1.09n: Reduction to just 5 stats... a step backwards IMHO

from Elemental Forums

So I've been playing around with Elemental the last couple of days.

I'm liking a lot of the changes.  City construction is a lot more interesting, and I'm liking the new spells.

However, I feel like eliminating the 'secondary' stats (move, combat speed, essence) is a step in the wrong direction.  I often put points into Combat Speed, so my heroes would eventually get more attacks/actions in combat, and having to decide on boosting Essence or Strength, for example, was a nice brain teaser.

Admittedly, I stopped putting character points into movement, as there wasn't enough bang for the buck there, but with some point tweaking that could have been made more attractive.

Also, it was nice having Intelligence factor in to the damage a spell caused.  This gave you another brain teaser.  Do I increase Essence or Intelligence this time...

As it stands now, I put a lot less thought into boosting stats.  Intelligence gets boosted only if I'm trying to meet the minimum for a spell (example: Fireball: 20 Int), otherwise Strength, then Dexterity seem to be the way to go.  Plus, with 3 points per level, those stats boost pretty quickly.

Also, before I had goals to work towards, e.g. I need to raise this stat to 4.0, so let's go kill things.  The only goal I have now is raising Intelligence to meet spellcasting requirements.  Everything else is just 'well, that'll give me more damage, etc.'.

Charisma is a Sovereign only stat for me at the moment.  If the 'party leader's/point of contact's Charisma is used for the hiring, that might change.  I haven't tried raising it in the 1.09n system to see what happens as of yet.

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As for the Global Mana Pool, it's an interesting concept, but I don't think it should just accumulate unlimited points.  I also don't think casters should have effectively unlimited mana in Combat.  The Essence stat capped how much Mana a caster could wield, which was a nice limitation IMHO.

I think generating 'x' mana a Turn is a nice change, but would suggest a 'Maximum Mana' to go along with it.  Say, 50x to 100x the points generated each turn, with 'Essence' structures increasing this total.  This would go hand in hand with reducing the Mana requirements for higher level spells.  The 'retreat' spell costs a LOT of Mana (according to it's description), so if you ever plan on using it you tie up hundreds of Mana points, thus decreasing your desire to use spells.

As it stands now, I only use combat spells if I don't have bows handy, as things like fireballs just cost too much for what they do... and the title of the game is Elemental - War Of Magic (not War of Archers).  Pre-beta, the 2-5 Mana cost for many of the offensive spells was just enough to make me think about using spells, so I'd use them some of the time but not all or none of the time.  As it stands now, I hold off on spells for a long time .  And I've desummoned familiars, as they don't seem to be as useful these days, until I have several hundred points banked. This just doesn't feel 'magical' to me.

I will admit I like the fact that Elemental Shards now increase the Mana Pool:  This makes them more immediately useful.

I'll miss the "Well, it'll be about 10 or so turns before my Sovereign sees combat again, so I can afford to blow 10-12 essence points right now", per the old Mana system.  Plus, it was nice having the Teleport spell handy to get back home quickly after a long exploration trek in the early game.  This allowed you to upgrade your weapons and armor, heal a bit, and trade some items.  This also made 'holding' items for the Sovereign a little more practical.

Also, having multiple spellcasters in the party is less important now.  Before, having extra casters in your party meant more mana available in combat.  Now, it just means more spell attacks per turn, if you feel the need and have a shortage of Archers.

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I really liked the 'feel' of the pre 1.09n character system.  A lot of that is now lost.  It feels more wargamey to me now, and I have a LOT less attachment to my heroes.

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In short, I'm really liking some of the new spells, but I'm not liking the new Mana system much.  The old one was more interesting/challenging (at least in the early/mid game), and with tweaking could have been refined.  'Hybriding' the two systems might make me happier... but I'm not holding my breath.

If I were to suggest a hybridization of some sort, I'd say Channelers have their own pools of Essence, plus they can tap into the Global Mana to regenerate Essence points during combat or between turns. On their own, they'd regenerate 5% of their Essence every turn, and they might be able to acquire a cool amulet, staff, or something that increases their regeneration by one or more points every turn.

Also, if they want to 'overcast', i.e. cast a spell that requires more Mana than they have onhand, the difference in spell cost is doubled.  Example: if a Teleport costs 15 points, but you only have a 9 Essence stat, you'd have to draw 12 (15-9=6, 6x2=12) points out of the Global Mana Pool.  Overcasting might come at a price, i.e. damage to health, and it probably should take an extra action point or so to do.

Global Mana would be equal to, say, Total Population/20, plus say 25 for each shard controlled. Certain buildings - such as Tower Of Essence - would add to this total.

Global Mana would regenerate at, say, 5% per turn, plus bonus points from certain buildings.  Channeling Mana into your Caster's pool would take an extra action point(s) - you'd choose a 'draw upon Global Mana' action, and indicate how much mana you'd pull from the global pool, replenishing your mana up to your Essence stat/pool limit.

Note that Caster Essence pools would NOT increased by outside influences (Shards, buildings) - they'd have to raise their own Essence stat to increase the size of their own pool.  However, they'd benefit from being able to tap on the Global pool as needed, so the size of your Global pool would be important.  Carried items might be able to increase their pool, however (Crystal Staff, anyone?).

 

Also, I'd like to be able to dump points into combat speed and movement again.  And maybe separate dodge & block skills.  A separate 'intelligence requirement' and 'spell damage stat' would also make things interesting: Intelligence for spell level, Willpower for spell strength.

And the fractional points were not confusing to me, so feel free to put them back in!

 

[/rant off]

Other than that, I'm really liking where the game is going!  Finding Salted Pork on slain foes is a nice addition!  Great job, kudos to the Developers/Programmers/etc.!!!

 

elemental
23,236 views 55 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I think not the reduction of the stats is the problem, but that the stats are much less important. In my opinion Dexterity and Charisma are useless at the moment, because the effect of Dodge and Prestige is too weak. Strength and Intelligence are ok, but not as powerful as in 1.0x. Constitution is the only stat, that is much stronger than in 1.0x and i would always start with a Constitution of 15.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Intelligence also determines your accuracy and spell resistance, so it's a useful stat in general. Strength still boosts your attack, dexterity will likely be more useful once dodge is actually working and charisma is handy for any stay at home heroes.

How important prestige is depends on your playstyle. It speeds up population growth and border spread, if you're focusing on empire growth both are incredibly useful, giving you faster specialist growth and letting you flip resources on the borders of rival players without going to war.

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

To the OP. Having personal limitations on tapping into the global mana pool has been discussed before, and I have to say that I'm personally for this 100%. However, for some reason, the devs have been turning a deaf ear. Maybe it's a time or priority issue, maybe it's an AI issue, I don't know. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, having "casting points" allows casting power to scale. I don't like how, right now, my heroes can channel the same amount of mana as my sovereign, who should be a god-king. It's just a little thing that takes a little character away from the game. Problem is, these things add up.

Having said all that, I think what you've described is a well thought out implementation of this idea. But, I don't see what the problem would be with keeping global mana as it is.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

I disagree with a couple of points here:

 

First - Intelligence affects a number of spells, and any champ I'm going to use as a caster gets a ton more points poured into it than minimum to meet requirements.

Second - uncapped total mana puts more emphasis on the decision whether or not to cast spells with mana maint. If mana were capped, as you approach the cap, you have no motivation not to cast a bunch of spells and the downside of mana main is reduced or even eliminated if you are at the cap. by keeping mana uncapped, casting a spell with a maintenance is always a trade-off.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Well I agree that Magic Heroes are very simple in leveling, but you seem to be missing the subtle and elegant strategy in inteligence and dexterity.

There are many ways to build a fighter:

-Focus on leveling his strength and give him the highest damage weapons.

-Focus on a fast highly dexterous hero that can penetrate the enemy line and deal good damage to their archers and wizards.

-Focus on defense, constitution, and good weapons while sacrificing speed to take down very high leveled creatures.

-Focus on inteligence and constitution to make effective wizards that can use their high Int to cast those very effective area spells.

-Focus on charisma for those cheap farmer units that you can send out with new settlers for a good pop bonus.

The list goes on, but very few of these are magically orientated as I guess that part of customization comes from the tech and arcane trees.

It just takes a little imagination to see how well balanced the stat functions have become.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

-Focus on a fast highly dexterous hero that can penetrate the enemy line and deal good damage to their archers and wizards.
End of quote

Dexterity doesn't increase speed. Actually, all it does for now is increase something that doesn't work at all.



Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Werewindlefr, reply 6

-Focus on a fast highly dexterous hero that can penetrate the enemy line and deal good damage to their archers and wizards.


Dexterity doesn't increase speed. Actually, all it does for now is increase something that doesn't work at all.


End of Werewindlefr's quote

It should. Would make dexterity more useful and allow heroes to customize more to fill different roles like seanw3 said.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Archonsod, reply 2
Intelligence also determines your accuracy and spell resistance, so it's a useful stat in general. Strength still boosts your attack, dexterity will likely be more useful once dodge is actually working and charisma is handy for any stay at home heroes.
End of Archonsod's quote

Are you sure that Intelligence determines the Accuracy? I thought the Accuracy is 15 + (Level * 3).

The bonus damage from Strength is nice at the beginning, but it is less powerful when the attack of the weapon increases. Dexterity has the same problem. Dodge is weak at the beginning, because the chance is very low, and useless later when the Accuracy increases.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Maybe they don't want EWoM to be too much like AoW but I really like the way global mana is implemented in that game: with "casting points" (ie number of mana points you can spend per turn) and also giving "global" spells a limited range extending from the sov.  I also think "Imbue champ" should either be a permanent enchantment, or you should have to sacrifice something other than just mana to cast it.

The way it is now, you can do all sorts of cheesy things like: only imbue your champions before they go into combat, and cancel the enchant immediately after so you never have to pay upkeep.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Edit: I was wrong about Int affecting spell accuracy.

READ THE DEV JOURNALS.

Int affects your ability to hit with a spell and your ability to cast.

Also, dex does not affect speed, If you read that in the other possible way, it says that you should focus on speed (rings, horses, enchants) and dex (ability to dodge).

This kind of confusion should be cleared up before we start asking for changes. I guess the accuracy idea was so good I thought the devs said they were going to try it out, lol. I guess Int is just plain old skill level and effectiveness and I can deal with that.

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top


I also don't think casters should have effectively unlimited mana in Combat.  The Essence stat capped how much Mana a caster could wield, which was a nice limitation IMHO.
End of quote

I agree very much with this. Honestly, from a design standpoint, I would start everything with how MoM did it, and design from there. Why reinvent the wheel when SimTex already worked a lot of this out decades ago. Casting Skill was the statistic that determined how much of your mana pool you could expend in any one combat. It didn't matter if you had 32,764 mana if you CS was 32. Spell casting heroes also had their own MP which defined how much they could contribute to a battle. Given the nature of magic in Elemental, it makes sense that they draw from your pool, after all, they are wielding your magic, but they, too, could have casting skills that limit what they can do. Perhaps rather than INT unlocking spells for them, it should define the maximum mana they can use. Thus a spell casting hero would need to forsake other stats in favor of getting enough INT to throw more than two or three spells a battle. (Make it INT/2, or something along those lines, or better, bring Wisdom/Essence back as this stat)

 

Despite its own flaws and bugs (and lets not forget it was something of a mess on release and was massively overhauled in the first patch), MoM was a true classic, and a solid game design, and so much of it could be applied mechanically to Elemental without altering its flavor. 1.09n already implemented half of MoM's mana system, so why not finish the job?

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

I have to say I have not missed essence at all it's completely redundant now with the Global mana change. To be honest I have no real issue with the stat changes they made at all other than it needs a little fine tuning formula wise and I think damage sometimes doesn't report properly. I find the stats that are there are more meaningful now and I don't just automaticly but everyhting in the only stat that counted (in 1.09E and bellow) essence.

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm glad one of the stats is gone. This is not an RPG.

I would still like to see the stats made more straightforward and renamed.

Constitution -> Vitality. Instead of influencing your HP it could effectively be your HP. No need for 2 stats if Con only affects HP.

Intelligence -> Power. It just sounds cooler for an all powerful Sovereign. You don't have to be booksmart to cast powerful spells.

Charisma -> Leadership. It could directly affect unit hiring and upkeep costs.

Strength and Dexterity could remain as they are though.

 

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

i hate to recycle posts, but here again is the post i made in the original beta patch notes.

 

mostly this is great, but the more i think about the decision to ditch essense the less i like it (probably for different reasons to you though). mana maint makes sense for summons and enchants definately, but not for channelers because they cannot be dismissed and are largely permanent. i also dislike the idea of generating global mana at a fixed rate per turn because it allows the possibility of 0 or negative generation scenarios. and it leaves the question of what is the maximum mana i can hold (if any?) and what determines this number. i am imagining a situation where the low mana consumption in the early game (and subsequent stockpile) will mean that in the medium game i effectively have a finite amount of mana in the latter game.

i think this would be a much better way to generate global mana (second post on this page):

https://forums.elementalgame.com/397730

essense was a better mechanic than mana maint for limiting imbuing. the idea of imbuing is supposed to be a choice between having lots of casters for logistical reasons, but who are not as powerful casters in their own right (ie, sauron vs a nation of wizards of more human power levels). mana maint is not a personal sacrifice for the sov, it just makes your faction in general worse at magic, which is much less interesting. right now it looks like there are going to be far too many things with mana maint.

intelligence has now to my mind become far overloaded. one magic stat vs 3 for combat sovs. that's a massive imbalance. would be better to use essense as the spell power stat and sacrifice this as you imbue. also add an spell that creates fertile land by sacrificing essense (would suit the idea of your sov reviving the land much better).

the patch is generally great but ditching essense is a massive mistake imho.

 

a further note on static (linear mana generation)

it leads to two possibilities in my mind. in one scenario mana will accumulate slowly without limit in which case a magic strategy will be about maximising your generation early on to increase the total mana generated over the course of the game. i think that's really far too long term and punishes people in the middle game who didn't know about this at the start (esp new players). it encourages strategies to be devised for the entire game which is far too gamey to my mind. fight one war in which you use too much and you can cripple yourself for the rest of the game. magic should be more of a medium term thing.

or you throw huge amounts of mana at me per turn so that i can recover from a magic war in the medium term. however, without a maximum to the amount of mana i can hold you will make mana meaningless as a limitation. and if you have a limit, what determines this incredibly important number? surely it can't just be a hard cap, it would have to be something the player could influence. it's one more variable to balance and it's barely been discussed.

to my mind, non linear generation as mentioned in this my post in this thread:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/397730

is a much better way of achieving medium term magic strategy. and it would be easier to balance because instead of two systems (generation rate and max capacity) you have one. and you make paying lots of mana maintenance more viable as a strategy. currently if my sov generates 3 mana per turn and my shard another 2 more, you are effectively limitting me to 5 summons/enchants. don't like this idea.

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

Currently, imo, Charisma is the only Stat of little use, as it requires a stay at home character to go and fight, to obtain any increase that they can be then use after being sent back home. Yes one could fight the local battles, but if you don't increase offensive/ defensive stats, then coming out to fight gets more and more dangerous with each Season that passes.

The 3 point systems is working pretty well. Mana expenditure is not unlimited, it is still based on available AP's iirc.

P.S. Can we get a switch that turn "Seasons" back into "Turns". I don't care if it is old school.

 

 

Reply #16 from Elemental Forums Top

Dexterity should marginally affect combat speed or intiative when that comes out, and strength should marginally affect movement points.

Charisma could provide a small generation of guildar, say 1 per 10 charisma over 20. I guess the prestige is nice but it seems pretty broken right now.

That would make stats vastly more interesting to me.

Reply #17 from Elemental Forums Top

You guys don't get it do you?

You can level a character to be more than one thing. If one of those things is charisma he or she will also give you gold in the form of taxes. For expanding it is a good idea to have a hero with 20 char and 12 on most other stats. Then he can work as a defending hero once you have horse and some gildar.

No need to change anything.

Reply #18 from Elemental Forums Top

Now that I've slept on it, it's nice seeing other points of view on this.

Well, before, I could make a super speedy character that could crank out a LOT of less powerful attacks, or make a more powerful character that only had 4 attacks/action points in combat, but they were Doozies...

Or, I could make a very speedy scout hero by dumping points into movement.

Or a Mana specialist that could fire off a LOT of spells from his ample mana pool.

Or a character that has JUST enough mana to fire off a fireball or two before bracing for melee against the approaching enemy, which he has sufficiently raised his combat stats to do pretty well (jack of all trades).

Or a tough character who's sole purpose in life was to wade into combat and laugh at most attacks, and absorb the rest with his HPs (admittedly, I used 4+ person units for this most of the time, in heavy armor of course).  With the Hit points now increasing with level, this might have been a more viable option under the old system.

While you can sort of do most of these things with ONLY 5 stats (movement and speed are now gone), having a 20 Strength just doesn't mean the same thing now... before it was somethiing special.  Now, it's almost inevitable.

Yes, items can help boost stats.  The problem with them is every character can pretty much boost those same stats equally.  Being able to further increase certain stats over what Items would give you made certain characters 'specialists' in their field, worthy of respect in their specialty.

In my current game, I FINALLY found a ring of speed.  In the 'old game', I'd be waiting anxiously for the next level to boost my speed stat to bump speed up for that extra attack.  As it stands now, since I already have a speed boost from my mount, the extra +1 by itself isn't doing much of anything for my bow.  So no extra spell/ranged attack, nothing I can do until another item comes along, when my research FINALLY gets around to it...

I generally hire as many heroes as I can, as the gildar makes itself available.  I'd like them to be sufficiently different from each other, so they don't 'blend'...

I don't think of Strength as physical Strength.  I think of it as a skill that makes my weapons more effective.  Same with the other stats.  So having move, essence, speed and the like as part of that equation made for more variety, and hence more things to think about when the level up screen hits.  I like little intricacies like that in my game experience.

What'd be cool is if each spellcaster had to choose which spells he was learning, so you could have a healing specialist, a 'spell artillerist', a city specialist, etc..  As it stands now, any spell in your spellbook can be cast by anyone with the intelligence to do so.  Not as interesting, and this makes all my Channelers 'blend' in with each other.  I don't want them to blend...

Someone mentioned this being a wargame, so 'being bothered' with extra stats wasn't necessary.  In my mind, Elemental is a hybrid of sorts.  Yes, we are leading armies of heroes and units to trash the bad guys, but it's nice having a touch of Role Playing to go along with that.  I like to become attached to my heroes and sovereigns, so when I do task them to take out a stack of enemy units, I have specific reasons for sending THEM (they aren't just another unit in my vast portfolio).  The 'dime a dozen - I'll just hire another sucker - he wasn't that special anyways' philosophy just isn't as compelling to me.

There are plenty of 4x games out there.  I like where this one is headed, though, and enjoy playing it now.  Anything us players might suggest that ends up making this a more immersive 4x experience is a good thing in my book, even if we all have different ideas of where the game should go.

 

Reply #19 from Elemental Forums Top

I think you should institute your own patch then to fix the stats how you like them.

Just go into the xmls and make all the stats upgradable and then set an amount and cost.

I was playing that way before when the glass cannons phenomenon overtook my desire to play unitl 1.1

Reply #20 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting seanw3, reply 17
You guys don't get it do you?

You can level a character to be more than one thing. If one of those things is charisma he or she will also give you gold in the form of taxes. For expanding it is a good idea to have a hero with 20 char and 12 on most other stats. Then he can work as a defending hero once you have horse and some gildar.

No need to change anything.
End of seanw3's quote

Anything except an Archmage that is good for casting spells, period. There needs to be a second magic stat. For that there are two options:

- A stat the gives spell points (per turn cap for how much mana a hero can use)

- A stat to allow heroes to cast spells faster (when they implement casting times), and for the Sovereign it effects global spell casting times (Spell points could also be used for this in regard to global spells).

Reply #21 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting seanw3, reply 19
I think you should institute your own patch then to fix the stats how you like them.

Just go into the xmls and make all the stats upgradable and then set an amount and cost.

I was playing that way before when the glass cannons phenomenon overtook my desire to play unitl 1.1
End of seanw3's quote

Well, I can always 'revert' to pre-1.09n, when stats worked the way they did before, but of course with all the problems...

I LIKE the old stat system a lot.  But since I'll be along for the ride, and since I have no clue or time to figure out the xml, all I can do is say "I liked the old way, let's keep it with some changes".

I want that 'Lord of the Rings' experience, where Aragorn and Gimli and company are leading armies into battle, and completely badass at what they do, but different from each other.  In an Elemental context of course - the city/empire building is a nice distraction between battles!

Maybe after the dust settles (post 1.1 with patches), some modder will figure out how to re-implement the other stats...

Reply #22 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting tjashen, reply 21

Maybe after the dust settles (post 1.1 with patches), some modder will figure out how to re-implement the other stats...
End of tjashen's quote

Once the facilities needed to tell the game how to use the additional stats are in place, maybe (likely it would take more than XML to do).

Reply #23 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting tjashen, reply 21
I want that 'Lord of the Rings' experience, where Aragorn and Gimli and company are leading armies into battle, and completely badass at what they do, but different from each other.  In an Elemental context of course - the city/empire building is a nice distraction between battles!
End of tjashen's quote

Yep, the reason why i bought Elemental is that it SHOULD be a wargame with a strong RPG part and a strong empire building part. If i want to play a wargame without the RPG part i would play Civ V.

Quoting Gwenio1, reply 20
Anything except an Archmage that is good for casting spells, period. There needs to be a second magic stat. For that there are two options:

- A stat the gives spell points (per turn cap for how much mana a hero can use)

- A stat to allow heroes to cast spells faster (when they implement casting times), and for the Sovereign it effects global spell casting times (Spell points could also be used for this in regard to global spells).
End of Gwenio1's quote

I think another option would be a powerful strategic resource for magic instead of a stat for magic, as described here:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/400657

Reply #24 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Wizard1200, reply 23

I think another option would be a powerful strategic resource for magic instead of a stat for magic, as described here:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/400657
End of Wizard1200's quote

Not the same.

Reply #25 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting LightofAbraxas, reply 3
I don't like how, right now, my heroes can channel the same amount of mana as my sovereign, who should be a god-king. It's just a little thing that takes a little character away from the game. Problem is, these things add up.
End of LightofAbraxas's quote

The benefit of the sovereign is they get to ignore the INT requirements for casting spells, so you can if you choose ignore INT entirely and put their points into the physical stats. So their power is being able to be an all rounder who's as tough in physical combat as they are in magical prowess, while non-sovereign heroes have to make a choice between physical or magical strength at the expense of the other.

 Guess it depends on how you define god-king really. It's more useful from a gameplay perspective because it makes the sovereign tougher to kill, thematically I think it works better too. The sovereign is a natural mage whose magical abilities develop along with them. Lesser mortals have to work at it.