UPDATING!

Wow 30 megs, this is the biggest update yet (space wise).

Just wanted to add something regarding the immersion factor as relates to the sudden appearence of resources..

In the real world new resources do appear where once there was thought to be none.  ex: Erosion wears away at the earth for years.  Then one day an enscarpment falls away and a glimpse of a mineral vein becomes exposed.  Then someone has to put eyes to it and know what they are seeing for it to be 'discovered'.  In my backcountry travels, I have been known to do a bit of amateur resource hunting myself. 

As far as learning a tech and then finding a resource: Just chalk that up to improving your understanding of the science of that which you seek.  When you look for precious stones, you need an understanding of the geologic processes that create them.  Only then can you narrow your search to those places that can actually yeild them.  For Old Growth Forests you can explain that away by learning the technology which allows you to actually exploit that resource.  ie Manage the infrastructure involved in getting to those wild places, havesting the material, and then bringing it back to market. 

Cool an update is available :~)  I'm off to explore the changes...

Test number 1: armor is much, much more balanced so far. I get a low fewer of those "blocked, blocked, blocked, blocked" chains. It feels like I'm actually fighting ! "Slightly", however, was an understatement. I would have said "significantly". But yeah, it's really fine now .

But my female sov still can't wear Traveling Boots

{edit: nevermind, works when I create a new sov}

The war council still has the wrong prereq. It's a small thing I know, but the building which allows you to train groups of units shouldn't become available when learning the Tools Of War tech. It's one line, from Tools_Of_War_Trogs to Armies_Trogs.

Full disclosure that I've barely played my copy as I wait (with increasing optimism) for Elemental to become the game I had originally hoped it would be.  However, on the topic of resource spawning, have to agree with the sentiment that the current system makes little sense to me and really is a detriment to the game.  Scarcity of and desire for resources is right behind religion/culture as the main reasons for war and conflict; having every faction handed and guaranteed key resources after research cuts directly at underlying premises of a 4x game. 

If hidden resources spawned at the start with contingencies for factions inadvertently trying to build upon them are an unreasonable goal, and the concern with making them all visible to start is outpost camping/tech balance, why not simply afix them with detriments/obstacles until the proper tech is acquired?  For instance, that Darkling camp probably values its independence, and will maintain its own stack that automatically attacks any settlements in a 5-10 square radius.  Crystal mines could routinely attract bandit armies or drakes, while bear packs zealously guard their Twilight Bee feeding grounds.  Only when you learn the appropriate tech and build its corresponding resource improvement on a node would the auto guardian spawning stop, plus if applicable a bonus (or removal of a penalty) to production.  Could still include a discovery aspect by setting it so that, upon gaining the appropriate tech, you get an X% chance per season of discovering a given resource within your territory, such that a faction isn't necessarily SOL if random allocation worked against its placement and still has incentive to gain the right tech as soon as possible. 

This would lead to far more interesting strategic decision making than is currently in the game, IMO.  No longer could you simply sit back and wait, self-assured that you'd get a resource when you wanted it and/or could simply game the computer into doing the dirty work for you.  Instead, upon coming across that precious mine, you'd have to decide if it was worth the cost of trying to immediately claim it and legitimately maintain a guardian outpost/city for some time prior to actually being able to capitalize on the resource, or wait and hope no one else swoops in before you can use it.

You released the patch? Are you crazy? Weekend is so far away. 

Thank you guys. So i´ll have go a little later at work... *update*

Yay the options screen cloth mode bug is fixed!! Been dealing with that one since the first beta of the game!.. So happy

First impressions are very good. 5 materials realy help in the beginning. But i have to go to work now.

Soo... we need another changelog.

Besides this ...

Two other points:

- pls. fixe the "free attacks" in tactical battles and

- everytime i load a savegame there is something different. Sometimes there are new/other goodie huts, suddenly there are new mobs etc.

- Cloak of Thwarting: Probably useless in the late game, because Accuracy scales with the level

- Sword of Wraith: 65 Attack is overpowered and makes the Strength bonus useless

- Arielle's Shield: Nice item

- Shield of the Sovereign: Probably useless in the late game, because Accuracy scales with the level

- Yithril Bow: Probably useless in the late game, because it can not penetrate the armor

Please balance the Attack, Defense, Accuracy, Dodge and Spell Resistance first before you add items that demonstrate how unbalanced the combat is. The Attack and Defense values are too high and the Defense should always be lower than the Attack of the same tech level. Dodge and Spell Resistance are only useful at the early game, because the Accuracy scales with the level. Shields should increase Dodge and not the Defense.

I agree for the sword of wrath. Both its attack power and penalty are exagerated. 50 attack, -5 Constitution would be a good set of values. But then, you need to lower the great scimitar's power a bit (50's a tad exagerated too).

Also, I found an enemy with a sword of wrath during the early stages of the game, which I think wasn't supposed to happen. I was able to kill the dude with 2 arcane arrows (-10 Constitution is too big a penalty; I understand the purpose of this, but if I push the idea to its extreme, would a 1 hp/200 damage unit be interesting ?) 

I actually think the game is overall much more balanced, but I think there are a couple tweaks that could be done, both early game and late game. I'll create a topic about that, but:

-The shortsword feels a bit weak. 8 (or 9 if you raise the mace as well) damage instead of 7 would help selling it over the mace sometimes. 

-The mace is rather okay, maybe +1 damage ?

-Broadsword is rather okay as well, though I think +1 damage would also be good to enhance its armor-fighting capabilites a bit vs. light armor.

I think that's about it. Just small tweaks. 

But most units are created at level 1, even in the late game. So it's still useful against most non-champion units.

Here here.  From my games the current system works well enough.  Sometimes I get spawns within my borders that I can quickly develop, sometimes they end up in enemy territory.

I prefer the random spawn.  I always hated Civ games (and I've had several) where I research Metal Casting or what not, but there's no copper around, I research iron working, but there's no iron around, nuclear theory, but all the dag-nab-it plutonium is on the other side of the world.  That really sucks in  a game like Elemental where a player (throretically) is not required to be Alexander, subjugating the whole world and all its territories.  Good for Civ, which essentially has only one way to play, not so good for Elemental with its current structure.

Raise and lower land cost 3 mana. Greater raise and lower land cost 128 mana. Is such a huge different intended? 

Good point, but i think an item that works against all units is the safer bet, like Arielle's Shield.

Ill try out bows in my next game, once the patch is done, but I do have a question on the Zone of Control being reduced.  I remember in a post that Frog said the one goal was to be able to have big cities with huge areas of control, that way you could have only a few big cities.  With the reduction in that now, are you aiming for smaller ones in the game?

Honest opinion after playing around: I still got a crash, but it's easier to see what's causing it- I think you've gotten over the hump.

You guys are chopping wood, but it's a much larger tree then I think you guys imagined.  Keep up the good work, but it's going to be a good bit of work.  I doubt you'll be finished patching this up until January.

well I mean, I wasn't trying to say its perfect yet  I'm just saying, I have taken the approach you asked for, I have a document outlining the tech levels into the tree all weapons and armor are unlocked at and currently the weapons vs same tier armor should always be 5 or so points higher than a complete armor set of that tier (2 handed weapons at least).  Part of the reason they are so close is that by the time those items are unlocked most of your units (aside from trained ones) should have a decent strength modifier to boost that number further.  There is no armor scaling from a stat...  That being said, the armor numbers were still too high so we are reducing them  if this is still the case the next step will be to go in and raise some weapon numbers.

I agree its no fun to have all your attacks be blocked.  We also have to be careful to make people who invest in armor feel like they are getting some benefit (which shouldn't be 100% dmg mitigation) its just a fine line.  Also keep an eye on the combat speed on some of the weapons, remember combat speed means you get another swing per round (and counter attack).  Its a very very good stat, most weapons with high combat speed are balanced to be less effective against heavily armored units (lower attack damage) but will be way better at cleaning up a bunch of lighter armored units quickly.  That's why Longsword specifically is a 17 attack vs the 30 attack of the slower battle hammer.  If you are running into problems with too much blocking try going for higher damage per swing weapons that will get through mitigation but not allow you a bunch of swings per turn.

  

Actually, there's a small issue with that I believe. There are 2 factors which make combat speed a bit less desirable than an increase in attack power:

-If you already increased combat speeds with other powers or tech, then the +1 in combat speed won't take you from 3 to 4, but (say) from 5 to 6. 5*30 compared to 6*17... well, not exactly good.

-As you mentioned armor. Even light units have some armor. A longsword becomes interesting if average(damage-armor)*combat speed is higher for the longsword than for the hammer. Is it currently the case? I don't believe it is even against unarmored units, because the difference between the two is currently too high. At 20-22 damage, I'd start considering it.

As it is, longsword only becomes better than the hammer with a large strength bonus.

Edit: I think the sweet spot for longsword is 24 or 25 damage. 25*4 = 100 damage, 30*3=90 damage (unarmored units)

-against lightly armored units with an average 5 damage mitigation: (25-5) *4 = 80, (30-5)*3=75.

-against  medium armor units with an average 10 damage mitigation (25-10)*4 = 60, (30-10)*3 =60

->Then the hammer becomes better.



But most units are trained...

well, first off I specifically made it a point to limit combat speed bonuses everywhere I could because in our current system they are way too powerful and do not scale properly.  So the ones on the weapons should be of increased importance...  That's also why its not just exactly half the attack power of the Mace.  Also as you said the benefit is generally only significant with a decent strength bonus, however, you are neglecting HOW much better it can be with a high strength.  It just means that maybe you only use Longswords on units with high strength, but thats why we are making sure you have other options....  You shouldn't ever feel like your only option is a weapon with combat speed bonuses that has a lower damage value.  

Finally its worth noting that in a future content patch there will be some more changes to the combat system that will GREATLY change the way combat speed works currently.  While its not going to require a full rebalance when it happens, it is specifically going to affect combat speed's value greatly and will allow us to fiddle with stats on weapons more to get a better feel for different weapons.  It will also probably effect the stats of ranged weapons, basically right now ranged weapons and combat speed are way too valuable because of how our system works.  Thus they have had their damage lowered to keep other weapons competitive.  In the future this will be addressed and those weapons will be able to be improved without breaking the game.

 

Well, in the case of the longsword, to have it become slightly better than the hammer against light infantry, you need *very* high strength. And to have it become really better... you need tremendous strength.

With 40 strength: + 15 damage. Against unarmored units:

-Longsword 32*4 = 128, Hammer 45*3 = 135.

I think the differential in power is much, much too big between fast weapons and armor-piercing weapons.

And why make it available for regular units then ? It's a bad weapon choice in any case I can think of. I would understand it in the case of a very special weapon, but longswords sound like troopers' material to me

well to me the issue there is more that you shouldn't have 3 swings by default in combat  which I promise you is being addressed in the near future...  I mean I'm not totally opposed to raising the dmg of specifically the Scimitar and Longsword for now because you are right, they don't scale as well as the lower tier fast weapons (due to more of the dmg coming from the weapon than str mod).  

Unfortunately until we get our combat speed changes in its not going to be possible to have weapons with combat speed balanced for all play styles and honestly I would rather a weapon feel underpowered then feel like its the end all be all everyone should be using.  Again tho, I'll look at tweaking the numbers a bit for the mean time until the other fix is in.  Know that this did come up in our meetings for this patch even, just we are trying to avoid feature creep and over shooting additions with each patch these days so we can focus more on smooth performance and testing

Actually, for the early tier weapon, you don't need to worry about how strong they'd be with high strength either. Sure, they'd scale more... but by the time you reach enough strength to make this an issue, the champions already betters 2 or 3 tiers above. So I think it's a problem with all fast weapons: they're all underperforming.

For the shortsword, for instance, compared to the mace, you need at least 16 strength to make the shortsword better against unarmored units. And it's clearly a worst choice for regular troops. I think raising it to 8 (or even 9, and raising the mace to 11 since, as I said, the mace would actually feel a tad better with a small boost) would make it worth it.

As long as the strong weapons are a few points higher than the fast weapon, they'll never become useless: they'll always be the best sort of weapons against heavy armor.

Edit: also, by definition, if the swords are underpowered, the maces becomes the end all weapons be all weapons .