If you could "federate" barbarians on your borders (set them up as little vassal states that act as minor powers but are always set to warlike AI) to defeat the other barbarians, that would be fantastic. But watch it to make sure they don't all turn on you!
I am hoping for certain options like "no spell trading" (I would probably allow spells to be traded most of the time... but I'd like the option) and "no tech trading" (this would be enabled all the time, because allowing this eliminates the choices you have to make between trees). An option for "tech diffusion" though, as is included in many of Civ 4's wonderful mods, most notably Revolutions, would always be enabled to allow small empires to stay in the game.
I was planning on a soviet/Zap Brannigan style of dungeon exploration, where things are best measured in how many waves of my own men I've sacrificed thus far.
[quote]Whenever the faction moves into the main Elemental world, they drag part of their own world with them, slowly changing the land into the other world. This would, however, be pretty much a requirement, as their units take small (but noticeable) bits of damage whenever they're not in a corrupted part of the world.[/quote] This could be modded in, since land creep is already part of the game (and presumably there will be effects other than simply being able to build there
As the amount of reclaimed land increases there should be a bigger reaction to it from the "barbarians." The reason for this is as the wasteland recedes, and more land is claimed by actual nations, the small groups of barbarians are gradually forced into smaller lands, and forced to survive on fewer resources. As they are compressed, they begin to organize on a greater scale, and you the players are forced to deal with massive hordes of barbarians coming out of the wastes and/or m
Personally I think simply scaling up the population (outpost from 1-200, village from 201-500, town from 500-1500, city from 1500-5000, mega city from 5000+) is the way to go, and then scale up food requirements proportionately. Instead of having a single food source feeding a megacity, make it so that you need three food sources to provide enough food for a megacity, and that your existing housing costs food wise increase with the tech (so you may increase your housing tech, but i
It has already been expressly said that there is not going to be multiple map types (like underworld maps, "other plane" maps, ect). Possibly for an expansion, but I kind of doubt it.
Personally I think that here, champions should be counted seperately from units (even though units might be small). Since your champions are going to be your leaders once your army sizes get larger, I think having two separate caps, one increased through research in adventuring techs (for your champions) and one researched through warfare techs (for your units) would be the way to go.
Frogboy has stated multiple times how he will not include capabilities that the AI cannot effectively use. Given how the focus is single player, and the deserved reputation that stardock has for capable AI, I am not too concerned about this.
[quote who="Mandelik" reply="69" id="2661360"] It's basically how it works in Europa Universalis 1 and 2 though there are several factors involved (production of grain, things like that...) and you can work to change them (getting new grain provinces, improving commerce and infrastructure,...) You are told how many thousands of soldiers you can field at nominal cost and above this cap the more you train it begins to cost you more and more. It's fine if you've go
Yeah that would. That is the kind of interconnectedness which would make this game feel alive.
That is kind of where I'm going with the "NPC's should have lives where they actually do stuff seperate from the player, and retire" vein. When they retire as successful adventurers, the building the build would be a spawn point for new NPC's to carry on the tradition (their kids, some student or apprentice who comes to learn from them, ect).
[quote who="Kantok" reply="8" id="2660962"] After all, their weapons and armor are probably highly conductive... Since your guys have, essentially, wooden sticks some of them might even live. /shrug [/quote] An extremely minor bonus. Or possibly a detriment, because now I have to pay them. To shamelessly steal from a movie, "use up the Irish! The dead cost nothing."
[quote who="Kantok" reply="5" id="2660898"]Sounds like perfectly valid reason to build yourself a horde of guys with spears and go invade the guy who does have iron. [/quote] Absolutely. Nothing better than taking my (ironless) horsearchers to show those farmbound peasants just how little their iron will protect them.
Well, a unit cap won't necessarily limit the size of the armies you are able to field, but their flexibility. A limit on the number of units means you can have 8 units of 6 men each, or 8 units of 100 men each. Investing in the ability to employ your military less rigidly could be very worthwhile with flanking, area of effect weapons and the like. Now overall numbers, would be a different story, and that would have to be an escalating monetary cap based on the total
It should be too easy to include this as an option. Fast aging or realistic. It shouldn't require any AI modifications, and really minor changes. I too find it very weird, and don't particularly like it.
A trading system would be nice. Ideally we could have administrator NPC's (ones that aren't hired) occasionally set up little operations around available resource and then sell them. Or travelling merchants (also NPC's) come in with ore, and other things, from other kingdoms.
Personally I'd prefer a more fluid progression of both your characters and the NPC's, outlined here. https://forums.elementalgame.com/385079 I am not an adventurer in a party, I'm the sovereign of a kingdom. My job is to lead my people to world domination, not babysit a bunch of demon fodder as they go around sticking their heads into dark places.
[quote who="Rysownik" reply="19" id="2659830"] it is TURN based, where are you hurry ? [/quote] I am not a mini-maxer. I think the mark of a truly great strategy game is one where having a better strategy and a little luck will beat micro-managers most of the time. And micro-managing the stats, skills, and leveling up of potentially over a hundred characters does not sound particularly enjoyable for me.
Agreed. Leadership could be partly based off charisma, and both increase any unit cap (for the general) as well as increase the relative morale statistics of all nearby units (for any hero on the battlefield, larger radius if the general).
Agreed. Having anything other than magical units fire from one tile to another seems pretty unrealistic given then scale of the tiles. Archers should have a ranged attack tactically, and should be the last regular units to get attacked in autocalc, but should not have any kind of ranged attack into adjacent tiles. I mean, we're talking about a weapon whose effective range is measured in hundreds of meters, not kilometers.
Completely agree with Annatar here. The essence system needs considerable work to make essence more important and more useful.
A players soveriegn is pretty mobile though, so I'm not sure the superstack of doom would really be a good way of tracking him down. And one thing I forgot to mention was the reason stacks of doom worked in Civ 4 was because you attacked units one at a time and defended one at a time. This lends itself to massive battles of attrition, in which the larger force always wins. Now battles are fought by field armies, your entire army at once. Given sufficient space on the
But they do become a waste of space after a very short period of time. You know what would be good? If they doubled the number of people "slums" provide when you build them over the camp! That way refugee camps would be a legitimate place to put a city (and it would also enhance slums, which are significantly underpowered in terms of the population they provide at the moment).
I don't think that reducing the number of champions out there though is the solution. They just need more to do that doesn't require your direct supervision. And that pathways system of leveling up and a dynamic system aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. Say your merchant levels up doing merchant tasks (lets say trading). Because the bulk of the experience resulted from making money (as opposed to killing monsters or creating items, ect) you get two or three pathway