Modding Depth
Elemental Forums
Games like Elemental tend to appeal to a smaller market than say, Halo. Nothing wrong with that. I enjoy the Halo games. That said, a turn based strategy game will never have the widespread appeal of an action based FPS like Halo. Games like Elemental don't need to have simulation level depth (although that can be fun too!), but they should have enough depth to allow for interesting strategy, meaningful choices, and tough decisions.
Having been through the Beta, and now having seen the initial reactions to the 'final' game, I think that the main problem people have with Elemental is the lack of depth. Yes, there are plenty of bugs and small issues, but most complaints seem to come back to the lack of depth in combat, magic, city building, heroes, diplomacy, etc. Right now there is a distinct lack of interesting decisions. I never have to decide anything really interesting about my cities...I can generally just build everything and they all end up lifeless. Sure, there are level up choices, but they feel bland. I would much rather decide to make characterful choices that impact gameplay...so when I found the city I can make it a Trade Post, Military Camp, or a Village. Each would have strengths and weaknesses, instead of the current bland % bonus.
Stardock has plenty to do making the base game better (smashing bugs, improving AI, etc). I would love to see Stardock make major improvements to the game's overall depth, but I would rather they focus on making the core game work properly while we in the community focus on expanding the depth and content of the game. Below I have listed a few ideas that I think we may (eventually) be able to mod into the game to improve depth and thus overall gameplay.
I'm putting this thread together to talk about how we can improve depth through modding. Several early adventurers have already gotten us started with some nifty mods. I'm sure that this will mature as time goes on and we get a better idea of what we can and can't do. I know we have had plenty of 'Walls of Text' already, but I am not just looking to throw out ideas. I'm trying to find ways to accomplish some of these ideas as I begin to learn to mod Elemental on my own. If anyone has ideas for increasing depth or ideas on how to begin to mod any of these ideas....I'd love to hear your thoughts.
1) City and Faction management: Right now, your Kingdom / Empire and cities are fairly bland, with few interesting choices to be made. There are no Faction-wide decisions to be made other than in Diplomacy (War, treaties, etc.). A player using a peaceful human Kingdom should have a different experience than a warmongering Fallen Empire, beyond just declaring war more often. Gal Civ II had this with the morality system and random events that had the player make decisions. Many (perhaps even most) other strategy games have something like this. Same goes for cities. There really aren't many decisions to be made. Even when you conquer an enemy city...it is now magically yours, with no real problems. This is rather silly, especially in a Fantasy setting where you have different races.
A ) City Management: Each city will have a happiness level. This will work the same way it has in most games like Civ, Gal Civ, etc. As the population gets larger, it will be harder to manage. You will be able to add buildings that impact happiness. A Pub might add happiness, while a Forced Labor Camp might add materials while reducing happiness. I would also like to see events and policies tied into Happiness, war weariness, etc. Different levels of happiness could have positive or negative benefits, ie: bonus to gold for a happy city, penalty to production for unhappy. I would like to see the possibility of revolts as well, but that will be even more difficult to mod. This will require the addition of a new stat to cities. We might be able to repurpose one of the existing stats such as Prestige. Once we have a 'Happiness' stat working, we would obviously need to add the buildings and other systems to make use of it. There are plenty of other things we could also do here, such as City Health as seen in Civ.
B ) Faction Policies: I love civics / policies in Civ, Alpha Centauri, and King Arthur. I think they add a great deal of flavor and gameplay choice. This would require us to be able to modify certain global values by setting policies. Ideally, we would be able to add a screen to the UI or modify on existing screen, such as the Kingdom Report, to allow policies to be selected. Look at Fall from Heaven II for Civ...playing as Bannor with the Order religion, adopting the Crusade civic...it felt very characterful and had a major impact on gameplay.
2) Combat and Magic: The issues with the depth in these systems has been talked about extensively, so won't rehash it here. Bottom line is that there needs to be greater choice...I should have a reason to want cheap spearmen (anti-cavalry / good general defense) even though I can equip my units with death hammers. I should be rewarded for focusing my efforts into one book of Magic, or for being a jack of all trades. Special abilities will help with combat as will overall balancing. Same for Magic...spells should be different and scale with the game. We shouldn't see minor summoned monsters casting area of effect spells that wipe out entire armies at the start of the game. However, a late game Sovereign should be able to unleash devastating spells that can really change the tide of battle.
3) Heroes: Another topic that has been discussed at length. Special abilities, better scaling and balancing, greater difference between Heroes...these will all help a great deal. I picture Heroes as the heart of the Adventuring / Questing system, and a supplement to large battles. I really like the way King Arthur handled this...see the next section.
4) Quests: Quests are generally linear. Kind Arthur had a much better system. I think we can probably do something similar in Elemental with a CYOA style system. The main thing I want to do is figure out how to tie such a system into the Heroes going on the quest. I like the idea of having RPG style parties that can engage in quests. Some quests could involve armies, as seen in King Arthur, but I prefer a system that focuses on small parties of Heroes. So when a given decision point is reached in a quest (ie: you enter a trapped hallway) the involved Heroes will determine what happens. So if you enter the hallway you may take damage, but if you have a Rogue-style character, maybe you can avoid it. I want to create more multiple stage quests that have NPCs and life to them, so that after the 10th stage of a big quest when you finally hunt down the evil mage that has been the root of the problems, you actually care about the fight. Ideally, we will be able to tie the quest system into other systems. So, if you have a city that is very unhappy, it may generate a new quest to deal with some rioting citizens or something like that.
