Goontrooper

I'm really surprised that more people aren't interested (or at least interested enough to discuss) in this. I honestly think that a good Quest Editor would go a long way towards arming the community with the tools to really make Elemental come alive, both with more interesting versions of the quests in vanilla, and also by allowing us to do new things like special events, storylines, etc. So...what do you say community? Do you think this should be a high priority?

[quote who="Dhraconus" reply="21" id="2800506"]I find one of things that causes a feeling of "lack of personality" is a lack of "oh shit" moments. This is partly the AI being dumb (waiting on 1.1) and partly a lack of "random" events, which the AI can cause some of. For example, I was recently playing MoM and was playing a custom wizard with Sss'ra's (sp?) face and Myrran with life magic (so incredibly unbalanced ) I had planar seal cast so that the entire plane to myself.&nb

The easiest way to learn and work with the XML is to just copy and paste, seriously. Take an existing improvement, copy and paste it, and just edit the parts that need to change. Start simple and see if you can do that while just changing the name. Your 'new' improvement will show up in game with the new name, but will otherwise be the same as the original. If you can manage that, the rest will be just as easy.

That is the correct folder, you don't need to add anything else.

[quote who="DKL" reply="3" id="2798935"] In games like AoW, like Elemental, the terrain didn't change much. It was more important to pick spots by strategic values and rare buildings around it. And yet, you could also protect the same buildings with a wondering guard around them, it wasn't really REQUIRED to have a city next to them. The terrain type itself changed very little, and when it did it was either a farm will be built there or not. Farms around the cities

Some good ideas here. The key thing will be to balance upgrading against making a new unit. Right now, vanilla unit training times are fairly long, in my opinion.If you look at Civ, it is very abstract...you pay gold and the next turn you have the upgraded unit. I feel like upgrading should be a faster than training fresh troops and should also save experience. So, the trade-off should be cost. Green troops are chea

[quote who="xaltotun" reply="22" id="2798930"]My suggestions for EWOM, either 1.1 or later: 1. Flexibility: 2. Magic Items: 3. Forge magic items 4. Bigger Dungeons 5. Unit retraining Some good ideas, but I think #1 is way too much for a 1.1 patch. #2 is certainly doable since modders can already create new items. #3, same as #2, although hopefully a future expansion will all

Lots of different species aren't MANDATORY for a fantasy-style world. Take a look at the Song of Fire and Ice series, which has often been cited by the Devs as inspiration. It is mostly just humans, and it is fantastic. Lots of what you guys are asking for was debating in depth in Beta, with Stardock fully involved in the debate. They went the way they went, and that is fine, and right now they are focused on getting the base game into a better state. My hope is that af

[quote who="Gene1966" reply="18" id="2798189"]Two things that I'd like to see most in the next patch (1.09e now) so I guess that is 1.10. 1) An AI that actually attempts to preserve/protect itself. 2) on the Kingdom side, please scrub the Equipment Technology tree stats to ensure that as a player progresses so to does the armor and weapons. It's been messed up intentionally since about 1.07. If you do plan to make it idiotic, please explain the idi

I agree with this, and there is actually a mod that makes forests into a resource. Right now, terrain really only impacts movement speed and combat. Random, you may not have noticed, but terrain does provide a defensive bonus. Take a look at your unit stats next time they are standing in a forest. It will tell you that they are getting X% bonus from terrain. I don't really like that system, since it is something on the strategic level impacting the tactical level. The u

[quote who="Istari" reply="11" id="2797987"]I love the way things are going. My only real gripe is with the proposed sharing of the mana pool. It hasn't been explained yet in a way that makes sense to me, so I'll have to wait and see. But if you have your sovereign and other spell casting units all draw from the same source of mana, it takes away the individuality of the caster, and it becomes more difficult to differentiate the power and limits of each magic user. I have stated th

I'm very excited about 1.1, the first big gameplay patch, since it seems to plan to address some of my biggest frustrations with the gameplay. We have been given some information about 1.1, but it doesn't sound like the final list of changes is set in stone. That means that there may still be time to get a few other things into 1.1 What else would you like 1.1 to do for Elemental? Please keep it realistic...this is just a patch, and thus changes need to be reasonable, i

By removing 0 I was able to get a technology to have multiple requirements. However, after researching the first of two requirements, the technology showed up in its own category. When I researched that category, the technology vanished from the list, but I did not get it. When I then went back and researched the second requirement, the benefits of the final technology became usable. Hm.

I would like to see the combat reworked to limit the number of offensive actions that can be taken. The current combat system isn't problematic just because the attacker's entire army goes first. It is also that units can make multiple attacks each turn, including multiple devastating spells. Casting times alone won't fix this. We really need to separate movement from actions per turn. This would also fix the current 'fast sword creates extra movement' silliness.

[quote who="impinc" reply="1" id="2795471"] It works for me. I just put another prereq in there. Did you add 0 ? I've been told its old code, but perhaps that has something to do with it? [/quote] Hm, I'll have to try that. Thanks.

Since there seem to be quite a few of us digging into the XML now, I thought I would start this thread as a place for us to help each other out. So if you have any questions about Elemental's XML files, ask and we will see if we can figure it out together. A couple from me to start: 1) Multiple Technology Prerequisites: Although it is easy to add multiple production requirements to an items, technology seems to only allow fo

Start simple. I recommend sticking with editing some existing XML files. I am worthless when it comes to real scripting and programming, but even I can manage to do this with XML. I suggest trying some of the great tutorials in this forum. They will walk you through making some common changes. As for working with anything more complex, there are a few people that have already started producing new weapons, skins, etc. Take a look at what the

The issue with caravans and food, for me, is that the caravans somehow are creating more food. Moving food from one location to another doesn't add 10% to the total food. What a caravan could do it allow access to resources, which is a great idea, but wouldn't have much impact right now since most cities don't need or use resources. What would make more sense is to move caravans to generate gilder, due to taxation / profit from sales / whatever.

I agree that more variety would be nice. Kinda strange that we went from the insane variety and customization of GalCivII to Elemental, which also allows for designing units, but in a much more limited way. The main problem is that you are dealing with living creatures, not ships, so that really impacts what you can do. Here is what would help, in my opinion: 1) More variety, especially between cultures. If one culture is refined and artful, let t

Quite a few people were begging for this during Beta, but it didn't happen. There were some very long debates about Factions vs Species, etc. I also want this, or at least better differences in vanilla Elemental. I'm currently in the early stages of designing a mod that includes much greater gameplay differences between species and factions. The XML is powerful enough to let us do this, so I expect that many mods will include more diverse factions

I don't define these sorts of things as 'Random Events' just luck with placement. Elemental does, however, need the sort of cool random events that are common in Paradox games and many other strategy titles. These events could cover a limitless range of things, from good / bad harvest modifying our food output for X #of turns, to a random event offering a quest, to a random event impacting diplomatic relations. I think that we can probably use the

Been using this for the last few days, I really like it so far. Thanks!

[quote who="oddrheia" reply="4" id="2791039"]Always liked homebrew settings I think they have some excellent storytelling potential, but I think the implementation into the strategy game could be difficult. Example: Lore-wise faction A is sworn enemy of faction B. Player selects faction C that's neutral, but due to their selected strategy, have poor combat rating. Faction A extorts/threatens the hell out of faction C because they are weaker in game, and completely ignores their nem

VERY IMPORTANT - PLEASE DELETE ALL OTHER THREADS BECAUSE MINE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT AND NEEDS TO GET LOTS OF ATTENTION! Anyways, I don't like that teleport is available from the start. I think ANY form of teleport needs to be a high level spell. I also want to increase base movement sizes slightly, but I wish we could tie this to leadership some how and logistics tech. I'm experimenting with ways to do this, and hope to find a better system...A think parties of Champion

Nice work! I don't suppose you would do armor as well?