Demiansky

[quote]In a game where armies might stretch into the 10s of thousands of units, low probabilities cannot be ignored. If I have 5,000 archers, 1/625 chances of hitting the Groglock would mean 8 archers hitting the Groglock per volley. Statistically, about 1.5 archers per volley would roll a 25/20 per round. About 1 archer would roll a 30 in any 3 volleys, a 35 in 15 volleys, a 40 in 75 volleys, etc. Now, keep in mind that that is statistically speaking. We haven't been talking about how much r

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="15" id="2422556"]Battle Options: 1. Instant Resolve (army 1 and army 2 meet, one is destroyed instantly). 2. Auto-resolve. (army 1 and army 2 meet, it zooms in and plays out automatically). 3. Player resolved. (army 1 and army 2 meet, it zooms in and players can give orders. At any time they can have the computer take over to resolve it). Tactical battle options: 1. Weight of action. This determines the c

[quote who="Tridus" reply="2" id="2422573"]One of the things that causes this is stack limits. AoW2 had a limit of 8 units in a stack. Faced with that, do you use a combination of sowrdsmen, archers, and other tier 1 units totalling 8? Or do you use 8 Chaos Lords? You always use the Chaos Lords, or the Dread Reapers, or the Red Dragons. Putting weaker units in a stack just makes you more likely to lose. Now, 8 Knights vs 8 Peasants is a no brainer. 8 Knights vs 100 Peasants? Peasan

[quote who="Tasunke" reply="1" id="2422513"]Well, in Medieval 2: Total War, the amount of each unit you could build in a turn depended on the size of your barracks/archery range. In elemental however, I think equipment production is the key element, and resources will not be infinite, so to wield better armies, and only the best units, you may find yourself severely lacking in numbers, and/or treasury. Multi-lateral resource acquisition will encourage multiple unit recru

[quote who="Tridus" reply="32" id="2422547"] Quoting Demiansky, reply 31 Thus begins the slide toward the Monolithic Army. This mechanic limits player thinking. If you are always encouraged to build the biggest and baddest units, why even bother with the small ones? Becauase not everything is a dragon. Dragons are rare. You can't build them. You can't easily recruit them. You won't even see them in every game. They're an exception

[quote who="Raven X" reply="29" id="2422491"]In D&D Second edition (and all the others too) there are many types of creatures that can only be hit with magically enchanted weapons. As Frogboy already stated, without the ability to actually hurt something it won't matter how many people are fighting it, if they can't hit it they can't hit it. I like this. I like this a Lot. This is really going to force the player to think about what kinds of troops they are sending

While many people may not consider Monolithic Armies a problem, I think it hurts the strategic breadth of a game. What I mean is, in many strategy games, pursuing a strategy of always build the strongest soldiers available of each class is almost always the best and it is almost always easy. For instance, in Master of Magic, the only difference between training spearmen and paladins was a longer training time and a higher upkeep. Once you gaine

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="23" id="2422305"] Yeah yeah, we know how you feel about your oober doober dragons. The important question in my mind, though, is whether an exceptional number of mundane, say, archers, can kill a powerful dragon. I would certainly hope that 1,000,000 archers could kill a dragon. A grasshopper can't kill a man. A million grasshoppers still couldn't kill a man. How would the million archers kill the dragon? It

[quote who="Tamba" reply="6" id="2422333"] quoting post * We don’t currently like how roads are being built but don’t want players to be forced to building “workers” to build the roads. If anyone has any suggestions we’d like to hear it. How about roads building automatically? When a city is founded it will try to link up with the nearest cities, then with the biggest one

[quote who="Myles" reply="20" id="2422254"]I like where Frogboy is going with this. Anything less then magic is not going to hurt a dragon. Arrows and swords propelled by men are not strong enough to do damage. It'd be like non-venomess ant bites - they could sting you everywhere, and while it might hurt a little, all it would do make you angrier. [/quote] Even if non-venomous ants bit you long enough, they would cart away miniscule chunks of your flesh until you were dead--

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="10" id="2420817"]The dragon in both. [/quote] Yeah yeah, we know how you feel about your oober doober dragons. The important question in my mind, though, is whether an exceptional number of mundane, say, archers, can kill a powerful dragon. I would certainly hope that 1,000,000 archers could kill a dragon. In vanilla D&D, it's simply impossible for any character under level 5 to even hit a dragon or penetrate it's damage r

Excellent ideas Robbie, especially the part detailing limiting special abilities based on a unit's experience. I think units could have something to the effect of a "discipline" score which defines how well they are able to repeat special abilities as you mentioned. Units might also fight with less efficiency when they've taken damage--- an element that can be mitigated by discipline as well.

A very good idea. I had also been thinking something along these lines with certain buildings that can only be contructed with essence once you've got the right techs. For instance, you could infuse the land with a stream of life, magic channel, or fountain of youth (conversely, the fallen might create a soul eater, altar of battle, etc.)

[quote who="tenchifew" reply="14" id="2421781"]I also agree with pretty much everything said here. I loved MOO2 and MOM, play MOO2 even now sometimes, played a lot of galciv, galciv2 and sins but found something missing. I play and come back to Sword of the Stars more often than to galciv2 because of these key moments of having or lacking a tech. "Just wait till i get fusion." "Oh no i didn't get point defense in my tech tree." "Bow before my mighty AI controlled pulsed graviton beam antimatt

[quote who="JEllis2" reply="12" id="2420072"]Demiansky, I still play MOO2 and love it. But for me, what makes it great is the ability to upgrade individual ships. Send 'em to a planet with a starbase, make any changes you want (well, almost any) and a couple of turns later you've got a brand new, up-to-date ship. So you can, for instance, have a bunch of curisers all the same size but with many different capabilities. The possibilities are endless. There is a sim

Well, what made Master of Orion 2 great was that each combat tech gave you both a bonus to the damage of pre-existing weapons (in the form of weapon special ability addons like continuous fire or rapid fire) in addition to new weapons that had different functions (lasers were a basic attack weapon, fusion weapons did consistent damage, neutron beams killed marines and did damage, graviton beams did extra damage once shields were breached.) So I think techs that give progressive

I'll happily take an attack/defense/hp/move and elemental subtypes system but with one very large exception: Qualities. A quality is a modifier to a unit's stats under certain circumstances. A unit gains qualities from equipment, special training, enchanting spells, and other circumstances like regional modifiers or experience. Let me illustrate. You decide to create a new unit type. First, you have to decide how you want to train it. You've res

[quote]3. Feature women prominently in roles throughout the game (e.g. soldiers, sovereigns), and in a normal way (i.e. normal looking women, not ones in bikini armor with giant chests).[/quote] Yes, whenever women appear in fantasy games and they are dressed absurdly, it destroys my ability to get into the game. The only time I want to see a beautiful woman dressed in something rediculous is if she's a sovereign's daughter trying to seduce a rival's son. Massive breasts a

Well, interesting idea, but I think it could get immensely complicated to the point where players would no longer use these dynamic levels in a strategic way. If you have hundreds of units, can you (and the AI) reliably analyze all of their unique strengths and weaknesses and deploy them meaningfully? For instance, let's say you've got 20 units in a battle. Unit one has +3 fluency against swordsmen, +1 against cavalry, and +0 against beasts. Unit two has +2 fluency aga

[quote quoting="post"]Just a few thoughts I have had and don't feel like making a spearate post for each. 1. Number of units in a stack should effect from how far away they are visible. Single units should be well night invisible unless you are in an adjacent square, and army of hundreds should be visible from quite some distance (assuming they are not skulking in the woods). 2. Terrain should affect visibility. No seeing units on the other side of mountain ranges or dee

[quote]I disagree. First of all, there are great works of fantasy where important characters die more readily than a DnD character would (read Song of Ice and Fire). Secondly, I think Elemental has elements of storytelling in it. Part of the objective with Elemental is to build an interesting fantasy world. Frogboy almost wrote a fiction generator with Gal Civ II, so I actually think Elemental is built with storytelling in mind.[/quote] I agree that, if a large focus of the game is st

Yeah Winter, I'm tired of sounding like a parrot too. For the record though, my point has gone utterly missed by your posts. They were excellent arguments against loading, but that was never the direction of my point.

[quote]It would be a shame if they buckled on their non-neg.... due to overwhelming pressure and we never found out how it was originally supposed to work. I guess this is time to plead for more info from above so that we can discuss alternatives with as much info as possible.[/quote] Yeah, that's a good point. Until we know exactly what he has in store, it's difficult to brainstorm, although it is possible that our brainstorming might inform or revise whatever original ins

Yep, so here is another thread to add to the heap about sovereign deaths and failsafes. I mentioned it in the recent journal thread, but was curious what other people might think of it. But before I mention the idea, let me predicate this post on my interpretations of Frogboy's divine decree that sovereign death = game over. I think the essence of that statement is that the game can end not just when

On a couple of points... I think that Frogboy has violated his own golden rule of sovereign death = game over. What I mean is this: a sovereign entering battle, losing, and then escaping to safety is mechanically the exact same thing as a sovereign losing a battle, dying, and being ressurected successfully, which a lot of people have been shouting is " NON-NEGOTIABLE !!" The difference is that it is thematically easier to ping penalt