Arcayer

[tacks can't move after fighting: let an enemy clear a nest of baddies, then claim the treasure yourself. With some clever use of sacrificial units and choke points, you can keep enemy stacks at bay indefinitely. ( Brainjuggler ) - Fight ends movement is ok for stacks without hero, but hero stack should continue fighting, current champion system can manage this. ( sharpxe ) - Combat ending the stack's turn should be REMOVED. Instead, new rule should be im

Magic dealing damage based on attack? It's true that melee spells (outside of Death's which are quite strong) don't seem to compete well with alternatives such as fireballs. This would give them a better home. I would throw Burning Hands into the pot. Gentle Rain and Mantle of the Ocean are both very powerful, so switching them would have few balance issues. (Their flavor is also similar, so that's not an issue either.) It's true that Gentle Rain seems out of place

Summon skeleton horde + Cull the Weak is far too strong. Why are summons sacrificable anyway?

I like the 9 resource cap. I'm sort of a perfectionist, so I like that I can easily find tiles that have "perfect" stats. It's annoying going on a fifty turn quest to max out your tile yield. I have, on several occasions refused to settle in the location initially offered, and set out to find a better start. It cost me, yes, but by continuing to fight, my sovereign was still at about the development per turn that was expected of him, and I was generally able to find a high qua

Updated with some bug reports and observations after further play.

As I remember, Cave Bears used to have a more standard bear graphic. However, their power level isn't actually at the normal bear level. They're dangerous. I like this graphic. It doesn't fool me into attacking the things before I'm ready.

I think the entire point is for it to be a win path disconnected from map control or combat. A way to win through pure nation building. That said, I'm currently mostly playing with spell of making off, mostly because it's kind of absurd on a huge map, that I can lose to an enemy far weaker than me, just because I didn't choose magic and he's too far away. With that said, I tend to dislike overly fancy solutions, and it makes intuitive sense that the m

I built a second palace and a Tower of Dominion. When I raze a city containing a 1 per faction building, I can rebuild the building elsewhere? (Even if I still have the building in one of my cities?) Leech Knife doesn't heal its user. Berserker's Broadsword does not cause its user to beserk. I summoned an Air Elemental. The knockback hit the enemy backwards. Now the enemy is on the same tile as the Air Elemental. Skeletal Army summons skeleton

What I've done: Challenging difficulty. I create my sovereign. She's based on a character from another game, which serves as an interesting stress test on the versatility of the sovereign system. Alright, so her basic fighting style, is that she uses dark magic to consume her enemy's souls. The magic renders her invisible, and slowly kills everything around her. She's also a skilled scientist and an expert tactician. She can't control her magic well

There's a big difference between no-one owning anything, and no-one owning intellectual property. The issue of whether non-rival goods can be placed in the same category as goods that are decreased in availability as more people gain access to them is a big one. Intellectual property laws are not fundamentally necessary. A lot of arguments can be made over whether humanity would be better or worse off if intellectual property was universally respected and obeyed, but that debate is la

Trying to punish piracy is like trying to order the tides around. New technology will be adopted, and people will use the most efficient and easy mechanisms to get the products they want. It is companies and governments that must adapt to this reality- organizations that can and will adapt to the new environment. America's intellectual property laws are simply too old and too random to make sense in the modern age. As a result, they do little to profit artists and other forces behind

I like that Elemental can be won from multiple angles. The tech-trees in Elemental are probably the most distinct of any 4X, allowing each to work in very different manners from each-other. At the moment though, diplomacy doesn't really work (largely because getting the ai to declare war on each-other is worthless since the ai won't attack.) and the adventure tree is too strong. Simple balance and ai issues will improve that facet vastly. In the same manner sovereign customization was

You know a good game that made use of tile based tactical combat? Makai Senki Disgaea. Okay, so what am I getting at? A lot can be done just by allowing various rewards for different ranges and tile patterns. Attacks that hit everything next to the caster. Attacks that hit everything one til

Your talk about how weak starting sovereign equipment is just makes me want to bring up the option available to humans only to equip boots that increase their movement in sovereign creation... I just noticed it recently, and think it's a little (read: way too) strong...

One point I find notable, is that this system seems difficult to produce realism (note: realism for its own sake is not particularly desirable. However, as a gamer, I've countered countless cavalry charges with entrenched pikemen. This is something I'm used to, and forcing me not to makes me "relearn" the dynamics of the battle system.) Now, we could just ignore this issue, and allow the complexity creep. (complexity creep is bad, but sometimes the benefits are worth it.) However,

I do feel that winning through spell of making or quest of mastery is too unilateral. Magical interference with the opponent's spell of making? Basically this would change the spell to work like the economic victory condition in Alpha Centauri (which worked well btw.) I think it would be sensible if the adventure quest sent you into other faction's territory, often into warring territory on the other side of the map- and everyone else knew where you were trying to go to

Rather, it would be simpler to set it up that you could build multiple different improvements on the same node. IE you see horses, so you can build a stables like usual or a "farm". Might be interesting, would give the player some more modularity in meeting their needs. On the other hand, I feel people would end up with some "best strategy" that they would always use. In Magic the Gathering, the base rules are set up so as to never let any deck actually work as intended- thus keeping a automa

The current system does have benefits in that it gives strategic implications to your actions, and even if turns were randomized it's still crucial that first turn activity doesn't end the battle. It's not good if results are too chance based. As for the ai, elemental still has too many ways of playing that it doesn't understand. As long as the ai tries to just spam stacks of death, I'll crush it, because I know exactly what it's going to do. Such a predictable player w

The diplomacy dragons are rather different from the adventure dragon, and are only available to kingdom. They function too similarly to squads to really be treated separately. Of course, they could be separated, but I see little reason to do so. The diplomacy troops are there mostly as an alternative fighting force for people who don't have combat or magic, and they currently fulfill that role just fine.

Buffs are good, they encourage actually fighting rather than just relying on magic (not that just relying on magic is all bad, but it should only be one strategy amongst many, that is occasionally how magic is used.) Notable points- All abilities should scale. IE, flat numbers are almost always a bad idea, you should rely on percents or Int/X Note that Encase, diamond skin and metal to stone will simply be used as perma stun. IE, everything will be hit by them in the first rou

I like the basic idea- it plays well into elemental's flavor. Might be somewhat difficult to implement (don't know.) but it would make sense if battle had more of a tangible effect on the world. It would also help long term adventuring prospects if players were actively generating quests. Rescue the princess, salvage the ruins of a razed/earthquaked/etc. city, explore battlegrounds. I feel the results of a champion losing in battle against a player should be consistent, (possibly different ba

Hmm, the dragon only shows up once though, so a strict rock paper scissors would result in late game heroes not being able to find their target, and armies being the only viable strategy. Of course if we expanded the adventure tree a little this wouldn't be a problem. However, at issue, heroes fall into 3 groups, loosely. Summoners, IE magic tree heroes, that build armies. They're your backrank support, and work fine basically as is. (although summon bombs are way too s

I just want my children to be able to move more than one space in combat...

Basically a game is dis-balanced if a faction with lower development cannot oppose a faction with greater development. At the least, it should be difficult for a faction with a lead to defeat several factions that are behind. (or if a technology within one of the factions is worthless, due to be being slightly inferior in that technology field, and so that faction virtually doesn't have that technology.) A rather good point, I haven't really properly accounted for

The system isn't intuitive enough. You're adding an entire extra stat in order to solve an issue that could be easily addressed just by giving heroes better deals in the item shop. Are squads relatively strong? Kind of, but they're not all that amazing compared to units that do unblockable damage. A single adventure dragon with some +essence boosts is very strong. Doing damage with magic is unrealistically difficult, but spells such as ice spike and haste are still very