v1.2 wishlist

You do realize the entirety of the game can be summed up there right?

Faugh. There's no mention of quests, the dynasty system, or diplomacy. They all still need serious attention as well.

Ok now with GW Swicord's post it's summed up right? 

Only the economy is unaddressed. It needs some work still, too.

Now I think we're pretty much covered.

Actually, noone mentioned 64bit support or dx14.

What will 64 bit bring besides bigger maps?

Hopefully the end to the dreaded out of memory error!

Also missing is the campaign re-work and additional varied quests

Interesting list, though I think that most of this stuff is not absolutely necessary. While I think that race/faction diversity would be an nice addition, I think that this is ultimately unnecessary to making the first expansion truly bring Elemental into its own. As for the AI, frogboy has been working on this during his holiday and I am sure that expansion or no expansion this will be done. My personal list is more like this:

1) Expanded Champions - Deepen them a bit to make them more than glorified normal Units

2) Expand the Dynasty System - Take out the sov death loss and replace it with a lineage system. Also, champion dynasties anyone?

3) Expand Tactical combat to include special abilities for most, if not all, units - I think every unit should have at least 4-5 actions available in any given turn

4) Expand the modding system - There is a great wish list thread in the mod forum. If even 10-20% of the requests were addressed, I would be happy.

5) Add a black market of some kind - It would be amazing if there was a black market similar to sins in Elemental.

6) Implement more extra-city improvements - This may be a bit to civ like, but external buildings like outposts, watchtowers, and merchant camps would add some cohesion to a faction by making the in fill lands between cities interesting and important beyond just being the land one traversed to get from city to city.

1. Yes, please

3. Very much true

6. By outpost I hope you mean fortress capable of area-of-control?

Besides deeper tactical combat and units, the biggest improvement I can think of at the moment would be separating magic research from technology research. In other words, arcane research points should be the driver of the current magic 'tech' path in addition to the spells themselves. That would allow a valid magic-centric development path, whereas currently magic is completely dependent on (and therefore secondary to / inferior to) technology (weird,huh?).  As some are (validly) fond of pointing out, if there is a clear correct choice then it's not really a choice, nor particularly fun.  In this case, tech vs. arcane is just such a clear lack of choice.  Separating all magic to be based on arcane research elevates magic research to nearly equal.  Just sayin'

Forgot half-decent multiplayer with rankings and global statistics. Also I'd like a sandwich. Oh and sponsored tournaments where I can win t-shirts and a great big golden champions belt or perhaps a crystal shard with gem corresponding to element (ruby=fire, etc) as a gift for special someones.

Make it stable on my system.

Well, for a turtler like me, you could include more defense base building. Also, I saw a number of time that some tech should be cross related in different path to unlock, that can be cool. I keep in mind that v 1.2 and 1.3 will be kind of "small" patch compare to the Fallen enchantress and the other expansion.

Hoping they fix the memory leaks still. my 1.1 still crashes every hour or so.

A fortress / outpost type of building would be amazing!  This would allow the AI or player to create choke points without having to build up a new settlement and go through all of the effort of making it "right".  Not only that, but it would increase the challenge when playing against the AI, because we would have to go through maybe a couple of fortresses / outposts before getting to the main settlement.  Maybe you could even treat them as "mini-settlements" and have levels to these buildings (outpost/fort/fortress) and increase the AOC as it levels up.  It could have different defensive bonuses and maybe have a reduced training time for units (on par with a settlement having a barracks) or something like that.

Wishlist addition of mine that sort of relates to this... figure out a way to make the Terraforming spellbook not as cheese.  I shouldn't be able to completely avoid an enemy chokepoint by just casting a spell on a mountain and making it disappear.

Definitely want to see some improvements to the dynasty system as well.  At this point it's just mainly... unimportant.  It's "cool" to keep track of my family line, but it doesn't have much of an impact other than creating free Hero units essentially. Which is nice, but... nothing separates my children from Heroes, so I don't really need them.

Here's a new one that hasn't been mentioned... Politics.  I want to see some more useful political machinations available to us, and to the AI. The ability to attack a player under the guise of another ruler, the ability to deceive Ruler A into attacking Ruler B, or cause a general/heir to rebel against their King and either try to take the throne or break off and create their own kingdom.  You could even create an alliance, attack your ally under the guise of THEIR ally (who now has a resource you want) just so you can attack them and gain that resource without breaking your original alliance.  Or it could all backfire and now you've got 2 enemies. Maybe Diplomatic Capital could be a fluctuating resource, rather than just "political gold".  And on the other side of the coin, the AI can do these things to you as well.  You could get attacked by "Magnar" but really it was Capitar trying to incite a war between the two of you.  This would require quite a bit of AI coding of course, so... you know, it's easy to just talk about it.  Diplomacy Tech could really become a lot more fleshed out if you could unlock different political machinations, bonuses to "scheming" or whatnot in addition to the different options.  I've yet to play a 4x game with a really fleshed out diplomatic angle, and I really think with a few right ideas, the complexity of this game could really expand, without overly complicating how we play it. It could create some interesting new strategies by getting others to do the dirty work for you.

I know a lot of these ideas would probably be difficult to implement, but hopefully just getting the conversation started can get the ball rolling on some new changes

I'd like a cookie.

I would actually disagree with this. I find it odd that someone who supports political intrigue in the game also says that using magic to circumvent a choke point is cheesy. Right now, I think that the terraforming spellbook is quite nice as it gives spells to both raise and lower terrain, which gives one side the ability to tailor make choke points, while also give your opponents the ability to get around them. My only point for changing this spellbook would to add spells which went along with extra-city improvements. Like maybe, a terraforming spell could be made which caused a food resource to no longer give its resource for a few turns, or one that gave a few turn bonus to material production for old forests.

I think there is a good point here about actions which have diplomatic effects, yet these suggestions would require a fairly large change to how player engage each other. Since interfaction combat requires a declaration of war, a unit cloaked in the garb of another faction could not simply attack without sparking a war. Honestly, I would hate it if an opponent of mine could simply start a war by merely building a unit and sending it on a suicide mission. That said, I think there is a huge amount of fertile ground for spy/stealth in Elemental. Maybe one could build a spy, send it to an enemy city to disrupt production, and blame it on another empire. This would allow players to deviously start wars or break up alliances, while also running the risk of their own plans being foiled.

Well since we are redesigning the entire game in v1.2 in this post (it needs it) I would like to add one to the list since all my others have already been added.  I would like to see character creation get a big face lift and have more of an impact throughout the game instead of only having an impact at the beginning of the game.  Right now to me character creation is very weak and only impacts the start of the game with little to no impact mid to late game.  Also there is nothing in the creation that defines strategy or opens up different game play strategies.

Also fix the faction creator so when you pick colors you can actually see what your citizens will look like.

Absolutely no cookies for anyone.

This:

Why not attach strength requirements to armor and high level weapons and make magic scale much better with Intelligence? That way, you'd have an actual trade-off when leveling up your Sov and champions without having to go to anything like a class-based system.

I really liked this idea, but it has at least one problem that I can see, and that is the training of "normal" units. They obviously wouldn't meet the requirements for high-level armors. And then I had an epiphany- use training levels to allow the assignment of stat points. Each race would start with a base set of stats (see, it's also a way to differentiate the races!). Basic training would yield a nominal amount of stat points to distribute, Elite would recieve a large number. Then, after these were assigned, weapons, armor, etc. could be assigned. You could have training level determine production time, and gear determine material cost.

Of course, you would need to Int and Cha do more for normal units, but this could easily be done. Int for group size determined bonuses, etc.

Blueberry muffin?

Wet T-shirt contest that we were promised in beta!

I think instead of hoping a whole bunch of wishlist items on v1.2, it should be considered for Elemental II instead. I remember Gal Civ 2 was definitely a superior game compared to prior iteration. Unless there is sweeping change for 1.2, it's not going to match the expectations from everyone, nor is that really technically efficient to implement. The game core is already there.

I say let's try to improve on existing elements, such as AI and fulfilling existing features, for 1.2. Then hope for the best with really big changes to be introduced in Elemental II.

A persistent world at the tactical level, including forts, ditches, walls etc would be awesome

I want to build Hadrian's wall and defend it against the spider hoards

Kenata,

My big issue with it, is that it takes out any strategic element to using cities as choke points.  The terraform spells are cheap enough in mana that you can just create your own land path to get around any obstacle to avoid a fight, or get a jump on a resource, whatever the case may be.  Ultimately, if the AI used it themselves, I wouldn't have a problem with it, or if I was playing against another human player.  But I see it as a huge advantage that we get against the AI, so in the end I just give myself a few "house" rules to not use it against AI.

It's different than political intrigue because in the end, intrigue is risky because it could backfire and instead of having a firm ally, and one of your annoying problems gone, you are know facing two bigger problems.  There's no risk/reward for terraforming, it just always works, and always gives the advantage.