As for heroes: how about heroes requiring, or being able to use, diplomatic capital for recruitment?  This would require a few changes to DC, but changes there are really needed in my eyes.

As for customization- my suggestion would be to allow it fully, and broken-ly, in sandbox play, but in "balanced" modes, only allowing default sovereigns. 

City spam and excessive numbers of heroes are an interrelated problem.  It creates too much tedium and robs this game of strategic potential. 

Caravan defense is also tedious unless there is a huge strategic reason to defend. If the caravan bonus is weakened too much, then having caravans becomes pointless.

POSSIBLE SOLUTION:  Implement a researchable "Command Points" system as in Sins of a Solar Empire.  Have hero recruitment cost points that increase exponentially to discourage hordes of heroes and encourage use of city-built units (which themselves should cost CP).  Have city founding cost significant CP.  Have caravans cost a minor amount of CP. This will enable strategic decision-making (city-building with few, strong units vs. smaller number of cities with more units, etc).

A lot of the balance issues in Elemental are symptoms of gameplay systems that, due to their intial design, are pretty much impossible to have balanced.  The problem is not that '_____ values are too high' or something, its that the intrinsic flow of combat and progression need to be overhauled.  1.1's balance changes were done to take the systems we have now and balance them to a playable extent without overhauling everything.  With FE we have the opportunity to go into systems themselves and tweak them to allow for more balanced play in the future.

I'm not saying the game will for sure be 100% balanced in FE, as has been mentioned before when you have a lot of customization options you will always have little balance issues (note why WoW has had balance patches for 6 plus years).  The hope is that they can be small enough so as to not break the game and we can deal with them as they come as opposed to not even having a framework to realistically fix these issues in the first place.  Its like trying to fix a roof of a house you haven't finished the actual foundation of yet.  Just so much you can do. 

Wow what an interesting discussion. I commend you Corbeaubm for your efforts and clear analysis of the strategy (such as it is) in elemental. I wish for you to continue your work. For me, elemental is still too dull and lifeless for me to get into...

Thank you for acknowledging the core issues. A lot of Stardockians have admitted only to things needing tweaking. It's good to know that you guys understand it's busted.

I think FE is a great idea, and the best possible way to redeem the Elemental franchise. For those of us who do not have crystalized impressions of Elemental (ie, people who are not Fistalis), we are essentially looking for a completely different game every patch. Now we can finally have it. WoM can rot for all I care. I don't even care if 1.2 never gets released if it means FE comes out faster.

Unfortunately armor will be super weak vs same-tier weapons if it gets a one tier drop. A group of 12 with strong weapons will bring the metagame back to high attack, large groups, first hit = victory. And we know that the AI will never get the first hit. It would make more sense to have each armor type give a percentage of absorbtion (balanced so that fully maxxed defensive gear reduces damage to 25% or so).

In regards to gold, numbers need to be normalized drastically. A couple of farms/gold mines can send gold per turn through the roof.

@Aeon221 

Another way of limiting rushing is to have a cheap building called Guard tower. This tower will shoot at incoming enemies before the battle, taking for example 1-4 hitpoints of each. This would help a defender a lot in the first part of the game, while being insignificant later. 

And ofcourse, Stardock could combine several of the rushlimiters making rushing very difficult early game. Still, they need to ensure that the players actually have to defend themselves against beasts and other empires. So its an balancing act as always.

Yeah, I don't think you're alone there. I probably won't play much, if at all, until the second expansion is released. Or the first, if it's especially awesome. I'll probably just put new spells in the bank for the third expansion as new xml functionality is added.

Stardock, please consider making at least *some* balance changes for battles with WoM.  While it's one thing that FE is going to be cool, I don't think it's good for anyone (players, prospective purchasers or Stardock) if pretty much everyone shelves the current game because of glaring areas that could use a thoughtful, effective, simple fix.

Stardock, could you consider this?

Best regards,
Steven.

But if a lot of people can't be bothered and choose to stop playing until FE instead...

Best regards,
Steven.

One thing to remember is that many of us are viewing the game as players not as game developers/designers. For many purposes, designers are worried only about the mechanics of the game... which is very different from the aesthetics of the game. That is, Weapon X adds +1 to Damage. Whether this is a sword, a magical spell, a funky monkey, that's mostly just fluff.

Players on the other hand, care about the fluff first. What would most players want? A sword x of +23 rather than funky monkey +23. Likewise, changing Elemental into a sci-fi game is effectively as simple as simply using different character models and light renaming; the mechanics of the game wouldn't really change (though expectations would differ).

This is an important distinction to make because the developers can fix and modify the mechanics without necessarily changing the aesthetics dramatically. But it also means that when Derek and Co. modify something, they then have the option of add more options into the game that are different... but ultimately have a controlled and understandable effect on the game systems. If they can get to a point where they know with high confidence that two sovereigns, all else being equal, that take New Trait X or not will have given up A of Y but lost B of Z, they can determine without even needing to do a lot of play testing if this New Trait X is balanced or appropriate for the game.

The cost of a little paper testing and such? Probably an hour or so, if that, and it only really involves Derek and one or two other guys . Over the course of a month, he can toy with hundreds of ideas - freeing up programmers and designers to do other things. On the other hand, if they're not looking at such balance and numbers and ignoring such things, the cost of dropping in traits willy nilly? Well, a day or so and it involves Derek, at least one programmer, at least one artist, and a few other people (those that make the builds, put it up on Impulse, etc). And then a few days later, the player base realizes Trait X is super bad or super good and that may not even be a lot of fun... and so Derek then has to go back and find a bandaid to fix it. He ends up spending a lot of time just chasing down and adjusting things rather than being able to design and implement other ideas that may actually be much better and much more fun.

tl;dr - Balancing as much as possible the sov customization gives them much greater opportunity to give us more, better, and much interesting sov customization options because doing so turns sov customization into an understood measurable amount with understood measurable effects.

Some thoughts / observations (its not more than that though and is not ment as a lecture on how Elementals design has to be, that is Stardocks job and I'm rather hopeful about that in the long run. Please take it just as IMO ) regardless of FE coming out scheduled for mid this year (which will of course lead to some major changes in the underlying systems):


I still hope a few things will be done until then to improve content / fun even to the regular game so we are not left out to dry (the huge update lists for the patches seemed and still to reinforce that hope.).


While a lot has successfully been done to make Elemental a playable game it has widely been noted (by Stardock-Members as well very luckily) that the game is suffering from being bland and having gaping holes in the content side of the game.



Some flaws I see with balancing as tried and practiced so far is trying to balance components by giving disincentives / curbing unbalanced things instead of the opposite (incentives) which has sucked the fun out of quite some features (I remember the golden ages concept for CIV coming from a discussion about dark ages and why they were not a good Idea and why positives can be more fun).

For example:


City Spam is tried to be curbed by making lots of small cities harder to grow instead of getting larger incentives for larger cities (also in a non-effective way since heroes / buildings can quite successfully mitigate that prestige-penalty: I haven't even really felt that penalty to be honest.).
An alternative to that might look like the following (with some incentives and some "disincentives" which really make smaller cities worth less than they are):

Use the build limit as an incentive to grow cities and curb the value of outposts as the workplaces for your faction a little! bit by using it as a breathing ceiling:


Level 1 Cities: Build limit:   10 buildings
Level 2 Cities: Build limit:   30 buildings
Level 3 Cities: Build limit:   50 buildings
Level 4 Cities: Build limit:   75 buildings
Level 5 Cities: Build limit: 100 buildings
(values of 10, 20, 35, 50, 75 might work just as well if the above seems to much a boost for Level 2,3 or the last tier)
That would make spamming lots of small cities to get lots of studies up much faster (or spamming mass-caravans to grab lots of gold-bonuses) a bit less viable (not totally non-viable but that is a pure question of how the numbers are done...).

Another thing which already works rather nicely with lots of administrators and the build-speed enchantment is reduced building time (that mechanics is already fully integrated into the game). It just needs to be applied to city size An example might work like the following:


Level 1 Cities: Construction ratio: 1.0
Level 2 Cities: Construction ratio: 0.8
Level 3 Cities: Construction ratio: 0.6
Level 4 Cities: Construction ratio: 0.4
Level 5 Cities: Construction ratio: 0.2

The effect should be obvious as should be the reason in-world (more people= more workforce=possibility to get projects done faster): Which together with a higher building-size limit would make very big cities very desirable (and still take some time to build up, especially for the last 2 tiers, even with prestige-boosting buildings and Charismatic Heroes.)



In Spite of the dynasty system being already rather a shadow of what it could be the time for children growing up was actually raised not lowered (I fail to see any! sensible reason for that and that change wasn't even documented, let alone explained. Someone maybe should be put on the short leash with simply putting in code without telling anyone else in the team since that change reeks quite like such an. Like the renewed reset of bows to set prices instead of resource-dependent prices which seems in the same way. Unless Frogboy decided those changes because he is the boss and calling the shots. Not that I would agree with those decisions being good though!...). Lowering the age of maturity for the kids might actually make a dynasty-centered strategy actually viable for a change... (still a very promising system with enough potential to be the core for its very own expension/standalone together with the rest of diplomacy and late-game interactions... I'd rather have a fun game with the rest mostly gotten right and wait for this getting some real love than some ragtag solution for a field with such nigh-limitless potential.)

Most of this disincentive-oriented balancing is understandable in the light of tossing lots of unworkable systems out of the window with 1.1 to get to a playable game. But part of the fun got thrown out of the window as well (because the game was designed with the old concepts in mind which didn't work together as a playable whole). Sad but probably unavoidable short term.


The change to the Charisma-Stat or escalating HP / effect of con with Leveling is one of very few examples where incentive-based design has been used to Great effect (IMO, in spite of some on the forums declaring Cha as being worthless I also think that it might well be the only attribute really worth bothering with sadly. And the cornerstone of the strategy I favor. Which is based on trading heroes.)


Caravans were nerfed (and neccesarily so) in exactly the same way instead of developing a balanced system (which I am sure will be coming with FE like so many other things... More about that in the second part of this post)





Now to adress some of Corbeaubm's points which I partly agree with / partly but can't fully endorse:

Strongest disagreement would be with strongly favoring a micromanagement heavy strategy (and I am an extreme micromanager mind you ) like working strongly with caravans and city-spam which demands a lot of attention even with huge territorial influence I had when playing large maps (I tried to use caravans but couldn't be bothered since monsters kept eating them from out of nowhere).
Especially when trading heroes yields such enormous benefits (even without the exploit to strip the AI of all its resources with a mere single hero besides Janusk or a Spouse which are worthless on the table / can't be traded. Which can be done by trading a hero back and fourth ad nauseum) since the value for heroes on the player-side of the table seems off is so much easier / faster and ultimately more fun. Especially since it gets more effective with rising difficulty (since the AI gets more resources for you to trade in from them)

(alongside with the other Gamebreaking exploit stripping the AI of all of its gold with trading diplomatic capital on the treaties table while at war with said AI for ungodly ammounts. Especially effective if another AI has large ammounts of diplomatic capital which you can buy at a much better rate at another part of the diplomacy-table which makes it an utter game-breaker.
This one is not usable in a legitimate way though and demands one AI having Diplo-Capital which thanks to the AI-production-bonuses is quite plentiful for them with a scenic-view near them at Ridiculous so I avoid that since its an obvious exploit and not a viable strategy which is not even reliable. Both game-breaking exploits have been posted in the support forums already so hopefully no need to double-up there to get the devs attention to that exploit )

Still some very valid observations in there on which ideas can be founded:


First lets start with stats:

To curb the dominance of them I have to agree that they have been largely nerfed into Oblivion (especially in comparison to the much more worthy traits right now).

What you give your Sovereign for Stats shouldn't just influence his own performance IMO but have a profound effect on the game (some examples given below). That would give an actual incentive to take them as well as give leveling / the RP-Aspect of Sovereign- Dynasty- and Hero- development more weight.

Strength: Is usable and gives some edge at the start of the game but the reduction was a bit to much imo and equipment (as a whole) is to huge of a factor now (not to concerned about that since its the first trial with 1.1 just out and I'm sure with time a good point will be found. The underlying system is still far better than the old one). Maybe a high strength could affect not just the Sovereign / Heroic Leader of a given Army but the whole battle to a certain extent. Verdict not worthless but certainly not essential. More work needed to get in line. Some overlap with equipment-balancing. (Still one of the current real options.). Changed by special abilities like crushing blow or especially savage strike which make this stat nigh-mandatory.

Intelligence: Nigh-Useless for the sovereign (seriously you don't need it unless your Sovereign is your only hero, which would be highly troublesome for your empire.) Essential for every other hero you want to have casting something. (So here the problem is just with sovereign-creation. Elsewhere it seems allright). Maybe arcane research should be modified by your sovereigns Int? Or Mana-income, or much more influence of Intelligence for the effect of spells and many other options. All sound like viable ways to make Int more interesting. Telling that all my custom sovereigns are dumb like a rock (would actually put that at 1 if 5 weren't the low-cap.

Dexterity: Huge construction site. This one should be re-thought completely imo. Options include actually putting some kind of damage-reduction here in lieu of dodge. Better combat initiative if it is to come. More accuracy (makes sense and is actually implementable right now, might be the way to go short-term) or empire-wide / army-wide doge bonus (less than direct like the change proposed to strength.). Combat-Speed modifier (very low one though) might be another option. As pure dodge-stat it is way to week (still possible to build a high-dodge high defense hero with high dex and a sword of wrath for actually going into melee which I hate but far from necessary....). No problem dumping that. Especially for ranged characters. Which seems very-anti-thematic.

Constitution: Looks weak but the real problem here actually is equipment balance. When Armor is no longer the road to invulnerability this will become more important and does scale with level. So fixing this seems mostly tied to equipment balance... (So IMO scaling HP with Level / Con actually mostly fixed that stat and I'd rather dump other things. There is still 2 Stats which can be dumped without any remorse. Still enough to get anything important)

Charisma: Now we come to the one stat that got it right. Matters un-proportionally for the sovereign but still has some use for most heroes (since empire size is vital now for most parts of the economy, not just gold). Some lough about it but as long as hero-trade-based economy is so powerful (even without exploiting) its easily a dominating stat (and funnily one of the easiest to boost by books ect...)


The professions-part of the whole thing is already suitably balanced with being taken out of the rest of the equation. With just one choice being possible and some profound game changers in there. Just some buff for the weaker ones might be in order but it seems mostly right / a good model.

The books I also find ok. Not as a no-brainer as before taking any and all of them and more expensive but I still like them all (enchantment and mobility still being a bit harder to replace and more powerful by what it seems like. With combat possible to replace with elemental books which are not that inaccessible.). Lack of enough spells has been discussed to death but I find the existing development / contest ect. promising enough to not comment on that part of the game much further. I'll just give that time.


Traits and Disadvantages: I agree with Corbeaubm about the current state for resource-traits being a nigh no-brainer but think if the other options are good enough and the stats not as inconsequential it will be better. There are also more possibilites for disadvantages but with the important things so easily obtainable without them its just not needed...

Equipment at sovereign creation: This really should be replaced by a different pool (Gold Pool for starting equipment. Maybe even with the possibility to spend starting gold as well if you really want a killer souvereign right at the start and are willing to reduce your starting funds for it (aka willing to hunt for your gold with the cool stuff you got for your starting funds. Sounds fun actually...). Viable Strategy already now but just not worth the points with so many other good options. Also the selection right at the starting-shop is utterly lackluster... Maybe there should be the option to also pick things just obtainable later on in a Shop?)


About Caravans: I agree that a flat bonus with a leveling-system of roads based on time might not be the right way to go...
Other options might include:
Making the bonus count for the sending city not the receiving one (disincentive-based design, As you might have garnered from the rest of the post I am not liking that to much actually... But that would limit the possibility to accrue insane bona) or (which I would largely prefer) a populations based approach with the sending city determining the bonus not by time spent establishing the trade route (unessecary clutter, not really worth the effort / design resources. Trail levels is a concept that should just be scrapped imo.).
So for example 1% bonus per 10/50/100 People actually living in a city (would utterly curb the caravan-spam-based tactics mentioned above while actually being beneficial for people with large cities which are much harder to establish. 1% for 10 people in a city might seem a bit much but getting a Level 5 city up and running takes time and caravans are limited to 2 for a city tops. So it would top out at about 200% bonus garnered from 1 capital. Still would say a bit much and 1% for 25 people sounding about about right...)
Distance and factions ect. could of course still be a factor of the equation and make that system more interesting than just a single variable. But a flat bonus such high is bound to be exploited in a way the OP is hinting at.


About Equipment-balancing: The system has been overhauled so its bound to be imperfect in the first iterations.
Still have to agree largely here that armor seems to powerful. Killing large ammounts of mobs (spider-hordes) just with a bone spear and padded armor seems hugely over the top. Seriously.
The later things are possible to overpower but still legendary armor is way off the chart (still mitigated by a few special abilities like savage strike but those are far to scarce to really shake it up).
Many things have been said about that which are more wise than what I would contribute so I'll just leave it at that equipment-choices are still far from differentiated enough (with a few exceptions like the sword of wrath ect.) and Kael hasn't even reached what he set out to do in his dev-journal about new equippment (with armor dodge being a factor but not all overpowering as they are now and offense being favored for the sake of combat dynamics...)


About Quests / Monster hoards and lairs ect. : This might be the biggest lacking part in the game besides balance (which I actually agree with Fistalis is less important to me than a fun and dynamic game but more viable balanced options can actually facilitate that which is where I in turn disagree with Fistalis) / Challenging AI right now (and the AI is leaps and bounds better than before). And is scheduled to change in a major way for Fallen Enchantress.
Still would be nice to see way more quests / points of interest before that. The system is there.
The lack here has been largely acknowledged by the devs but waiting for an expansion/standalone to tackle that blandness at all seems way to long.
Also agree that the adventure tree as only driver of that part of the game seems a bit to much player-steered approach to be fun and the tech part of the game already has some good branches, so putting adventuring somewhere else might be a better idea indeed (even though I far from hate that mechanics existence. I have nothing against some player/AI driven dynamics in the world. But just shoveling it all there seems a bit to much Deus Ex Machina and detracts from the fun in the long run. Just recently in frogboys christmas-version of 1.1 I had an Air Elemental on the perimeter of my not so well defended capital around season 60 and I nearly got a shock by the sheer power of that thing (at riddiculous). "Luckily" for me it went another way. Still very good times.
More of that please.
Empire-Building really shouldn't be such a walk in the park / calculatable ect.).
I heard that there is a mod for that. I'm sure to try that if that is compatible with 1.11. to at least get some excitement till the devs add something interesting here (hopefully not just when FE arrives but before. Because that doesn't need any new mechanics really. It will just get better by them. But that is allready covered in the concepts for FE. And I have no fear for that in the long run. Given my experience with FFH2 and what is quite sure to come).
The occasional killed / player / AI shouldn't bother. It really is good to be killed at times and not just auto-survive the early game with a single hero with boar-spear with padded armor at the advent of equipment-tech (which can be started with when picking the right faction / creating a respective faction.)


I agree that the loss of morale seemed a bit drastic not least because it was a real limiter to overlong battles or all to cheesy mobility-tactics with a way inferior force facing far superior and much more fearsome opponents (Which actually did work prior to its axing and so far I see nothing to replace it).
It did work in many another game and I fail to see why it couldn't work here (although there is sure some things to come in that field with the reworking of tactical battles in Fallen enchantress. Also its not essential to the games fun provided there are enough interesting other concepts in the field realized. We will have to wait for FE for that though and I am fine with that for tactical battles...)





Now my post is largely finished. Feel free to comment / discuss and tear apart my unqualified and far to long ramblings (and If the text is to long for you just feel free to just ignore that post. I know it is awfully long. Just wanted to take that opportunity of a bit of time off to comment on my impressions / experiences with the 1.1 Version of Elemental. Maybe it will help the devs to make the game more interesting.). Still might add a few additions of important things here and there though. Sorry if it bothers you.