lwarmonger

I like all of these ideas. Nuff said.

Personally I think techs should be expensive, increasingly difficult to get, dependent upon existing infrastructure level, and additive to existing techs so that the tech tree never ends in most cases. This should have several features. For example, if you wish to research more advanced lending the tech for it gets discounted by an amount dependent upon the highest level lenders you already have built as a percentage of buildings (reflecting infrastructure choices and focus

Absolutely. For mercenaries though you need to have a relationship with a specially created "mercenary faction." That should mitigate the exploit of "using up" mercenaries. Hiring mercenaries a lot and paying them on time will increase your relationship with this "faction" over time, making it cheaper and easier to recruit mercenaries, while getting companies slaughtered, or failure to pay, will lower your relationship, making existing companies in your employ likely to muti

[quote]True, it's not like it really nullified everything. So you don't actually have to fight to gain essence if you don't have to fight to gain experience anymore, and you don't lose your sovereign when it's defeated in battle... I guess it really did?[/quote] Um, no. There need to be significant consequences to losing your sovereign, even if they aren't game ending. They are very easy to add. Amazingly easy even. If there are s

I think this would work well for created items, resources, and even spells. Actual civilization techs, since teching in the medieval time period tended to be more incremental and based on development than hinging on any single invention, I would like to see in the not traded category.

[quote who="Tasunke" reply="28" id="2621183"]You assume that a sovereign needs to be a tank if they don't want to be killed. YOU CAN USE MAGIC TO FIGHT!!!!! GRAWR! I mean ... you are assuming that you can't use combat spells, or that combat spells won't be able to kill your opponents. Its a side effect from beta 1, yes, but doesn't mean it will be in the final game!!! [/quote] I guess that is a crux of the matter. How will the magic system actually be

[quote who="psychoak" reply="27" id="2621182"]Your entire critique is null and void, on account of being wrong. Lets pretend you didn't see the last two paragraphs, go back and read them. It shoots the hell out of your entire post without me needing to post a response. [/quote] Nothing in those two paragraphs in any way nullifies anything I just said. It is a way of gaining experience without combat, which is completely different from not

[quote]First, detaching essence from level up nukes choice in what kind of character you're building. If you want to be a tank from hell, you go crazy on beefing the hell out of your character by physical stat boosts instead of essence. If you get essence separately, you've made no such sacrifice and no longer need to choose between them. This is bad. Building a character is only a meaningful task when you have to make hard choices between one aspect and another.[/quote] Not true.&nbs

Personally I think that having "dungeon" style combat for things like assassinations, special missions inside cities (say you are sending some champions to whack a crime lord who is siphoning off money and threatining control of your city, at least the underworld portion of it) and special missions against other factions and sovereigns (because you just have to have that artifact) is a must... if not for elemental, then for an expansion.

[quote]Alternatively, all Sovereigns could gain 0.15 essence (per turn) all the time, with no other way to gain essence. Otherwise, yea having places out in the open, in the middle of the map where Sovereigns could sit on to gain 0.25 essence per turn extra .... might as well have only one of these places ... WAIT is this Elemental or King of the Hill?[/quote] Game mode called king of the hill? And a bonus of the consistent essence gain is that it is incredibly easy

Experience sharing shouldn't happen. It just seems contrived, difficult to balance, and makes it so you can have a combat sovereign without having to commit him to combat. Leveling should be a reward for questing and fighting with your sovereign. That being said, I shouldn't have to quest and fight with my sovereign if I don't want to, so leveling and essence generation need to be separated. Now because you are questing and fighting you will have a much stronger combat

I agree that quests should give experience. It should be quests and combat that give experience, but only those two things (essence should be de-linked from leveling to make this balanced). Independent trading heroes should get more powerful as they acquire more gold (as they can trade and purchase more), but the only people who should be leveling are adventurers and warriors.

Below is one of the threads that I think prompted this thread, in which I think there is pretty good discource on the merits and downsides of the various systems: https://forums.elementalgame.com/382176/page/2 One of the big problems with allowing essence gain to be linked to level is precisely that it prevents turtling completely, and ties your sovereign into one or two strategies. The gradual increasing of

Personally I think the argument for XP gain for stay at home sov's is extremely weak. They shouldn't gain experience, because experience improves combat and other worldly statistics. They aren't gaining any of that kind. But I am strongly in favor of de-linking experience from essence. While that stay at home sov is going to be much weaker in terms of experience and combat ability, he won't be weaker in terms of the amount of essence he has. Dominions 3 has a n

Agreed. Changes through tech really shouldn't be large, especially as right now large empires are favored over smaller ones in research (who can't get as many research buildings). Whereas in medieval Europe, advancements were largely based on gradual improvement of infrastructure, and it was the smallest political units (Italian City States and the Dutch/Belgian towns) that were the most developed. Probably the tech tree should be mostly focused around improving exist

There is always the problem in 4X games of what trumps other things. In Galciv 2, over time technology tended to trump race. The final iteration resolved that a little bit with unique tech trees, but it was still a problem. In Dominion's 3 magic ultimately trumped faction. In Master of Orion, both 2 and 3 technology also trumped faction in the end. While races usually played a bit differently in all of these, the differences, by the end, were usually compensated

[quote who="Tasunke" reply="28" id="2620063"]Lol ... an arena in cities where you can control what you fight (anything non-unique that you have fought earlier) ... could be cool. Representing the people finding and capturing said creatures, and bringing back to city for you to fight ... could slowly recharge instead of constant use in order to avoid over-usage. Like ... arena captures one bear every 10 turns, one troll every 20 turns, ect. [/quote] Agreed. You could even pi

Why not? Perhaps marginal increases can be had, I mean hell, essence gain rate could even be something that you purchase in the character start up screen for a significant number of points. But that being said, why should I be required to go throw my sovereign into combat in order to remain competetive? You keep treating essence gain independent from leveling like it is limiting your sovereign, but from my way of thinking having them linked is extremely limiting. It li

[quote who="StillSingle" reply="11" id="2619240"]I think this thread really starts getting to some ideas solving the issue of passive (I like my city walls) Sovs vs active (find me a monster to kill) Sovs. Basically, if essence wasn't tied to leveling, then active sovs SHOULD be more powerful and the only ones to gain experience, tasunke is correct in saying Risk = Reward!! However my post on the thread below tries to design a system that makes passive Sovs

Why should my king be an adventurer? He's my Sovereign, not some rabble mucking about through ruins. That is why I hire people. My Sovereign is there to rule the peasant scum/gentle townsfolk of his Empire/Kingdom.

Which is why a fairly steady, equal, gain of essence through each channeler, is the way to go in my opinion. The choice is how to spend it, and there your options should be extremely numerous, with each player being able to choose a different route. I know people aren't fans of communism, but why does fighting improve your ability to channel magic anymore than research or learning? If essence was consistent I would still use my sovereign for fighting if I chose to go a

Ha! Seems like mutually assured destruction to me. But seriously, Patton would destroy Einstein in a fist fight. And when does anyone say that!

The problem that I see is that when you come up with a solution for balancing a stay at home channeler to a channeller who is out fighting you then eliminate the balance by enabling the sovereign out fighting to get the same benefits. There needs to be a more academic, less combat oriented way to improve your sovereign. Otherwise every player will be forced to play their sovereign the same, and where is the fun in that, from both a roleplaying and a strategy standpoint? Now

Well, from the looks of it food is going to be the limiting factor with city size, which is good. The question is whether or not city spam is going to be a problem. I mean, it could be that having lots of resource gathering villages making a few large cities possible is a very good thing. I think this is something we'll just have to play through to figure out.

I don't think under this new system it would be the sovereign building cities after the first. Sounds like a good job for a few hundred pioneers to me. That being said, I think a concern with this would be city-spam, and how to prevent it. I'm fine with a massive city that has 10+ small mining and farming towns supporting it. But covering the world in settlements is something I thought we were trying to avoid.