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[quote who="TheBirthdayParty" reply="14" id="2704089"]stop hijacking my frakkin' post![/quote] Your question was answered already, by the game developer and project lead.

[quote]Three units operating in a coordinated manner would be more effective than three units operating independently.[/quote] Yes.... hence why they attack together and all of them get to do their damage before the defender responds. And why they have a shared hitpoint pool such There is no need to make three mooks as good as a giant. The combining of squads into a single super-unit is a major contributing factor to the massive dominance of attack over def

I get the impression that Inns are there as a placeholder to some extent. They'll probably be one of many quest generators in the final game.

See here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/389679

It seems to me that there are many features more important than water now, and that could easily be an expansion update.

Inter-faction balance is not the only kind of balance. We want the various techs to be balanced with each other too. I can see early game being a rush to parties if you can easily tough units from your merged peasants. Still, this is all very secondary to the three 5/2 vs one 15/6 issue.

[quote]If groups worked normally, it would be basically impossible for this to have balance issues. [/quote] If groups work as they currently do, then merging would be a huge balance problem, because I could build up individual armies of small soldiers, and then when I happen to hit the squad upgrade tech, I instantly merge the individuals into parties and massively increase the power of my army. If 3 5/2 soldiers in a group are still three 5/2 soldiers, then its not much of a

The tactical map isn't that small, but units start so close together that the vast majority of it is ever used. I'm guessing in theory you could increase it in size, but only by manually creating new tactical maps or changing the random tactical map creation scripts.

Because it will be a micromanagement mess. constantly having to train new individual soldiers, march them out to the front lines, merge them with units. Lots of hassle for no obvious design gain. Not fun. If you want a "realism" argument (which you shouldn't; we should be concerned about gameplay here), then the soldier isn't actually "killed", he's just "incapacitated". And then recovers as the unit regains health.

[quote]Oh, personally I think that if a unit of 6 loses 10 HP (and each have 10 HP) then the unit permanently loses 1 member.[/quote] Permanently? Nah. That makes the benefits of parties/squads too low. We want incentives to build together, and for you to have to build full size squads, rather than building the smaller ones and then merging them together. I think that not losing members permanently would be much easier. If nothing else, the Name of the

I can see some difficulties with this; would they have to have *exactly* the same equipment to merge? I wonder if unit merging would best be worked into an upgrade mechanic. But definitely it would be great to be able to merge individual soldiers into parties when you research the parties tech. But this would have balance issues unless they change the system so that group stats don't stack completely.

I like the idea of location spawns, but worry that humans would be able to farm for xp in a way that the AI wouldn't be able to handle. Fixing XP gain so that its proportional to the threat of the unit would help, so killing weak units doesn't give much xp. The current method where every fight gives the same xp is just broken....

[quote]Well ... having 6 archers with an attack rating of 4 each ... instead of a single attack of "24" it should be 6 separate attacks of 4.[/quote] Strongly agree with this. And, if the unit has lost half its health, it should only get 3 attacks of 4, because half the guys are incapacitated (though they eventually go back to normal as the unit gets healed). Now, obviously this would require some rebalancing, but I think it would be a better foundation to balance on tha

King Arthur: the Roleplaying Game had some great flavor like some of this stuff, in particular for the quest paths. There were two spectrums (Tyrant/Hero and Old Faith/Christianity), and the various quests launched text-only pick-a-path adventure quests, often with 10+ stages. Different choices you made would affect your standing on the spectrums. So for example, you could torture someone for information, which might give you useful info and Tyranny points, or you might pr

But.... what if ninjas assassinate him before then? And all the backup servers he sets up in his will are destroyed by volcanic eruptions?

[quote] Oh no! you have to click one more time. [/quote] You have to click one more time... .and you have to even know that this is a game option that you should look for to click! People should also note; its not like having it set higher than zero saves much clicking; with large combats, the combat screen (where you would chooses between auto or tactical) is still presented to you, its just that the tactical is greyed out, so all you can choose is auto. [quote]

As far as I know: No, purchased items are just for Sovereign and Champions. You can't group existing units, it only applies to newly trained units. In the unit build menu, above the portraits of which unit you're picking, you can pick party, squad, etc. and level of veterancy. There's no way to set up formations before battle, though the ordering of units does I think depend on the party order in the strategic screen - but the only way you can change this is thro

Yeah. Was much easier to read before.

I note from this: [quote]Whereas your descendants are born with that magic, so there are some real advantages to being fruitful and multiplying as much as you can.”[/quote] Is this not enabled in Beta4? My children don't seem to have an Essence score.

[quote]I would modify the sovereigns so that no one knew any elemental magic until a shard was discovered [/quote] But that could mean: a. 100+ turns without any magic! For a game that is *about* Elemental magic. b. No player control over what magic you get; you're forced into it by the mapscript rather than getting to choose/roleplay your magical development. I don't think this is a good way to go.

I've seen this. Will keep an eye out for next time it happens.

I see now that there is an option, but this is a weird option, its not at all obvious that someone would expect this to be a game option, and its not at all obvious what it does. If it does stay as an option, at least default it to zero.

It seems like in the release we're just getting transports. Which is ok with me for now. But: does the AI understand them? I haven't seen the AI launch an amphibious invasion yet - which is always a tough thing to get the AI to do. But the AIs on islands have been stuck there forever.

I'd love to see quests with some of the interest and humor of the GalCiv events. With appropriate good/evil options. Things like the alien species who find human blood... delicious. And you get the option to sell it to them or not.

I wouldn't go with forced Civ4 style city popups, I'd use the Civ5 style notification icons. We get notification icons, but clicking on them doesn't do enough; if I left click on the notification icon for city X building a unit, it should take me straight to the unit build menu for that city. Similarly if I left click on the notification icon for city X building a structure, it should take me straight to the structure build menu for that city. Right clicking on the notific