If you prefer terrible balance in your games, I don't think that we have any basis for communication. Game balance does not somehow prevent atmosphere, though if we also wanted to discuss Elementals shortcomings on the latter point we could definitely do that.
[quote who="Fistalis" reply="3" id="2866690"] Quoting Corbeaubm, reply 2 Quoting Fistalis, reply 1I don't get it.. you cheat then bitch that the game is broken when you cheat... Limited Sov creation points is a huge limiting factor. You create a super sov via cheating and then go on to say the game is broken because your faction with the super sov does so well. Try reading. I not only built my Sov within the rules, I built it in such an under
[quote who="Fistalis" reply="1" id="2866686"]I don't get it.. you cheat then bitch that the game is broken when you cheat... Limited Sov creation points is a huge limiting factor. You create a super sov via cheating and then go on to say the game is broken because your faction with the super sov does so well.[/quote] Try reading for a change. I not only built my Sov within the rules, I built it in such an [b]underpowered[/b] way that I had 92 points le
I'm extremely glad to hear that Kael will have substantial freedom to re-write the game mechanics. For all that I like Elemental's vision, I've been very let down by its implementation in the game rules.
There are some extremely exploitable mechanics in 1.1 - none of which have so far been addressed by dev comments on mechanical alterations or on the AI. To illustrate some of these problems, I've gone and busted the game using a sovereign with 92 unused points during sov creation . World difficulty and AI difficulty are set to Hard. I've made this strategy work consistently all the way up through Ridiculous, when using all my sov
There are some extremely exploitable mechanics in 1.1 - none of which have so far been addressed by dev comments on mechanical alterations or on the AI. To illustrate some of these problems, I've gone and busted the game using a sovereign with 92 unused points during sov creation . World difficulty and AI difficulty are set to Hard. I've made this strategy work consistently all the way up through Ridiculous, when using all my sov points. &nbs
It would be, if it worked in enemy territory. Outside my dominion works fine, but not inside another faction's dominion.
[quote who="kapeman" reply="4" id="2865664"] Quoting Glowing_Ember, reply 3 You can use the spells to raise land to make an outpost to increase your trade revenue in your major cities through caravans. This makes gold easy to get when you want it. What do you mean by this?[/quote] Create a city, build it's maximum allotment of caravans, and send them to your gold-producing cities. Each of them gets +10% gold production. Rins
I recommend playing some Dwarf Fortress. Not that I don't think the Elemental mechanics need some serious revision (they're basically all fantasy/strategy tropes mixed together with very little feeling of coherent direction), but there are some serious levels of abstraction that most players want in a strategy game.
[quote who="IBNobody" reply="3" id="2857037"] You may deal more damage, but you also open yourself up to attacks. Teleporting around the map keeps you from being hit at all. [/quote] Not that the AI really uses them, but what about archers?
Well, the problem is that ICS is actually much better for defense than just a few cities. Why? Because if you blanket the map in cities, there's nowhere for neutral mobs to spawn. So, ultimately, you can just defend your border cities against the AI.
[quote who="AlLanMandragoran" reply="76" id="2856359"] Quoting Corbeaubm, reply 73Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'd just like to ask, for a moment, why on earth the AI has to "save up population"? I have never, outside of the first five turns of the game, had to wait on population growth. Never. Not once. It's a complete and total non-issue. How on earth is the AI having trouble with this given their immense prestige boosts on higher difficulties? I genuinel
I'm pretty sure the OP is the troll. I mean, no one could possibly be that stupid, could they? [e digicons]:|[/e]
Also, dodge vs accuracy appears to be a straight-up "chances of result" type of thing. Basically, if you have 15 accuracy versus 5 dodge, you have a 3-in-4 chance of scoring a hit. Dodge is pretty weak overall, unless you cheese Guardian Aura to get ridiculous amounts of dodge (read: over a thousand, in which case an enemy with accuracy 20 has a 1-in-51 chance of hitting you).
Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'd just like to ask, for a moment, why on earth the AI has to "save up population"? I have never, outside of the first five turns of the game, had to wait on population growth. Never. Not once. It's a complete and total non-issue. How on earth is the AI having trouble with this given their immense prestige boosts on higher difficulties? I genuinely do not understand this at all. I've always felt that population was pretty mean
You can siege? How does that work? I've never seen it happen, nor done it myself.
Just a note: all those cities are far from useless. Infinite city spam is a very powerful strategy when combined with trade routes. You can get obscene income from taxes alone if you settle packed cities for +10% cash apiece.
Just for reference as to why this is a balance issue: [IMG]http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z201/Corbeaubm/Elemental2010-12-2900-48-57-61.png[/IMG] That's my sov basically soloing an enemy capital. Blinking into the choke point was totally unnecessary, as it turned out.
I'd just like to add another report of an AI "freezing up" when it loses a city. I took Resoln's first expansion city, and they refused to expand afterward despite having copious room (including some fantastic city sites that went unclaimed for practically forever). I wonder if they might refuse to build Pioneers while at war? I made few, if any, aggressive moves after the initial city grab, but I never signed peace.
My experience with the AI (from the test build .exe thread) is that it doesn't recognize that champions operate on an entirely difference resource system. They don't exploit the item shop to get around resource restrictions, and thus they are trivially-steamrolled by a player who does (I obliterated the AI on "extreme" - set in both world and individual AI difficulty). Early plate, without iron, is still a complete wrecking ball. Squads don't matter when they can't damage he
Or game mechanics that make sense.
You should only buy this game if you're dead positive that you want a fantasy TBS six+ months down the road. What exists currently is a better game than it used to be, by leaps and bounds, but it is not a Good Game. The engine is not as broken as it used to be. Some rules holes have been fixed, and some AI improvements have been made. The rules are still busted in half and lackluster in most aspects, while the AI is still unable to cope with the rules. This is
It's actually a bit of a universal that game designers are rather bad at their own games. Particularly digital game designers who also have to worry about the technical details that players never (ideally!) see. I don't know whether it's a true story or urban legend (it was related to me as the former, but, well, you know), but there was once a wargame about the American Civil War that got released with a critical flaw that totally broke the game. It turned out that the me
Can't say for certain how the AI currently works, but I feel like the AI would benefit (in both style and effectiveness) if it'd compare it's resources with those of its neighbors and emphasize (even over-emphasize) developing it's strengths. If it has gold mines, push hero development (at least until/unless the item shop changes - and please, please do change it). If arcane temples show up, imbue and start throwing combat spells - and make conquering elemental shards a high prior
Champions with Charisma are actually a very handy way to increase prestige. Mobile, too, so you can shuttle them off somewhere else once you've leveled one city up to where you want it.