Initial 1.08 Impressions

from Elemental Forums

Playing 1.08 so far, my initial impression is that it's far better than it was gameplay-wise.  Supporting your economy with goldmines as opposed to spider organs is a big change for the better.  But there's still some aspects that are off.

Here's my list of what I'd like to see tweaked yet:

1) Equipment for your NPCs is completely unaffordable.  Equipping your guy is one of the coolest parts of the game.  It shouldn't be virtually impossible to do.  Also, I get that longbows were cheap, but staffs were CHEAPER.

2) Shards add too much of a bonus to magic.  I was walking around with an unarmed, barely clothed sovereign death machine.  I started near two earth shards.  Game over everyone else.  Hurl boulder was dealing 34 damage from across the map.  Everytime I slaughtered an army, I'd up my essence and blam.  Even more other army death.  I didn't find a monster that didn't just auto resolve.  There's no skill in starting near a resource.

3) City construction drives me crazy. A. It's too easy to miss when a city isn't building anything. B. I like the buildings that add resources or trade one resource for another.  They fit in this sort of economy.  Unfortunately, there's only like 5 of those.  The rest are percentile increasing buildings.  My city is producing 4 food.  Do I really need a building that increases that by 25%?  I'd be happy if ALL percentile buildings were removed from the game.  They overly complicate things for no good reason.

4) The magic tech tree.  Am I just not getting it?  Is there supposed to be something appealing in this tree?  I can harvest shards that's good.  I already seem to have access to Enchantment books.  Is that because my custom sovereign chose all books?  If I can do that, why is it a tech too?  My units get an essence bonus of 4900%?  Really?  Buildings that provide essence percentage bonus to units?  Huh?  (Another percentage building that should go.  How about a building that just gives all your units produced there 2 mana instead?)  Do units even get essence other than through imbue?  Have I just not gotten far enough to get flame wielding pikeman?

5) Tying monster spawning to tech trees was a bad idea.  My last game I didn't bother to research the Adventuring tree...  And the world was a much safer place.

elemental
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Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

5) Tying monster spawning to tech trees was a bad idea.  My last game I didn't bother to research the Adventuring tree...  And the world was a much safer place.
End of quote

 

Very funny :) :')

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top



5) Tying monster spawning to tech trees was a bad idea.  My last game I didn't bother to research the Adventuring tree...  And the world was a much safer place.

End of quote

Too bad that doesn't work in real life. No microscope, no bacteria and viruses :grin:  

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top


5) Tying monster spawning to tech trees was a bad idea.  My last game I didn't bother to research the Adventuring tree...  And the world was a much safer place.

End of quote

Exactly.

Yet another reason why the adventuring "tech" tree should be axed. I'm actually surprised there even needs to be a debate about this...

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

I disagree I like that when things get quiet I can create a new wave of mobs.  Very useful and unusual but ingenious game mechanic.  Don't kill it.  You had the option to not spaw mobs, I have the option to do so.  I think that speaks to leaving it in.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Nah, the adventuring tech doesn't really need a "fix" the AI should just stop researching it for you.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting greggbert, reply 4
I disagree I like that when things get quiet I can create a new wave of mobs.  Very useful and unusual but ingenious game mechanic.  Don't kill it.  You had the option to not spaw mobs, I have the option to do so.  I think that speaks to leaving it in.
End of greggbert's quote

"When things get quiet"? Why should the game allow you to wait until you are ready to deal with new challenges? From a game designer's point of view, how am I supposed to communicate to the player whether they are good or bad at the game when they can simply choose not to deal with certain threats? While we are at it, why not let the player start out on a map by themselves and only spawn enemies when the player is "ready"?

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting mastroego, reply 3
Exactly.

Yet another reason why the adventuring "tech" tree should be axed. I'm actually surprised there even needs to be a debate about this...
End of mastroego's quote
We don't need one. Adventure stays. :P Instead of axing, lets talk tweaking.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Instead of axing, lets talk tweaking.
End of quote


Instead of tweaking, let's talk overhauling. It needs more than a bit of tweaking.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

One thing on adventuring, wish we could visit the pub or inn in our city, like we can with the item shop, and recruit adventurers there, as well as pick up certain types of quests.

Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top

The amount of gold you get after winning a battle seems to have been reduced by a factor of 10, so if you were getting 50 goldozer (heh heh) now you get just plain 5 guilders.

Loaded a saved game (more than 500 turns, nearly 400 save games :-D) and suddenly my income went from near neutral gold to minus 120 gold! Had to let go of lots of 8 and 12 unit fighters..

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting gsitetfs, reply 10
The amount of gold you get after winning a battle seems to have been reduced by a factor of 10, so if you were getting 50 goldozer (heh heh) now you get just plain 5 guilders.

Loaded a saved game (more than 500 turns, nearly 400 save games ) and suddenly my income went from near neutral gold to minus 120 gold! Had to let go of lots of 8 and 12 unit fighters..
End of gsitetfs's quote

Here are the three biggest problems that have cropped up with the 1.08 update:

1. Less gold means less of everything, including soldiers.

2. Magic has become more powerful, which makes battles easier to win without soldiers.

3. Equipment cost is so expensive that we cannot afford as many well-armed soldiers.

 

After all the petitions for making combat more "epic", the game just went the opposite direction.  Our armies shrunk in general, our battles are now much smaller, and they can be won simply by casting spells.

I'm glad to hear, however, that we'll be getting a slipstream fix to reduce equipment prices as well as a new "Wealthy" talent.  This should help.

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

After all the petitions for making combat more "epic", the game just went the opposite direction. Our armies shrunk in general, our battles are now much smaller, and they can be won simply by casting spells.
End of quote

 

Elemental War of Magic?  And your saying that being able to cast spells shouldn't be the biggest deciding factor in battles.  It is magic for Christ sack, it isn't like every tom, dick and hairy can cast spells.  That is way everyone always goes for the caster first.  The magic system is fine.  Make the game run smoother, and get multi-player going (100% of the reason I bought this game was to play it over a lan with my friends).  Then they can spend time, changing aspects of the game.   

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

Is it me, or does the weapon balance in idea make sense from 1.07 but in 1.08 what is the reasoning to have a Mace do 6 damage and a warhammer only do 5 damage?

Am I Missing something?  Why on God's good earth would I want a warhammer now?  You'd think a Warhammer would at least do 7 or 8 damage?  Didn't anyone look at the numbers?  Fire your QA department SD you need ppl with a sense sense of attention to detail....

Also WTF is with 2 and 3 shards spawning next to each other?   It's like the lottery but if I wanted to play the lottery I'd have bought 50 Lotto tickets rather than this game. 

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

Here a mod i made awhile back, just read the readme file so you know where they go. All this does is balance out the items.

http://www.fileswap.com/share/01f4a2bece216ca0e34f215578b9de57/Elemental.rar.html

I tried to get Kyogrel12 to post it, no reply from him on PM. guess he been busy on other issues. Since there alot going on for Mod Lists.

Enjoys :)

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting howell_6_2000, reply 12

After all the petitions for making combat more "epic", the game just went the opposite direction. Our armies shrunk in general, our battles are now much smaller, and they can be won simply by casting spells.

 

Elemental War of Magic?  And your saying that being able to cast spells shouldn't be the biggest deciding factor in battles.  It is magic for Christ sack, it isn't like every tom, dick and hairy can cast spells.  That is way everyone always goes for the caster first.  The magic system is fine.  Make the game run smoother, and get multi-player going (100% of the reason I bought this game was to play it over a lan with my friends).  Then they can spend time, changing aspects of the game.   
End of howell_6_2000's quote

 

Nothing's wrong with magic being more powerful.  I think that's great.  It's the combination of increasing magic power while reducing the ability to raise an army (because of less gold and higher equipment costs) that's a bit of a problem I think.  

Reply #16 from Elemental Forums Top

"Equipment for your NPCs is completely unaffordable."

There is absolute expense, and relative expense to equipping other unit types. Too different issues. I understand that relative expense has not changed. Unit across the board have got more expensive due to reduced money supply.

Expensive units change the character of the game. I quite like it. Maybe champions gear could be cheaper proportionally.

"2) Shards add too much of a bonus to magic."

Difficult to balance to magic. I think shards should have a big impact. But first to find shard wins is is bit unbalanced.

"3) City construction drives me crazy. A. It's too easy to miss when a city isn't building anything. good reason."

It is fine as long as you click on each city every turn.

I still don't think they have the building balance yet.

"4) The magic tech tree.  Am I just not getting it? "

I suspect your not getting it. Units only get essence from sovereign's imbue champion. So its important that only units that already have essence get a boost from techs.


5) Tying monster spawning to tech trees was a bad idea. My last game I didn't bother to research the Adventuring tree... and the world was a much safer place.

End of quote

I don't really see the problem.

 

As I see it the big problem with 1.08 is that the correct stragety is still city spamming. Problme size one cites are still free.

 

Sorry for the mess, sometihng sees to have gome wrong with my use of quotes. I also can not see a way to usefully preview my posts.

Reply #17 from Elemental Forums Top

The equipments not hard to come by except the rare ores and materials. Magics on the otherhand are hard to come by, depend on the casters. Take years to learn those magics, than making an armies.

Reply #18 from Elemental Forums Top

The adventure tech tree has never made sense to me.

Perhaps it should be replaced by a "history" or "lore" tech tree that focuses on uncovering artifacts / dungeons / etc.

Reply #19 from Elemental Forums Top

To be completely honest, I have not had yet with 1.08 a hard time generating enough Gildar, Ive two towns with two Gold mines each, Ive one with 4 That's FOUR gold mines and half of the rest all have one gold mine...  gold or gildar is not my issue, and for those playing ridiculous difficulty and complaining that the game is ridiculous ...I laugh  because you're being ridiculous if you expected something else... 

 

But what get my goat is dumb bugs, I get the 4 gold Bows glad SD caught it,but catch the 5 damage Warhammer when a mace is doing 6 damage...  Cmon already... maybe the broadsword is supposed to do 5 damage I don't know so I cannot complain much there but It makes no sense for a higher tech weapon to be worse...  besides the fact there is RL historical presidence (M-14 rifle being superior to the M-16 rifle) in this game it just makes no sense...

Please fix it. 

Reply #20 from Elemental Forums Top

4) The magic tech tree. Am I just not getting it? Is there supposed to be something appealing in this tree? I can harvest shards that's good. I already seem to have access to Enchantment books. Is that because my custom sovereign chose all books? If I can do that, why is it a tech too? My units get an essence bonus of 4900%? Really? Buildings that provide essence percentage bonus to units? Huh? (Another percentage building that should go. How about a building that just gives all your units produced there 2 mana instead?) Do units even get essence other than through imbue? Have I just not gotten far enough to get flame wielding pikeman?
End of quote

 

The essence boost % buildings stack (at least in 1.07), so if you build like 8 of them in different cities, then all of a sudden you have +200% essence (or at least MP).  I'm not actually sure it is +200%, there may be some odd addition of % rule that they use, but I've seen Sov essences over 200 when I get going with my essence buildings.

There are other books too (Summoning, healing), not to mention magic items... there are good reasons to research it for sure.