Hello, here is my large unwieldy list of ideas and changes for Elemental. Since Elemental is a huge game there are a lot of things to comment on.

I heard all the drama about how terrible this game is, so I bought it to see for myself.

Never played this game before version 1.9 and all this stuff was written pre 1.1 beta. Also, never actually played multiplayer, so anything related to that is speculation.

 

Anything I didn’t comment on in this document I either have little interest in (Dynasties), haven’t played with enough (custom Sovereigns / races) or is related to tactical combat, which is its own document that I'll post as the first reply to this post.

 

Since the 1.1 Beta is out, I thought I should post this before 1.1 came out properly.

Below is a huge list of ideas that I think would make the game more enjoyable for me.

 

World Creation (Skirmish game start):

 

I would like to know at what difficulty the AI starts cheating (if at all) and what type of cheating it gets.

Each difficulty having a general overview about what makes it different from other difficulties would be nice.

 

Victory Conditions:

Conquest:

The obvious way to win, kill all the enemy sovereigns or take their kingdoms. Maybe add an ability to annex a weaker player or something so you don't need to chase down their last cities? (Functionally a force surrender button)

 

Diplomacy:

I wish there was a way for only one player to be the winner in a diplomacy victory. Otherwise everyone should instantly ally and win the game! It’s fine in an AI match, since the AI doesn’t know of this killer strategy.

 

Spell of Making:

Instead of the lengthy research time, the spell has to be channelled by the sovereign over a number of turns. Everyone will be alerted to the spell casters location and the location of their elemental shards while he channels the spell. There is a large graphic of the energy of the shards converging on the channelers location on the strategic map while the sovereign is casting. This is visible to all players.

The space the channeler is on is immune to all strategic spells.

In combat, the person casting the spell is surrounded by an energy field that will repel attacks launched from more than one space away. They also receive a special terrain bonus that gives them a lot of extra defence (replaces, and does not stack with any existing terrain bonus). The spellcaster however cannot move, attack or preform other actions. If they are defeated, the spell is cancelled and must be restarted.

If the channeler loses access to an element the spell is cancelled.

This is the basic tech victory, with the twist that you have to have the ability to defend your insta win technology before you win.

 

Master Quest:

The sage that warns you of reassembling the forge, once defeated will trigger a large amount of otherworldly monsters to start attacking all players. This warns players that someone is trying to reconstruct the forge, and maybe they should try and find the forge dungeon and camp on it to prevent the quester from winning.

The main master quest dungeons should have unique tactical battle tilesets (like the crystal palace area actually be made of crystal).

If one player takes a forge piece, a second player cannot claim it. However, once they beat the dungeon that held the piece, they can 'sense' where the piece is. They can always see where it is and who is holding that piece. They can also try to beat the player to the dungeon that holds the next forge piece. The person that brings all pieces to the first forge dungeon and holds it uncontested will win via master quest. Shards cannot be placed in the kingdom vault (another suggested game feature).

People who are not on the master quest cannot see the pieces in a persons inventory, and if they kill a forge piece holder the forge piece drops onto the ground.

If a person loses the forge piece, they can always see it's location.

 

 

World events / Monsters:

 

Monster Lairs:

If you are not in a war and it’s after a certain turn number, you may get a monster lair(s) setup near you (you get a warning when it gets setup, telling you which of your settlements is closest to the lair). This monster lair wages a mini war on you. If you get into a real war, the monster lair will become defensive instead of offensive.

However, in general animals / monsters will not attack settlements. Roaming Bandits will block trade routs but will not attack defended settlements by themselves.

What this will do:

- Encourage all players to keep a military at all times

- Allow players not in a war to have some fighting going on

- Threatening monster fighting is usually focused on one or two of your settlements, instead of randomly across your empire

- Allow players in a war to not worry about monsters so much

 

Super Monsters:

These monsters are random events, and will go around attacking settlements. You can see these on the map at all times unless they are in enemy territory. After destroying a settlement from one kingdom, they will attack another kingdom, preferably one on the opposite team (if there are alliances).

 

Troops:

I'm not sure if this is campaign only. But Veteran units are way too powerful (healthy) compared to normal units. It's crazy.

 

There needs to be a way to turn off the default unit designs (besides peasant and pioneer.) I don’t want pre-designed units.

Units movement speed:

Units move way too slowly in skirmish (2 is too slow).

Ways to fix this:

Increase the propagation of roads, letting units move much faster most of the time.

Just increase the base speeds.

 

Units should move faster than 2 by default, 3 for troops (before any upgrades) and 4 for notable persons and the sovereign (before any magic equipment or horses).

 

However, you don't want enemy units able to sprint up to your cities too fast, so movement in enemy influence should be lowered (-1 movement back down to 2 for troops). Slow units (like siege weapons) move 2 normally and 1 in enemy territory.

Sovereign solo teleport spell should have its cost lowered and should only teleport the sovereign. Both death and life books should have a solo teleport spell at game start.

 

Since unit speeds may be increased to levels where they cannot see where they are going (if you have horses and stuff), units need to stop moving if they see a new enemy unit when you command a unit to move, so you can decide if you want to change your order. The enemy unit/monster gets a ! placed over their head or something and the screen scrolls over to them. If you don't do anything, the paused unit will keep moving to its destination when you click the end turn button.

Not sure what you should do if you press the end turn button and the moving units see another new enemy unit. Maybe there needs to be an option to turn on end turn movement interrupts. Since if it was on by default it might get annoying.

 

Movement Paths:

Saw this on the forums and wondered why this wasn't in.

When a unit is moving, their path is displayed to the target square while you have them selected.

After an enemy unit moves a path is drawn from where they came from to where they are now. If part of the path is hidden in the fog of war you cannot see it.

 

Intercept:

If you tell a unit to attack an enemy tile, or to merge with an existing army, your unit should change course if the enemy moves or the allied army you want to join with moves.

 

Exploring units:

Land Exploring units should try to explore the closest black square that could possibly be pathable land (do not try to explore the ocean or squares you cannot reach from known exploration). If they are a hero and find a vacant goodie hut, they should automatically pick it up. If the goodie / notable location hut has a fight attached, then mark it as hostile and do not attack it.

 

Military Unit Training and Upgrading:

Already created units should be able to be upgraded/downgraded. Upgrades and downgrades happen outside the recruitment queue (a separate upgrade queue maybe?) but does take at least a turn.

If you order an advanced unit, it will be created as a peasant then automatically upgraded when the peasant is recruited. So you can use the peasant as defence. If you move a unit that is upgrading out of the settlement, the upgrade is cancelled.

Units that are upgrading have an icon over their portrait and are not selected by default when you click on a settlement, so you know not to move them out of the settlement.

You get half the resources back from any equipment the upgraded unit discards (so the price of upgrading is whatever the new equipment costs + the time it takes to make the equipment – half of the old equipments costs).

Obviously you cannot upgrade a peasant into a spider or something like that...

The equipment of a guy will affect the pay of the unit much more. And peasants will be very very low upkeep.

Peasants real cost will be population, low fighting ability and the time it takes to recruit them. Peasants are an un-customisable unit (except for appearance maybe?) and undeletable from your buyable units.

What this will do:

-Allow you to train fodder quickly if you need bodies for defence

-Allows you to have a sizable force of monster patrollers in the form of peasants without the upkeep costs.

-Allows you to have possible military ready to go (peasants) all you need to do is train and equip them which will be shorter than creating them from scratch.

 

Creating military improvements (like barracks) does not decrease training time, it increases the amount of units able to be trained and upgraded simultaneously.

Your military draws from your global population pool, not the settlements.

What this will do:

-Allow you to create military specialised cities, by allowing them to produce much much more than a normal settlement.

 

Optional: buildings like castles or some other building will give peasants stationed in the settlement better weapons (since there is a stockpile). This makes peasants a little better at defence.

 

Unit Equipment:

Big ol equipment revamp.

 

Armour:

Chest piece - Provides defence

Leggings - Provides defence

Boots, wrist guard, helms, capes - cosmetic (free), provides no defence (the amount of body it covers is so small you may as well have them be cosmetic).

 

Weapons:

Weapon: Provides attack

Shields: Blocks arrows, provides defence.

 

Misc:

Pack: Provides 'class' bonuses and special abilities.

What this will do:

The removal of boots, wrist guards and helms from practical equipment will allow for greater visual customisation of units. Also, it gets all the defensive choices placed in two items instead of minor bonuses spread out over 5+ items.

-The removal of capes as stat givers will makes it into a yes/no visual option and reduces item clutter (no multiple identical looking capes with different stats).

 

Enchantment/Training:

When creating a unit, they have up to three slots that you can fill with researched magical enchantment or special training, these aren't attached to any specific item, but rather to the unit in general. Enchantments are unlocked through magic research. You could either have all 3 (or whatever) slots available from the beginning, or you could have additional slots open as you research higher levels of veteran training.

Enchantment costs crystal and some money, training costs time and some money. Training is available form the start of the game and can give you units that have more movement speed or extra sight range. Training is always weaker than enchantment (but cheaper too).

If two equipped training/enchantments boost the same stat, the higher value is used and the lower value ignored; they do not stack.

What this will do:

-Again, this increases customisation by having the little bonuses like +1 sight or +move speed just be assigned to the unit directly instead of linked to capes or shoes.

 

Notable Persons and Sovereigns:

Defeat in tactical battles:

When a notable person or sovereign is reduced to 0 hp, they can no longer fight (they are removed from the tactical battle) but as long as the battle is won or you retreat (note, have not actually tried retreating yet, is it in the game?) from the battle they will not die. While at 0 hp they will not be able to participate in any more tactical battles until they receive healing. When a champion / sovereign is at 0 hp, they must stay with a unit that does have life remaining. Otherwise they die.

 

Local Champions:

Randomly generated Champions should arise from your own cities (there might be a civic / adventuring tech for this). Every so often, you get a message saying that a potential champion has been located within your kingdom. You then can 'purchase' them into your army or ignore them. The price of a home grown hero is much lower than convincing random champions to join you.

This will also allow you to marry within your own race. Because my empire doesn't mingle with the lesser races.

 

Champion Administrators:

Resource champions only give their bonus when they are in a settlement (but their resource boost can be increased by the settlements improvements. If they are in a settlement, then they go into 'administrator mode' where they level up their resource power. The resource power can level up 5 times (to level 6). Each settlement produces an amount of administrative xp that is divided amongst the stationed resource notable persons there. The amount of xp produced is increased by the settlement level. Heroes gain a penalty on xp gain from settlements one level below their ability and get zero xp from settlements two or more levels lower.

What will this do:

-Allow high level heroes to become a bigger part of your economy

-Make high level heroes more valuable to trade to other kingdoms.

-You won't feel bad leaving them in a city! You can progress a hero without making them fight stuff

-Bigger cities are required to train administrators to their highest levels.

-Because of exp splitting, heroes will be spread out over different settlements instead of sticking them in your capitol.

 

Champion Generals:

Adventurers/Assassins get a 'military experience' ability which increases the efficiency (attack and defence) of regular troops under their command (if there are multiple notable people with military experience, only the highest one counts). When a stack with regular troops wins a battle, all notable persons in the stack with 'military experience' gain xp towards that ability. This xp is split between multiple notable people is there are multiple notable people with military experience.

The sovereign automatically gets a military experience ability as well. The sovereign also gets an additional passive that increases regular troop and notable person efficiency by a little bit extra.

What this will do:

-Military champions are encouraged to spread out and lead regular units.

-Military champions have an alternate progression path

-Honestly, this is just to make these guys even with the administration champions.

 

Stats:

Currently there are too many stats for notable people.

Since you only get to increase one stat at level up, it’s time to cut back on the number of stats.

Speed should be represented as one stat, if the tiles moved are different in strategic and tactical movement, the speed stat should be represented as 3-4 or 3(4).

Speed should not determine how many attacks you get, only how far you move. Number of attacks should be weapon dependant.

Speed should not be able to be selected as a level up stat, have it able to be increased by equipment only.

HP. It could increase automatically, so notable people mont get left behind vs troops that gain stacks of hp when they level up.

You could even have str/dex as a single stat and int/magic defence as a single stat.

Drop charisma. Since it has little use in battle and only the sovereigns stat matters. Replace the effects of low charisma with a sovereign weakness and the effects of high charisma with a sovereign strength.

Since all that cutting leaves only Physical Strength and Mental strength, it leaves the player to determine if they want a notable person to be a sword guy or a magic guy or a hybrid. And really, those are the choices now, except now there are less stats.

 

Of course, your equipment can effect sub-stats/derived stats whatever you want to call them. So a ring might increase magical defence but not magical attack.

Notable Person Items:

 

Trading Interface:

When trading, all the notable persons portraits in the stack should be displayed in a left hand column. All the characters items should be displayed to the right of each portrait. From there, you simply drag and drop items between character rows in the table.

 

Royal Vault:

You should be able to 'trade' items into the royal vault. If you are within your influence and you trade, the vault is a viable trade partner.

The vault is also viable buy/sell target. So you can stockpile items from your own kingdom and distribute them to your notable persons later.

The vault can hold unlimited items.

Using the value lets you indirectly trade items to any character in your influence.

If a kingdom is defeated, the contents of the vault are placed in an goodie hut near the kingdoms capitol.

 

Shopping for items:

The item shop really needs some tabs (weapons / armour / consumables / trinkets) because it gets very crowded at the end of a game.

Also, items should probably not cost pure gold it you are buying from your own kingdom. They should be forged as normal as if you were crafting a unit. How would my shops be making iron swords if I don't have iron?

Buying items from another friendly kingdom (you can do this right?) should be in pure gold however, and (some of) this gold should go to the player you purchased from.

 

Notable Person Equipment:

Notable Person equipment is purchased from your kingdom shop at the same price (without the time cost) as it would take to equip a soldier.

Heroes however, can wear equipment gathered from quests, which can be more powerful than what you are producing.

Some items (materials) can be recovered from quests that can be forged into powerful weapons (like the very expensive sword you can currently buy). These forged weapons can be created as long as you have the required materials, they do not require research to unlock. However, the materials can only be found in higher level dungeons.

Heroes can also use consumable items.

Heroes can equip two sets of weapons and switch weapons mid battle. When it is their move, they can switch weapons before attacking. The weapon they used for attacking will be the one they use for defence in the enemies turn.

What this will do:

-Making weapons cost the same as getting it made for a unit will make equipping heroes much more affordable.

-While players that quest a lot will find items that will make their heroes much better than a single troop.

-Make heroes slightly more versatile with weapon switching (might be op, not sure if want).

 

Notable Persons enchantments:

Enchantments are assigned to items in a notable person’s case.

A hero can wear as many enchanted items as they want, including rings and stuff. However, items that have the same magical bonus do not stack together, so there is an upper limit.

When your kingdom can enchant equipment, you can modify shop items as you buy them to enchant them with the various effects your troops can wield. Enchantments are tied to items for heroes.

However, things like boots of speed (endurance training) or +1 eyesight (scouts training) that you can imbue units with at the start of the game cannot be added to hero items. Notable People already have all these basic bonuses, just like they are trained how to handle every weapon available.

What this will do:

-Allow heroes to become much tougher than regular troops due to diverse enchantments, making them tough all round.

-Cut down on shop item overload with all the enchant variations, you select your own enchants with the appearance you want.

-Non stacking bonuses also increase the value of better enchanted items.

Sovereigns:

 

If your ruler dies, he should only lose essence temporarily. To recover his essence, he needs to rest in a city. Each time he dies, the essence penalty becomes worse and the time it takes to heal increases. If their essence is reduced to 0, either game over or they are forced to stay in the city you are teleported to until he recovers.

 

If your ruler grants essence to a champion and the champion dies, do you get that essence back? if no then switch to yes.

Strategic View:

 

I can't easily see if my unit has moved this turn. And If I try to move them, that might trigger the next turn automatically.

If you move all your units, the turn ends. What if I want to build stuff at cities after (an option to toggle this behaviour off would be nice). [found option]

When you finish moving a unit, the view shifts to the next unused unit. Even if the unit you moved is now having a battle that you might just want to watch. [found option to switch off]

You cannot see the city details when you choose a specialisation, and it's kind of hard to remember all your cities. Also the random guardian option is should be removed or make it cost no upkeep for the guardian unit.

It's impossible(?) to view a settlements specialisation at any time; Though city specialisation should be removed anyway.

 

Turn ends are sloppy. The messages you get when a turn is processing can be out of order. Example: spell learned, goto spell book / increase knowledge *click spell book* Congratulations! research complete, select boost *select*. ok here's the spellbook now.

Also, it's difficult to keep track of why the enemy is doing. Occasionally I got popups saying I’ve been attacked. When this happens however, the screen does not show where this is and even if it did there is a large battle popup blocking the screen so I wouldn't be able to see anyway.

Also, it would be handy to be alerted when a monster / bandit group enters my influence so I can muster an appropriate defence force.

 

Here's something like how the end turn sequence should go:

Click end turn. Title bar appears at top of screen this displays which kingdom is moving with their ruler name and kingdom name and symbol. Hide all inactive controls that you cannot use when it is not your turn.

Any 'wonders' the AI has finished will display now.

If you can see any of the AI / monster movements, then the screen centres on them and watches them move (quickly, don't use too much time). If the AI attacks you, pop up a small version (with each side’s strength/unit portraits and the option to autocalc or tactical battle) of the current battle popup that can be expanded to the full thing if you want. If the AI wants to initiate diplomacy with you during their turn they will do so at any time (between unit movement) before they hit their virtual end turn button.

Repeat for all subsequent AI. If the AI did nothing you noticed, then their turn should be over instantly (well, near instant).

At the start of your turn, display research breakthroughs, spells learned, wonders finished.

Then scroll back to where you last left your display when you hit the end turn button.

 

Settlement Building:

 

Drop the specialisation bonus from levelling up settlements (keep the level up notice though). Make settlement specialisation come from creating improvements not from some magical specialisation boost.

What this will do:

-Drops a feature that is unnecessary.

 

When a resource tile is connected to a settlement, it seems to become a settlement building. Why is this? Yes it should be enclosed within the city walls (or else it would look silly) but building on the resource should not place the building in the settlement queue. Also it should not take up any city tiles.

 

When a city levels up, instead of saying "your settlement is level x" it should say "your settlement is now a level x [outpost/town/city/metropolis/whatever]"

 

I don't like how food is consumed with gildar production buildings, doesn't make sense.

 

Abandoned Settlements:

If monsters defeat a settlement, the settlement should become abandoned, not destroyed.

When abandoned, all wonder improvements are destroyed.

When 'razed' the settlement is abandoned.

Abandoned settlements are 'damaged' when claimed again. You need to do something to repair all the damaged improvements (pay half their original cost maybe).

Abandoned settlements can be built over if not claimed. If the abandoned settlement centre is built over, all the abandoned improvements are destroyed.

When you move a unit into an abandoned settlement, you can choose to claim it or leave it alone. Abandoned settlements give you a defence bonus in a tactical battle.

What this will do:

- Allows you to recapture cities sacked by monsters.

- Allow you to take cities razed by enemies before you got there.

- Allows you to find randomly generated abandoned settlements.

 

 City Spam Problems?

I had a problem with city spam, until I realised that they shouldn't be defined as cities.

There shouldn't be a problem with creating a size 1 settlement to only claim one resource. The only problem is when you want a resource in an area that is just outside your current influence. Then it seems weird to build a settlement especially when your city could project its influence there once it levels up.

 

The only problems I can see with city spam is that the more cities you have, the greater amount of buildings that are limited to one per city you can have. Things like the basic markets, study's, trade routes and stuff that are your basic resource production buildings (if you didn't get a old library near your start).

Easy fix, remove this limitation, so you can create workshop cities if you want, that way you won't need to spam cities as much. The buildings that raise production by a % should still be limited to one per city / kingdom.

 

Also some other fixes.

Pioneers take up one food when in existence. Also, every city created by a pioneer consumes one food when existing. Increase food tiles production by one to compensate.

 

A new city building system:

New system - There are two tile limitations, One for homes and one for non-home improvements (production buildings and city enhancers like barracks, but not objects like walls).

Home Limit:

When you reach the maximum allowed population required for the largest city, you cannot build any more homes. Homes consume food while active (like normal). The homes = people = food consumption is an abstraction which makes sense.

Other improvements limit:

Limit non-housing buildings by settlement size (or population? I feel that limiting by settlement size is a fair abstraction).

So you get 5 tiles for a size 1, 12 for size 2 etc. The number of tiles to settlement size ratio grows larger as the city size increases. So larger settlements are better than more numerous settlements (but with enough smaller settlements you would catch up).

To gain more resource buildings, you need to invest more food in homes to grow your settlement for more production buildings. The reason to limit production buildings so much is because if you don't have much population, there's no way they can run all the buildings. I think this is a better solution rather than limiting copies of a production building to 1 per settlement. Buildings that give a % boost are still limited to one per settlement.

 

I hear that buildings will require the people resource to construct in 1.1. I guess that’s better than limiting by tiles, but maybe settlement size should limit your resource tiles anyway, because since population is a global resource, if you don’t limit improvements tiles by settlement size you could create a size 1 settlement with 50 workshops.

 

Castles and walls:

If you build an improvement like a hedge wall they upgrade your town centre. So you can only have one wall type and one castle type at a time. Walls or Castles change the defenders side in a settlement battle. This can just be for looks, and to add more intervening terrain for the defenders to take cover behind.

 

Settlement Influence:

I think that a settlements size should not effect it's influence range, the reason being that it will take fewer settlements to claim your nearby resources.

A settlements influence can grow one per turn until it reaches it maximum. Research and racial abilities increases this maximum. An influence ring's expansion is stopped if it runs into an enemy unit (monster or non friendly player) or if an enemy unit is inside your influence ring (these must be cleared to make the land safe). If another kingdoms influence ring is there first, then you will not overwrite it (or there is some sort of influence strength clash).

An easy to expand influence ring will allow you to claim more resources faster which would speed up the initial setup time of a kingdom. Also, you won't need to create as many small settlements to nab resources near you.

 

Impassable mountains blocks influence spread (but doesn’t stop it from expanding elsewhere); influence spread has to go around the mountains. If you lower the mountains at a later date, your influence will spread out through the gap you made.

Influence from a city can only go two tiles into the ocean. Docks produce influence two tiles into the ocean if your influence didn't already reach. This prevents a boat from arriving at your dock un-announced.

 

Every square in your influence you can always see. This could be a low end research reward (citizen surveillance?). This removes the requirement to have scout units within your territory.

Watchtowers are an improvement that creates little (decorative) watchtowers on the boarder of your settlements influence. The Watchtower tech lets you see a few squares past your boarder at all times. Watchtowers should be moved up the tech tree (behind citizen surveillance). Empires could have scion scrying instead of watchtowers. Settlements with a scion tower allows you to see beyond your influence.

 

When creating a settlement:

Instead of moving a pioneer to a location and pressing create, you can click the create settlement button then click the target tile. The Pioneer will move to that location and then automatically build the settlement. This means you don’t have to keep track of if your pioneers are at the build site yet, you just need to send them on their way and they’ll handle the rest.

When you are placing your settlement, a shadowy ring (in your colour) shows the maximum amount of area it will influence. That way you know what resources this settlement can claim before you place it.

 

You could (as an off by default option) keep this shadow ring for all (known) settlements that have not reached their maximum influence range. So you can see how much influence your enemy might project and you can place an army to limit their influence spread (to hold off the influence area until you place your own settlement and project your own influence).

Food/Road Network:

Food should not produced by caravans.

You need to keep people fed. Cities without food need to be linked to cities that do.

Caravans (and paths/roads) are an innate trait of any empire/kingdom, no research required. Caravan units cannot be built, the functions they provide are automatic. Researching trade will allow paths to generate gildar.

Paths cannot run over hilly terrain (as normal).

Paths are automatically created between settlements and any unconnected, claimed resource within the settlements influence.

Paths are automatically created from new settlements to the closest existing settlement.

New settlements cause a re-evaluation of your current paths. So if you build a settlement in between two existing cities, the old path linking those cities will be replaced with two paths from the new settlement. The old paths will decay after a few turns.

Paths cannot pass through enemy influence. If enemy influence grows over your path, the path will try to re-connect by going around.

 

Questions automatic paths raise:

What to do with settlements separated by the ocean, shipping lanes? Actually, I don’t think the ocean is a major part of this game at the moment, so just have no path.

Should there be a maximum distance on paths? If so, when you are placing new settlements you need to know if you are placing it out of contact with the rest of your empire.

Not sure if manual paths should be allowed? maybe for a fee?

If there were three settlements in a triangle, each settlement should get a path to the other two. If you moved two of the settlements closer together, at what point would you drop one of the paths to the third city? And which would you drop?

 

When you start a trading agreement with another player, your two closest settlements get a path between them.

If an enemy unit (player or monster) waits on a path for their entire turn, that path is blockaded. The owner(s) of the road can see the tile(s) that are blockaded and the units that are blockading until the enemy units end their turn off the road.

 

Blockading Roads:

Depending on type of services that road was providing, different things will happen.

Was it providing food? If the path linked a settlement without food to your empires food supply, then the settlement will begin to starve.

Was it providing trade (gildar production)? All trade benefits are revoked and the blockading player gains the gildar that path generated. Blocking a trade path between players will steal all gildar production their trade agreement produces (since there is only one path between players, but you'll piss off 2 players instead of 1).

Was it connecting a resource to a settlement? That resource node does not produce while it is blockaded.

If that resource was food, then the settlement it was connected to may be starved (if it can't get another food source).

 

I'm not sure what effects starvation should have, besides killing population over the amount of remaining food. But which cities should receive food first if there is a shortage but some food is still connected to multiple cities?

 

Diplomacy:

More diplomacy options!

Give troops, you can only gift troops if they are in a legitimate place for the person you are giving them to own them or right on the border of your influences (they just step over when you trade them).

Allow treaties to loan resource nodes or loan/share shards to other players.

Allow the ability to ask kingdoms to cease their war with another kingdom or I’ll declare war on you.

You could expand that be more general. Do this (alter your relations, give me something) or I’ll do this (war, cut off trade, cut off shard access etc).

AI greetings should change depending on your friendliness with them. I had a little empire I was protecting and throwing resources at and there was no way they would survive without my help, however their greetings text was still fairly hostile (I was a kingdom, but they should warm up to me if I continually support them).

 

Diplomacy Research Tree:

Diplomatic capitol allows you to use special powers. Diplomatic capitol received from other players (via diplomatic trade) allows you to use diplomatic powers.

 

Diplomatic Powers:

These powers have to be good enough to make acquiring diplomatic capitol actually worth it. So diplomatic capitol can be traded between humans and have value.

 

Some ideas:

Make city immune to invasion from players?

Boost trade route with other kingdom for x number of turns?

Allow purchasing of items from enemy shops temporarily?

Allow a stack of units to pass through hostile (but not at war) territory.

Take in Refugees from target empire you are not at war with. If that empire loses population, you gain population at your closest city.

 

 

Dungeons:

Epic Dungeons can be a multi turn affair (either multiple levels in the dungeon, or large tactical maps that are paused when your parties moral is empty). Each turn you can choose to continue or come back out.

When you enter a dungeon space, you receive information about what enemies will be in there, you can choose not to enter the dungeon.

Dungeons can have a 'population cap' for invading troops trying to run the dungeon. So dungeon running favours many strong individual units (heroes) rather than swarming the thing with peasants.

Dungeons should have alot of line of sight blocking obstacles, and enemy monsters should be waiting for you instead of just charging at you.

 

Quests:

Quest huts are unique to each player, so one player will have their own set of quests that only they can see. And the other players will each have their own.

This means that each player can only see quests that they have researched and quest spawn positions can be tailored for each player (higher density at the outskirts of their territory, in unclaimed territory just over the boarder in another player’s territory).

 

Wild Goodie Huts:

The randomly generated old battlefields and broken carts. Like quests above, are unique for each player.

 

Hidden Tiles:

Should add 'mysterious place' tiles which have a misty effect over them until you get the required adventuring tech. Mysterious place tiles cannot be destroyed and are where high level named dungeons are placed.

Without the proper adventuring tech, each mysterious place tile is only revealed if you have a unit in the tile. Also, if your unit stays stationary inside a mysterious place, then there is a chance to lose troops to monster attacks.

Also, you will not be able to see any dungeons or goodie huts on the tiles under your adventuring level. You will be able to see the fog covered areas even if you don’t have the adventuring tech, so you can enclose them in your influence to try and deny them to your enemies.

With the adventuring tech, you can see into the tile if you are in the tile or are adjacent to the tile.

Besides generating the 'high level' dungeons on these tiles and being unable to build things on them, they are also good for hiding your units.

These mysterious places would only be about 3 tiles joined together, and only 1 major dungeon is allowed per area, however, goodie huts can be generated in there. There is a race for these goodie huts, these are global for all players.

Settlement Influence cannot exist inside 'mysterious place' tiles, but influence expansion is not blocked by these tiles.

What this will do:

-Increase map generation complexity

-Provide a strategic option for players that research dungeons. They can hide troops in the mysterious place tiles and enemies cannot see them.

 

Dungeon 'seconds':

High level named dungeons, once beaten by a player can still be raided by a second player, but they get less rewards. Once a player has conquered a dungeon, that player cannot raid it again.

 

Allied Species:

Once researched and claimed, an ally species exists as it's own mini-kingdom within your own kingdoms influence. It only has one settlement which maintains itself (you don't need to pour resources into it). The settlement maintains its own uncontrollable guard force which will protect it from casual siege. You cannot produce the races troops from your own barracks/settlements however and it doesn't work quite the same way. When you click on the monster settlement, there is a 'hire' button and a maximum number of units the settlement has available. You then select the types of units you want to hire and click hire, then you get the units quickly in a few turns. The settlement restores it's number of units available to hire slowly as the units you hired die.

You can upgrade the monster settlement by giving it [x]? For example, giving it food per turn. This increases the amount of military the settlement can support.

 

Instead of the species tile randomly appearing in your influence, you get a [species] ambassador unit (in your capitol) that will setup the species tile, like a pioneer. The ambassador unit consists of one of your races people (your ambassador) with a bunch of species guards. The ambassador cannot be moved outside your influence, cannot be moved inside your settlements and cannot be sent into battle (though it can defend itself). If you somehow lose the ambassador, you will get another at your capitol.

Like when you are creating your own settlements, you have to place the monster settlement at least 5 spaces away from your own settlements.

 

You can command the settlement to move locations. This makes the settlement unavailable for awhile as the settlements guard force razes it’s current settlement then moves to the new location and sets up their home.

 

Each species has its own set of 2 upgrades in your diplomacy tree. Each increases the number of unit types you can hire from that species / the power of the dragon, as well as allowing you to build the species settlement closer to your own settlements. At the second level you can build the settlement at minimum of 1 space away from your settlements. At the maximum level of the species tech, you can build the species settlement adjacent to your own settlements. This encloses the monster settlement within your own settlement (like other resources), the species guard force will become the guard force for your own settlement.

 

Dragon Ally:

Dragon Ally can only support one dragon at a time (when it 'dies' in battle it retreats to its settlement to recover before you can send it out again)

Level 1 dragon settlement does not allow you to hire the dragon. You have to give it something to make it fight for you. Maybe population per day? or just stacks of cash or artefacts? When the dragon is out, it's lair is undefended. It the lair is lost, the dragon will not be available after it dies until you re-conquer the lair (if it dies, it will go into hiding while you get it’s lair back).

Dragon settlements can only be built on mountains adjacent to pathable terrain.

The dragon ambassador is only your ambassador, without an escort.

 

Spider ally:

SPIDER MOUNTS!

When hiring spiders, you can hire 'spider mounts'. These are a non tradable resource that can be used when training your own troops. Spider mounts aren’t any faster than regular units, but they increase the riders hp and change their movement type to mounted.

Spider settlements can support extra military population if the settlement is setup in a forest.

 

Tactical Battles:

Combat:

Reduce luck in attack and defence rolls. Because luck sucks. Yes this includes removing things like % to dodge.

If you have an attack of 7, you will always output around 7 damage (+/- 10%). The damage number is reduced by the enemies defence by a set amount.

 

Tactical Battle Terrain:

Add objects to hide behind. Ranged attacks need line of sight to attack and can be blocked by objects. Indirect attacks are not blocked by line of sight (catapults).

 

Tactical Ship Battles:

As the only ship you can build is a transport adding ship battles isn't too difficult.

 

You can only have one transport ship in a strategic tile.

And there is an upper limit on the number of men you can carry. A man and a horse count as two (or three?) people.

 

Tactical ship battles are exactly the same as land battles except the terrain is two ships with boarding planks joining them. The empire and kingdom ships look different but that’s about it.

You get a defensive bonus for standing on the upper deck vs people attacking from the stairs (where the wheel is, whatever it's called).

If you win, the enemies transport is converted into your own.

 

Magic:

Magic Revamp:

Global mana pool (since that's in the future patch notes).

 

Heroes still have an essence stat, but you cannot select it when levelling up and it does not increase while levelling up.

The only unit you have that starts with essence is your sovereign. All sovereigns start with the same essence (but you can take a trait to increase the base essence)

The main way to increase your essence is to preform magic research, construct magic improvements and consume items that increase your essence.

The sovereign can also imbue heroes with the sovereigns essence. This transfers an amount of your choosing to the target hero. If the hero is slain or you cast recover essence (this has infinite range) you can get your essence back. Heroes cannot acquire essence any other way.

Children can start with essence, they cannot be imbued with more and they cannot imbue other characters.

 

The sovereign can only give out 1/2 of their total essence. So the sovereign will always be your strongest (or equal strongest) magical unit.

 

Essence allows the casting of more spells per turn, each unit has a mana bar based on their essence which refills every strategic turn (but draws from the global mana pool).

Intelligence improves the damage of offensive spells.

Intelligence improved the effectiveness of self buff spells (buffs that will improve your own stats only).

Support spells (like deflect) are not affected by intelligence, so low intelligence heroes can be support casters.

If a spell is part of an element, then it's effect is increased by holding the appropriate essence stone. Low level spells are less affected by essence stones; high level spells are inefficient unless you hold the correct stone.

 

Only the sovereign can cast from the life or death books. These books hold powerful late game spells to buff a sovereigns abilities (to Sauron levels), a cheap self teleport (targets any allied settlement or stack of units) and any other sovereign only spells.

These spells have a large essence upkeep while in effect, so any other casters will be less effective at spamming spells if you concentrate your power into one unit.

 

Magic Book Research:

When learning spells.

Each book has a tab with all learned spells in the tab, broken up by spell level. A Spell level is a nice looking bar across the page with a number of empty dots in it.

Spells that have been learned are placed under their corresponding spell level bar.

Instead of 10+ spell levels condense it to like 4.

Also, condense the spell books from 10 down to the 4 elements + life/death as a special book.

However, each spell book has its own set of spell levels you have to unlock individually. So you could be spell level 2 in one book and spell level 3 in another.

 

Random spell learning:

When you want to learn a spell, you select a book and spell level and click study. Then once it finishes you get a set of random spells from that book and spell level to choose from.

 

Advancing spell levels:

Every time you research a spell, a dot in the next spell level bar fills up. Once all dots are filled, the next spell level is unlocked.

The highest spell level (level 4) also has an extra requirement. You need at least one of the appropriate spell shards and enough level 3 spells.

Once you have enough spells in a spell level to unlock the next tier of spells that spell level becomes mastered. Once a spell level is mastered, all remaining spells in that level will always show up when that level is researched (so if you are really unlucky, this will ensure you get the spell you want).

 

All sovereigns start with life/death and an elemental book of their choice. The 3 missing books can be researched in the magic tech tree.

What this will do:

-There won't be so many spells on the spell learn screen unless you research all the books.

-Increases faction diversity a little with initial spell tree choice

-Puts some more research options into the magic tree

 

When you learn a book you get some ‘level 0’ spells automatically added (imbue champion, basic ranged damage elemental attack as examples).

Book of life/death spell levels require technologies (advanced spell books, expert spell books, master spell books) however you get all the spells for that spell level when you research the appropriate tech.

As a prerequisite for the advanced spell books techs, you need to have at least one elemental spell book researched to the appropriate level (advanced = level 2, expert = level 3,  master = level 4).

 

Magic in tactical Battles:

Most spells cause change to the battlefield that persists through multiple turns instead of just direct damage.

Direct damage spells can be blocked with shields by using block pointing at the casting enemy.

In the Tactical Battle post, there is a list of new spell effects.