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Elemental Beta 2: Player Input #1

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Elemental Beta 2: Player Input #1

from JoeUser Forums

Greetings!

We’re glad to see the beta has gone out relatively painlessly. For those of you who have been with us since back in the GalCiv I betas, I think you will agree this one went off a lot smoother.  After a decade or so, you eventually start to get the hang of this.

That isn’t to say we are free of hicups. There’s people with video issues. There’s people who can’t even get the game to run. That will be our big priority next week.

Vorlons: Who are you? Shadows: What do you want?

Our favorite part of the development cycle began with Beta 2. This is where ridiculously rapid changes to the game start to occur.

Given the notoriously massive suckitude of Stardock betas, we now have the collective opportunity to roll up our sleeves and decrease the crappiness of the game from nightmarish to merely painful.

So let’s walk through the areas (in no particular order) in which you can flex your power:

#1 City Improvements

These are trivial for us to add. And we’ve only started touching the capabilities here.

  • We can have improvements that require adjacency. That is, we can have a farm and require a second improvement be adjacent to a farm tile.
  • We can have improvements in which you can build as many as you want per city, only 1 per faction, or one per city level.
  • Improvements can use either 1 tile or 4 tiles.
  • City tiles that meet a criteria can be merged. So if you built N of the same type of improvement in 4 tiles, we can visually merge them together. You won’t get to see it during the beta phase but you can make requests on this still.

Examples

  1. Maybe there should be an improvement that you can put next to a farm (or garden) that magnifies the output of the farm. You should be able to put as many as you want so long as they are adjacent to the farm tile.
  2. Same for Metal resources.
  3. Same for Crystal Resources.
  4. Same for Shard resources.

#2 Research

The research screen is still pretty rough. The tech tree button is disabled and there’s too little information on it.

Feel free to discuss different ideas on what information you’d like to see. How you would like to see it presented.  Bear in mind, we are not going to toss out the general research concept (the one in there came from the 9 month beta 1 cycle and we like it as a game mechanic).

#3 HUD options

Beta 3 will have a Head’s up Display toggle that will allow you to get information about your cities.

#4 NON-HUD Information

That said, we don’t users to have to use a HUD to get basic info at a glance.  Thus, feedback and suggestions of looking at a unit, city, etc. and telling if they are defended, how strong they are, the general output, etc. We have our own thoughts on this but we’d love to hear yours.

We do NOT, however, want to have units running around with flags or other things of the sort.  We want subtle (non-HUD) and hard core (HUD).

#5 Visual Distinctions between Factions.

The Beta 2 series will begin to show how factions are different from one another much better. However, we’d love to hear your thoughts on making different factions more distinct and interesting. Bear in mind, from a RAM point of view, it’s not practical for every faction to have a completely different building design setup (when we’re all 64-bit then we can talk about that).

#6 Other types of World Resources

The Beta 2 series will start to add horses as a global resource that is used to create mounted warriors. But we’d like to hear your thoughts on other resources that one might control – rarer ones.

We have plenty of ideas of things about a given kingdom that might be affected by this or that but we don’t want to bias the direction of suggestions. I will say, however, we want to stay away from the GalCiv “Approval/Happiness” concept.

The XML allows us to create any type of resource, define a graphic, a 3D tile, and what stats it changes and how much. The random generator will make use of it automatically (and this same thing will happen through modding no doubt). So it’s not a big deal to add more resources as long as they’re fun and not simply there for the sake of “complexity”.

Ideally, we can define resources that are all very rare and thus would only occasionally show up in a game (but yet every game would have a couple of these different rare resources).

What’s coming up next…

The Beta 2 series will start to re-enable the other technology trees. Right now, building up your kingdom has limited choices because you’re effectively a mundane. The Magic tech path takes the view that rather than building up your cities with improvements you can also do things to enchant them to do better. It’s just an alternative direction (or you can mix and match).

Next build will be next week.

 

UPDATE!

One thing I've been reading on the forums has to do with weapons and defenses available. Right now, a lot of them aren't in (for instance, you only get daggers on melee weapons) because we still have to update the UI to handle the different types of damage and defense types.

For instance:

Code: c++
  3. //################# Damage and Defense Types #######################//
  4. #define UNITSTATTYPE_NAME_PIERCINGDAMAGE<span> </span>_T("UnitStat_PierceDamage")
  5. #define UNITSTATTYPE_NAME_CUTTINGDAMAGE<span> </span>_T("UnitStat_PierceDamage")
  6. #define UNITSTATTYPE_NAME_BLUNTDAMAGE<span> </span>_T("UnitStat_BluntDamage")
  7. #define UNITSTATTYPE_NAME_FIREDAMAGE<span> </span>_T("UnitStat_FireDamage")
  8. #define UNITSTATTYPE_NAME_ARCANEDAMAGE<span> </span>_T("UnitStat_ArcaneDamage")
  9. #define UNITSTATTYPE_NAME_ICEDAMAGE<span> </span>_T("UnitStat_IceDamage")
  10. #define UNITSTATTYPE_NAME_ELECTRICALDAMAGE<span> </span>_T("UnitStat_ElectricalDamage")
  11. #define UNITSTATTYPE_NAME_CRUSHINGDAMAGE<span> </span>_T("UnitStat_CrushingDamage")

So a club does blunt damage, a dagger does piercing damage, etc.  But we need to display this in a way that easy to understand for the user so that when they go into battle, these modifiers can be understood.

 

UPDATE #2!

Great stuff in the comments area! Keep it up! Now you're getting into the spirit of the beta. We'll look at all of this and see which things make sense to put in, which things make sense to put in after release and which things make sense to put in some future update.

 

508,129 views 174 replies
Reply #126 from Elemental Forums Top

I really like the person's idea on mayors for cities.  Methinks that after playing a large game city management would get bogged down quite a bit.  Also some buttons to direct the mayors as to what to build, ie; production, research, population, soldiers; you get the idea.

Some resources that were mentioned, gems, different types of trees for different weapon types, wild game, etc, I believe would be great to have. Also lets don't forget about resources in the oceans.  Fish, whales, maybe crabs that could provide food bonuses.

I think the idea of ruins would be a good addition.  Finding a ruin would grant a one time bonus or an ongoing bonus to the owner/discoverer.  After all there was a world before gameplay begins so there should logically be ruins scattered about.  If you discover a ruin it could have some tech in it that would negate you having to research a particular tech.

One last thing, I don't remember seeing any streams or rivers on the map.  Were they all destroyed in the disaster that befell the world?  Ala Civilization games, building near a river could give a bonus to production or food.

Anyway, my two cents worth.  Game looks like it's shaping up to be a classic Stardock.  Good job to all concerned.

Reply #127 from Elemental Forums Top

As for more world resources, how about cotton for cloth (which would allow for the patchwork armors)? 

In general, I think the heavier armors should have more of a penalty to attack speed than they currently do, or perhaps the lighter armors can give a bonus (since we seem to be stacking up from 1 for attack speed).

What's the vision for the clay and stone foundries?  Do they provide resources we just haven't seen implemented yet?

How about a resource that gives an increase to speed, separate from crystals?  Speed of motion over the terrain is such an important feature of 4x type games that I think it should be a separate resource from crystals, which will give att/def/asp benefit (depending on the ring used).

Hawk's Eyrie; trainable hawks for scouting

SoundPackager - Customize the Windows sound scheme
Reply #128 from Elemental Forums Top

City Building

Some sort of adjacency effect in city building strikes me as a Good Thing. At present, the need to manually place each building is an unnecessary complication, because positioning isn't a meaningful choice (as far as I can tell). Putting some sort of consequence on it would justify the extra step. However, there's a balance-point to be struck - don't want to create the situation where researching a later tech suddenly reveals that you've 'painted yourself in'. That might be less of an issue once the tech tree is visible.

There have been several comments that the total number of cities build will be low and that city spamming won't be an issue, but I'm not sure yet what mechanic is pushing that. Increasing cost of establishing each new city?

 

Research

Like it so far. I think there are some basic concepts that aren't clear yet, though, perhaps to be addressed by documentation or tutorial. Not clear exactly what determines which techs will be available to choose from (or which of the ones I'm choosing between THIS time might or might not be available as choices NEXT time).

Tech tree visibility, with specific descriptions of the things enabled by the various techs (a la Civopedia) will help a lot; I'm sure that's planned for later.

Hey, what about buildings that generate research points, but only for specific trees? Maybe the Town Hall generates +1 research, but only while you're pursuing the Civics tree, and the Barracks produce research only while pursuing Warfare, etc. It would mean that if you're heavily invested down a particular tree (and thus have many of the related buildings), you'd feel more torn about skipping over to one of the other trees to pick up early, cheap advances.

 

Combat

Combat rating doesn't seem to do a very good job of predicting success against 'boss' opponents. I'm not sure if the problwm is in the calculation of the army's combined combat rating or in the rating given to the boss, but I've yet to see an army defeat a boss when they had equal ratings (the point at which I'd have expected to win about half the time). More mechanical transparency here might help.

Maybe a 'tactical stance' option for auto-resolve combat? Aggressive/Balanced/Defensive?

Might be available later, but the ability to specialize units for particular terrains would be interesting.

 

Quests

It would be nice to be able to see the destination of a quest BEFORE accepting it. I've had a couple where the target was inaccessible at present (due to a patroling boss or being located in another player's territory).

Basic quest variety (understanding this is the beta and the quests are mostly placeholders) seems good. You have 'escort NPC from here to there', 'go to X, fight something and return', 'go to X and escort NPC back', etc. The examples of mid-quest decisions (save the wolves or kill them, save the knight or take his sword, etc) are promising also. Unclear what, if any, consequences there are to quest failure. 'Her father won't be pleased', but will it matter? Hopefully yes.

Would like to see some hero-type-specific quests. Maybe it's not enough to get ANY hero to the Laboratory of Al-Kazul The Mad; you have to send an Inventor because no one else would understand how to shut down the Great Device.

Reply #129 from Elemental Forums Top

Don't be scared to experiment with some city types.  I wouldn't mind playing a few games where you could only build, say, one improvement per city-level and prestiege alone would cause a city to upgrade.  We've made it this far, there's nothing to lose.

I would like to see more competitive quests.  Quests that aren't for just you, but the multiple players.

I also want more stuff to use essence with!  Essence-infused terrain tiles, buildings, heroes.. I know it's coming, but I want it so badly!  And be imaginative.

Reply #130 from Elemental Forums Top

A few thoughts.

 

City Improvements


City Improvement List UI

* Tabbed headers seperating the available buildings into types:  Housing, Food, Prestige, Gildar, Research, Resources, Military, Misc.

* Collapsible windows in each tab, showing Allowed Buildings (grayed out for low resources, coin, space), Future Buildings (researched, but current city level too low), and Unavailable Buildings (researched but lacking a resource, such as harbors at an inland city).

* x/x building count showing on the building icon (top right?), showing current/allowed structures in the city.


Administrators

* Choose to micromanage, or install a Mayor.

* Additional production bonus for NPC types working as the Mayor; Merchant, Administrator, Farmer, Royalty, etc.


Housing & Food

* Get rid of the Garden (1x1, 2 food)

* Make Huts & Houses provide food for their inhabitants.  Villas & Estates do not produce any food.

* Researching the Farming technology allows building Farms (15 food) on Fertile Land, or Community Gardens (4x4, 10 food) anywhere.


Building Location

* allow buildings to be placed anywhere nearby the city, instead of clicking up previous buildings.  (As current Lumberyards can be built a few tiles away from the city, if trees are nearby.)  This would add room for "building specific" upgrades, such as Farm/Granary.

Reply #131 from Elemental Forums Top

please get rid of the refined X technologies

they are mindless filler technologies that on top being generic are overpowered as well especially housing and farming

Reply #132 from Elemental Forums Top

#1 City Improvements

To much clutter and MM as is. It is a bit boring that one will have to click on the capital city build screen in consecutive turns to build the workshop,build the farm and one more building to wait the "materials" to accumulate, then finally build that one hovel - as the resource requirements for the later buildings are not met, they cannot be put into the queue.

So, I suggest the following:

  • Get rid of housing altogether. A sovereign is not a landlord/real estate developer. Make it a sprawl.
  • The adjacency idea is not a good one.
  • Scrap buildings that create money. Why should a city that has 4 trader and 4 marketpace but noth much else generate any money? Revenue should be from population size (head tax), and "tolls", i.e. every resource (food, materials a little, iron/crystals/etc. more) produced in a city should generate some tax revenue. Artisan industry (leatherworking shop/whatever, smithy, foundry, forge) should add to this "trade". Markets etc should provide bonus for it.
  • Have special buildings that require the availability of a resource to build - and only a single building for each resource available. Like 1 iron- 1 forge/armory/whatever. 1 Wood -> 1 shipyard. 1 copper -> 1 foundry. Or one would need  "ancient texts" to build a University.
  • Defending cities. Make a "keep" building that would be much harder to siege, and provide refuge to the population up to an extent - from marauding monsters or occasional raiders, and make it last for a few turn if sieged.
  • Don't know how mass armies would develop, but an armory should make more 'longswords' than a single smithy. If it would have any effect.

#2 Research

  •  Get rid of half the gear would help. I'd rather have a single suit of armor, instead of greaves/legging/shroud/cloak/headgear - makes no sense unless one want to implement hit locations for the heroes/monsters. This would also allow condense inventory to a single page or two (equipped items and 'backpack').
  • Streamline it, condense it. No need for a separate tech for each type of weaponry like spear/dagger/dirk/shortsword/longsword/bastard sword/two-handed sword/axe/halbert/glaive/Japanese-variant-of-the-same.
  • I like the idea to have resource prerequisites to develop some techs.

 

#6 Other types of World Resources

  • Wood. The world is supposed to be a wasteland, so trees large enough for shipbuilding should be a scarce resource. Should be necessary to build any larger type of ship, and to make charcoal for foundries/armories.
  • Copper. For Bronze armor, and bronze goods should make some extra revenue.
  • Fine horses. Regular horses should be available everywhere.
  • Cash resources: Those that would simply generate money. Gold, silver, spices, pearls.
  • Gems: I don't think they should generate money. They have no inherent utility in a post-apocalyptic world. However, they should have some 'magic' value - like being necessary to some magical artifacts or spells. Should be an accumulating resource like materials, not an availability resource like food/iron. Also a 'gem mine' should generate one gem every 1-20(10? 15?) turns.
  • Ancient texts/artifacts

 

#+1 - Heroes/NPC/quests

  • Settling the "bonus" champions (trader/inventor/loremaster) in cities should give bonus according to the buildings. A trader adventuring in the wasteland should not make any money. Settle in a shop to get that 2 gildar. Marketplace would give 1 extra, harbor/bazaar another one.
  • Have champions earn XP while doing their calling. E.g. a trader trading in a city, or an inventor.
  • Introduce "weaponsmith/armorsmith/artificer" heroes. They would be necessary to build 'masterwork' weapons, or special items, one every few turns. Should be rare/unique kind but not overpowered (perhaps one employable for each civilization). Also a good trait for sovereigns.
  • Give the nobles in an escort quest at least 2 movement points.

 

Reply #133 from Elemental Forums Top

Agreed.

 

Elemental: War of Magic

 

1st priority in game: War

2nd priority in game: Magic

3rd priority in game: Management of resources to accomplish 1 and 2

 

Of course doing 3 well makes 1 and 2 possible, but I'd prefer more time on 1 and 2 quicker in the game.  Governors as optional for cities; micro-or Governor, don't care, just don't make the game tedious.  People would realize they need more food/housing and automatically pursue that--maybe a feature there, that if you don't give enough food/housing your other construction project suffer, but don't stop.

 

 

 

 

Reply #134 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm new to the Beta but wanted to echo a couple of things I've seen posted here.

Having just played through a handful of times there are a couple of things that don't quite sit right with me.  While I really enjoy the "explore" aspect of moving around the map with my Sovereign, City Management is distracting and somewhat tedious.  I guess I had expected a higher level of abstraction in City Management -- you research technologies that "automagically" make your city better over time.  I like the idea of finding people in the world and "recruiting" them to live in your city, but agree with what many others have said: being forced to build farms, huts, etc. isn't fun or especially immersive.  In my opinion, placing NPCs in your city should be a stronger determinant of what "kind" of city you build.  If I park a merchant in my city, it should start to become a gold producing city that attracts people by virtue of its wealth.  I shouldn't have to build 4 marketplaces to do this.  I also don't care for the sprawl aspect very much.  Aesthetically the cities start looking ugly after a bit because they keep accreting structures over time.  I'd prefer a more static city that occupies 4 tiles that just starts looking "grander" as you advance it, instead of bigger.

Agree with the comments about the Creeps.  Most are way too darn hard to kill and there's no real sense of progression or logic to the local monster ecology (i.e. lairs with bosses and gradual progression to tougher critters).  If there's a gargantuan skath roaming 2 miles from my home, why hasn't every last scrap of humanity been destroyed by it yet?

Troop Management: also a bit kludgey for me.  With so much city detail on the screen it seems a shame to me that I can't easily see how many troops are stationed there without looking at the stylized badges in the info bar.  My preference would be for something more "civ-like" where my troops are represented by an "on the map" icon that I can easily activate.

Still, the individual, sovereign focused bits are super cool and I really look forward to customizing my hero and researching magic.

Reply #135 from Elemental Forums Top

I would like to see serveral things.

 

1.  I would like there to be a reason to build units with daggers(insert weapon here) other than (thats all i can afford) without it limiting ones creativity.  Why build a unit with a staff when he can wield a super hammer O doom!

Example:  Better use for assassins/caster types.

2.  Different abilities for creatures and races. 

Example:  Trolls can regen/ Sipers can web and poison/ humans can party with any race.(give us a reason to play human vs lizardmen.

3.  Different levels of transportation.  Dirt Roads/Paved Roads/Enchanted Roads/Railroads?

4.  I really liked the idea of wizard towers/domains in age of wonders perhaps impliment something here?

5.  Sovereign can level up without having to fight personally/ give him a % of exp for all fights.

6.  Land Transformation (like in age of wonders) besides Green or Black realms make a fire/snow/ect realm as well?

7.  Birth right, if Sovereign dies but has children that child becomes new sovereign instead of ending game.  Add bonus stats for being Main sovereign. 

8.  Positive + Negative stats on soverigns/children, have them gain good and bad stats based on their parents + chance to gain different stats of their own.  Also give us the option to remarry if Sovereigns wife dies.  Multiple children with different wives for different stats/abilities combo.

9.  Gain abilities with certain level ups.  Not just stats but actual abilities that will make your sovereign unique each time you play.

Reply #136 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Relsden, reply 134
I like the idea of finding people in the world and "recruiting" them to live in your city, but agree with what many others have said: being forced to build farms, huts, etc. isn't fun or especially immersive.  In my opinion, placing NPCs in your city should be a stronger determinant of what "kind" of city you build.

I really like the suggestions there have been throughout the thread, that focus on what people you recruit to live in your cities. Maybe you should even consider being able to "breed" sovereigns that can improve your cities in various ways!

I also have to agree about the tedium, when it comes to city growth. Maybe you should get rid of housing altogether, and just let food be the limiting factor of city sizes (although, I do like the way you can make one city focus on food, whilst another uses it for housing. So to find a way where you can utilize this aspect of customization would be nice). And have prestige dictate the rate of growth of cities.

Reply #137 from Elemental Forums Top

Allow adventurers to be able to buy from your shops as part of your income!

Reply #138 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Recnelis2, reply 137
Allow adventurers to be able to buy from your shops as part of your income!

Okay, this is actually a really good suggestion. If the wandering NPCs actually had cash to spend on items, and had an AI goal that would send them to the nation with the best available gear to purchase the things they wanted, that would really add to the feeling of it being a real world, as well as giving a nod of acknowledgement to whoever's at the top of that tech tree.

Reply #139 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Jack, reply 122
Didn't read all messages, but, what about conditionnal technologies ?

By conditionnal, I mean that they would only be shown in the reasearch selection if a special condition is fulfilled.

For exemple, "ressource exploitation" techs might only appear when you have such a ressource near one of your city.

<snip>

This would prevent players from chosing some cool looking tech ("horses, cool !") and then realizing that there are no such ressource in the map or near their empire.
 

I refuted this in another interesting thread about the tech tree, but I will do so again here...by doing this you run the risk of cutting huge swaths out of the tech tracks simply because a player has a crummy start position. Quarries and such require advanced mining, which you will never get to if you don't have an ore deposit. So do you get to skip Mining I and go right to Mining II or III?

Also, you can trade for horses and such via diplomacy, but if you are never able to research the techs to utilize those resources, then horses will always be useless to you, and you will never be able to have calvary, even though you can trade crystals, etc for horses.

And while it may add to the immersion/realistic factor, having techs denied me because I have a crappy starting position isn't very fun. Besides, as someone else pointed out, we are rediscovering techs as well as learning new ones. 

Now, if you want to deny me horses because I chose the seafaring kingdom of Tarth, (and we all know that no sane Tarthian would trust a horse in battle) but my brave Tarthians instead get to ride Sea Monsters (in naval battles, of course)...then that is a horse of a different species altogether.

The whole thread is here. We are hoping Frogboy or one of the other devs takes a quick glance at it, some interesting ideas/enhancements on the current tech system in there. 

Reply #140 from Elemental Forums Top

Just a quick thought on city building.

What if non-special tile housing and food production tiles automatically appeared outside your town so as people moved towards your town the farmland would be cultivated automatically and farmers would appear and neighborhoods would organically rise up to provide housing for the people who work in the core tiles.   So gradually your larger cities would be surrounded by farms and civilian neighborhoods.

Then as you grow your town, you occasionally have to displace a neighborhood or farmer but it's not anything you need to worry about, as they'll just re-settle somewhere close by.

This way the Sovereign is only focused on managing the core specialized heart of the town, and when enemies approach the outlying farmers etc will leave their farms while seeking protection in the town center, which can cause food shortages etc.

Add in a couple population limiting things, courthouses, aqueducts, granaries, and whatnot, which would increase the max sustainable size of the town but basically peasants just need to be left alone to breed n feed themselves.

Reply #141 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Recnelis2, reply 135
I would like to see serveral things.
7.  Birth right, if Sovereign dies but has children that child becomes new sovereign instead of ending game.  Add bonus stats for being Main sovereign. 

It's agains't the core concept, which is Sov dies = game over. We've talked a lot about a possible "successor system", perhaps someone will be able to mod it in. :)

Reply #142 from Elemental Forums Top

To be honest, I am surprised by how many people don't like to manage their cities.   That is part of what makes a TBS strategy different from the other genres.  

That said, I agree we don't want tedious or obvious city building tasks to be left for the user every time.    But, I definitely want to be able to differentiate my cities from yours, or from the AIs by how they are developed.  

 

I love the idea of adjacency bonuses, where if I build a laboratory next to my metal smith I get a bonus to developing magical armour for example.  It would even be cooler if those shops transformed into a magic smithy building or somesuch.   So my ideas include:

  • apothecary & farm - potion shop
  • laboratory & farm - increased food/potions/hps - chance to create mutant population
  • workshop & barracks - Increased weapon production/efficiency
  • House & Palance - less population growth, but increased tax revenue (housing for minor nobles)
  • Temple and Palace - Increase in taxes as the church is officially sanctioned by the government
  • Shard and Bestiary - % chance of magical beast production or increased stats of beasts
  • Shard and Tavern - Increase the prestige of the town as people come to see the famous "Blue Shard Tavern"
  • Apiary and Garden - % increase in food production as bees help pollenate
  • Temple and homes - Increase in research as you make more homes for monks, and other religious initiates.

 

That's just a few for starters, the possibilities are really endless.   And with the comment that the buildings could combine to create a new building.... That is just B) B) B)

As for housing and population, perhaps you could start out with a city have a total population max of some large number, then with each improvement you build you reduce that number, as fewer people can build homes in the city due to industry.   That way you don't have to build houses they will automatically get built, but you still have to make the choice of building new buildings or allowing your city to grow in population.   You could keep the current housing techs which would just increase the population maximum back up as well.   you could still reserve space for houses to ensure a certain population size, but you wouldn't have to, the houses are built on demand (and reduce taxes as a result perhaps).

Reply #143 from Elemental Forums Top

I've seen a lot about the farm/housing issue on here.

 

I don't mind having to build things to generate food, or to find resources that increase my food generation. I don't like having to automatically build 2 farms and a Hut en masse every city level, and trying to sneak in a real improvement in there. Managing food should be a necessary part of running a civilization, managing the housing shouldn't be. Houses should just be automatically placed in the city.

With that, it would be neat if there were still techs that increased housing. That way you can still get more people in a smaller place and perhaps decrease the required population for the next city level.

 

I saw an idea about being to build anywhere within the city, not just adjacent to it. I sort of like this idea, but perhaps it should just be limited to a 2 tile range from the city's current limits, so we can plan ahead for these adjacent buildings, but not build a Study 6 tiles away when our city is only level 1.

 

City management brought another thought to mind, which was the catalyst to post this. Tactical Combat isn't in yet, but if it's not already an idea on your board, let me throw it out there.

The combat areas for besieging a city should be based off the actual cities lay out and generated. It would be epically nice to see the entire city up close with troops marching up and down the streets, razing improvements as they advance to the keep. Just like it was cool to see our base so up close in X-Com when we had to defend it.

I was thinking more about resources and looked more at the Mining. You get mine iron, than crystals, and than I imagine more interesting metals later on as the game develops (mithril, adamentium, etc.). Could the same be done for other resources? I made the suggestion of tile specific resources (Coral Reefs for water, Giant Turtles for water, these would of course need Pioneer boats, and different types of forests). I think it would be interesting if forests could have different qualities of wood that required techs to harvest.

 

Reply #144 from Elemental Forums Top

City Improvements
I completely disagree with those who say dealing with cities are too much micromanagement. As far as I'm concerned, cities are one of the most robust parts of the game right now. Especially in the early game. Unlike everyone else, I think gardens are fantastic and I don't think houses and huts should be self-sustaining. When the UI is improved, a lot of the issues with micromanagement I think will be streamlined. Longer build-times may solve this. It's in the late game where I think the things break down. Many of the buildings don't have a clear purpose or aren't particularly useful compared to lower level counterparts, such as the archives, pub, or the town council. Slums aren't particularly useful, either, especially when 4 houses have a greater capacity.

Certain buildings should have an upkeep cost, in particular ones that increase prestige.

However, I do get where you are going with this. I enjoyed having satellite farming town with huts and pubs, feeding into my huge megalopolis. I think the city management part is important for overall strategy: specialized more efficient cities? Or self-sufficient ones? One huge city or several medium-sized ones?

Prestige should do more than just improve city growth. Perhaps split prestige into different attibutes? I don't really like the prestige mechanic.

Other than that, cities would benefit from a more orderly appearance. Streets would be of great help here and cut down the cluttered look of towns. More housing variations would make things look nice. Finally, I tend to build gardens in clumps, so having some garden merges would look nice.

Another way to build variations would be to have different structures manifest as different buildings. For example, building a food building could manifest as bakery or a butcher or still. Commerce buildings can be different kinds of shops, like a perfumery, tanner or a tailor and such.

Research

I like the research screen as it is right now, and I like the research system. Infinite research is especially nice. No comments for now.


HUD options
You really need some inoffensive audio or visual cues for the event bar. A little "ding" when a building or troop is finished, for example, maybe have it flash.

NON-HUD Information

You could take a sim-city 4 approach and have it so buildings show their status by their appearance (i.e. a city under siege would have a lot of starving people on the streets and troops marching to and fro).

Visual Distinctions between Factions.

Altar seem to me the "vanilla" faction, and should have all the base graphics. At the very least, different factions should have different town center and housing designs. I imagine Ironeers, for example, would have much simpler houses out of simple stonework and lack the "ostentacious" villas and mansions of other factions.

Other types of World Resources

I less want more resources than I would a more believable or more interesting economy. In particular, I think some buildings should continuously consume resources. Let me illustrate this:

Materials are produced by lumber mills and workshops.

Markets and other commercial buildings consume a certain amount of materials each turn as "product" and are taxed a certain amount.

Civic prestige buildings and military buildings consume gold as maintenance.

This way, you can get a fairly interesting yet still abstract economy running.

Reply #145 from Elemental Forums Top

One thing that feels like an obvious omission for me is a sort of queued path when you are issuing move orders to units.  X-COM did it with a running tally of available Action Points used to punctuate each square that you moved, Civ 4 did it with a number on the tile indicating how many total turns it would take at the current movement rate to reach the destination tile.

Here's an example:

Currently, you select your unit and right-click the destination square, a destination pointer lights up (if they are out of moves this turn), but there is no visual path made or any indication as to how long it will take to arrive at the destination:


>_>                                         X

 

I think it would be beneficial to have the option to display that same path as:

 

  :) -1-2-3-4-5-X

 

With each consecutive turn subtracting itself from the number of turns:

 

                        :thumbsup: -1-2-X

Reply #146 from Elemental Forums Top

Agree with comments on early mob strength, city building is tedious, and that the tech system needs to be looked at.

Tech system suggestions such as typed research buildings and subcategories have their own subposts in the Elemental Ideas subforum, but we definitely need to refine those ideas more.

My biggest peeve right now from a graphical issue is the borders/influence system.  I don't see a very intuitive way to understand how influence circles interact with each other when they abut, and its weird to have bubbles of influence for a kingdom when you're throwing down early cities.

Reply #147 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm going to throw my support for how city building is right now.  I have a feeling that when we get furthr on into the beta we're not going to really have too many cities, even in the larger games.  At the very least cities give you something more to do every turn.  I like being able to decide how my city is built and to expand it in a strategic manner (towards a resource, cutting off a choke point), but I do see the sense in trying to put in some kind of "mayor" AI to do it for the player if they so choose to.

 

In regards to early mob sgtrength, I'm going to wait on commenting on that one.  It REALLY sucks right now, but when the tactical battles are in the game and you have your tanking units / healing units / ranged units fighting one big bad it'll prolly work out a lot better.

 

Hey!  That's a good suggestion now that I think about it!  When we do get tactical battles adding in some kind of priest/healer unit that doesn't rely on magic I think is kind of essential.

Reply #148 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Sareln, reply 146

My biggest peeve right now from a graphical issue is the borders/influence system.  I don't see a very intuitive way to understand how influence circles interact with each other when they abut, and its weird to have bubbles of influence for a kingdom when you're throwing down early cities.

 

One aesthetically pleasing way to resolve the border/influence problem would be to keep the lines on the cloth map but for the visual map create little houses in a Kingdom's territory, petering out along the border. Different Kingdoms would have

 

Take for example the towns in Civilization 4, where over time they grow. Those little "mini-cities" make the world look less like a collection of huge cities, and more like an organic decentralized kingdom.

 

Empires could have little Pig farms and mini-warforts across their empire.

Reply #149 from Elemental Forums Top


#1 City Improvements

These are trivial for us to add. And we’ve only started touching the capabilities here.


We can have improvements that require adjacency. That is, we can have a farm and require a second improvement be adjacent to a farm tile.
We can have improvements in which you can build as many as you want per city, only 1 per faction, or one per city level.
Improvements can use either 1 tile or 4 tiles.
City tiles that meet a criteria can be merged. So if you built N of the same type of improvement in 4 tiles, we can visually merge them together. You won’t get to see it during the beta phase but you can make requests on this still.

Examples


Maybe there should be an improvement that you can put next to a farm (or garden) that magnifies the output of the farm. You should be able to put as many as you want so long as they are adjacent to the farm tile.
Same for Metal resources.
Same for Crystal Resources.
Same for Shard resources.

Is there any plan for Wonders, or similar buildings? You mentioned one per faction buildings, what about one per game? You can do a lot with that, here's an example one:

 

Grand Bazaar

4 tiles, 1 per faction, requires Tier 5 City.

+15 Gildars per turn. Markets in all adjacent connected towns produce +1 Gildar per turn.

Reply #150 from Elemental Forums Top

#1 City Improvements

 Give us reason to not make the city as big as possible (i.e. high level city).   It can be achieve by giving Rural production Bonus to magic/farming/ beast-breeding related production building.

 Adjacency Bonus aren't that interesting, nor it gives much fun factor to the game.  It will become a no-brainer decision very soon.

 I like city specialization (e.g. Farming city, troop city etc).  It means a commitment to certain priorities for a city.  It means a real decision from player.   The 1 per faction, or one per city level contributes to that, so I like it.   During the old economy debate thread, I've suggested if you build 10 smithy in 1 particular city, you get way better weapon output and/or reduced input than 10 scattered smithy.  Let me call it Mass Production Bonus.   This bonus will even be be bigger, if all your smithy in that city are capable of only producing Armor.

 I like city generalization.  It means if a city does not commit to any specific direction has its own reward, e.g. easier to adjust to the changing need of an empire.   But the cost is that it will not be able to enjoy the production efficiency of the Mass Production Bonus.    Maybe Quality Bonus can be introduced.   The 1 smithy scattered in 10 cities of yours will be able higher quality armor, statistic-wise.

 Let players struggles on how general, how specialized the cities are.

 Reduce micromanagement by queuing city improvements, including those you cannot build yet.  In general there are 2 reasons you can't build yet: 1) lack of techology, 2) lack of material.   The 2) reason is a bit more tricky.  Consider the scenario that you've already queued 2 gardens in 2 different city.    They are permanantly put on-hold because you just don't have the material required to pay its building cost.   This turn, you've gather enuf resource to build just one of it, which one should be built first?

 I say to the one that is physically closer to the where the resource is produced is automatically build first.   And there should be a mechanism that overrides this default decision.

 Above concept can applies to unit/manufactured goods production too.  

 Can the smithy I've just build come with a dormitory?  100 workers working for a smithy means 100 workers already lived there.    It is not that the housing mechanism is removed, it just no longer a requirement.    But then, it has a different meaning when I pop down a new hut e.g. I want to build a cottage economy, or moves the city to a higher level.

 #2 Research

Like the general implementation in general.   It can be real good if there is 5 Unique playstyles by making each individual tech tree viable 

 Here I'll like to talk about the 'randomness' of the tech tree.  I'll like to have some fuzzy control of the rare red techs I'll get, instead of being completely random.   For example if I've make spear as my weapon of choice and I am now researching weapon tech.  There should be a better chance of me to get a tech advance in spear.

 #3 HUD options

How about you get the "Card" when we mouse over a point of interest?

 #6 Other types of World Resources

Make it so that Unicorn, horses, giant spider, Fallen and other beasts/living being a resource.   Help them build a city/lair/dungeon, these resource re-produce.   These are self-generating resources, as long as racial food & racial prestige is available, nor get killed.   City & lair are basically the same thing.

Rare Natural resources that come from land should be discovered not via the randomly generated map only.  It should be discovered due to what you've achieved in this game.   For example, if you are one of the greatest magic user in this game, the game will notice and rewards you by letting you to re-discover a new sources type, e.g. ultra-mana shard.

"So a club does blunt damage, a dagger does piercing damage, etc.  But we need to display this in a way that easy to understand for the user so that when they go into battle, these modifiers can be understood."

 How about by conversation bubbles?  Maybe the troop leader (hero) will rant "Oh.. even my troops' Magical sword +1 aren't going to be effective the gorgon's tough skin."