Beta 3A Impressions

from Elemental Forums


Impressions so far, Beta 3A:

(1) Magic: Magic doesn't seem all that epic.  It seems too easy to power-through spell research with a few Arcane Labs and a few Heroes on your side that generate spell points.  The number of research points that it takes to learn a spell should be doubled, at least, and then strongly exponential after that.  To take the edge off of this, you should start off with a small grimoire of spells based on your starting book choices, spell choices happening in the design phase of the sov.

(2) Caster Heroes: Caster heroes are way too useless.  When you imbue a hero, you are faced with a long levelling process just to get them to the point that they can cast the basics.  I suggest having hireable heroes that have 5 or 10 spell points, but can't imbue.  What makes your king/emporer special is the ability to imbue stuff.

(3) Character Design: Implement sovreign design in the modding tools as well.  I like the in-game design, but I find I am too impatient to put any meaningful backstory.  Also, I second (third, fifth?) the previous suggestion to have starting equipment come out of your gold supply rather than your attribute points.  Finally, allow the player to edit the character card at any point in the the game to reflect currently selected equipment.  Maybe allow this for any hero?  Also, allow rename of any hired hero when you first recruit them, a-la MoM.

(4) Magic Again: Spells that cost shards occur way too early in the tree.  I have played about a dozen games (to about halfway b/c of crashes), and have yet to have fire shards spawn near me, so I feel like one of my books is completely useless all the time.

(5) Adventure: The sites that are spawned just seem way too generic.  The sites should be "named," and have a card with flavor text.  The card should tell me if I explored it, if I (even) can explore it, how dangerous it is for my currently selected stack, an what quest it is for.  The game should also have "named" dungeons 1-10 levels deep with ever increasing danger (anmd reward).

(6) The Cloth Map: Very nice.  Really like it.  Now, how about letting me name the geographic features?  Let me type "The Crystal Mountains" on a range, or "The Deeping Wood" on a forest near me.  No game effect to this, but would be super cool.

(7) Final Wishes: Allow the player to enchant items in-game, like MoM.  This was crazy fun in MoM, and I hope it shows up in Elemental at some point.  Also, have an "underworld" map a-la Age of Wonders or MoM with heavily guarded entrances.  I always looked forward to striving to break into those maps to get the goodies before other players.

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Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Yeah, i agree on the quests... i think it would be really cool if you could enter a dungeon type enviorment and look for treasure kill the bad guys or whatever, instead of simply moving from one tile to the next on the main screen...

i made my first sov a caster too, which is really upsetting in 3A cause most of my spells are tactical and cannot be cast right now... but i feel that when tactical battles are released then this should be fixed...

i personally dont like the way the spell book is set up, there should be someway to organized your spells, and perhaps make the symbols for them smaller...

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Good comments and suggestions.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Overall I think the magic system is too cumbersome.   It is also not fun.  I am hoping for a significant re-do of the magic system. 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

I also totally agree with the OP. k1   As I said before, perhaps spellbooks should be tied to shards you control, not what you start with. It is meaningless to have spellbooks when the closest shard is a forever far away. It is like saying I know all about raising cattle, but I started in New Guinea. It becomes worthless.

Now, if you want to tie the maximum number of spellbooks you can learn to intelligence or wisdom (one for how much essense, one for how may spellbooks) that could be interesting.

Perhaps intelligence could be tied to how many spells I can learn based on the level of the spell? So I can learn 7 level one spells or one level 7 or any combination in between. Of course, there would have to be a factor or intelligence X something. I am all over the board on intelligence and wisdom and am starting to think there should be a third trait of inherent magical abililty.

 

 

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

I too agree with all the points the OP makes. k1   What do other people, fans and developers, think?

Best regards,
Steven. 

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Thanks, folks.  :-)

I like the idea of starting the game with a number of books based on your INT.  Makes for another good excuse to invest in the stat.

I've been reading alot of other posts about the magic system, and I don't have the impression that it is as broken as people think it is.  Its just kind of... dull.  It will get somewhat better with more spells.  MoM had lots of spells spread across 6 schools, and that was plenty enough to insure lots of fun and mystery because the spells you got were randomly selected.  So, you were not guaranteed from game to game to get your favorite spells.  If Elemental does this, things could get quite exciting. 

And... Elemental really needs to have a really good "I just got a spell!" animation.  The little pop-up window we have now, while informative, is lame.  I used to love the new spell animation in MoM.  It was an exciting Eureka! moment.  As it should be.

Also, what was fun was that you could cast most of the spells that you researched.  Super-expensive spells merely took lots of time to cast... you weren't locked out of it for lack of skill.  The biggest complaint about the magic system seems to be the fact that using essence for gameplay effects gimps your ability to cast.

It doesn't have to be this way.  Implement a slider, like MoM, that allocates the spell points that you generate per turn to three things:

(1) Spell research.
(2) Mana point (casting) regeneration.
(3) Essence generation.  50 accumulated points (or something) gives you 1 essence point to start.

Say that you generate 4 spell points per turn.  You could use 2 for spell research, 1 to pump your mana regeneration, and 1 as a long-term investment in your mana cap.  When you don't need mana regeneration, re-allocate to the other two.  But, if you face a series of battles, you might need the mana regeneration a lot.  Hit the sliders for a short term boost.

Is a summoning or enchantment spell too expensive to cast by being above mana cap?  Don't disallow the casting... just make it take more turns to cast based on your mana regeneration.  If a spell costs 20 and your cap is 10 with a mana regen of 2, make it cost 6 turns to cast.  This is what MoM would do.  To cast faster, shift your sliders to mana regen for a quick boost to casting speed for those big spells.  Finally, because you could buy essence with research, people will be a bit less reluctant to use it for map modification and imbueing.

I've been thinking about deep dungeons, 10 levels deep or more.  Dungeons that go deep allow for lots of adventuring opportunities (level ups and rewards) without adding to map clutter.  Also, such "world dungeons" would spawn monsters from time to time on the surface map from the deepest level that has been explored.  These extra spawns would make the surface map more exciting, and make the need to clear them more urgent as tine goes on.

Anyway... enough musing for now... got to get ready for work...

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Now, I'm probably going to look like an ass, but someone has to say that...

Magic is a mess, but slow research isn't going to help with it. Also shard locations are meant to be random.

So as a matter of fact you get a lot of spells fast and easy access to spells requiring shards to get advantage of the shards that spawn in your vicinity. As a matter of fact in conjunction with magic system spawning of shards is in better condition than spawning of other nodes champions or monsters. (anyone ever spawned near not so friendly looking dude with 150 hit points and other nice stats to go along with them? I did... been a short game...)

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

At this point, I say nix shards or just tie them to massively powerful spells.  If you're holding the last remaining fire shards from an opponent who you know (somehow) just finished researching "Armageddon", fine.  I'm not going to look for shards to summon Fire Giant, who happens to be no stronger than my swordsmen (and much more work to obtain).

 

Perhaps if shards were only tied to powerful enchantments, and instead of generation, they were "utilized".  Something the kin of:

 

"I just obtained a wind shard.  Time to empower it with "Waves of the Sky" to give all my boats the ability to fly over land"...

 

The idea that you have this rare resource that generates once per turn just means that spells costing "1 shard" are woefully underpowered for the rarity of aquiring them.

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

I can see (both) your point(s) that magic is not what it could be.  But, I would maintain that it wouldn't take much to fix it.  It is definitely a mistake to require shards for lots of low level spells when shards are always so scarce.  And, I also agree that shards should be needed to cast/maintain magics of world-altering power and no less. 

That said, the game should have shard outcrops that provide both shards and spell points like Nodes in MoM.  And, such outcrops should be guarded heavily by critters so that it feels like an accomplishment to get one.  If we were allowed to shift around allocation of spell points between research, mana regen and essence generation as I detailed before, this would be a whole new ballgame.

Also, one should remember that the magic system is so boring (now) because we don't have tactical battles yet.  In general, we should reserve judgement until this part of the game is available.  Not that it would have mattered to me in my games so far: I never had any shards to power my combat magic.  So, it still would have been boring.  Now, if it were possible to spend an essence point to create a shard outcropping in my territory, I might change my mind about that.  :-)

Overall, I think that the game design so far is suffering from a "High Magic" vs. "Low Magic" dichotomy.  Parts of the design feel like "Low Magic" and parts of it feel like "High Magic."  Its a little strange.  Personally, I believe that when these issues get worked out, Elemental will be a great game.  But, right now, there just isn't much to do once you've got a few villages up.