Your archers and warriors are in a single unit or in stacks? As the game progress the heroes armor will be high enough that single unit attack always miss. A stack of 12 warriors with 6 attack rating each will have 72 attack rating and will have a higher chance to hit the enemy as oppose to a single warrior with 6 attack rating.

Higher int affect spell damage and attack rating too. On the first game my sov just pump essence and find that my spells always miss or deals little damage, on my other playthrough I just pump int all the way and let my essence increase my buildings and my sov is a terror to behold. I suppose I will only pump essence if i want to abuse an army of fire giants

I agree, the stack mechanics are messed up. why do groups of units have thier defence sumed? It makes no sence. Say an individual swordsman has 10 defence, and he is attacked by an archer with an attack of 6. The archer has a reasonable chance of defeating the swordsman before the swordsman can reach the archer. Ok, now put the swordsman in a party of 4, now the WHOLE STACK has a defence of 40 and that same archer has no chance in hell of even killing one swordsman. And even if he did get lucky and take one out, the 3 remaining swordsman still have the same attack and defence value as if there were still 4 units. Take an extream example of a company of 12 macemen, 12 attack individually, 144 attack as a group. say the stack starts with 120 HP and over the course of a battle, takes 110 damage, leaving only 1 maceman out of the original 12. WHY DOES THAT ONE MACEMAN STILL GET TO ATTACK WITH 144 ATTACK!? It is a major flaw in my opinion.

This is what should happen with grouped units.

HP: Summed up as before.

Attack: Summed, but reduced for each unit killed.

Defence: start with the base defence of the individual unit. I can see larger units having improved defence in mele combat due to group tactics, watching eachothers backs ect. I propose a party would get a 20% bonus, a squad 40% and a company 60% bonus to the base defence of an individual unit. Ranged attacks should either use the base defence of an individual or halve the group defence bonus to 10% / 20% / 30%.

Also, I think a damaged group unit that has had some units killed in battle should not be allowed to fully heal without some sort of population draw and 'retraining' the unit back up to full combat strength. Perhaps this would cost a portion of the time and materials/metals/gold of the original unit, as you have to replace lost/broken equipment and train new reqruits.

#3 i agree with partly.

It would be easier though if they had swallowed their pride and learnt from earlier successful games and then added additional components say roughly MOM/AOW combat + magic then added questing/dynasty/civilization aspects but instead they tried to go their own way  everywhere (or worse yet copied straight from Gal civ)

That's why you got a mess.

Right now I see signs they are trying to fix this.. e.g 1DN rolls will be modified for example, implementation of global pool of mana... But we will see how far SD can learn from their mistakes..

And no.. I'm not trying to turn EWOM into a copy of MOM, and this is despite EWOM having benefited immensely from the buzz as the "spiritual successor of MOM" (something they have not gone out of their way to distance themselves from), but there are certain standards of the genre you do not touch..  

In-game, design your unit was a cool idea that was mooted by fans a lot, but in hindsight it was not a good idea, particularly when coupled with the straightmark RPS style of SD. Microprose could probably have pulled this off since they would just throw in every unbalanced trait and ability in there to make the game fun, balance and AI be damned, but SD was never that style.. so their unit design is pretty much pointless..

The interesting thing is SD were far more ambitious than i expected.

Compare say Galciv and Moo series.. the later is a lot more unbalanced with more features.. while galciv series tend to be more restrained in fetaures..

I kind of expected a "magicciv" type experience..with a resrtained feature set.. but instead SD acted as if they were Microprose.. throwing in huge feature sets. But given they are SD and not Microprose, they couldn't pull it off.. They realized the AI wouldn't handle it (Microprose wouldn haven't cared and just gave insane bonuses), so each feature set though in theory powerful, was restricted (spells are roughly the same, unit design didn't matter, few special abilities) until it looked empty and pointless..

They don't. Each individual makes it's own attack & defence rolls. Unfortunately the way units with more than one individual calculate their individual attack & defence ratings is currently screwed up, but it should be fixed in the next patch (there's a post about it elsewhere in this section of the forums).

As for your suggestions, I very much disagree. Even if the current system was working as intended, the outcomes are much too variable. A guy with Attack 20 rolls somewhere between 0 and ten times what a peasant can possibly roll. It makes combat unpredictable as hell, prone to spectacularly bad luck, and it creates a sort of feedback of ever increasing HP, Att & Def values. There's nothing good about that system at all.

Finally, the only reason I see for damage to carry over onto individuals that haven't actually been hit (like two guys with 5HP each both getting pasted from a single attack that does 10HP damage), is the time & resources it takes to realise the system. I don't see it having a positive effect on gameplay.

Ok, this makes sense now. It was hard to tell what the original intent of the system was in its current, broken state. Thanks for the clarification.

I retract the summed attack and defence idea, however, I still like the idea for a potential synergy bonus to individuals defence values for larger groups.

1. Drastic shifts in numbers

My Suggestions were: https://forums.elementalgame.com/395049

Change for the 1D:    Split it in a fix number and a variable one, D5…0-5

0 is a botch, max D is +50% (round up)

D10 becomes 5+D5 (6-10, max 13)

D14 becomes 7+D7 (8-14, max 18)

D15 becomes 7+D8 (8-15, max 19) etc.

And on Tactical Combat:

Split Attack and Damage roll

Each Soldier is on its own. A Group sums its damage after the defenders armour is subtracted from each damage-roll of a successful attack.

The Number of possible attackers (of a group) is: # of defenders + 2 + size (so one dragon can still be attacked by 5-6 men) Maybe this doesn’t apply to ranged attacks, but shields should block arrows then.

Each successful attack does minimal damage (1-2 per soldier) if not “blocked”.

Initiative System and/or simultaneous Attacks-Counterattacks (weaker)

More diverse and better Terrain Modifiers (+/-)

High, Dangerous Ground (Quicksand), Block of Sight,

Weapon Range and Modifiers for Positioning (Flanking, Attack from Rear)

Skills that modify all of these

2. Exploits

A Balancing Issue, me think. But separate Summoning from NPC.

Summoning Circles in Cities and on Shards only (for corresponding Elementals)

Number of Creatures should be limited and depending on something different than # of NPC.

3. Too many ideas

Yea, but so was it. Good Ideas, all of them, but I wish the were more “fleshed out” 

4. Stack sizes

See #1 above, Sizes are o.k.

But I go accord; the cities need militia or town-guards. Good for the A.I. against initial Player-Rush. But not the best/latest Units, just something cheap depending not linear on #of townspeople, restricted only to this town and fully activated when the enemy attempts to raze the town.

Size: 50 People / Militia 5 / Raze Attempt: Instant Militia of 10

Size: 200 People / Militia: 10 / Raze Attempt: Instant Militia of 20  

Activation Chance and Number of instant Militia (angry townsfolk) depends on the difference in the Charisma Scores between the struggling sovereigns.

5. Tactical Battle Process

See #1

6. No city damage

I agree

7. No expansion penalties

Food restricts this somewhat already, but Upkeep cost should be higher.

A slightly different economic system would be nice, one which makes towns less a necessity.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/396165

Also eventually just a little income from the normal land itself (Gold and Materials) and a little less from the special resources (so not having that one gold-mine is initial not that crippling). But Multiplier-Buildings must than re-evaluated (maybe multiplier only for special resources, hm?)  

8. Random monster spawn

Again, just a balancing problem… More interactive/diverse Quests are a bigger concern for me and these strange abruptly appearing gigantic quest locations. Please let them simple be on the map – and I can only get inside if my scholars decipher the door-code. (With small ones, like a hole in the ground, an underground-dungeon entrance – I have no problem…) 

9. AI

Not an easy job for Mr. Frogboy

10. No diplomatic consequences

Hm… closely correlated with the A.I. A better (and still hidden) numerical System for moral and “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”…

Take your time Stardock, I have fait!! 

1: I really would much rather perfer that every unit did a base damage of something and then weapons would only modify that damage by a very small amount. Swords, maces, axes and spears should all really do about the same amount of damage. But gain an advantage or disadvantage vs the type of armor you are wearing(blunt,pierce or slash). Then add base damage bonuses based on the skill level of the unit. Those skill levels could come through research or through specialty buildings(trainers) or just plain experience. Two-handed weapons and bows would be a bit different, with bows maybe making one or two incrimental improvements throught technology.

Armor should be based on the protection it provides vs certain attack types and balanced with movement/combat speed restrictions. Lightly armored guys move quick, but dont last long and armored turtles resist a lot but take forever to do anything, maybe getting killed by a rain of arrows.

All in all though there should be many different types for each weapon, swords, axes, maces and such. Like for swords, a longsword might be good at slashing, normal with blunt and suck at piercing. Its not going to do great vs chainmail(which is good vs slashing and sucks vs piercing). But a Gladius(Broad Roman sword) is great at Piercing, and maybe normal at blunt, less than a longsowrd at slashing, but guys in chainmail wont wana fight you.

That way each player could build a unique civilaization based on what they want, not on whats the best weapon. So I could have spearman who carry round shields and wear scale breastplates as the mainstain of my unique looking army. Maybe through exploring sites I might find a mastersword smith who suddenly changes my civs whole combat outlook or maybe an armorsmith was the one who taught me scalemail to begin with.

The Huns and the Romans were two very different opponents to face. So should the other factions you face, with the player having to adapt depending on the opponets that are around them or the advantages they can make for themselves.

 Also Groups shouldnt stack attack values, they should just get more rolls to attack with maybe a bonus to hit considering various factors(armor vs weapons vs group sizes).

Now how about some examples.

Joe Bob is my starting peasent he does a base damage of 4 has an armor of 0, he uses a club (+1 vs blunt,+0 vs anything else.) and he wears padded armor(+1 vs blunt, +1 vs slash, 0 vs pierce.) If Joe Bob lives through his first battle it will only be by luck.

Sir Charles is my swordsman, he has been trained in combat at the keep, his base damage is 6 and an armor of 2, he uses a Gladius (+1 vs blunt, +1 vs slash, +3 vs pierce.) He weares scalemail (+3 vs slash, +1 vs blunt, + 1 vs pierce, -1 move/combat speed)

Joe bob should still have a chance to hurt Sir Charles, but he will most likely die, badly. Even several Joe Bobs probably wont win verse Charles, but enough of them might. Hitpoint amounts would still play a factor along with how you determine damage, but it is essential skill vs numbers.

That is the choice you are trying to present players in combat. Do I have enough skill to win vs the numbers? Can I find an advantage to exploit that will allow me to win vs greater numbers? Should I just zerg them with bonk master peasents in padded armor? Will that even work?

After writing all this, it occured to me someone has probably already said all this, just like me. Oh well, you did say we should tell you what we want to see. So I did.

7: You could really cut down on the rapid expanding by uping the population costs of pioneers, either in a flat rate or scale it according to how many cites you already have.

Now I want to add one.

11. FAIR GAME PLAY: For the love of god, please stop punishing the player for playing. Monsters out of control groups, insane damage inbalances, speciality skills way overpowered. If I wana play a punishing game, make a diffcutly level for it or a toggle.

 A.I. Players that dont follow the same rules players do, A.I. pioneers/combat groups wandering care free next to those same monster groups, bonuses givin to A.I. players to make them more difficult instead of making them smarter or more ruthless. A.I. Players dont try to win the game themselves(Alliance victory, Spell of Making), they are only roadblocks for the players. Please steer clear of anything Sid Myers may have taught you...The key to making a game more fun does not lie in making the A.I. cheat.

Punishing players for researching tech. Players advance to gain advantages they can use, not to spawn more difficulty. Please see Elder Scrolls:Oblivion on how not to handle player advancement. 

No benefit for keeping forests in your kingdom, they only spawn monsters, every one of them should be burned to the ground or turned into desert. Give some kind of bonus to having forests in your kingdom, maybe a so much food bonus per forest square amount. 1 for 10, 20 ,60 forest squares...something.

Allow me to build harbors anywhere there is water. Just transform the land for me, its ok, you can even take the mana if you need to, I wont mind. I do mind however, guessing if the beach will really be beach that I can put a harbor on, or wondering why I can make buildings to harvest shards, but building a harbor off a cliff is impossible.

I like the game, I would like it alot more, if you we could find some common ground here or if you dont like my ideas, then at least make it possible for me to make the game that way.

Damage alone is not enough to stop the steamrolling of enemy cities. Newly conquered cities should have unrest. Each turn cities with unrest have a chance of buildings being destroyed. A garrison of troops would be required to put down the unrest or your newly conquered cities go into open rebellion and breaks away.

good AI is only available when there are good players input to the developer. Why? Because the AI can only as good as it's maker when he / she plays the game. So, definately, playing hard AI is just like you play against Frogboy one by one. If it suck, then Frog boy is suck as a gamer That's why Developer tend to let the AI cheat. Because they know that AI won't improve if not edited by it's maker.

My input about AI is that the developer need to upgrade the AI regulary so it can stand against the player playstyle. Or just open the AI source code so the Modder can improve it in the future. Someone doesn't sastified with the current AI? just look for the Mod list. Who know, he'll meet a better AI that created by a better gamer.

As far as harbors go, if u cant find a beach.. make a beach.. Raise land on a cliff, POW instant beach.... your island city to small, POW raise Land.. more room... dont fell like making a boat to get to the island... POW raise land......tired of walking around the mountain.. POW lower land..    one of my favorite spells.

#3: Too many ideas...

I agree with the point about that since many things are brought to the table maybe Stardock should stick closer to formulas from other games where these ideas have been shown to work.  But I like that they are there and getting rid of any would be bad.

#6: No city damage

Attacking cities should be handled differently.  The way that exists now is fine if the city has NO defensive barriers.

But as soon as defensive walls go up, I would like to see a different system.  A hedge or stone wall impartiing a defensive bonus to defenders is too simple and feels wrong. 

And alternative would be that if walls are up, the attacking army needs to lay seige.  For hedge walls, the seige duration could be one turn, for stone walls, say five.  Or have it so the city walls take damage based on army strength.  Once the walls are destroyed, the city is attacked as if there are no walls, and walls would need to be reconstructed once the city is taken (or defended).  Catapults, rather than being glorified archers, would increase seige damage.  You could have a spell like earthquake which for a high mana cost could also weaken stone walls.

This would greatly buff city defense in the game, but I think that's a good thing... it makes the alternative victory conditions more attractive, or forces you to attack the Hinterland outposts before going for the capital city.

I think quite a few of these are already being dealt with in various ways in the future patches.  However, a few of my opinions:

#6:  Unrest.  If I'm Kingdom and I steamroll into a Fallen city, the population isn't really going to be all that excited about me being the new ruler.  It'd be awesome if I had the option to put most the population to the sword to limit the rebellion at a huge city cost. (Yeah, that sounds horribly sadistic.)

#7:  The game needs to encourage specialization and careful expansion.  If I put a city a continent away, near an area heavily influenced by foreigners, that city should definitely take a hit in cost to operate.  If I build 10 cities and place every upgrade possible on each one, the cost to maintain it should become astronomical.  A city shouldn't be able to spit out Squads of experienced soldiers and output a ton of research and output a ton of resources and research spells.  As cities grow in size, corruption, crime and disease should become rampant (w/ applicable technologies/buildings to help reduce the effect).

#8:  I don't mind the random monster spawns.  However, a spawning monster should never spawn within view of the player without some sort of warning.  It would be interesting if Monster spawn points could be seen and destroyed ala the barbarian cities in Civilization.  These spawning points could be randomly created within the fog of war.

I think the stack size of 12 is fine.  The one thing i started thinking about today was, what if only 1 stack was allowed per square?  this  would allow you to hold up defensive positions (choke points) and get a better idea of what kind of army is running around.  As it is now, there could be multiple 12 unit stacks in a square, pretty misleading. (i'm using unit as the stack slots. ex. sov, 1 company, 1 squad = 3 units.)

I had a battle today where i saw 1 stack of units heading toward a city and the AI attacked me 8 consecutive times.  the first two battles where from 12 unit stacks, the rest were 1 unit stacks.

lots of good thoughts here, one point on #1 - do we need so many pieces of armour? apart from causing balance difficulties, it seems a complete waste. One slot body armour, one slot shield is all that's needed. We can get rid of greaves/helmets etc.

I support the addition of a fatigue mechanism, it works well in Dominions3

Just picked up a mace on turn 2. My god does it kick arse!

Yeah! Lots of stuff like that. E.g. Multiple Spies – nasty.

Give it time, when the game gets out of beta they will have this stuff sorted.

Have much less of an issue with this then with lots of other stuff. Still some rough edges could be smoothed. Any further than this, and I think each point should be taken individually.

Oh, by the start – do you mean the start of a game of Elemental, or the start of development?

Agreed that the tactical map can not cope with large stack battles. Not enough squares. Can cope with 3 units a side – but 12?

I had a battle where at least 11 units attacked one of my cities with around 50 units in. Units seemed to get stacked on each square on the tactical map, and lots of stuff did not seem to work properly.

Limit stack sizes, or just except that after a certain size you have to use auto combat (or rewrite tactical combat so there are more squares).

Lots of bigger problems, but yes what you are suggesting would be better. At the very least you should not be able to have two versions of each improvement – Empire and Kingdom. Various options here.

Just been looking at a post about this. My theory is have all cities except the capital have an extra food upkeep, plus reduce the impact of caravans – max it at 25% not 100%, and set a min city level of 2 for building caravans. So the food supply limits the size of your empire, at least at the start.

Eh! they are? Thought they were an attempt to help the player over their cash flow problems.

AI is always a problem in any game. As long as they continue to improve it, I don't think you can really pin this on them.

I guess they did not want it to be too blatant a copy of Civ. Still Civ is the result of twenty years of development. An almost exact lifting would work, and I suspect will be quickly modded in if necessary.

Regarding city damage, since people seem to have trouble with how gold is earned one way or the other (either too little from resources or too much coming from monsters), why not add a function like Rome: Total War?  You can pillage it for extra gold or leave it be to keep structures intact.  Unfortunately since Elemental doesn't have a happiness statistic for some reason, there's less depth in regards to city capturing (in Rome you could decimate the population so it won't revolt against you).

I tried that, lowering and raising land to make a beach, for whatever reason the game didnt like any of the beach I created and still wouldnt let me build a harbor. Just seems kinda silly not to have an auto option unless there was some specific tile that I couldnt turn into beach.

I think that is a great idea, because if you have enough gildar you buy always all parts of an armor, but the helmet should be seperate for cosmetic reasons.

A couple of other points.

First I think also that Labour Pit and hut should be the only things buildable at size 1.

Secondly there should be more incentive to build more than one size 5 city. You get a big ouf with the first - Tower of Erog, Mint and trade centre. But no particular reason to build a second, it being more useful to raise a size one city to size 3 than a size 3 city to size 5. Maybe put more big buildings, palace, wonders in size 5 buildings, only allow the best units to be build in size 5 cites; that sort of stuff.

So the way the game is structured now, we build one size 5 city in best gold producing city as many size 3 cities as food can cope with (for Temples of Essence) then full the rest of the map up with as many size 1 cities as can pack in.

City sprawling is bad as it reduce the number of cities you can fit into an area.

In fact thanks to caravans, if you have taken the time to ensure one city has two food resources, then in the end game you can should be able to use caravans to upgrade all cites on that continent to size 3.

Very good suggestions here.  I agree with all of this, especially the +500% battle animation, lol.  I get seriously annoyed when I have to actually run a tactical battle because the AI is not smart enough to protect my weaker hp units on auto-resolve (even if the battle is 900-200 in my favor, I'll lose one of my sovereigns on auto resolve--usually don't even lose hp on any unit if I just do it myself).  And then having it take 10 minutes due to the slow battle animations makes me want to scream sometimes.

First off, Great Discussion and the OP has some valid points...  There are Brilliant folks in this community, (some to much so for their own good) but nonetheless brilliant for it.

#2  What you discribe is not an exploit when the game mechanics intentionally exist to allow for it.  Are there bugs in the process? maybe?  But Bugs do not make an exploit.  This game is so new that even the devs do not seem to know what is a bug and what is not yet... so we DO need more and continued interaction and patch support to resolve bugs such as the confussion spell which allows for exploitation.  Then there is the essence base pool which limits how many Champs can be recruited.  I for one think the summoning and caster champ route should be viable as well as the Quest route and Research route and Diplomacy route and Warmonger/conquest route to victory.  The Caster route does need to be balance the AI needs to be able to respond in kind.  But that is a AI / Balance issue not an exploit so while I agree on teh general area of work to be done with you I disagree on the verbage and litteral way you make your point.

I roleplay the ole fart hermit caster who recruits young champs to fight for a cause! wield magic and arms for said cause!  But my sov is a facilitator and director not the tip of the spear past turn 50-75. 

#3 I like all the elements but agree that they need better balance between them all.

In general, I agree with most of the rest of you points, with minor disagreements in some of the specifics. 

Thanks for posting. There are heaps of really excellent thoughts in here about a whole range of different aspects.

Below is a heavily edited summary of the ideas I like (My comments refer to the quote above each one, not the quote below):

Agree. In my OP I wasn't suggesting removing them from the game. Rather I was hoping to get the basics right first then finish them. I see them as a bit of a smoke-screen with regards the balance.

Good ideas.

A lot of great ideas in this post. I edited out the combat mechanism but do like the thinking here. I also like that the trainable squad size idea basically reduces the escalation of numbers to 1,2,3,4.

Like it.

Agree.

A lot of good ideas here.

Nice ideas here. particularly for TC.

Good idea to hinder initial rush.

Like it.

Yep.

Would help but there should also be a cost when you go into the negative - like when you capture enemy cities that don't have a food resource and it takes you past your limit.

Like this idea.

Coming from a fan of HoMM games, If they could somehow make the random mobs a bit more similar to how they were in those games would be awesome.  Most of the valuable resources were guarded by the mobs, and if not attended to they would generally get stronger and stronger.  Having something similar set-up for elemental would be awesome, with certain mobs guarding precious resources, but then having others prey on unsuspecting caravans.  A bit more rhyme and reason to the resource placement I believe would be needed for this though.  Seeing an earth shard, but having to fight some trolls in order to clear the way to it would be awesome.  Any peoples feedback on this idea would be appreciated.

 Also some sort of limit to how many champions you can imbue with your essence would be a nice balance.  Some one had mentioned in a post about putting a bigger focus on your sovereign having to use his magic to improve the land in order to found a city in an area.  I really liked their suggestion as it fits with the whole restoring the world.  

Sometimes you have to make a bigger beach and it does depend on how far away from your city or on top of it.. It is weird sometimes. Tho i finally got Raise Mountain and its awesome.. make choke points and a wall of mountains.. Have a border town swarmed with mob spawns? just seal it off.. can always lower later.

It seems they run out of money at some point - that means limited special abilities, no flying units ( I remember AoW 1 where dragons and airships ruled versus most ground units ). How about more ranged units - some crossbows , ballistas, add some warships and so on. The lore is simply not represented in the game - we have dragons with huge wings walking instead of flying, and the levitation spell from the intro is not to be found in the game.

But there are also easy to fix things - like the density of resources in the world and a shortcut for "New Game".