Hi all
Just my 2 cents worth on the game a lot of which has already been said but as I say – it’s my 2 cents worth based on my experience of the game and others like it.
The RPG aspect of the characters is one of the best things in the game. We should be able to make more of it and IMO the best way to do this is with a skill tree. Some heroes have a skill. Why not skill up all of them and make them individual. This could be done by adding a tab on the level up screen to tick which skills to skill up each level up.
Skills should /could have ranks.
Melee rank 1 - +1 attack - +.2 combat speed. To Melee rank 10 - +10 attack +2 combat speed - just example numbers they would have to be balanced.
Critical attack - +% chance of a critical hit per point in the skill.
Looter - +10% more gold from combat per point in the skill – the thief class should be getting about that if you bother taking it for your sovereign.
Archmage – overcomes 1 point of resistance per point in skill.
I’m sure there are lots of ideas out there that are better than those – but you get the point.
Starting distance – I find that in general that the enemies start way too close to my starting point. Case in point the last game I played – I started on a medium map with 2 opponents. I found one to the east and one to the west of my start point within 15-20 moves in each direction. I was at war by round 20ish (they attacked) and the game was over by round 60ish. I studied magic - summoned a Fire Giant and a familiar – studied war to make some archers and in pure self defence had the game won in 60 minutes or less.
Those starting distances may make sense with 6 bad guys – or more – but the game seems to fill the closest starting points on a map first. Personally I prefer to build a town or two and explore something other than the combat system. I shouldn’t be forced to, first and foremost, study war in self defence in every game. The starting points need to be more random – I had one game on a large map where I explored a third of the whole map and found all the opponents and the other two thirds of the map was ignored by all kingdoms while we slugged it out.
Fertile land. I liked the beta system where a Sovereign could convert land into fertile land. The concept being that a Channeler could restore the land. Which is the whole point behind the game. I admit that I haven’t managed to study every spell list all the way to the highest level so maybe there is a really high level spell I missed that does this. But I personally think that it would be nice to be able to spend some essence and fertilise some land for extra food.
Food isn’t always a problem. But it can be. I played a game a few days ago where I saw three fertile land areas in the entire game. When I took an enemy city my food jumped from +1 (Natures Bounty, Irrigation, Granary, Farmers guild etc) to -20. How am I supposed to recover from that? Just raze the city? Kill all those people because I can’t feed them? Better to allow a Sovereign to spend a little essence and make some fertile land if they feel they would like to.
I’m not sure how natures bounty works – does Irrigation, Granary, Farmers guild increase the effects of natures bounty or is it just +1 not +1 making it 1 so it can be increased by improvements? It needs to be increased by improvements – Natures bounty makes things grow the improvements; improve the outcome of that growth.
Combat is pretty good. In fact it is very much like Master of Magic – I had a play of MOM today just to compare. I think the AI needs more work so combat is more tactical – but on the whole it works well.
Personally I liked the mana storage system of MOM better. You create mana each turn in the form of crystals – then spend them to cast spells and create Items - Mana in Elemental is a bit limited. One reason is the severe lack of mana in the game. As a 7th level Sovereign you might have 20-30 mana – which is enough for most battles but it only comes back one per round – so a really big fight for a quest means you run to town for 10 rounds if you have the building that adds mana regen – or 20-30 if not.
Talking of crystals – it’s nice they add spell power to the game - but wouldn’t it also be nice if they added ESSENCE to the sovereign who owns them? Not sure how much but 5 -10 per crystal shard would be nice considering how rare they are.
Creating Magic Items; I know that as we unlock technologies we get magic items to buy in the merchant. This is good and should stay that way. But I think we also need to be able to make Artefacts – really powerful magic items by using essence to do it.
Make a ring with a mana pool – it adds to your own mana pool and regens +1 per round as well. Amulet of Mana regeneration – with +1, +2, +3, +4,+5 mana regen a round depending on how many essence points you want to put into it. A helmet of mana multiplication – wearer gains 1.5(1.1 or 1.8 or 2.5 etc) times there essence – so while worn a 20 essence gives 30 mana. A sword that does an extra 1-6 fire damage. A bow of slaying Fire Giants - +10 true damage to Fire Giants. Etc.
I think that a group of enchantments could be made up similar to MOM.
+ attack, + defence, + combat speed, Extra Elemental Damage, Slaying racial types. Mana regen – Mana Pool, Mana Multiplier. Stoning (turns things to stone) Slowing, etc. I’m sure the community would have a lot of great ideas. In general allowing the creation of magic items would help to balance the lack of Mana in the game and make it a lot more fun to out fit heroes…
Bows??? – there are swords with +20 attack for champions – but what happened to an Elvish Longbow (+8 attack) a longbow of the Fay – (+6 attack +2 combat speed) a Longbow of flame (+6 attack +1-6 fire damage) etc.
I’d like to see new races with completely new town building options and racial units like -
Elves, Dwarves, Dark Elves, Sidhe, Drakeborn. Etc,
Unicorn riders – Dwarvish Crossbowmen, Spellsingers, Fairies, Death Lizards – etc but I’m sure that would be more of an expansion or a mod.
Anyway – just some ideas on what I think could be improved or added – lots of great stuff already in the game and it is a great foundation for making a fantastic fantasy world building game
