Council of War (BAR)

This is a before action report, as the game to play this hasn't quite been written yet.  I have spent a lot of time playing civ, but also have a love for the fantasy setting.  This story descibes the game I want to play.

In Civ you key choice is to balance the military or the economy.  How much of your resources do you invest in building up your own empire compared with the amount needed to defend or go and take other peoples.  Elemental could give us a third option, by investing time and resources into a group of heroes. That would give us a whole series of new strategic challenges.

Currently in Civ you have a single continuum of strategies

1) farmers gambit - zero or limited military - hope you don't get attacked initilly

2) tortoise - Military for defense only

3) raiders - more military with focused oportunistic targets (e.g. those persuing a farmers gambit)

4) empire - build the empire to take land to produce military to take land to produce military

5) horde - any resource not spent on military is a resource wasted.

Heroes adds a new dimention

where do we allocate heroes? - to manage cities or to lead armies or to go on adventures

how much resources do we give our heroes?

Do we keep them together or scatter them to achieve more, but with higher risks

The mechanisms assumed by the above story include the following

1) game changing quests than span multiple stages

2) some form of collection /combination/crafting system (that was what the Quartermaster was bringing from the base camp - all the midnight stones and potions that would be needed on the front lines)

3) stealth - heroes can sneak past regular units

4) heroes are different to regular units and to each other

5) whilst the lead character can only found a city if they don't already have one, it is possible to abandon any current city.

Add in politics and dynasty management and you would have amazingly strong game. 

Obviously these thoughts are nice material to "chew on" while working on the Macro of the game.

Honestly, I think the strongest design philosophy for this game (at least for me) is to focus on creating a TACTICAL BATTLE GAME.

Just create a really fun Tactical Battle game that is fun while using Heroes AND giant squads of 80 soldiers. (and stuff in between).

Once you have a really good Tactical Battle (a simple system at its core, that still has the capacity to get rather complex), you can build a strategy game around it.

First level of the strategy game will be all about the Macro ... Economy, War, and Big Battles. Primarily War and Big Battles.

Second level will be to determine how Questing can be feasible .... if questing is more cost efficient to ONLY bring heroes vs Hero + Army. If perhaps an army of ONLY heroes can perhaps slip by armies with Regular units in them ... and yet CANNOT take cities.

If perhaps certain tasks are better for large squads of regular units, other tasks are better for a Squad/hero hybrid, and other tasks are better for Heroes only. This would all, at its core, be directly tied to the combat system. The simplicity and complexity of the combat system would determine if such scenarios could be crafted (or not).

Currently I'm looking for a decent combat system ... and I feel I may have found something with a simplified and modified version of the D20 combat system.

My main, core reasoning, for using such a system is that X + 1DN vs C, (where X and C are not randomly generated), is superior to 1DN vs 1DN ... and is also superior to even X +1DN vs X + 1DN.

Therefore, taking X +1DN vs C as my "elegant system" ... I then form a X + 1D100 system loosely based upon X + 1D20. With C being loosely based on the static Armor Class of DnD.

Also, I'm thinking of using a Parry system similar to Diablo. (to determine parry even before the attack roll)

Probably will use a critical hit chance as well (possibly only for heroes, but could be more expanded), which would logically roll after a damage roll.

....

I could bore you with details ... and my decision may not be the "best" or it may not be everyone's "favorite" ... but an Advanced Combat Mod is the first Mod I am planning on making (if I'm able to make a mod at all, it will be this one). I won't worry about the balance vs "the current values for the game" because I believe that Combat is the CENTER of the game. And everything else stems from that.

If I can give my small piece of the "Elemental Platform" a good combat system, then maybe I can build a decent strategy game (inspired by the original Elemental concepts) around such a combat system.

I agree in part.

What I am trying to point out is that you now need 3 core mechanics.  One of which is combat.  It is essential that the combat is good and satisfying in its own right (what that actually means may vary from individual to individual) Elemental is not that far behind civ on this basis, but is way behind total war II)

We also need a decent economic system what we have now is probably behind total war, and way behind civ.

We also need a decent adventure system for individuals.  On this Elemental is ahead of Civ (no individuals to speak of), but still a little behind total war (they had dynasties with personalities and titles)

The balance of the three mechanics and which you chose to improve first is a personal matter. but whatwill make this into a great game is how they all interrelate

certainly