I never use the summon one either for the reasons you mentioned.

IF it is ... An option to remember what you've bought previously on a champion would be amazing. I usually scrounge up 30-40 champs per game and clicking on all the magical amulets, rings, and armor for each one is time consuming.

Also, maybe that can auto equip strongest, or have an option for it, or at least "next" and "previous" arrows for equipping members in parties easier... without having to select, equip, click, close, select, equip, etc...

But, amazing list, it needs release, thanks!

One step forward... And one step back.

I realize you want the game to be a polished and consistent as possible, but removing spells at this point - no matter how unbalanced they are is simply the wrong thing to do atm. Maybe if the game had a spell list rivaling AoW:SM or MoM, but it doesn't.

Patience! How do you know they're not gonna add something even better before this version's released?

Either way, there's obviously gotta be sound reasoning behind removing it.

I agree with TheProgress. Add a long cooldown, or a much higher mana cost to Blink instead.

The reason for removing blink is you can chain it infinitely, jumping from one side of the map to the other and casting spells, while enemy units run after you.

  We considered a higher casting cost, obviously thats what we did with Teleport.  But Blink wasn't just a case of balance.  It introduced significant AI, balance (in that even with a higher casting cost it was still abusable) and fun issues (bouncing back and forth on a battlefield while the ai runs back and forth isn't enjoyable and its strategic).

  It was, much like a Pauly Shore movie, beyond saving.

  The good news is that all the data fields still exist so modders can add it in if they would like.

Well, thank you for leaving it for us . But I thought having a cooldown would have taken care of most abuse...have it so you can only use it once per battle. That way you have to really think about when you use it, and can't be abused. But, it seems you guys put a lot of thought into it, so I won't push any further.

It also seems that someone high up really dislikes cooldowns on spells!

I wonder how many fun spells or features have to be killed due to AI issues,,

I kind of had a feeling that much of the games problems has been trying to either not being able to get the AI or engine to do what they wanted to do. 

Considering the AI can't use any spells right in 1.11 in tactical, I'd say very few.

two items I do not see listed in the fixes.  The first is a significant issue.  The second is annoying but purely cosmetic.

1) When reloading from a save, if the stack had a bunch of movement bonus items, those bonusses are not applied, so the stack gets 2/6 movement.  (Bonus from the Conquest tree extra movement tech do get counted.)

2) In tactical combat, when Sarog breathes fire, the fire stays on the screen.  Until the end of battle.

Yours,

Joel

PS: Sorry if these have been posted elsewhere.

Consider the current AI state of tactical battles... I wonder why tactical battles are still in.

But I will agree to all design changes to make the AI able to fight back even a little, then it's current broken state, so I can't really complain about that change. :/

So because I demonstrated that you can win any battle by blinking around (or by blinking behind kingdom houses), you are removing the blink spell?

You guys can't be more creative than that? Seriously? No casting limits per battle? No spell cooldown? No limited range? No making the AI smart enough so that it can blink up to your units to attack? Just a blanket removal?

This is the penultimate of poor reactions to player exploits.

This is so true and sad.  It's too bad.  They cut corners with how they did a lot of things in the game, and then when they can't get it work, they just remove it.

Well, in the best of all worlds, they would ofc balance it and not remove it, but balancing something costs time, which I think they just don't have atm.

Look at Elemental in its current state: There is no balance at all.

- Diplomacy? Broken with op politicial capital, exploits in trading abound and a power rating system which doesn't work at all.

- Economy? Gildar is of no concern since Gildar income and expenses aren't balanced (ie. there is way too much income)

- Research? There are 5 discrete research paths with one of them being so powerful, that if you only concentrate on it, you have won the game (warfare) thanks to the powerful equipment it gives. Also, who thought it is possible to balance 5 different research paths with no dependencies between itself in the first place? It's like if I was able to beeline to tanks in CivVI without ever researching 4/5 of the rest of the techtree and then crushing the AIs spearmen with modern armour.

- Combat system? OP armour makes all but overamored units worthless. I'm still doubtful if the change will fix that.

- Champions? Add the broken economy with the broken research system and a broken combat system to produce one man armies that can destroy all units in the game combined in a single battle.

- Spell casting? Blink makes the AI unable to even hit an unit. Other spells are currently useless with the combat system we have now.

- Stats for sovereigns? Put all of it in... charisma maybe, since all other stats are currently useless, since a 5 stat in everything sovereign is negliable less powerfull then an all 15 stats sovereign.

What else do we have in the game right now? There is other stuff, that isn't balanced against at all now and any good player will cakewall over any number of ridiculous difficulty AIs without breaking a sweat because of that.

TL;DR The game is broken in that regard, as the AI can't fight back.

Imho there is just too much wrong with current balance, for the devs to fix all of them, for a patch that has to come out soon. So, before they add more stuff to the game, I'll be so glad if they fix the game first to make it be a challenge. Since that's currently not the case. If they have to remove spells, armour and all gildar increasing buildings first to achieve that since they can't do a total overhaul of the game at once, I agree with removing blink.

Yes, diplomatic capital needs a overhaul. As it is, it's a tool for making the AI poor if you find a diplomatic resource.

There are several ways to exploit the game, warfare isn't the only one. Anyway, the problem with warfare doesn't lie in the tech tree, it lies with the total lack of balance equipment-wise. When you can get late-game stuff early game, then your tech-tree is horizontal. That works, if the game is organized around that fact. Elemental isn't, as of yet. As a reviewer mentioned, it's still a Frankenstein-patchwork in some respects.

It obviously won't, but we'll only be able to confirm that, with proof and weight behind our words, on Thursday. While I understand that it's better to proceed step by step, the game has been really unbalanced in this area for 2 months. You cannot fix a major problem with such a minor change (and it is a minor change, as you can see from Kael's own example and other examples you could check by yourself). I don't mind minor steps to proceed carefully, as long as it's understood that there will be many of those, because the balance issue is big. And as long as we don't wait months between each !

Okay, Frogboy himself mentionned cooldowns. I've made a mod with them, showing that they work. Just like Heavenfall, I am puzzled. Did someone at Stardock get his dog bullied by a cooldown when he was a kid or something ? 

But yes, balance has issues, and I'm not exactly understanding the philosophy behind the fixes. Removal of blink instead of using the available tools (cooldown, which should be on many spells to improve spell usage variety and balance), insignificant (almost homeopathic) changes to armor when it's a gamebreaker,  issues with the diplomatic system... I'm not saying I have the perfect solutions to these problems, but as much as I advocate not making huge changes in a single day, I do think that the magnitude of these issues is such that to make progress, the changes need to be somewhat bolder.

I have always thought Blink was a weird spell and OP. I agree that removing spells is kinda lame but in this case I understand why they did. It is to easily abused and broken through going behind buildings etc. Spells don't have cool-downs period. You can't add one just for Blink, maybe in FE. If you can cast infinite fire balls in a row why not Blink? Even if you added cool-downs to all spells it would be lame because people would still just alternate between similar spells. Fireball, Magic Missile, Lightning etc.... WHat possible reason could be given for being able to throw lightning but not fire twice in a row? This is not Warcraft where units have 4 fixed spells. In Elemental you have dozens of interchangeable spells that overlap. Cooldowns would be kinda odd.  Blink is also different from other spells because it actually benefits warriors more then sorcerers. Just blink your Warrior Sovereign next to their archers. Why bother casting dmg spells? I know intelligence is already pretty much useless but Blink makes it more so. The only change that I think could work is a range limit (5 squares?). 

1) Why not ? It might require some charging time, or it might strain your body. It's magic, make up an excuse that makes sense, and it works. From a mechanics perspective, a lot of spells *need* cooldowns anyway. (One volcano per turn ? PUHLEEEEAAASE)

2) Cooldowns force people to alternate between not-so-similar spells. Some might do less damage but cycle more quickly. Some could be a 1-per-battle wonder that you should use when the time is right. If you can't spam the same spell all the time anymore, then choosing when to cast your best spells is an important decision to make. Suddenly, you solve (partially) the problem of spell obsolescence.

And you solve another problem: if you've used your mega-fireball and can't use it for 4 turns, then you have to choose between using your weaker fireball (or whatever) or a more tactical, less direct-damage spell. Suddently, buff/debuff/tactical-superiority spells become more valuable, because for 3 turns, you can't blast the shit out of your opponent.

Cooldowns are not the ideal solution; A casting time + max power/battle (or per strategic turn), AoW-style, is a better solution. But cooldowns are already there. It's cheap solution, and one that adds tactical depth to the game. 

I named a number of suggestions in my previous post and in the post where I talked about using Blink to take down hammer-wielders.

You can give a cooldown to blink. Just make it an enchant that bestows the special teleport ability that demons have. You'd then have a cooldown ability that could be used in addition to attacking. (Blink, then attack.) Surely the AI is smart enough to do that...Right? RIGHT? Even MoM's AI could handle teleporting in-battle.

Now... How is it that *I* am being more creative or having better ideas than the developers? It's like they've said "we can either spend money on development time to think about how to fix the spell, or we can just comment out the code and disable one of the few spells that people are using."

The problem with this whole line or reasoning is that everyone assumes balancing blink and making the AI using it effectively is simply done.  That is to say that it won't consume significant Stardock resources.  

If the choice was chuck blink and get 10 other interesting new spells or keep blink and get it balanced and, more importantly, get the AI using it correctly which would people choose?  What if it was blink or 5 new spells?  Or 25 new spells?  Or champion skill trees?  Or meaningful tactical battle terrain?  Or any number of other things that would improve the game?

My point is that we don't know what the trade-offs are that are going on behind the scenes.  Jumping up and down and freaking about about how any of us is obviously smarter/better/more creative than the devs are is myopic and probably a bit dumb.  

Any sort of project with limited resources is about properly using those resources to get the greatest value.  If they're dumping blink I'm willing to be its because they can better spend those resources elsewhere for more return (read: more improvement to the game than fixing blink).  

They could have just added a cooldown of 20 turns or so, or make it one cast per battle. I don't see how that would have any more significant balance implications than removing it completely does.

While I don't particular care for the removal of blink, I think that it is a reasonable design decision. Honestly, the code for it is still in the game and I know that Updated weapons will not be removing it. Personally, I think they should have simply increased the cooldown or made it one time cast and then gave it a much smaller range, but these are things modders will be able to do.

I might be a bit biased but I still prefer my cooldown solution from a couple months back. Though I'm sure someone has made much longer and more detailed suggestions like that before and after my post. A decent cooldown system could be used for the almost non-existant abilities and maybe planned ability/upgrade system if there is one in the works still and is very familiar to rpg and strategy gamers alike.

Seeing a lot of repeat complaints/confusion every time I visit*cough*adventure techs*cough*. Ah well I guess someone just really hates cooldowns and maybe has some amazing solution but is keeping it secret for future patch that fixes magic

Also if I haven't plugged them in this changelog yet (A guy can dream!).

1. Rare Techs! Please bring back uncommon/rare techs and make them worthwhile! Maybe toss some of the really popular/powerful techs in there. This system really helped set the tech tree apart from the tech trees in other good games, outside of frustrating Adventure/Diplomacy lines. You would have your ordinary ideas and research bringing you that nice plate armor, some skunkworks research bringing you that magically spawning ventri mine in enemy territory, and every now and then a researcher has a stroke of brilliance and realizes elementium could be forged to make a badass sword.

2. DYNASTIES! This feature has sooooo much potential that I can't even think straight to spell sooooo correctly! It could add a lot of intrigue and uniqueness to the game instead of sitting in the gutter with the rest of diplomacy as a sort of forgotten feature. As fun as incest is maybe factions could have things like traits that have a chance of appearing in youngsters and 'mixing and matching' different groups would create unique champions you bother to remember the name of. Perhaps the above mentioned incest could cause a negative to charisma.

Factions could each have a set of unique good and bad traits that are randomly chosen for Sovereign heirs. For example the famous Gildar Prince who is said to have legendary Blacksmithing (+10% metal in city) and Marketing (+10% gildar) skills has married the Princess of Paradin famed for her beauty (+1 Prestige) and babbling (-1 diplomatic capital). Their offspring could have 1 of the above traits and one random trait of the opposite faction. There being negative traits such as the above too perhaps to make some offspring more trade-worthy.

Something that made the 'heir to the throne' list matter would great too. Perhaps the Soveriegn is attacked and 'killed' at some point, and instead of magicking back home somehow they die unless equipped with the one-time use ring of deux ex machina or a sonic screwdriver. Their heir would then step up, if there are no more heirs then that kingdom/empire is gone from the pages of history. Another idea is at least having stat bonuses to 2nd/3rd in line to distinguish them a bit.

tldr; I don't like adventure/diplomacy line of techs and may keep a open mind on elemental incest.