Black-Knight

Join Date 09/2009

+15

A Game is Fun When it Makes Sense

The leader of a group of units starts out founding his village . His group is some sort of nomadic tribe, or a group of survivors from a big war (...As legend goes, Rome was founded by Aeneas survivor of the Troyan war... Yep, Rome was founded in a way very similar to the capital of a typical TBS game!)

They find themself in a foreign and hostile land and first thing they decide to build a town. They need food and soon (SOON!) they need horses too, not so much for fighting at first, but to carry their stuff around and move faster.

That should be the main idea behind any strategy game of this kind. I haven't read the Elemental book, and quite honestly I probably never will. The idea of the great cataclism is fine, but it is just one of the many possibilities a game like this one can and should offer.

The point of this post is to suggest a point of view that has to do with realism, other than gameplay, because IMO Elemental as a game is very hard to like, not only because the gameplay is slow, but also because the player is really unable to REALISTICALLY relate with what is going on in the game.

As things are now a wizard alone builds a city (should be a small group of units) he is supposed to be a leader, but he is alone. Also he builds a city and suddenly there are people in there... still he walks around alone for 100s turns (25 years!!), heroes don't come out from his village or his troops, but instead he has to find them around. The guy is the owner of a city but inexplicably he doesn't have the money to get nice clothes or a horse until he finds money around... That's right, the citizens pay no taxes, instead all money in this world is scattered around and he has to find it!... Sorry, not "find it" but just "step on it."

Let's face it, I could accept a game like chess where the realism is very abstract, but the gameplay is well conceived... Or I would be able to accept a slow but very realistic game (could be interesting actually, low lifespan as a game, but interesting)... but an abstract game which is slow and boring makes no sense!

What I am suggesting here, of course is to add enough optional things to the game for it to be played in a realistic way. Allow the leader to get a small army from the beginning (without all those monsters around being stronger than a reasonable garrison), allow a basic "horse" technology to be built from the beginning (maybe horses should be found, and horse riding/fighting skills developed, but the fact of being UNABLE to ride for so many turns IMO is just silly... The leader should soon have a horse!) - develop a good road system and a good boat system (fishing could give a lot of food...) and if you want to add extras, like flying machines or teleport, they should be only available as an option, so that players can personalize the magic specific to their world. Everything should be conceived starting from a realistic approach, because IMO once all bugs are fixed, EWOM will still eventually fail because players have no idea of what the hack they are doing half of the time, or why they are doing it! Walking in a desert for 30 years, with gold appearing around cities, only when researching a technology? WTF!!!

With realism players identify with their leader, otherwise the game will be impossible to like.

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Cruxador

I agree somewhat. Although, I would say a game is fun when you can be immersed. When the game gives you a story you can become a part of and in some little way believe in it. Sometimes really fun games make use of obvious gameness, like the wonderful world of Scott Pilgrim.

I think realism is a poor choice of definition in a fantasy game. Perhaps, immersion, or logical world is a better way to put it. The problems you mention should mostly be solved with FE, so its hard to debate if you are not in line for that game. As for starting illogically and needing to discover the arts of horseback riding ans such, ya makes little sense and is just a game balance to prevent the player form getting horse warriors at turn one. That is only the art of war horses that you are discovering btw. Horses are probably available for packing before that discovery as evidenced by the trade caravans.

The real issue is that the nuances of what you are doing and why are never explained. I can see why you would think that researching a technology to find gold and items makes no logical sense. In fact you are having your researchers study lore and maps in search of ruins that may contain theses things. But since that is only explained on the tech description, I am assuming you missed it and were annoyed.

Ruins make alot of sense, but they are poorly implemented in this game. It was supposed to an alternative or supplement to your civilization techs that increase your economy; which as it happens is supplemented with the occasional gold mine. The idea was to have many paths and options to find gold. Ruins are very appropriate for the genre.

I do believe that you start with a usable fighting force in FE, pretty sure the game is going to be more focused on combat.

As for starting, you found a civilization and people living in caves and ruins flock to it. In the tile you start, there is going to be a few people there that will immediately move in. Realism satisfied.

As for customizing, this game is probably one of the most easily modded games around, though it is undesirable to actually play. Any magic or spell is easily taken or added as you see fit. There is a thread going right actually arguing this very subject and the merits of making a map editor to give quick and easy parameters for every resource and spell. Go us.

I can tell that you are new to the forums based on your comments. I suggest looking at the Fallen Enchantress threads under Developer's Journal to see how they are fixing all the game's problems. Cheers.

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Tell me about it, needs more realism. Magic should be about pulling a bunny out of your hat, or finding the jack in a deck of cards. And why do I have to marry a hero? Why can't I just pick up some drunk chick down at the local inn?

And whats up with teleporting, huh?

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Kantok

Join Date 10/2007

+67

Quoting Ausland,

reply 2

And whats up with teleporting, huh?

I'm sensing a troublemaker in the area...

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Quoting seanw3,

reply 1

As for starting illogically and needing to discover the arts of horseback riding ans such, ya makes little sense and is just a game balance to prevent the player form getting horse warriors at turn one. That is only the art of war horses that you are discovering btw. Horses are probably available for packing before that discovery as evidenced by the trade caravans.

The real issue is that the nuances of what you are doing and why are never explained. I can see why you would think that researching a technology to find gold and items makes no logical sense. In fact you are having your researchers study lore and maps in search of ruins that may contain theses things. But since that is only explained on the tech description, I am assuming you missed it and were annoyed.

The bad "logic" about horseback riding is precisely the kind of thing that starts them all! In reality the warriors of Troy who (as the myth goes) disembarked in italy to found Rome I suppose knew how to ride horses in combat, their real problem was that they had no horses to ride! So in fact in order to limit horseriding at the beginning of a game would be sufficient that horses had to be found (captured, stolen or bought), then breeded and trained. That would take a while, but and a few main characters would be able to have them from the beginning. That would only make sense for a king or a knight, who should still be careful not to travel alone for security reasons, and therefore we wouldn't have units all over the map from the beginning. The horse technology is the perfect example of what should and could be made in a logical way in order to get a realistic gameplay. And when things are made logically they always work!

Regarding treasures, I had indeed supposed that there was a vague explanation of that sort, but the treasures are too many, too easy to find and are only around the reasercher's towns!! Absurd!

Call it "realism", "logic", whatever... in a magic world anyway there can be "realism" once you have set your magic rules!

Instead personally I would like to have ports easily available from the beginning, while further technologies should only increase the number of units that can be carried by boats, and the armament of those ships.

I would love to see this game based in a real "non magic" system, that could be personalized with the level of magic that each players decide to implement in every specific game.

No I am not new to the forums, just trying to make a point of what should be the right angle to approach a fantasy TBS. I know some of these things have been taken into consideration in FE, but some of them have not, which makes me worry about the final result...

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I am going to pursue this point as I pretty much agree with everything else. It is only logical that research into lost ruins brings about information of ruins that are close to you. The lore books and maps that one would study are no doubt in reference to local lore. That is anthropologically sound.

I think that ruins should work more like the explore feature in Sins of a Solar Empire. Each city you build has a radius of influence. You have a lore level for each town that can be raised by putting gold and materials into the gathering and analysis of lore within your influence. Obviously the potential of adventuring is cruder than all that in WoM and likely FE, but we may get something at that level in the following expansion.

So in my view you would open up a new area, FE style, and be able to build a town that can begin researching local lore. In a few years you will find some good economic justifications for seizing that territory. In ten years you might invest enough to find a hidden gold mine or even the secret resting place of Excalibur (though it be stuck in the stone still).

The question of too easy to find is easily dismissed since only one level of lore will take two years to research in the beginning. That is a significant investment. It justifies the quantity of loot. Obviously we have to hope that FE has more balance in the loot department. "Ooh another dagger..."

As to technology, I like what you say about teleport making roads and ships useless. There should be a sort of reason to the technology available; after all, we only have the techs we have as a response to a need. If there is a full teleport society, there would be no need for roads, unless teleportation is very limited. Telegates would be a cool building option for the end game as a combination of Air Shard magic and very sophisticated engineering. You could send an entire army to any city that has built one. Now before you start calling unfair strategy for defense, the gates would be a monumental achievement. There would be significant magical drain and it would cost a fortune to build. All that could be balanced out with the extreme benefit such a building would offer. I would like to get rid of all the teleport spells and just do this if possible, but I am not in charge. This is also a great technology for random acquirement, through quests or luck of the tech draw.

That brings me to your dream of fully customizable magic. Yes please. We are never going to agree on magic so why not make the field huge and let each person choose what they do or don't like? I am eventually going to mod it ot or add it if I want it another way. The key is to make these choices painless and quick. Editors and well described xml is the key. There are already alot of very good ones in the WoM version.

P.S. Sorry for calling you a noob, but since you hadn't read the adventure tech descriptions and you seemed to have trouble comprehending the more complex game concepts I just assumed. I didn't realize you were The Black Knight of the Air Shard Holocaust. Actually I agree that the way it is implemented now is way too useful and costs nothing to cast.

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I don't know what you are asking for. More realism or better gameplay?

You are complaining about the realism of a guy founding a new city / kingdom, and then not immediatly having horses, armies, taxes, etc.

Go out in the woods. Go ahead, try it now. Now found a new city.

Wait, what? A horse didn't appear under you? The refugees that wander into your camp aren't all smiths and sages and need to spend time figuring out how to rebuild a society?

Now go out in the woods after the end of the world. I bet it is even harder.

My point is that in WoM, the world is supposed to be devastated. Now, I certainly don't think that the game presents this very well, but I do feel that it makes sense for resources to be scarce. I'm all for a degree of realism in my fantasy worlds, but in a game like this, gameplay is the most important thing. Does the game force meaningful, interesting choices? If yes, the gameplay is likely good. If no, it probably isn't. Right now Elemental falls in the later in most places.

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I mostly agree. Some thoughts:

I think the main problem here is a time scale issue. Some things - like walking around to pick up gold - would make more sense if the turns were weeks or even days.

And it doesn't require many people to found a village in this situation - remember, the sovereign is a magic user and thus has great personal power, and people do live in the wasteland. If he says "I'm making a village here, anyone that lives in it is under my protection" then it makes sense that some people move in. But I agree that this could be made more clear in-game, since right now it looks like the sovereign just pulls a town out of his ass.

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Quoting seanw3,

reply 5

Fair enough, then we should be able to research that lore only if we have a hero in that specific town, and it should be possible to research it again, once we have new towns.

Quoting seanw3,

reply 5

I didn't realize you were The Black Knight of the Air Shard Holocaust. Actually I agree that the way it is implemented now is way too useful and costs nothing to cast.

HAHA I am also The Black Knight from hell, one of the theorists of the teleport revolution that convinced the developers of Age of Wonders Shadow Magic to make teleport optional in their game... Result: They removed teleports from the random map generator, didn't use any teleport spell in their game and eventually decided to make all buildings optional (starting with optional teleport portals in a quick patch already available in AOW the wizard throne, the installment previous to AOWSM)... Their game was a huge success and it still has a huge fan community (not only because of that, obviously... but maybe just a little ... anyways options make game lifespan last longer and AOWSM has been around for 10 years)

Quoting Goontrooper,

reply 6

I don't know what you are asking for. More realism or better gameplay?

My point is precisely that those two things more often than not go together. If you can't relate with what is going on, the game is likely not much fun (example: what is believable about a sovreign alone founding a city then going alone by foot for years exploring a land, without a weapon or an armor? ...But as things are now he just has to do it because the AI is cheating A LOT!)

Quoting Cruxador,

reply 7

I think the main problem here is a time scale issue. Some things - like walking around to pick up gold - would make more sense if the turns were weeks or even days.

Personally I think that cities should produce more gold and less treasures should be spawned around for heroes to retrieve. That should be something players balance before the game begins, according to their personal tastes, but IMO it is more interesting to have the feeling that descovering the presence of ONE treasure somewhere is a real achievement. As a matter of fact I would like the treasure hunting lore to be something that can be researched over and over whenever there is need for money, but one doesn't know where a treasure is going to appear. A similar feature was present in the very old WARLORDS series of games (yep, I pretty much know them all ehehe). In that game you would have to go to a ruin and an oracle would tell you about a distant treasure. That treasure could or could not be visible to other players as well, but its location would be decided BEFORE the game starts and other oracles could have mentioned it to other players as well for a bigger challenge. I just hate to see tons of gold appearing scattered around cities as it is now in this game, it's just silly and being illogic, it just spoils the "immersion" (again: I know that they are somehow addressing that issue in FE, I am just giving my opinion on how that should be done)

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Quoting Black-Knight,

reply 8

Again, you are putting some kind of real world realism onto a fantasy strategy game. In this world, things start out devastated. Your channeler is just another guy, who happens to have great powers. That doesn't mean he can magic full plate armor out of thin air at the start of the game. And you are assuming years are passing with each turn, when to my knowledge no version of Elemental has included a time scale. As for alone founding a city, just look at all the posts people have made about locals being drawn in. Or figure that the channeler has a small band to start. Whatever...you shouldn't need a graphic representation of this to be able to accept it. Its like complaining that in Civilization, the settler graphic only has 4 people in it, but the city they found starts with 1000.

Bottom line is that there is a difference between believable / relatable, and realistic. The Halo series is relatable and believable because it has interesting characters and situations that people enjoy. That doesn't make it realistic. Nothing about Elemental is realistic, but that doesn't mean we can't relate to it. Your definition of 'realism' has nothing to do with good gameplay. Any fictitious world has its own logic and rules. In the case of Elemental, we are dealing with a post-apocalyptic environment, and that sets the stage for everything else.

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StevenAus22

Join Date 06/2010

+110

One of the later WoM patches specificially uses a "season" to be equivalent to one turn (and even seasons and years after a fixed starting year), so four turns in a game year. Previously to that, you're right, there was no game world time period specified, so first turn was Turn 1, and incremented by 1 each turn.

Other than that, I agree. Each game, big or small, fantasy, sci-fi (or both ), turn based, real time, or both, has its own logic and rules.

Best regards,
Steven.

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Kantok

Join Date 10/2007

+67

"As things are now a wizard alone builds a city (should be a small group of units) he is supposed to be a leader, but he is alone. Also he builds a city and suddenly there are people in there... still he walks around alone for 100s turns (25 years!!), heroes don't come out from his village or his troops, but instead he has to find them around. The guy is the owner of a city but inexplicably he doesn't have the money to get nice clothes or a horse until he finds money around... That's right, the citizens pay no taxes, instead all money in this world is scattered around and he has to find it!... Sorry, not "find it" but just "step on it."

Quoting your original post since the quoting controls got all screwed up. You're quote is above here.

I heartily disagree with your characterization here.

I think it makes perfect "realistic" sense for a lone wizard to found a city, in the lore of Elemental. Wizards are unfathomably more powerful than the average person. Why wouldn't they be able to attract followers by just building a town hall and putting up there beacon? If you were wandering the world of Elemental alone and starving you would try to join one of these "lone leaders". Any reasonably physically fit person would be able to build one lone wooden building in a "season" so I have to think that a Sovereign would be able to accomplish the same.

Likewise, it makes sense that most of the world hasn't heard of your small alcove of civilization after 100 turns (25 years!!) and that you're Soverign must travel around seeking allies. If you were a fine fighter or explorer and some random weakling human came up to you with stories of a new civilization lead by a powerful leader you might be skeptical too.

Furthermore, how many small and remote frontier outposts generate enough wealth to properly outfit troops right away? Especially if they don't have sources of money, horses, or metal ore? Also.. how many successful outposts in the world developed without the use of horses? Horses seem like a strange (SOON!) requirement. Especially in a fantasy world.

I don't think it's the realistic or immersive nature of the game that is flawed. I think it's your premise, which is partially your fault and partially the fault of WOM for not better laying down the lore and history of YOUR civilization as you play and as that lore develops.

Quoting Black-Knight,

reply 4

So in fact in order to limit horseriding at the beginning of a game would be sufficient that horses had to be found (captured, stolen or bought), then breeded and trained. That would take a while, but and a few main characters would be able to have them from the beginning. That would only make sense for a king or a knight, who should still be careful not to travel alone for security reasons, and therefore we wouldn't have units all over the map from the beginning. The horse technology is the perfect example of what should and could be made in a logical way in order to get a realistic gameplay.

It doesn't make sense to you that the breeding and training of horses would be lost knowledge? In any realm of fantasy or even here in the slightly more realistic "real world" training proper warhorses is something that takes immense skill and years. I would think it's exactly the kind of knowledge that would be lost when everyone in the world was focused on their next meal and shelter for the night.

Quoting Black-Knight,

reply 4

IE: in a magic world where armies move through magic portals there is no need for ports and transportation by boat. The prove is that the devs forced that features into their game but nobody uses it at all! Therefore it pretty much becomes "unrealistic" to imagine that such technology would even exist!

Instead personally I would like to have ports easily available from the beginning, while further technologies should only increase the number of units that can be carried by boats, and the armament of those ships.

Leaving off all the teleportation arguments, boat building seems like another skill that would be lost in a cataclysm. How many hundreds of years did it take humanity before we could reliably travel the oceans?

Quoting Black-Knight,

reply 4

I would love to see this game based in a real "non magic" system, that could be personalized with the level of magic that each players decide to implement in every specific game.

You can't base a TBS game based on a magical fantasy world on a "real non magic system". You'd end up with a game that was disjointed and a mess (more so even than WOM, imo). The fact that sovereigns and shards exist and that the world has a rich magical history would completely change the way the world developed. It would be like saying lets design a realistic modern Earth-based TBS but pretend that humanity developed without speech and sight. It just doesn't make sense. The world would be COMPLETELY different.

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Actually sight doesn't make much sense in the first place. The eye is so complex that it is basically the only magic I know of in the universe besides steroids and cheese.

Since we are talking about time and realism, I want to point out distance in Elemental. How much area does a single tile cover? How does a city use up the distance it takes half a season to travel on foot? Somewhere in the forums I have explained this, but I lost the link. Anyone find this strange?

I know it had to do with the game being a quantum representation of reality, where only significant objects appear in each tile. Icons fill the entire tile and seem huge since they are the only thing in that area that is of relevance to the game at hand. I suppose that when a city grows, all the land that was in the tile it grew into is shifted outwards to the surrounding tiles as mere grassland.

My question is if it would be feasible to allow items from one tile to shift to an adjacent tile if a city needs to expand on that point.

Any thoughts?

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I'm not a fan of the current cities built on the world map thing. It seems like a blending of the tactical and strategic levels in a bad way, same as in Civ 5 with tactical combat on the strategic map.

I'd rather have a separate window for each city where you place buildings. This same map would then be used in tactical combat. Big dreams, I know.

As for the strategic level, you would have a miniature version of what you placed in the city window. Cities would grow larger as you placed more buildings, but they wouldn't start creeping across the map. Urban sprawl in a problem in the modern world, but I don't see it as very realistic or in keeping with the lore of Elemental...this is supposed to be a devastated fantasy world. I'd rather have massive wilderness between the cities than cities that grow to cover huge areas.

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Quoting seanw3,

reply 12

A city can cover let's say 20 tiles, therefore if you enter from one side and exit the other you can cover in one split second the space you would have to spend 5 years to cross.

Well the first think that comes to my mind is that they must have an incredible fast subway crossing it...

Seriously, my suggestion to speed up units would make that absurdity a little more realistic: cities would be like super roads that just speed things up a little, besides the owner of a city can realistically have a movement advantage around the area he knows.

My suggestion about unit speed was made in order to be able to get rid of teleport, but IMO that proves once again that in the end, with realism, everything starts falling into place!

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Okay I give about quantum mechanics being a piece of game design, but it would be square one if I were lead designer. I think FE will use far less space for cities from the info I have seen. I really don't like the idea of having a picture I can look at if I want to see my city. That just makes me question whether or not I am really playing a game at all. Another solution would be to scale cities down to one eighth of a tile so that more can fit in one place. Then the zoom could be improved to look even better at full zoom. Realism is nice as long as it doesn't get in the way of me making mods.

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