I've been playing around with this idea since the first night Elemental launched, though I'm not sure if it's been raised here before now. If so, I apologise.
Like everyone else who has ever played this game I've been frustrated by the lack of balance between individual champions and stacks of soldiers. I've read some well thought out posts on this board regarding ways to balance stats, or use a new 'to hit' mechanic, but I think that the most elegant way to solve this issue is to have 'adventuring parties' and 'armies' as separate entities in the game.
Allow me to elaborate through story.
In the early game I have a great time exploring with my soverign and early summons and weak champions. Taking on wolves and darklings for small rewards is fun, the sort of fun I expected from this game. What is not fun is when the game rather awkwardly transitions to the point where a full army is needed to complete a 'dungeon crawl' sort of quest and even moving about the map with a party of only adventurers will result in death. At this point champions become irrelevant, and the fun of having high level heroes evaporates.
Why not make a party of individuals a separate entity to an army of brigands? They can have slightly more movement than an army, to account for them moving about easier. If a hostile army detects a band of adventurers and moves onto their square they should not automatically surround and attack them. Depending on some skills maybe the party could attempt to evade capture. If they are captured they could be ransomed back to the player. Perhaps individuals could take on some of the gameplay roles that agents have in Total War games. Hiring a thief would allow you to sneak into enemy cities etc... In my opinion this would give the champions much need flavour. This way champions would be relevant for the entire game, and new ways of putting them to use would become apparent over the game.
When it comes to sending your champions into large battles why not allow them to attach themselves to a group of soldiers, like a bodyguard? It fixes the imbalance between champion health and unit stack damage in a cleaner way than just quadrupling everyones health, while giving fairly generic soldiers more flavour by giving them leaders who could give them new abilities, depending on the champion's talents.
Here's a playthrough: My sovereign heads out into the wilds to battle a party of brigands who've taken an inn hostage. On the way home he notices that a proper army of brigands has been gathering in the woods near his capital. On reaching the city he uses the 'join an army' action, bringing up an interface where he can attach himself to his personal bodyguard unit (which each sovereign starts the game with) and attaches his famous gladiator friend to another group of soldiers (which gives them a morale+attack bonus maybe). Heading out into the woods he meets the bandit army in battle. Here is where I can see one flaw in my idea. Balancing the same set of spells so that they are powerful in both 'adventures' and 'epic battles' would be difficult. I believe many people have suggested that shooting a fireball at an army should really make an attack against each unit individually. If this was implemented then most balancing issues would fix themselves, as spells would naturally scale depending on how many units are targeted by it.
So, facing the bandit army my sovereign casts a firestorm spell. Considering that he is supposedly an all powerful channeler, in command of a rare shard of fire, he doesnt roll: a miss, a two and a 79. He scorches half the army and half the forest. When the bandit king and his bodyguard unit approach my gladiator's company perhaps he could initiate a champion duel. This could be a decicive moment in a battle, that turns the tide of morale. When the battle is completed the sovereign detaches from the army again and sets off to find a legendary spellbook he has heard rumours of, without the fear of being unexpedly ambushed and forced into tactical battle with a CR 74,000-seething-horde of mobs.
I apologise for how much I've rambled so far, and I hope my incoherence hasn't hurt my chances of getting this noticed by devs. I'm aware that these are changes that require then entire game to be reworked, but I'm convinced that they will improve Elemental immeasureably. But then again, I'm a lone fan who has never made a video game in his life and these are possibly all awful ideas.
Discuss!:
