I won my first game ever on ridiculous against all ridiculous AIs.  As a strategy game aficianado, its frankly impossible to find a way to play that doesn't break the game without purposefully ignoring cost/effect.   Which is what a strategy game is about.

THIS! I feel like this game seriously ignores cost and effect. There is barely any choices to be made come building, and those there are are pretty easy(oh this city makes more gildar, k put the 50% gildar boost there). And combat is so broken and poor it hardly matters what units you bring compared to theirs.

It is ridiculously easy. It is absolutely possible to win against all ridiculous AIs in under 100 turns without touching the warfare tree at all. All you need is exploration for the endless gold and treasures and magic item research under magic for ~20-40 movement worth of boots.

This. And in strategy games, sometimes you have to change your strategy based off what the enemy is doing. You don't need to do that in Elemental ever.

I disagree with your last sentence though. I am going to hound them. Personally,  I'd really like a dev to respond to this thread.

Agreed.  I've been saying since release here and in IRC that a simplistic two-stat system with such gigantic random die roll range (1-300) with uniform probability distribution is a system that renders strategic play impossible.

Yea ... I just feel that most features are too simple or too primitive at this point. Especially with combat (and apparantly Hairrorist agrees).

Honestly I'd rather have the "traits" (like adventurer, Warrior, Thief, Warlord) be actual "classes" ... but for that to have ANY meaning at all, I feel that combat should be a bit more complex. (like having a bell-curve/ Gaussian, or separating attack/defense and damage).

Honestly I feel the more "combat stats" the better (that perhaps automatically increase at each level up, at different rates depending on Champion and their class). Like an agility score which can increase your chance of randomly dodging an attack, or of randomly having an attack/counterattack cost less action points (leading to multiple strikes). Or having an accuracy score that affects only attack and not damage. Or having a power score that effects only damage and not attack, or having a crit score which effects your chance of getting a "critical hit" (or a skewed Gaussian even). However, if its a skewed Gaussian then that could probably be its own stat (maybe tacked onto accuracy, or perhaps be called Focus), with a crit score itself merely give a chance for a 1.5x damage, or a 2x damage ... with no effect on attack rating, just a chance for extra damage.

also perhaps a luck stat that slightly effects crit rating, agility, and accuracy ... and perhaps Focus as well.

Also, maybe constitution points can get more powerful as your champ levels up. Like at level 1 each Con point gives 1 + 1/5 HP. At level 2 each pt gives 1 + 2/5 HP. at level 5 each gives 1 + 1 HP. At level 10 each gives 1 + 2 HP. So a 10 Constitution guy at level 1 gets 12 HP, while that same guy at level 10 (still with only 10 constitution) gets 30 HP. Of course, if you wanted HP to scale faster, you could increase the rate at which HP gets stronger. Like say 1 + X/3 HP, so that the HP roughly increases 100% every 3 turns instead of every 5 turns. And that's just the simplest idea I could think of (well, at least the HP stuff)

If all of these changes were made (accuracy, agility, crit rating, focus, and luck increasing at each level up, at rates dependent on class ... as well as HP scaling based on level) then I think Champions could be made much more interesting.

This is on ridiculous world and maximum ridiculous AI players.  I'm not bragging, I'm not even particularly good at a lot of strategy games.

No, I don't use the maximum movement speed cheese.  I do take organized, because bang for buck it is the best trait.  In fact, I don't really min/max my sovereign other than taking organized.  With the outrageous accessibilty and low cost of teleport create a dynamic where one stack is able to defend an infinitely large, sprawling, and thinly spread empire.  I play as a caster primarily, which is like severing a finger in this game.  The problem is that in order to not completely curbstomp everyone in the first 100 turns, I have to avoid using optimal strategies.

I thought ridiculous was the easiest level. Certainly easier than normal in my experience.

Go down the warfare tree until you get squads and the big maces (the ones over 20 attack). Crank out a bunch of squads with those. You win.

indeed the game is very easy, i try to play "dumb" sometimes (not researching stuff, playing only with few cities and all that) but i manage to beat the ais with no sweat

Hey all,

As I said in my thread about tips for challenging games:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/394307

I'm under the impression that cranking everything to max, DOES NOT ensure the most challenging game. To not go into detail what I said in my thread, the main issues of concern with playing with MAX # of opponents and Map Size. From what I read, and observed, the AI needs a bit of time to build himself up. So if you have too many enemies, they will not have time to expand adn will just start attacking each other.

I'm also suspicious of the effects of setting the world difficulty to Ridiculous. Inadvertently, I believe that this difficulty will affect the AI in a negative way. Having less ressources and more/stronger monsters won't help the AI one bit.

Anyways, feel free to look up my thread and give any advice or observations you've had with fiddling with difficulty settings.

Cheers,

v.

I wasn't part of the beta, so I can't confirm this. But after doing multiple searches on teh forums, I would end up with threads about the beta. And some slighty 'outdated' skill and talent lists, or even buildings.

A LOT of stuff has been amputated from what I was able to see, traits, buildings, Racial/Faction features.

So maybe amputating all that stuff after the last Beta, would inadvertently cause issues with the AI in the 'actual' release.

And one of the things I found is that there seemed to be Faction and Terrain specific buildings. Something I wrote a suggestion thread about...

Patience is a virtue, but... but... yeah.

It is, but releasing a Strategy game with a serious lack of Strategy is not good.