2961

I agree, just play the sandbox game.

I’m enjoying it. It’s come a long way since beta 4. As patched on release day, I think it’s very fun and addictive.

2962

Unfair representation? Probably. Quite a bit exaggerated I admit.

Its just frustrating so see this thread have two more pages every time I look, and have most of those filled with almost nothing about the actual game.

Ok, then: Technology.

The technology tree has some random techs. As a fanatic fan of the MoO1 tech system I am still disappointed. The random techs are of so little influence. Elemental still is geared towards optimizing the research order.
You play along, researching one area at a time completely disregarding the pace of the game.
My favourite example: city defenses. So at some point you decide you want those and research the first level in warfare. You then start building that in your city queue. In the time that first defence takes to build (hedge?) you could research the next two levels of city defense (with the hedge automatically upgrading to the researched level).

I’m sure sure if i make my point clear… It just feels so wrong to me that technologies fly by so fast if you focus on them , yet completely stagnate in the other areas. Rewarding the human for optimizing a max exploit strategy an AI could never compete with.
One technology at a time and progressively rising costs independent of the actual situation in the game are also thing I personally dislike. -> Costs for light armour can vary greatly; depending only on how many warfare techs you researched before. It has no influence at all if you have iron or not, if light armour would be a “logical” tech because your leather armour doesn’t cut it any more against an enemy using many archers, if light armour is widespread and well know in the game world or you are the first to discover it.
The Mongols didn’t develop horse riding to be better at creating the Mongol empire. They had a culture based on horse riding (because they “had horse resources”) which was on of the things that made the Mongol empire in its form possible. I’d like things like this “cultural specifics”, resources available, situation on the map (counter technologies becoming available/more likely after encountering something) influence technology.

Good examples:

  • Paradox EU series.
    Technology costs rise considerably if you are “ahead” too much while being behind compared to your neighbours gives a considerable bonus to research. That still allows for technological superiority yet encourages distributed research and provides a positive rubber band effect.

  • MoO1: missing certain techs can be a real hindrance in a game, yet greatly improve the actual gameplay. -> Not getting the first three bomb techs might make planetary invasions against an opponent with planetary shields almost impossible, unless you look for alternatives (bio weapons, missiles as a low efficiency bomb, or a beam weapon that can overcome the inherent weakness of beam weapons at bombardments, not to mention diplomacy and espionage).

  • Sword of the Stars: Technologies can have different roots. Phasors might spring up from cheap early laser weapons or might require the much more advanced meson beam tree first. (Made that one up to illustrate)
    Different races have different strengths in a semi random tech tree. Hivers have much better chances to roll for most of the kinetic weapon techs for example.

Hmm sorry, seems I drifted into armchair territory quite a it. I’m just disappointed by the atmosphere destroying, uninspired, poorly paced implementation of technology.

2963

I always skip the campaign and go straight to sandbox. I generally do the same thing for RTS games. The campaign always feels kind of crippled with me not being able to take full advantage of all the units and other game mechanisms until I get to the very last campaign scenarios.

2964

Therlun: Good stuff. My only experience with the sandbox + tech so far has been with a race aiming for the Spell tree ASAP, and I think that’s “OK” as far as the rewards you get go. I must admit I don’t quite understand the way you’re “unlikely” or “likely” to get certain techs as a result, though.

2965

From my experience, that is not true. Researching any tech would make that warfare tech more expensive, other warfare techs simply have a greater effect on the cost than techs from a different tree. I noticed that while climbing the civilization tree the first level of adventure tech started to cost more and more turns to research, although still less than the next level in civilization tech.

2966

I think the housing upgrade is really up in a strange part of the tech tree. You need to get Education before you can get Housing.

Here’s the actual chain:

Civics > Specialization > Administration > Economics > Education > Housing

After you unlock housing, there’s a small chance any time you tech up the Civilization research branch that you’ll get an option to take the Refined Housing Richard mentions.

2967

If you’re talking about the mechanic, when you research a new tech level, you have a % chance of being able to select one of the listed possible techs. I’m making up the numbers, but:

Green = 100% chance of being able to pick it
Yellow = 50% chance of being able to pick it
Brown = 20% chance of being able to pick it.

So to get that Refined Housing tech (brown), you may need to research the Civ tree 2-3 times.

2968

That might actually be true, but the effect is rather small compared to the tree-specific growth of costs.

My comment was also aimed more to the order within a tree. Light armour might be half as expensive as city defense or three times as costly, depending on the order you do the warfare techs. It’s only dependent on your choice of order and not directly connected to the state of the game.

2969

I actually rather like that there are techs you may or may not get to pick from when you’re levelling one section of the tree.

2970

I like it to a point, for extraneous stuff, but I don’t understand why a staple like Alliances (a victory condition) has only a random chance of showing up when I want it.

2971

Fair enough. And that is not the weirdest thing. Imagine you are going up the civilization tech tree instead, and are focusing on research improvements, and refined learning tech. You spend a lot of time and money building said new research buildings. Now you want to use that research power to research the some other civic improvements you really want. However, it is quite possible that research tech made the tech you want so much more expensive, that researching it will take longer than if you simply didn’t have that advanced research tech.
Now that is a good example of how weird this system really is.

2972

The chance is based on the amount of techs you have researched and the level of the technology in that tree, and is rerolled after every breakthrough. It gives you a small chance to get an advanced tech earlier than normal and making it less predictable on how long it will take to research a certain tech, unless it is very easy compared to your current tech level. It is not really all that different than Master of Orion’s random chance of breakthrough once you have payed the minimum amount of research points.

2973

I understand how it works, I don’t understand the reason for it.

2974

Not having reached a point in the campaign where I could research anything, I’m confused about this tech talk. It seems that you guys are saying that as you progress up one tech tree the cost of researching other tech trees increases. Is that the case? If so, what’s the justification for that? As you become more specialized along one path you’re being discouraged by increasing costs to try out another path?

2975

Really? Here’s the particular segment I take exception to:

First off, I’d like to see where I’m apologizing for anything when someone refers to me as an over the top apologist. I don’t believe I did that anywhere. Quite on the contrary, I’ve been on the offensive instead of defensive. I had nothing to do with the game, and didn’t submit a single beta report despite my early access with the preorder. I’d like it to be a good investment, but it obviously has had some issues and I’ve never said otherwise.

Second, Mr. Francis is somewhat confused between “paid beta test” and “precisely what people signed up for and were warned about multiple times.”

Regarding it being “kind of a shame” that Brad posted that people unhappy with the launch state of Elemental should stop buying Stardock games, I wholeheartedly agree. That’s a piss-poor response to valid criticism from people who paid for what should be a finished product. There is no element of media conspiracy in this “sound-bite oriented world”. Brad said what he said and it was dumb. I disagree that there is any “valid reason” for Brad to have reacted that way, especially to Ben and Jason’s very even tempered and justified criticism.

Last, I’d like to see where I stated or implied any kind of a conspiracy or excused Brad’s post. I explained it, but I didn’t excuse it. There’s a world of difference between the two.

Anyway, I’m not aware that I ran over your dog and stole your mother’s purse, but I do apologize profusely to you if I did so by accident. ;)

2976

Heh. An adventurer cropped up. I went and moved my Sov to talk to her. Instead, the movement turned into an attack as the adventurer moved. I was given no choice whether I wanted to attack or talk. I kill the adventurer, the game gives me the “You have murdered someone, the world will react!” talk.

2977

I haven’t played the campaign, I’m a sandbox guy.

As for your question about techs:
There are five trees, each tree has several branches available. Every time you complete research in a tree (you can only research one tree at a time) your knowledge for that tree goes up a level, and subsequent levels in that same tree will cost more, even for branches you haven’t explored at all.

2978

Feedback Part II (yes, i have the game alt-tabbed. Alt-Tab works for me, except i lose the particle effects)

-Sometimes an information (like type of spell, strategic or tactical) appear on the right column of the page, sometimes on the left column.
-Creature camps are confusing, because they appear to work like a normal resource tile (you have to research the appropriate tech, the tile have to be inside you influence area, you have to click on it and the select build) but really there is an added requisite, they have to touch one of your cities to work.
-There should be some indicator in the floating hud of the cities when said city have full housing (i.e. it needs more houses so the population can grow).
-Spiders, spiders everywhere!. I don’t know why, buy in my actual game there are groups of spiders spawning everywhere. It seems there is no other type of creature in the game. Normal spider, rock spider, hoarder spider, albino rock spider (lol?), etc.
-In auto-resolve mode, casters doesn’t use their mana to use spells. It’s a delicate issue, as you don’t want the AI to waste your precious mana, but sometimes the fact it won’t use you powerful offensive spells makes the auto-resolve mode itself null, so you will have to fight every battle even if there aren’t lots of enemies in the fight. A threshold perhaps, a % of mana?
-I feel there is change for worse in the pace of the game with the last patch. There is slower mundane teching?? and less resources on average. I think a feedback cycle in the game systems that makes the game go a bit too slowly, as you can’t pump new cities as before, that makes the teching slower that makes the possibilies to expand also slower that in return affect again the possibilites of found new cities and gain more food and/or mundane tech to speed up the cycle.
Or perhaps i am imagining things.
-When you want to cast an enchantment (enchanment!!), you can’t choose the target in the actual group.
-Worse perfomance than Crysis.
… really? (edit: mmm i think it was caused by a memory leak)

And there is something it’s not griping me in the game. The magic system, and how little can be used. In MoM you could do magic everywhere. Same in AoW I (well, only in your area of influence, i think). In AoW 2 and SM, the channeler was present in the game as a hero, like in Elemental, but could cast spells in every battle which occurs somewhat nearby your mage, in a radius, and if it was in a city with a magical tower, the radius was much bigger. And other heroes served as relays, also.
Here you only cast spells if your avatar is present in the battle, or in battles where perhaps you have an hero for whom the channeled has shared essence, or in the rare case where the champion was also a channeler.
And then the slow mana regen. comes to finish killing the magic system.

2979

And also important, the 4 other trees will cost more too, the increase is just less pronounced than the increase in the tree you just researched in.

2980

The gamer’s bill of rights is still up:

http://gamersbillofrights.com/