental's maps.  Relying on modders to fill the gap later could leave the game limited in options at release, even if it does get filled in time.

In order of how good I think my ideas are:

Richness vs. randomness: My original idea was to do both. Maybe have 20 premade tactical battlefields. Then random 40, 1-20 is the corresponding pre made map, anything randomed over 21 would be random generated. This could also be functional for people adding their own tactical maps, just add them to the existing "canon" maps and then random (#of maps) x 2.

However I also really like the suggestion above of using stamps comprised of areas of the map and then randomly applying those to create "rich but random" tactical fields. Only problem would be if some stamps did not merge well with other stamps (if they were adjacent.)

I really think that tacitcal maps need to correspond to the terrain type the battle is taking place on. This is probably already a given, it would be weird to attack someone on a desert square and then fight the tactical battle in a jungle.

Yet another possibility would be to start with a"rich" tactical map and then generate a little randomness into the map. Anyway, there are three ideas on that topic...if it is an either or choice I favor rich pre-built over random variety.

WINNER TAKE ALL. I tend to agree. I have no problem with allowing retreats, but they should be painful enough that it truly is a last resort. (having read some other posts on this, it would be interesting if you could have spells and/or design a small army that speicalized on lightning strikes and then running away) Also, how badly the fleeing army is mowed down should be a factor of average combat movement speed difference between the fleeing army and the non fleeing army and how many archers there are in the non-fleeing army.

example: The fleeing army is faster on average, and the non fleeing army has few or no archers - 10%-25% attrition for the fleeing army.

The armies are roughly the same speed, no archers. 20%-40% attrition for fleeing army.

The retreating army is slower, no archers. 30%-50%.

Then how many archers their are and the sizes of the armies could be factored in - if the pursuing army has a LOT of archers, it could add up to maybe 25% losses to the retreating army.

Heroes in all cases would have a much better chance of retreating safely, and should have a possibility of jsut taking damage but surviving the retreat.

All kinds of tweaking could be done regarding how painful you want the retreat option to be, it could even be a game setting.

Controlling the length of tactical battles: It may seem overly simplistic, but the easiest way to manage this is through a hitpoint modifier of all units. Let's say base hit points for a unit is ten, and it takes three good sword thwacks to kill this soldier in fast mode. By leaving all other things the same (damage amounts, etc) but doubling the hit points - well this will draw the battle out and you might be more willing to manuever vs. melee if you are going to lose a lower percentage of your hitpoints doing so. You are more likely to run for a better tactical position if you are only going to lose 1/4 of your health doing so as opposed to half. You could go all the way up to 10x health if you wanted truly epic battles. This does a lot more than just "drag the battle out" which I see as being the first knee-jerk negative reaction to the idea. It really does make it more strategic as someone who is going to take 30 hits to bring down again has a lot more options to him than the guy who can be "one shotted".

I do think that if 'x' rounds of tactical combat go by without any units being damage, that either the computer auto resolves the battle OR the attacking unit is considered to have retreated. (some negatives to either option.) for instance if the defender runs around the tactical battlefield for 5 rounds, is it really fair to punish the attacking player with a "retreat"? anyway, some ideas to think about.

Big Smile For Winter first.

You did it as well.  

Raven X has a point. He has expressed it with zeal. Kudos for that. We all face the same uncertainly at this point. What don't we know, what haven't we seen. How can we help, if we are being treated like Mushrooms, minus what they feed us part. lol

I too have come to Elemental for reasons of my own, but the main one is that it is a Stardock offering. Getting in ground floor on any game has huge benefits come launch day. Not the least of is knowing many of the other players you meet in MP, the first days...

The other is that SD does make games that have offerd a CURVE that to many, may be a bit to curvy. Rock and Hard place for them, given. Sales make profit, profit fuels the business and only being and staying in business can they persue their own internal goals. BUT...

If the cost of gaining new players to their Titles, has a Negative effect on those, who come from the past, how does one measure the true cost.

I am old, "dirt" old. I grew up in Mechs that had Heat, they were a nightmare to learn to drive, maintain and simply pointing and shooting every chance you got was a Death sentence. God that was so much FUN!

Then time passed. More, new, younger players, were needed. Complexity, apparently was an issue.

When I finally succumb to the new reality in that genre, driving that same Mech was a Joke, no FUN at all. It was sad, but it was progress. There were alot of NEW shitty Mech drivers, with Point and Shoot (no side effects) mentalities running around. Sales must have improved, but alas, the FUN the "dirt" had enjoyed had been stripped. Last time I checked, the young guns had moved on after a short time to greener, more pointy and shoot pastures, but there was nothing for the "dirt" to return to.

Don't let the "Shooty Pointies" decide how the game of Elemental should be made when in the end, it is the "dirt" that will be around long after that dust has settled, and they are but a distant memory, and we can all say. To bad they never stayed with it.

"Now Shuffle us up a Map and let's see who got Army!"

Thus end my rant ends.