2781

There are both tactical and strategic ones, and both are in your heroes’ spellbook (only your sovereign at first, but you can imbue others with magic if you research it).

There are headings in the spellbook for the spells you have, spells you’re researching, and spells available FOR researching. These should really be tabs, imo, but it works.

2782

It’s a bit of a change, but for people who have played Sins of a Solar Empire and Supreme Commander, it’s very intuitive and useful… once you get used to it! And it does take a bit of getting used to.

The cloth map (strategic zoom) is great though. Very, very clear in it’s display of information.

2783

Yep, I see your point now and agere with it. It would probably be logical for a game to scale the spell damage based on how many AP’s you actually spent on it.

On the other hand though, how would you deal with spells that can’t be scaled, like “the target loses its actions for 1 turn”? Not to allow to cast it untill you have all AP’s required? But then the system becomes even more convoluted, where some spells can be cast with partial AP’s and some can’t.

If you make all spells require full AP’s then you have to either lower the AP cost or give the casters more AP’s (because if you don’t, casters can’t move and cast, which is nonsense - all you need to shut down a caster is to chase it, because if the caster stops and casts, he will die). If you lower the cost, you will have powerful spells cost close to a sword swing. If you give casters more AP’s, you have to introduce some artificial requirements to weapons, because a mage can wield a sword and will get more attacks with it than a warrior.

Every of the options leads to a major re-balancing issues. But who cares, that’s the joy of being an armchair designer - you don’t have to worry about balance, development costs and schedule. :)

2784

Generally in games with this mechanism the cost is associated with being able to frontload your attack. For example, in HoMM you have, say, three actions a unit can do. If it’s a caster unit quite often you’ll choose to forego the fact that he can move and attack and then cast to simply cast and stay put, because the model is that casters are fragile and you don’t want them to be up front getting counter-attacked. In that case, there is a tactical choice of attack/attack/big spell vs. big spell/nothing/nothing.

If there’s not in Elemental, then the problem is still there but I’d say it has moved from an “unintuitive” action point cost to poorly balanced alpha vs. omega strike utility: Your spellcaster shouldn’t be up front whacking away effectively against other guys. That should be a tactical choice you make, not something that’s a no-brainer. Under that model, the action point cost thing works just fine, since the real cost of using the lower point attacks first is the risk, not the action points.

2785

Or you screen your spellcaster(s) with other troops. It’s not a one-on-one combat system, after all. That’s how most other games handle ranged units (including HoMM, which you mentioned earlier).

And that’s assuming that a spellcaster will die if they get into melee, which has not been my experience. In the campaign, my leader guy closes to melee range and casts spells all the time. Two sword attacks followed by Fireball is a pretty devastating combo.

2786

While that’s true, I don’t think this is armchair game design, it’s pointing out something that must be either a bug or something completely overlooked in the design.

If you have 3 movement points, and it costs 1 point to move, 1 point to stab, and 3 points to cast a spell, then using two points on a move and stab should result in trying to cast the spell giving you a “you don’t have enough points to do that.”

But from what Ben say, you have this situation:
A) Cast spell at beginning of turn. All 3 points used. Turn over.
B) Make two 1-point moves, and then cast spell. The spell can be cast even though you only have one movement point left. So the spell cost drops to 2 or 1 point if you wait to cast it until after doing other things?

If this is by design, it’s mighty innovative, as it flies in the face of every precedent set before it. And makes no sense when you extrapolate the game mechanics back to the fantasy world. (“This spell has 24 words and 3 gestures I must make. Well, unless I run to you and stab you first, in which case, I can cast the same spell with 8 words and a single gesture!”)

2787

It doesn’t. Heroes of Might and Magic was mentioned a few times already.
Age of Wonders 2 had a similar mechanic. Units had several distinct colours on their move path in tactical battle.
As long as you stayed in the “green range” you could move and still attack twice, when you entered the yellow range you could move further (like moving again) but only attack once. Red range was only moving.

2788

Ben, consider Avernum 6.

Attacking/spell casting costs “all remaining ap”. Characters get 5. Yes, they can move 4 and attack/cast. It’s a situation resulting from the rules being what they are, but IMO a reasonable one (you could certainly add a “no attack after movement” or “after X movement” clause). Casting haste adds 3 ap, but a character still cannot take extra actions (a character can move 7 and attack/cast). I think the key for Vogel was in knowing the mechanics needed to reflect that casting and attacking are far more valuable than moving (the vast majority of the time, anyway). One might make the argument that attacking/casting should not cost the same, but they both need to cost more than moving in an AP system like the one Vogel uses, and making them different is certainly something that needs to be carefuly considered.

With the Elemental system, the relationship of fast/slow units changes dramatically. MoM has plenty of slower, hard hitting units and faster, less powerful units. Here, creating a balance between those things seems more complex. I don’t know that it’s easily done through the attack/defense stats. A fast unit that doesn’t have a good strength and/or defense skill (and maybe lots of hp) is at a huge disadvantage, since it’s going to get countered a lot.

2789

Didn’t Armageddon Empires do something similar?

2790

Somehow I missed this in Brad’s day-0 update post:

One piece of good news on MP. Originally we had planned to eliminate tactical battles from MP entirely because of balance. Some people correctly guessed the misguided (in hindsight) reason for this: We were approaching MP from a purely competitive point of view. Based on the persuasive arguments made by our players, we have decided that tactical battles will be made available in MP – as an option – at a later date as a free update.

As I bitched loudly at the exclusion of this earlier, I felt it was only fair to post it here. That’s great news, I’m glad they listened.

2791

That’s really not the same thing. AoW2 permitted you to move and then fire, but if you wanted to move more than a little bit you had to sacrifice a shot, or even both shots. There was a trade off, it was a decision, it was situational.

There is no trade off involved in the situation as described in Elemental; as was said above, why would you ever not attack and then cast?

2792

2793

2794

Attacking provokes counter attacks (and your leader is pretty squishy if you build him as a caster).
Attacking and then casting prevents you from casting twice.

2795

Not in any way that I can think of; it doesn’t have movement in combat.

As mentioned, lots of games have systems where taking an action (attacking, spell casting) ends a unit’s turn. You can attack, or move and attack, but not attack and move. I can’t think of any where you can attack two times and cast a spell but can’t do the reverse.

2796

You don’t have to attack. You could move and leave a point of AP to cast. Either way, there’s no incentive to not do something else before casting. If that’s the mechanic Stardock really wanted, then they could’ve given every magician one free cast at the end of every turn.

2797

Hmph, I’ve gone from one CTD after 4 hours+ yesterday to 3 CTDs in 3 hours, after the patch. Although I guess it could be related to the progression of my one non-campaign game that I’ve been playing all that time.

2798

Heroes of Might & Magic has been mentioned a few times erroneously. If we’re going to point at other games as examples, let’s get our facts straight. Just to clear things up…

This is incorrect–HoMM does not work that way. An archer in HoMM can move or shoot, not both. This is why you need to screen archers in HoMM with other units–because if an enemy closes with them, then they can’t shoot, and are forced to fight (very ineffectively) in melee, or flee. If they could move and then shoot, then they would be able to take a step away and then fire their bow. But that’s not how the game works.

It’s possible that Stridergg is confusing ranged units with melee. Melee units in HoMM can “charge”–take a move that ends with a melee attack. HoMM considers that to be one action. Which is good, because one action is all that any unit gets in HoMM, unless high morale grants them a free turn.

Or you will forego doing that because it’s not possible. Because it isn’t. Casters, like archers, can move or shoot, not both. In fact, IIRC, ranged units can’t even charge, like melee units can. You won’t even get the cursor, because if you mouse over a distant enemy, the cursor defaults to ranged attack. (Probably because nobody would ever want to charge into melee with a ranged unit, under any circumstances.) When you say “cast,” I think you might be thinking of the hero casting a spell, which is separate from unit actions (well, unless you are playing HoMM IV) and done from off the battlefield. That can be done at any time, and has no impact one way or the other on units taking actions on the battlefield.

Also, each unit has one action that they can do, not three. Well, they have multiple actions to choose from, but they can only do one of them per round.

In that case, there is a tactical choice of attack/attack/big spell vs. big spell/nothing/nothing.

This is not a tactical choice that HoMM ever offers you.

2799

Another example: civilization on the world map.

Two-move units can move into a forest whether they have one or two moves left (and it uses up two). You can move into a plain and then into a forest to travel one tile more.
You can cut corners that way by using the fact that no matter how many moves (above zero) you have left, you can move into a tile.
(Civ1 had the possibility to fail moving in IIRC, but that was later dropped)

2800

The great thing about Wardell and Stardock is they really DO listen to the players and do their best to accomodate. That’s one of the reasons Stardock Fanboi’s exist.

Look at Gal Civ’s last expansion, that added a unique tech tree for each race.

Wardell is very passionate about his games, which may be bad upfront (IMHO takes things a little too close to heart in forum exchanges), but always pays dividends in the end (they stick with a game well BEYOND the “it’s done” phase).

Jorune