Now having spent a decent number of hours exploring the game and playing through some maps I feel like it's time to lay out my feelings for the various sections of the game as well as ideas for the devs (or modders that are more experienced than myself) to consider.
I'm one of those lucky ATI 64 bit people that get the OOM crashes and horrible performance on the 3d map because the game stops utilizing my GPU when I zoom in. Despite these problems I've still enjoyed all my time playing this game. I don't want this post to seem like I'm upset with the devs work or anything of the sort. I'm really trying to outline the ways in which I'd like to see elemental grow. I'd like to thank the devs for taking the time to get us the early version when the street date was broken and then release not one, but two patches AND a hotfix for the release. Not to mention being available in the IRC chat amidst the storm of angry players and whatnot just to provide assistance.
City Building:
Right now I really do enjoy the way city building works, it's definitely one of the more polished parts of the game and it just flows nicely. I would like to see some more unique buildings for cities however. Just to provide more of a unique feel to each city aside from only having the % modifier buildings for the appropriate resources. In this way they can start to feel like an actual city rather than a series of shiny mining colonies. There are some unique buildings out there, many of which seem to be locked into level 4/5 cities which are tough to get to without exploiting the system by destroying housing to get back the extremely scarce food. In this case, more options would be better.
Resources:
Due to the random nature of resource placement you end up with a situation in which the player may end up having to restart many times just to get an area to give them a decent start. Some maps have you starting without a generator of something as important as materials, and none even remotely close to them. If they do manage to find some in a far away land, getting a pioneer there alive and defending that remote outpost when you had no materials to make troops is difficult to say the least. Resources being rare is nice but the resources near a starting player could use a little bit of tweaking, at least one good city for the start would do wonders.
I really do like the touch of having the adventuring tree uncover resource locations, it's quite similar to something I suggested in the beta so it was cool to see it show up ingame. Many people didn't realize those techs did that, perhaps add that function to the area where it shows building and tech unlocks as well. I'd like to see this concept evolve further with the discovering of even more precious resource deposits which could be used in the creation of powerful items or structures.
Champions:
The champion system is kind of a mess at this point. They end up being rather trivial very quickly unless you take advantage of the oddity that allows them to wear infinite backpacks, rings, and necklaces. Leveled up they may be able to hold their own in Attack/Defense which creatures in the wild or opposing forces but their HP is just not up to the same challenge. The only way to make a viable champion is to stack accessories on them. This also reaches a tipping point in which the champion becomes gamebreakingly powerful. It is expensive to start outfitting that first champion, however once they become powerful enough to take on monsters in the wild alone you can really start to rake in the gold by defeating them. I've seen as much as 6,000 gold from one battle doing this. Eventually you'll have a hero similar to mine, wearing 800-1000 rings/necklaces/backpacks that nothing in the world could defeat. With the exception of the bugged drake I found running with 2.8 million attack and defense anyway. This hero can also move 90+ spaces a turn, and just run around the wilds killing monsters for gold, which in turn fuels even more items, I made 30,000 gold in 2 turns doing this, that was enough money to buy another 300 necklaces.
Kryo mentioned in the chat that I shouldn't expect the infinite ring mechanic to stay, I'd say the usual limit of 1 backpack 1 necklace 2 rings would be sufficient. In order to compensate for this more powerful items should be added in further up the tech trees. With limits in the items themselves can be more appropriately balanced.
Children inheriting the abilities of the parents is cool, being more powerful if the parents are powerful is also cool on paper. If you want powerful children you have to wait until both the prospective parents level up a bit, currently this can take an extremely long time and even longer for the children to grow up. While this is certainly reasonable on large maps, I feel like people playing smaller maps are going to perpetually have weakling offspring. As an aside when choosing who to marry in an opposing faction, let us look at the stats of that child from the diplomacy window, so we can choose more appropriate spouses.
Adventuring techs raise the levels of the heroes wandering the world but I feel like it doesn't raise the levels quite enough. A bit more of a boost at each level of the adventuring tech would be appreciated, even if it comes with a higher price tag on the heroes themselves. When I've cleared out the tree and my army is running around with level 20 champions, I'm not likely to pick up a wandering level 5 guy who provides 1 gildar a turn and probably chose his stats poorly. I would however pay for a level 1 guy who has really good stats, an actual legendary hero.
I'd also like to see more depth to the levelup system, ideally it'd be something like this:
Every Level:
+HP
1 Stat pick
Every 2-3 levels:
New ability
Units:
I love designing my own units and I like the system for grouping them together and getting higher HP via training. I'd like to be able to provide more training for the units and grant them abilities as well. Weapons could provide special abilities as well just for having that type of weapon. It'd add some much needed spice to the tactical combat. Currently soldiers are a tad expensive and in some cases take far far too long to train, a group of soldiers taking near 50 turns to build with 2-3 buildings reducing training time is a bit ridiculous to say the least. A reduction in cost/training time would definitely help with the "epic" feel the game is lacking currently.
Magic:
Right now the magic system is fairly shallow, there's little difference between the elemental books outside of whether or not you were lucky enough to get the shards to make your spells not seem to pathetic. With such pitiful mana regeneration having such weak spells does not fit well at all. It's been said many times already but there is a plethora of games available to draw spell inspiration from, many of the spells could definitely use some secondary effects, more reason to choose one school over another in a battle. The new frost spell is a good example of this.
Tactical Combat and Stats system:
Right now the tactical combat is not very engaging and is often quite frustrating due to the random nature of the battles. I'd like to see the army cap raised to ~40 (perhaps via technology late in the warfare tree) and the tactical maps enlarged (can this be based on the size of the engaging forces?) with the bonus tiles being in logical positions rather than symmetrical patterns on the map attached to nothing. A forest providing -50% defense while an open field providing +50% is just strange.
I'd also like to see the stat system expanded upon to something like this:
To Hit:
Offense vs Defense
% to dodge outright
Damage:
Damage vs Resist
Str = Bonus Damage and Attack
Dex = Bonus Defense and Dodge
Con = Bonus HP and Damage Resist
Int = Bonus Spell Damage and Mana Regen
Essence = Mana and Elemental Resists
Cha = Still reduces the cost of heroes
Longsword:
20 Attack
10 Slashing Damage
-.25 speed
Platemail Suit
0 Defense Bonus
70% Slashing Resist
40% Blunt Resist
40% Piercing Resist
15% Fire Resist
0% Air Resist
0% Frost Resist
-10% Dodge Chance
Leather Suit
20 Defense Bonus
15% Dodge Chance
20% Slash Resist
25% Blunt Resist
5% Fire Resist
5% Air Resist
5% Frost Resist
Combat action points stay the same.
The numbers need to be tweaked but the idea should be easy enough to see. It would remove a lot of the randomness from the combat while at the same time giving more meaning to armor and weaponry choice as well as what spells to use on what targets. It would also make spells a lot more useful since it would be doing the damage range against a damage resist, perhaps spells could still be dodged for half damage or something. I'm also a fan of the initiative systems other games use rather than the entire army movement each turn thing. But that's not as huge of a deal.
Tech Trees:
The tech trees right now are decent enough, I'd like to see some more high end techs added to them as well as cross techs becoming available that require things from multiple trees. Perhaps a combination of warfare and magic techs allows you to construct magically reinforced walls. Adventuring reveals special metals combined with warfare and magic lets you research the ability to make particularly powerful magic weapons. Adventuring might locate the resources and plans necessary to construct a special building in conjunction with the civilization trees. Always having those techs at the end to research is nice and all but it's not nearly as exciting as uncovering a real and worthwhile technology.
You guys put together a gem of a game here, now it just needs a bit of polish so it can really shine.
