3741

The core system of Elemental multiplies modifiers, with the easily ancicipated consequence that every additional level (improvement/whatever) of increase makes the immediately previous increasingly underpowered.
It also produces results by turning modified values into ranges for random numbers, comparing said random numbers, and using the difference as the result. Which means results become increasingly unpredictable and unbalanced over time.
Beyond creating the dual-spirals of game breakage just mentioned, the system is also too simplistic. It’s not a system you can easily make exceptions to, so the potential for cool/weird/interesting spells, special abilities & whatnot, is limited almost to the point of non-existence. Which makes the playing pieces boring to use.

As I’ve said a great many times by now, the only real hope for elemental is that Stardock scraps the systems design entirely, in favour of something more elaborate & predictable, or at least enable modders to do so. Well, that, or that they turn it into an almost exact copy of GalCiv - but I don’t really think that is something to hope for (not that GalCiv was bad. On the contrary, I’m still playing it).

We need a system where a hellspawn can be healed by fire and killed with cold iron. Where blind people can’t hit for shit, but can cause just as grievous wounds as the seeing. Where having a bow doesn’t mean you can’t fight melee. Where wearing field plate won’t protect you from a catapult… Basically, we need a systems design along similar lines as just about every other wargame, rpg & 4X-that-isn’t-GalCiv. Otherwise the game is screwed.

Depending on how close the AI is to you, in that time frame you should either dig in and fortify until you can crush the AI, or you should expand to at least 4 towns.

The former is necessary if the AI is so close you can’t expand. 4X games aren’t exactly wargames, but since you need a competitive chunk of the finite resource pool to win the game, you (and the AI) may not have the luxury of choosing if you want to go to war.

The latter should enable you to re-/train units fast enough to beat down the AI if it comes after you. Assuming you haven’t spend all your gold & material on recruiting useless heroes and expensive production buildings whose product you almost certainly can’t use that early in the game.

By default, all the players in a match have cold war’ish relations. Military- & reputation- equivalence and trade will make factions similar to your own more inclined to peaceful relations with you, but the nature of your situation in the game is such that you basically can’t have peace without superior firepower. It doesn’t mean you have to build your military continuously, but it does mean you have to ensure you don’t fall behind. You can keep track of how you all compare through the kingdom & foreign relations overview menus (yet another flaw of the GUI design).

3742

I’m going to try and get Troy on JTS this week so we can talk about Elemental and Mafia II and then cry in our beers.

3743

So the only way to get them to like you is to build a bigger army. So…if you want to win the diplo victory, you need a big army. If you want to win the military victory, you need a big army. Where’s the subtlety? Where’s the strategy?

3744

You don’t need a big army, you just need a decently competitive one. And there are other things that you can do to offset the relationship hit of having a smaller army, such as diplomatic capital and trade treaties.

I’m something like 250 turns into my current game and have yet to be attacked. But I was smart enough to sign an early alliance with one neighbor and a non-aggression pact with the other. And I’ve been willing to spend money and diplomatic capital to maintain those relationships. Seems to be similar (if somewhat simplified) to what the Civ games do to me.

3745

The -2 doesn’t make or break your diplomatic ties, it’s just one modifier among many. Although ‘many’ in this case doesn’t seem to approach the ‘many’ different types of modifiers I’ve seen in GalCivII (I haven’t look all that hard), +/- 2 might be the hair that broke the camel’s back, but it isn’t going to force your hand unless you’re got shortcomings in other departments.

3746

I just emailed Stardock for a refund. Never did that with a game before. I think we should all do that to send a message that we won’t put up with their paid beta tactics!

3747

How? I can’t even get non-aggression pacts, let alone alliances.

3748

Yep. Not this week, but next. It will be an extra long show, too.

Troy

3749

What do you mean by “can’t”? As far as I can tell, it’s a simple matter of matching the values. When you pull up the treaty menu you will see the value of your, let’s say, alliance offer and the value the other guy places on his. If your value is lower then his, then he will never agree to a treaty. So you have to add to your value until yours is large enough that he agrees to the deal. You can use money or diplomatic capital to do that. Simply click on one of those and add that to the deal. Make sure to click “ok” on that popup box or the offer won’t count. Then click on the part where you say you agree to the deal.

If you are playing from a non-military approach then you are going to have to pay for alliances and such. Trade treaties help improve you overall relationships, which makes the cost of alliances and non-aggression pacts cheaper.

3750

I’ve had to start using female Sovereigns 100% of the time now because of my inability to find a mate with my male Sovereigns. I’m sure there’s a female or two randomly generated out in the world somewhere, but all the fertile heroes seem to be predominately male in this game.

3751

They are certainly more uncommon, but I’ve been able to find them in my games. Sometimes is takes awhile, though. Also, the AI seems relatively competent in taking them if I’m boxed in and can’t get out for awhile. At that point no heroes ever wander into my area.

3752

There is a Diplomacy Tech upgrade that allows you to trade heroes. I used this in one game to “buy” a female hero (no - don’t ask). Of course, the two next turns, I ran into 3 female heroes in the wilds.

3753

I had absolutely no idea I could buy and sell my spouse. I guess I haven’t spent enough time being diplomatic, thanks for pointing it out. Now I’m off to buy the future mother of my four… no, three children (my dude has the ugly trait).

3754

Even that seems wrong. I haven’t gotten to catapults yet (I restart the game a lot, trying to learn it. I’m ready to give up. I tried.), but you mean to tell me catapults are precision weapons you can use to kill lone men on the field? They’re not artillery bursts, are they? Armor should be worthless against them, but they should be inaccurate enough to make them ineffective against mobile and/or small units, no?

3755

I think that’s expecting a bit much of the game and given that catapults have been a standard counter for tightly packed troops going back to Civilization IV and Rome: Total War, it’s not a decision many gamers will be upset over, IMO.

3756

The amount of gold I need to balance it out is far more than I have. Why so imbalanced?

3757

I’m finally into a mid-game after many restarts due to learning how to do stuff.

I don’t know if it’s this way every time, but in my games Magnar runs a huge deficit while fielding a massive army. Every one else seems to be keeping a good eye on their budgets.

But Magnar’s armies are magic weak. He steamrolls everyone with high attack/low defense/no magic armies. So here’s the strat I’ve developed to (hopefully) beat him.

You have to start off with a character who is very good at magic. You want to find a spouse very early and keep that unit with you for a long time, but DO NOT WED until the plan has matured.

You will use your sov and his/her spouse-to-be plus a few extra units to wipe out the wandering monsters. You will probably already know that they can mostly be found in the woods and hills. You can’t neglect the defense of the homeland of course, so keep up with that. But don’t attack anyone, keep everyone happy with you, and level up you and your spouse, focusing ONLY on intelligence and essence. (Of course you will need to imbue your spouse with essence for it to have any.) Once both characters are very good spell casters, marry them off. When the children grow up, they will all be very good spell casters. You want all four of them in your primary army. Since you have been focusing on magic, you will have six spell casters with high essence/intelligence. YOU WILL NEED THEM! The best spells are obvious – the area of effect spells and the high damage spells. You need a big enough army to keep the baddies off your mages, but they don’t have to actually fight all that well. You can make them high defense units.

I’m not outlining everything here, still lots you need to decide about the other techs to keep up with everyone, but this strat may allow you to handle Magnar’s huge armies without having to keep up with him man for man.

3758

Fenris, they might figure that you need the agreement much, much more than they do. (whether they’re a bottleneck between you and the majority of the map as an example).

I’ve played several games and never have a problem getting an agreement unless they just don’t like me. If I’ve been overly aggressive with other civ’s, especially friends of the civ I am trying to make an agreement with, they’ll dislike my warring nature and prices will go up as well.

If you post an example save game somewhere for download I wouldn’t mind taking a look at it and trying to figure out if there’s anything you can do to make things work. Saves are stores in the “Documents\My Games\Elemental\Saves” folder in Win7, and I think they’re only a meg or two in size.

I’m using the latest updated version of elemental, so if you haven’t updated yet for whatever reason, don’t worry about posting it.

3759

Are you trying to schedule Mr. Wardell to be on the Elemental podcast? I thought his previous appearance was very interesting. Wasn’t that podcast on the top ten Three Moves Ahead list (I can’t locate that list now)?

Kal

3760

Yes, Brad will be there, too, for some of it.

Troy