Numbers and numbers with some numbers

By Frogboy Posted October 27, 2009 16:44:47

Someone who is only casually into gaming asked me what battles in Elemental will be like. I said if there was a game called Magic: Total War, then you have a pretty good idea of what the scale of battles would be.

Now, for lots of people (and myself included most of the time) auto-resolve will be the preferred choice. One of my biggest pet peeves as a gamer is feeling like I have to fight through every battle myself. So this is an area that beta testers and us will be discussing a lot and one of the reasons why the tactical battles are getting so much public beta testing time this Winter.

…

But let’s talk about numbers.

Battles

Early battles might have 5 soldiers involved.

Late battles might have 10,000 soldiers involved.

Economics

A citizen produces gold and research points.

The default rate is 0.10 gold and 0.10 research points per citizen.

Players will be able to change those rates based on what they build in their city.

Prestige

Buildings provide prestige.

Prestige determines population growth because you’re really trying to attract people into your towns from the wastelands.

Resources

An improvement will produce N resources when played on a resource (farm on fertile land).

Some types of resources give bonuses to whatever is built on them (a farm on a wheat resource produces more food than fertile land)

All cities in your kingdom will receive 1.0 of a resource per turn when any city is using it.

A city will receive an additional 1.0 of that resource per turn if it is connected by a road.

This amount will be able to be modified through technologies and improvements.

A caravan is sent to each city in your kingdom that is connected by a road and will deliver N (typically 10.0) of that resource when it arrives at a destination city temporarily adding to whatever projects need it.

* We don’t currently like how roads are being built but don’t want players to be forced to building “workers” to build the roads. If anyone has any suggestions we’d like to hear it.

Populations

Populations start out in a city at 1 and can rise to tens of thousands late in the game and possibly higher depending on player feedback.

Armies

There is no such thing as just building a unit. That unit has to come from your population. If you plan to have mass armies then you better have massive population. If you plan to have small armies that are very well equipped then you better have the resources to do it. If you plan to have fight with elite forces of magic users then you better have access to the shards and magic spells or have completed quests.

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I was not familiar with total war. I went on you tube and saw a huge battle. If we can get that in Elemental I am all for it. It would be way cool.

I am also again the super unit that is unstopable. Even in LOTR Sauron was defeated once with a lucky sword stroke. Maybe something like this can be put in the game. The possibility that a super unit will make a fatal mistake or that a regular unit will get lucky....

It was not a regular unit ..... it was a KING!!!

Admittedly some of these ideas has been mentioned. Here is some of my wants about roads...

Roads should have its own progression of development.   Gamer should be able to make strategic decision on the design of road networks, especially as caravan is an important way to transport resources (and hopefully equipment during unit upgrade)

Tracks
Tracks are automatically generated due to heavy foot traffic, may it be generated from repeated caravan traffic, or a huge army has just passes by.   There is no way to remove those tracks manually (short of casting some illusion spells), but they disappear if not used.   Negligible speed improvement, no upkeep needed.

Tracks appears between cities as trade/caravan travels between them, using a shortest path. After gamer build a road to fine-tune their route, the tracks will eventually disappear.

Roads
Caravan travelling along a road will never leave it unless it is manually instructed by gamer.   This means gamer has a complete control of their trade routes by road construction. Caravan will never take the shortest route to its destination when proper road is available, (e.g. to avoid anticipated danger). Some speed improvement, upkeep needed to maintain it. Costs $ to build.

Gamer can build road anywhere. This can be used as an distraction strategy if wanted.

Bridge: similar to roads.

Forts
Forts provide defensive bonus; larger more expensive fortress provides higher bonus. All caravan stops immediately at a fort. When they resume traveling next turn, any unused movement point last turn is carried over , plus they got some extra speed bonus this turn.   Thereby, gamer can better protect caravans if they garrison troops in forts. High upkeep. Expensive to build.

Man-made walls
Walls are built between cloth map tiles, just like the river in Beta. And up to 4 walls can be built by workers on 1 map tile.   Most Non-flying units CANNOT traverse to the other side of the wall.   There are infinite configurations possible with other on-tile structures like cities, forts, archer towers, mage towers, etc because walls will automatically connected to these structures. For example, the Chinese Great wall can be easily simulated by a long row of map tiles made from a “wall+road+wall” configuration.

Siege warfare on the Strategic map
Units with ranged weapon garrisoned on the Fort/tower automatically attacks nearby enemy without melee retaliation.   Normal foot soldiers cannot assault Fort/man-made wall unless siege equipments are researched & equipped (e.g. siege ladders, rams).   Siege weapons like Catapult, Giants`stone throwing can destroy a wall section and then allows normal entry.

Workers
I like Workers unit. I don’t like “Automated” workers unit (a la Civ4) as they never do want I want & too much micro. EWOM should incorporate a “Way Point” system, this will reduce any need to have them automated.   Gamer draw a path on the map, the unit follows while performing one of the actions available; in this case, workers building roads & all other infrastructure outside city on the cloth map.

When workers are building roads/walls/forts etc, a stream of caravan will supply the material needed e.g. stone. This represents the difficulties of building structure in remote/enemy location.

Workers are usually not killed. They surrenders and be captured by enemy instead. They can keep building fort after being captured, even if their new owner do not have the technology to build a fort.

I like all of Climber's ideas in the above post except for two; I don't like the walled road idea at all. to me both unrealistic and unfun. On workers I am not against so much as I am neutral. Whether there are actual worker units or roads just "get built" without creating a worker, both can be fun, so it doesn't matter to me. However, I do not like the idea that workers can be captured and then continue to build something for the captor that he does not have the tech to be able to build. I don't mind the part that they can be captured, just the part that they can continue to build whatever they were building regardless of the new owner's tech capability.

actually Athens would build Walls around the Roads from their cities to their Dockyards/Ports, so that they can more safely get to their navy when under attack.

enryu, Reply 104.

Thanks for liking most of the idea above. I am not sure what you did not like the "walled road" idea, I'll like to hear. However, I've made a change about walls and have it updated it with the following:

Man-made walls
Walls are built between cloth map tiles, just like the river in Beta. And up to 4 walls can be built by workers on 1 map tile. Most Non-flying units CANNOT traverse to the other side of the wall. There are infinite configurations possible with other on-tile structures like cities, forts, archer towers, mage towers, etc because walls will automatically connected to these structures. For example, the Chinese Great wall can be easily simulated by a long row of map tiles made from a “wall+road+wall” configuration.

Finally, I explain a bit more about why I like workers here if there is a Waypoint mechanism in EWEOM to simply unit's path planning.

Yea, walls being in-between tiles seems like the best option. I wonder if that will make walls harder to garrison though? Maybe not .. I mean, if ranged units start in a tile "defended" by a wall (a wall should have a front and a back, I think), then if they are attacked from the side which is defended by the wall, I think such ranged units should start upon a massive wall in the battle-screen. Perhaps the rest of units will have an option to use ladders to scale the wall in-case the opponent brings ladders as well? Mind you the wall should be in the middle of the battle-map, streching entire length left-to-right.

Should also be option to simply keep ALL soldiers on the ground behind the wall, and wait for enemy to either Blast their way through or fly over, if you think placing your archers upon the walls would not confer an advantage (or if you don't have archers).

I suppose most such "attacks" would happen at the location of a gate, but I suppose if the wall is meant to be "unscalable" then I suppose ladders are out of the question. Of course, mounted units would not be able to cross an un-gated wall regardless. For an enemy melee unit to cross ... would require significant investment in ladders, either from a resources perspective, or a siege perspective (or both)