"Standard" TBS Mechanics

from Elemental Forums

Something in another thread inspired me to look at Elemental in a different light by comparing it to the other TBS I've played.  Unfortunately it seems like all the TBS I've played were developed by the same people, haha.  Master of Magic, Civ2, Colonization, Alpha Centauri, Civ4, Civ4 Colonization, and GalCiv 2 (Total War would be a bit of a stretch).  After looking at these games, I have to say...

I REALLY don't miss taxation.  I didn't even notice it was gone at first.  Every TBS has it (wait, I guess Colonization didn't have it, except in the form of the King taxing you), and thus also has City happiness, and it's usually annoying to manage.  Unfortunately, it also simplifies the empire building a lot, but quests take up the time that is freed up.  Anyone miss this mechanic?

Population directly affecting production stats, such as hammers, coins, and food, thus more population results in more production (and more taxes).  It seems like the only point of your population in this game is to upgrade your cities to better levels to gain access to better buildings, and to provide people for your army.  To me, I would think that more people would result in lower build times (more laborers), and larger effects from your buildings (example: more researchers in your archivist building results in more research).  Maybe it could be made so that, say, for a lore shop you get 1 arcane research point for the city level (level 2 city -> 2 research points).  Only applies for those 1 per city buildings, so doesn't apply to Lost Libraries.  Opinions?

Government types: another way to interact with your empire's population, which the game seems to lack right now.  Are you an oppressive dictator or a light-handed president?  Although happiness management was annoying, getting rid of it lost a lot of depth in the empire part of the game.  So the game is simply using people to support your questing instead of building a civilization for all of your people to prosper.

It's late so if I think of any others, I'll post them later.

elemental
11,790 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I do wish that labor was more than a glorified name for build time.  It feels like larger cities should be able to build small improvements more quickly.  Heck, you could even get rid of city level restrictions and just make bigger buildings take exponentially longer with small populations!  It'd be a much more elegant system, even if it was more complex to predict as a player.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Yeah, normally you have the options of either expanding like crazy, building a strong army or teching up. In Elemental, you can do all three at the same time!

The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top


 Maybe it could be made so that, say, for a lore shop you get 1 arcane research point for the city level (level 2 city -> 2 research points).  Only applies for those 1 per city buildings, so doesn't apply to Lost Libraries.  Opinions?
End of quote

Nah, I like how it is at the moment where basically a city has to have a nearby resource to be useful. It prevents the Tetris aspect you usually get with the "how many cities can I fit on this continent" game. Abstractly more people providing more resource is in there - you can't build the larger production boosting buildings until level 4 or 5.

In fact, I think this is the first TBS (apart from Colonization) which doesn't make city spam a valid strategy.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Actually, when you think about it a certain way, it's the traditional method of 'throw more people at it!' that doesn't make much sense.  Raising a building requires a certain number of people to do in a reasonable amount of time and adding more people beyond that doesn't speed things up significantly.  Consider building a house: you can't start putting up the frame until the foundation has been laid, can't put in drywall til the frame is finished, can't furnish it 'til the drywall is in.  Having the masons, the carpenters and the drywallers all on site at once doesn't get your house built any faster, it just costs more money.  On the other end of the spectrum, it takes a minimum number of hands to be able to lay a stable foundation, to get the frame up and level, etc.  In most cases I think those two numbers tend to be pretty close together, especially at the scale where most TBS games handle resources.

As for happiness management.. I do kinda miss that.  If only because my last game featured another sov's city so thoroughly surrounded by my own that it's borders didn't actually extend far enough to cover it's own walls and outlying buildings, but I had no 'culture force' urging them to defect over to my side.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

If you have more people IRL, you can undertake multiple projects.  Which is harder to simulate than just letting you work faster on one project at a time. ;)

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Yeah, but sometimes in Civ I get the feeling my people are building cinema's in the same manner they built Pyramids ;)

 

 One thing I would like to see are non-pop cities, or non-advancing cities. Just something that throws out your influence over the large swathes of dead land so it's possible to connect your empire rather than having to scatter cities about the place. So basically something like the forts in civ with an additional influence exertion.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

well i like some changes in elemental but i have to admit there is something missing in the global strategy

 

i dont miss taxation but the whole system is complicated and redundant

i have to get food to increas cities which does nothing until i research buildings and build them and then i make my cities produce what i need to expand them more and build the real stufff etc etc

 

no thats really too much

i think citizenz should do something more

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting phril, reply 4
Actually, when you think about it a certain way, it's the traditional method of 'throw more people at it!' that doesn't make much sense.  Raising a building requires a certain number of people to do in a reasonable amount of time and adding more people beyond that doesn't speed things up significantly.
End of phril's quote

That's true, I forgot about diminishing returns (not good for an econ major...), but I can be forgiven since games never really modeled it either (maybe Colonization since production is limited by supply and capacity...Col is a pretty good econ simulator).

No pollution effects: an interesting concept dating back to Civ2, which limited your population and production unless you want to destroy the surrounding landscape.  But, those mechanics always came in the late game, modern era, and since this is medieval fantasy, it makes sense not to have it.  On the other hand, Saruman did pollute...

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting phril, reply 4
Actually, when you think about it a certain way, it's the traditional method of 'throw more people at it!' that doesn't make much sense.  Raising a building requires a certain number of people to do in a reasonable amount of time and adding more people beyond that doesn't speed things up significantly.  Consider building a house: you can't start putting up the frame until the foundation has been laid, can't put in drywall til the frame is finished, can't furnish it 'til the drywall is in.  Having the masons, the carpenters and the drywallers all on site at once doesn't get your house built any faster, it just costs more money.  On the other end of the spectrum, it takes a minimum number of hands to be able to lay a stable foundation, to get the frame up and level, etc.  In most cases I think those two numbers tend to be pretty close together, especially at the scale where most TBS games handle resources.

As for happiness management.. I do kinda miss that.  If only because my last game featured another sov's city so thoroughly surrounded by my own that it's borders didn't actually extend far enough to cover it's own walls and outlying buildings, but I had no 'culture force' urging them to defect over to my side.
End of phril's quote

 

So, basically what youre saying is that if one woman takes 9 months to produce a baby, you cant just get 9 women and get a baby in one month?

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Taxation has massively varied over time from simple taxation on transactions to fees for forming and maintaining businesses to taxing business income and taxation of the individual. Throughout the world and history taxation of some sort has been nearly constant, whether it's dollars or coconuts. WWII started Canada on taxation trend that will never disappear :(

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Viperswhip, reply 10
Taxation has massively varied over time from simple taxation on transactions to fees for forming and maintaining businesses to taxing business income and taxation of the individual. Throughout the world and history taxation of some sort has been nearly constant, whether it's dollars or coconuts. WWII started Canada on taxation trend that will never disappear
End of Viperswhip's quote

Um, what?

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting JesperEB, reply 9

So, basically what youre saying is that if one woman takes 9 months to produce a baby, you cant just get 9 women and get a baby in one month?
End of JesperEB's quote

Dammit.. I misread that the first time and thought we were going to have to have 'the talk'.  But yes, to but it another way: piling more men on a woman doesn't get you babies faster, it  just gets you brought up on obscenity charges.