Shifter

First, happy Thanksgiving to all! :D I'm so very proud to be a part of the wonderful Stardock community! Secondly, to those poo-pooing the holiday, I say poo-poo to you! When I was much, much younger than I am now, I learned that the pilgrims and locals didn't always get along that well, just as I learned there was no Santa. The truth is, however, that there is value in spirit. When I celebrate Christmas it's not to celebrate the birth of Chri

Good post. As a game designer myself, I can honestly say you don't need a background in computer science. You also don't need a background in art. That said, they can be really good starting points because they help you with the single most important thing for a designer to have in the games industry: communication skills. You need to be able to communicate your ideas and you need to be able to understand the ideas of others. This is why a background in art or engine

Lawl. I feel silly knowing GalCiv2 did the same thing... but that doesn't change the fact it's a good idea! I agree it seems odd that some relatively simply things like that were overlooked, but I suppose the enormity of Elemental played a role in that.

@ Redwind85 Heheh. That exact thought crossed my mind as well. Right now it just doesn't seem to matter enough.

@ Robbie I agree that 1-man squads and heroes get incredibly weak late game and that is another issue I currently have with the game. Specifically, the weak heroes (I don't mind 1-man squads getting outdated). That said, to me these are somewhat separate issues, not necessarily tied to the core combat model itself, so much as the way the attack and defense values are increased over time. In addition, I think the game still works without those issues being resolved

@Tasunke I appreciate the additional feedback. I am not entirely opposed to the idea separating damage and chance to hit further (as you suggest, having damage tied to a weapon and chance to hit being tied to attack value is one possible way of handling that). That said, one of my objectives with this system was to ensure that only these core formula would need to change and not any of the numerical values or other parameters. Ultimately, I'm kind

5-10 is a little on the low side, but I decided it was a fair trade off if the target of the attack was resistant to that attack type (especially since they have a whopping 80% chance to hit). Keep in mind against a normal defender (non-resistant), the attack would be 10-20. Of course, if you have a morale advantage, it can get much higher than that as well. If you still feel it's a bit low, let me know. If enough people feel that way, I will change it. Bonus

Coming from you, that really means a lot. :) I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to read what I wrote. If you can think of any inherent flaws with the system or if these changes jeopardize your vision for the game in any way, I would be more than happy to revisit, modify, or rethink this approach. Feel free to PM or simply reply to this thread with any future thoughts on the matter. Cheers!

I agree that Elemental is broken ATM, but there are two key points I disagree with. 1.) Brad CAN design fun games. GalCiv2 is bloody fantastic. Perhaps my favorite 4X game to date. 2.) Elemental is not broken beyond repair. Not even close. In fact, I think most of the issues with the game lie in some of the fundamental math behind things like spell casting, tactical combat, and hero advancement. Finding the right math to fix something may not alwa

Frankly, global resources don't both me in the slightest. It speeds up the pace of the game a bit, which I think is a good thing. It means when I take a new city, I can immediately build some defensive troops... which STILL TAKES many, many turns. A smart player will still bring along extra troops to leave as guards, since then they can steamroll from town to town anyway.

I have tweaked the formulas slightly on the "chance to hit" side of things, to increase the likelihood to hit. It occurred to me that I often see higher defenses than attacks late game, and that's when we want whiffing the least (massive armies NEVER whiff against massive armies).

INTRODUCTION: I'm truly glad I bought Elemental and look forward to playing it for months (years) to come. In fact, I love it so much, that I put darn near 6 hours into this post for the community and The Almighty Frogboy to consider. Despite my love of this game, the tactical combat results aren't just random at the moment, they are erratic to the point of frustration. They are so unpredictab

New this edit: Added Issue 2. Minor Updates to Issue 1. Planned for future edits: Formatting Improvements (for readability).

Good problem. It's the first one I'm going to tackle in my solutions thread. Cheers! :) ISSUE #01 https://forums.elementalgame.com/396501

INTRODUCTION If I scattered my thoughts about the 50 gajillion topics, I would lose track of them. Ergo, I shall hurl them thusly upon this single topic to maintain some semblance of my sanity as I collect my thoughts. I will be selecting issues and complaints, both by others and my own, and then attempt to come up with efficient and elegant solutions to these problems. Should I select a problem that another has brought up, I will credit them and l

Ultimately, I think the sound is the worst part of the game. I actually like the music and don't mind that it falls on the ambient side of things (it's a strategy game, dangit, I want to think, not rock out!), but the sound effects are... too few and a bit uneven. For some reason my rat-things (dipped if I can remember the name) are near deafening compared to the rest of everything else in the game. However, there are other things I would rather see get atte