Froggie, I am pretty sure that lot of players would love to play those epic battles [10kv10k for example].

Yeah let's hope so.

I'm pretty confident. From the 3A patch notes:

That tells me the larger squad sizes were there and were just turned off. If it's just a tech tree thing there's no reason a modder couldn't add it back.

I'd like to hear it from the chief or Boogie. That way I know for sure we can Mod in those 10,000 man armies. It "May" be a Engine limitation and it just doesn't like to display that many soldiers without lagging all to hell, we don't know. I would "think" that it's just as moddable as everything else, but I'd really like to make sure.

There are two reasons mostly that I pre-ordered Elemental.

1 ) Customization, because too me that's what Stardock is known for.

2 ) MASSIVE Epic Battles.

If it isn't at Least moddable that I can display as many units as I want I'll be Highly Disappointed. Not to mention it will shoot my plans for the Dragonlance Mod all to hell and back. For the DL Mod I plan on having Hundreds of Dragons alone in one army, not counting all the other soldiers and units. If I can't Mod In epic numbers then I might as well just wait until Stardock makes it so we can have Epic Numbers. It would be better to wait then for me to have to half ass my mod because of display issues.

Edit: Also note, I've asked if that particular thing was Moddable at least 3 times in the last few weeks and haven't been answered in any of the threads where I asked that. That's a little scarey when you're planning a epic mod like I am and then the Devs dance around your question.

His previous posts on the subject have all been about balancing rather than engine limitations. He stated that balancing a game where unit sizes range from 1 to 10,000 is kind of crazy. No mention of it ever being a limitation of the engine itself.

I've asked for details on how you give special abilities to units a couple of times without an answer either. I don't read anything into that except they're pretty busy making a game and can't reply to every forum question.

I mean in this case the techs existed in the tech tree, and were removed for balance reasons. That's why I'm confident.

Even the Total War engine starts to slow down when there are 10 000+ soldiers on screen so I'm pretty sure that the Elemental engine would also have some problems.

It doesn't slow down if your PC is beastly enough. In any case it's apples and oranges for comparison here. Total war has to render all those units in real-time, with many special animations for units in combat. On top of this it runs all the AI routines and path-finding in the background for those units as well. Many of these obstacles are not in place for a TBS system. At any given time you are only moving one unit at a time and combat only gets calculated between the two units you've got fighting.

Exactly. And Also No Mention of whether or not it's moddable or Hard Coded. As I said, I would tend to think that it's Not hard coded, but I REALLY want clarification on the matter so I can stop worrying about it. I only ask and want clarification because I have seen Many Games where this Exact Thing is Hard Coded...like the Total War games and it's "20 Units in a Army" Cap. Why did they Hard Code that? Because when people with slower or older PC's would want to run epically large battles their machines would lag all to hell. They Hard Coded it so their Engine didn't look bad to the consumer.

I Don't Think Stardock would do something like that simply for that reason, but, having Not been answered the last 3 Times I asked this question, it's starting to make me think the question isn't being answered on purpose.

*hands Raven a collection of tin foil hats*

My friend, think of this. If they were removed Solely for "Balance" reasons, then why not tweak the costs of the units or tweak how much food they eat or tweak something else to make 10,000 man armies more viable? They Already Know a LOT of people want to have Massive Battles like those in LotR or Dragonlance, and yet they still took out the 10,000 man armies for "Balance" or because it was too time consuming for the average player to play through a battle. Why not simply re-balance the numbers so larger armies are possible?

Whether or not a battle is "fun" or is "too Time Consuming" is One Person's Opinion. Nothing more, nothing less. In my Opinion, Large Epic Battles are the most fun, whether they are Turn Based or Real Time I don't care. I also don't care if other people think it's too much micromanagement. They won't be playing My Version of Elemental. They'll be playing theirs.

On a side note: They've already shown us how to add abilities in code

What I want to see is Where in the code it says something like..

Display Number = #

Where # is the number of actual soldiers displayed in a unit on screen. I want to know if I can simply edit this in XML or Python or whatever....or IF it's Hard Coded with Cap Limits. It's really a very simple question that they shouldn't have a problem answering. By this point also I'm pretty sure I'm not the Only Person wondering one way or another. This is a Major Factor and selling point on the game to me and I'm guessing to some others as well. By them not answering this rather simple question it leads me to think they don't want to tell us the answer for some fear of economic backlash. I.E. someone might think "What do you mean I can't have 10,000 in one army on a Huge Map with a Booming Economy? Well then I'm not Buying this game!!!". There are people out there that think that way, including myself from time to time.

Tin Foil? Bah...that's for amateurs. Only Iridium blocks the signals the Aliens in orbit around the moon keep sending to my brain.

Now be quiet and don't throw off the topic until we get a Solid Answer on this

After we get a solid answer you can call me crazy all day long and I'll just smile and nod and say "Yes Mr Annatar, I'm nutty as a fruit cake"

It's moddable. if you wanted to, you could have a million people on there. It's just XML and a number.

WoooHooo, Thanks Chief

Ok Annatar, I'll be quiet now and sit in my corner and keep my crazyness all to my-self for the day

Don't forget to add "run out and buy 32 GB of RAM and an array of video cards to display all those units."

i dont tbh

never found a combat more fun based on how many units there were

but ofc my opinion like yours is based on assumptions since we have no clue bout elemental tactical battles

myabe in here it would be fun, who knows

Ok now that it's officially moddable, how do you balance a dragon or a champion against 1,000 soldier units, while still maintaining balance at smaller sizes?

lol?

you drunk?

how could this irrelevant thing change sales?

also even if told or not told on a forum it will be unknown for majority of customers

i dont get the questions

the balance required is not of 1 dragon against 1000 soldiers

the balance can still be 1 dragon against 50 soldiers and work perfectly

also is pretty soon to talk about balance with so many unknown aspects of the game

My honest opinion, the Total War game's battles are a LOT more fun when you have bigger armies instead of just a few units. That's just me though. Also, as we know, the TW games are Real Time, while Elemental is Turn Based, so the same may not apply to Elemental. It's all up to the players personal tastes.

I can tell you for certain now some people are going to Love my Dragonlance Mod, other people are going to Hate it. It's up to each person individually. I'll make sure to put plenty of Warnings in the "Read Me" for the DL Mod though...

Warning: The Dragonlance Mod Contains EPIC Amounts of Fun. If you don't like Epic Amounts of Fun with Huge Armies I would Recommend Not playing this Mod. Thank You, and have a Elemental day!!!!

Did you see some of the First screen shots of Elemental over a year ago that showed Huge Armies? If someone saw that and that's what they were expecting, then found out the game Didn't have that before they made their purchase, they might change their mind and not buy it. That would decrease sales.

Because those things aren't the problem, and changing them changes balance in other parts of the game? You're looking at something in isolation and saying "change whatever it takes to make this work", which would have dramatic impacts on everything else.

The problem is how do you balance champions against 4 units in the early game, and 10,000 later in the game? That's an astronomical amount of scaling that would lead to your champion being completely godly if you managed to get ahead of the army size curve.

Whether or not changing every number in the game to make the number you want possible is "too time consuming" is not really an opinion, and even if it is, the only opinion that matters is that of the project manager. They've got a lot of game to work on, and someone decided that it would take too much time to make the numbers work as compared to removing the huge army option. Besides, how would you even train 10,000 at once? There's no city that big to draw the people from.

They haven't shown how you make an ability then add it to a standard soldier through training, which is what I was asking about.

I won't know how to answer that until I have the Full Game in my hands. If I were on the Dev Team maybe I could have shown them the way having known all the information I would need. Sadly I'm not and I don't so I have to wait like everybody else. I already know I'll have to re-balance almost everything for my Dragonlance Mod, especially tweaking dragons.

In the Dragonlance Mod I'll be sticking as Close as I can to the story told in the first 3 books. If you don't have a "Dragon Orb" or maybe a few "Dragon Lances" or "Good Dragons" on your side then chances are you'll be destroyed if you try to go up against one of the Dragon Armies.

The game plays exactly the same if there's 40 guys in a unit or 4000 guys in a unit (except for how you balance champions against it). This is just graphical stuff.

So no, a 400 vs 400 battle isn't likely to cost many sales over a 10,000 vs 10,000 battle when the gameplay is basically identical. And hell, they changed the entire combat system midway through for gameplay reasons. That's more likely to affect sales then how many thousands of individual troops are visible on the screen at once.

well i didnt like total war

tried it and got bored  after 2 battles

that just me

well the argument of expectations makes sense

but im sure stardock will show real pictures/videos b4 release and also ppl knows they have to check them and not old ss