What is commonly referred to as a "bullshot".

Lol Simsum, tile-based battles won't EVER look like that ... I didn't say you couldn't pull off a battle with that many soldiers.

Its kind of like Paradise Lost, only its Epicness lost.

Sure, you CAN get a fun system that's tile based (will it look like the pic- No), and you can even have moments that feel pretty epic. (since epic is all subjective, etc)

But no ... and, whats your business about piles of d2 rolls?? That's VERY simple ... I mean, I dunno I never tried it, but DON'T try to knock on X + 1DN vs C. // 1DN vs 1DN is Gal Civ ... armor basically comes in 2 flavors on the strategic level from that standpoint, useless, and impossible to break. (and also its ships so who cares, its not like you'll cry if your Enterprise Voyager scout gets destroyed, cause it isn't a story about the Voyager ... while in Elemental there is at least an "opportunity" to create mini stories through the process of war and exploration (unless we want to cut out any RPG elements))

In battles, there will never be an instance when "no one" is dying ... therefore a simple X + 1DN vs C to determine if there is a hit (and have a margin at upper N and lower N for always hit and always miss), and then determine damage once there is a hit (based on the weapon, and how good the hero is)

like, the only possible instance is if two heroes are duking it out ... and while they trade blows (probably misses), their armies are killing and dying all around them.

And the current "tiny box" approach to battles just doesn't cut-it for me. (if high end squads were 50-ish, maybe.)

In GalCiv2 I always upped the numbers for fleets. I had huge fleets of hundreds of ships, and so did the enemy (although the AI didn't really excel at fleet building). It would be nice if you could do the same in elemental.

Also, I really loved the fleet battles in GalCiv2.  It's a bit disappointing not to be able to see battles being played out when you choose auto battle. It would be nice to switch between cinematic (long and slow) and just the numbers thing you have now.

Depends on what you mean by "look like that". What seems to be happening in the pic, are multiple melee units in formations, trying to outflank & gank a dragon, while the dragon uses an arc-shaped AoE, its superior melee reach and charming personality to kill & rout the melee units. To do that in a Dungeons and Dragons game, you need three new rules and help to keep track of the data. The three rules are: formations, unit costs and a unified morale system. And the help you need is a... computer.

Pretty much any tabletop wargame you care to mention allows the kinds of battles depicted, some far more massive ones, without the aid of a computer. Most of then aren't even tile based.

But of course, if you mean the pic looks like both sides are acting simultaneously, then you're absolutely right. No IGOUGO system can do that. WEGO systems can, however.

I'm not knocking x+ydn>c. I simply prefer a purely d2 based system when I have a machine to instantly do the dice rolls for me. Because when the number of dice you're rolling is a non-issue, a d2 system is easier/faster to compute for us humans. Think of it like SMACs GUI vs. Civ IVs. Both do pretty much the same & there's nothing wrong with either, the latter's just nicer to use.

As for the size of the battles & battlefields, they really don't do it for me either. It'd be OK if the battles worked along the lines of HoMM, but I'd much, much prefer the tactical battles to play like an actual wargame - formations, flanking morale & so on. If Elemental just did that one thing and did it right, I wouldn't be sitting here complaining right now, I'd be playing the hell out of it

We're not having epic battles and it's extremely unlikely we ever will have epic battles because way too much effort has been placed into graphics as described below:

I've been reading many of the topics in each of the forums yet I am not finding any requests from us gamers asking for high resolution 3D models for "everything".  This design decision for providing such high resolution 3D models means the battlefield size and number of units will be limited.  Will we ever experience the 70 *different* units which total 500 units on a single battlefield... only if the tactical battles are completely redone by not placing such a high importance on graphics will we have our epic battles.  Stardock shouldn't take all the blame I've seen other developers do the same mistake and thus suffer during game reviews.  It's like marrying a model and then discovering how shallow and boring she is in real life.  How much longer will us gamers have to suffer with medium size maps, small battlefields, slow performance, and unstable gameplay because there's this unjustified importance on rendering high quality graphics?? 

Less high resolution 3D models means more memory for larger map sizes, larger battlefields with more units, more stable gameplay, and more time for providing strategic depth and game content. 

I don't buy that man, not at all. Why? Because there are Way Too Many other games that pull it off just fine without a problem and that have far more detailed units than what we see in Elemental. Case in point, Total War. Pick one of the ones made since Rome. THOUSANDS of highly detailed models on screen at once with no slow down. It doesn't matter if it's turn based or real time but "high grade models" doesn't fly as an excuse in my book. It's a case of balancing in Elemental. Any computer today can run thousands of units on screen at once. If it slows down the engine then it's a bad engine, not a bad computer.

You'll see when we start working on the mechanics for the Dragonlance Mod. Frogboy said a long time ago unit count on screen was going to be moddable with just a few Xml edits back when we had the talk about them cutting down unit counts so much. A lot of us modders made it a Specific Point to Make Sure it was moddable and Frogboy told us it was. I'm sure more than just me remembers the talk I'm talking about.

I remember it Raven ... and the reason we have small unit sizes BETTER be just because of the blindness of the Dev Team instead of the weakness of the engine.

Cause honestly ... the only reason I'm considering modding Elemental is because its supposed to be a "great platform" using a "good new engine" ... and if it turns out its a weak engine that pales in comparison to Total War's engine ... then I'll probably have to mod a much crappier version of my game on Civ IV or Civ V ...

here's hoping its not because the new engine sucks!!  (Cause I thought the new engine ... didn't suck)

I think that's reasonably doable in 2010. 

Am I wrong?

MoM is great inspiration for some of the 'Big Picture' things, but it's not acceptable for the nuts&bolts of how tactical combat should be in 2010.  We've basically got MoM tactical combat with slightly improved graphics/effects, and (currently) worse gameplay implementation.  Hopefully the gamplay implementation will get fixed in the next few months. 

If we want the epic feel of the Total War we're going to have to make that clear to froggy -- hold him to the promise that that screenshot made.

I don't think it has to be a choice between 'pretty but simple' and 'complex but plain' with today's machines.  If that choice has to be made, function > aesthetics.

Better to play good than to look good.

Best to play good and to look good.

It's about knowing the intended market.  Some gamers focus on the flashy graphics.  Is that the market-share SD wants for Elemental?  Is that the folks they expect will buy the game, and play it for years?  Who is that market-share for Elemental, and what do they prioritize?

I'd just like to know who whined to Brad that combat simply HAD to be a turn-based.  It's obvious what we could have had (see screenshot) vs what we got, had the old system been left in place.

Although, there's something to be said about the lack of multi-player and the weak AI hindering epic combat.  I'm going to go out on a limb and say that combat will be much more awesome once the game actually requires us to build armies larger than 4 units to win.  Necessity is the mother of invention: If I actually need 100 units to capture a city, then I'll certainly build them.

well, as of 1.06 we had (worse) than MoM ... I'd say having tactical battles being Tile-less (yet turn based) WeGo is a fair demand. As well as squads upwards of 50 or 80 soldiers a piece.

As well as individual soldiers (within a squad) being viewed as individual objects (but gaining experience as a squad).

That would be about fair.

...

As for acceptable ... basically anything I (and other combat oriented posters) have suggested previously.

I'm one of them. As far as I'm concerned, RTS games ought to be called STM games: Strategic Time Management. Outside multiplayer it doesn't appeal to me. Granted, there's games like TW, but I utterly fail to see how those wouldn't have been better off turn based. Because of their TRwP system I'm forced to deal with a ton of interface nonsense AND pause the game every so often, so in effect they play like TB games, only with added nuisance. Of course, I'm only speaking for myself here. And err... While I did ask for TB, I didn't ask for the kind of combat Elemental has. I explicitly asked for range-based WEGO.

Gimme gimme gimme pleeease!!!

I agree with pretty much all that Nick. Not too sure about the we-go thing, but at least animated it so it looks like it. Even on a turn based system you could animate both sides of the units to have animations while they're waiting of them fighting. Say one unit attacks another and neither die. There should be an animation of them fighting each other continuously until different orders are given to them next turn. That too would give the battles a better feel when you add in more soldiers (that's just something to add to the wish list). There's a lot of little touches that it needs but I don't except it to be there for at least another year, just as it took a while for Gal Civ 2 to really mature. In the end though Gal Civ turned into what I consider to be the best space strategy game on the market. The only thing it lacks are battles.

I don't know if I can say the screen shot makes a promise. Being an ex designer I know first hand that things can change rapidly when making a game. As a customer buying a product though I can see how it would lead me to think I can do that in the game. I think if enough people did want larger unit counts it might be something they would take into account for a future patch after they get past some of the stuff their working on now. Definitely something someone should try to suggest and bring to their attention as I think a lot of people would like to see it, me included.

You can mod the stack limit already. It's in ElementalDefs.xml. Same with the number of units in a group, etc.

The problems with increasing the stack limit is that units over the stack limit randomly get deployed on the battlefield (bad).

The problem with increasing squad sizes is because of weird graphical glitches.

Forgive my unfamiliarity, but how, exactly, would a TB We-Go work in a tactical simulator? What happens if they just move the unit away from where I wanted to attack them? Do my units just auto-follow who I want to attack? In that case, how would situations like flanking work when you have no idea where an enemy unit is going to go?

RTS has time outdoing tactics for importance, but the deeper the system, the longer it takes to play out in TBS.  You can't do Total War turn based, battles would take like 10 hours to click out.

TBS gets by through abstraction instead of simulation.  You abstract thousand man armies taking on each other by assigning hit point blocks and damage values that will match up for something that finishes in a short number of turns.

All games can be viewed as turn based, ones done in real time are simply fluid turns.  Units have attack rates, movement rates, everything is played out in a scheduled manner, just as you have in TBS.  The difference is you can play out 60 moves in one second increments in a minute with real time, but to do so in a TBS would take half an hour.

Games like Warhammer show the upper limit for Table Top with hundred man armies being commonplace, and thousand man armies beyond rare.  TBS computer games aren't much higher.  You get rid of all the manual actions such games entail, and you can make the calculations as complex as you want, but you still have to keep the turn segments short.

It's why combat in Elemental is sucking so hard.  The turn segmenting is anything but short.  Single round survival is too short for tactical depth.  It's why I was jazzed for continuous turns instead of the TBS standard.  You have distinct turns, and can adjust the speed they play out to your preference, but you don't have to make each movement and can play it out much faster as the scale of your armies increase without sacrificing depth.

If you want to see epic, deep, and organic-looking battles, stick to the Total War series, especially The Third Age mod. Let's be honest, Elemental dropped the ball on this one. Battles are clunky and unsatisfying and there's frankly no excuse for this kind of anemic display in 2010. To those who say that you couldn't satisfactorily incorporate magic and spells in TW-style battles, I say take a look at Neocore's King Arthur and weep. It's already been done, and done very well. The picture that started this thread could effortlessly be staged with the TW or King Arthur battle engines.

Hopefully, Brad will take this into account if there's ever a sequel to Elemental. I don't regret buying it. I love the strat map, the atmosphere, and look forward to modders working their magic on the code -- not to mention that I respect Stardock as a developer. But battles will always suck with the current system.

IIRC Brad has mentioned a while ago [..actually this "epic battles" topic has been brought up already because of this screenshot...heh, funny, isn't it? :P] that the reason of this is balance -> regarding max. number of units/squad & max number of squads/army - max. stack size. It has nothing to do with the engine itself, that is for sure.

Personally I wouldn't like that game to have tactical battles like in Total War.

I would prefer turn based option as in Age of Wonders. simply map, let's say 150 x 150 hexes, with lots of bushes, trees, hedges, hills etc would do the trick. That was the best game in terms of turn based battles I ever played! I played it for years! . No idea how difficult it can be but maybe some modders could do that

While I certainly respect your opinion [this being a free country and all], I simply cannot see why anyone would prefer TBS to TW-style tactical combat. TBS does not have a single advantage over TW-style, and does have many disadvantages. Since you can pause the game and issue orders in TW, you can make it as TBS as you want. It's entirely up to you how many "turns" you want a battle to have. You can't even flank properly in Elemental. In addition, the actual fighting in TW battles looks approximately a million times better than the rigid, dinky animations of TBS games like Elemental.

Preferring TBS to TW-style battles is like insisting on making fire by rubbing sticks together after someone has just handed you a lighter.

i love turn based for the campaign, but completely agree with this post.

Yep ... Total War style battles are simply THE BEST way to fight tactical battles. Its simply true.

I honestly can't wait till my "good" computer is fixed and I can play the LOTR mod for Medieval2. (does anyone know if that mod uses heroes??)

Because ... if a proper RPG stat system can be worked into a Total War framework (where normal troops have 10 or 0 in all stats, depending on the stat, giving them no special bonus) ... that'd be awesome.

Consider Fall From Heaven ... Chalid Astrakein has this really OP "Pillar of Fire" ... in the strategic map that thing will annihilate an entire army of infinite number of troops (unless fire resistant). Mind you, it won't completely kill them, but it will come very close.

In a Total War battle, however ... not ONLY will it only target part of the army ... but you have the option to upgrade its radius (to make it a better spell).

For instance, skinny pillar = killing 30-80 guys (one unit). Effective? Certainly. You might could kill his best unit on the field. If he is just using 1000+ peasant warriors and no super-unit, however ... not so effective.

Wide Pillar = potential to kill hundreds. If the enemy is unprepared, any clumped together army will be decimated. However, once the enemy understands the potential devastation of the wide pillar ... they will spread their units out Modern Warfare style, so that only 1 unit will get hit by this "tactical nuke" ... it is then, when the units are isolated, that you (instead of using wide pillar) send out 3 or more units of cavalry to pick off their units 1 by 1. If ever the player groups together 3 or more units (- number of your units within radius), you use it.

So yea, you could use one of your high-end units as bait ... so it can survive long enough for the foolish general to surround your unit with ALL their units. Then, Wide Pillar takes out their ENTIRE ARMY, and you sacrificed only 1 unit.

Or even better, you enchanted that unit with Fire Immunity, so the only damage it really took was from the opposing army's mooks ... if you use this strategy, you can afford to use a FAR BETTER bait, which will have a FAR GREATER chance to act as good bait by surviving a thrashing from the opponent's army. (leading them to want to pile more units into the fray)

I don't think the battles "need" to be Real Time to be Epic. Turn Based battles can be just as Epic if done correctly with Massive Unit counts and Continuing Animations. If you leave two units locked in mêlée combat then the animation of those two units fighting, swinging and missing, can keep playing even though those units aren't actively taking a turn. Animations for some things should continue playing until a new order is given. This works in Turn Based games to give a better visual feeling to the battles. That's why I thought it was kinda cheesy when you've got two formations of troops and only one guy from each unit steps up to take a swing and to defend. They should ALL step into each other and every guy in the group should be swinging and raising shields to block, while the damage modifier scrolls up, have the animations continue until a new order is given to that unit. A lot of other turn based games do this, even some console games like some of Koie's games. This should have been taken into account for the battles in Elemental, but, that would have cost more to do and taken more time to do the animations. Of course if they would have had another 6 months to do it....and a Beta 5 where we got the "Almost Full Version", we could have made sure the devs took note of all this and made the adjustments as needed to give it a better "feel".

The whole battle system doesn't need to be re-done or made into real time. It can be kept as turn based, which I think is good for Strategic decisions, but still have continuous animations like a we-go or RtS type system. Increase unit counts, re-balance upkeep and drafting costs to create units, and everything would look and play a lot better IMO.

I agree. I hate RTS games with the exception of the TW series. But then the TW tactical combat is not a mindless click-fest like most RTS.

I've been lurking here since the game released and been very much on the fence about whether to purchase it, warts and all, as I've enjoyed Sins of a Solar Empire and know Stardock has/had a good reputation as a champion for their customers.

I picked up the Elemental novel last week while on vacation and have finished it.  It's a quality story... although [MILD SPOILER!] the book ends with many subplots unfinished and mysteries unrevealed.  It pretty much screams out for a sequel that I have to wonder if we'll ever see.

After (probably too many) hours of reading through threads and watching videos of the game on YouTube, it was THIS thread here that convinced me to not purchase Elemental (yet). 

I had assumed that battles scaled up as the game progressed, both in units-on-screen and in complexity of tactics, both those exhibited by the AI and required from the player to ensure victory.  From what I'm reading here, that's not currently the case.  If so, I unfortunately can't see a compelling enough reason to own the game.

I love the Total War: Rome game and would love to see a fantasy version released with that engine.  Even better would be Elemental with that combat system.  *sigh*

As a side note, a recommendation I'd make for "real time" combat is the World War 2 Close Combat games, an older series that has been acquired by Matrix Games.  They've re-polished each original release and are available for puchase/download on their site.  Not anywhere near a 4X game by any stretch of the imagination, but I mention it as an example of top-down, real time combat that isn't the frenetic pace you see in games like Starcraft2, etc. (I'm not an employee, etc. of Matrix, just a fan of the CC games, so I thought I'd mention it)

Anyway, it's too bad Elemental isn't living up to expectations/wasn't ready for release.  I'll continue to keep my eye on it and hope it evolves into the game everyone wants it to be (or that the picture at the top of this thread implies).

I guess it's time for me to finally download GalCiv2 and give that a go.

[One last comment: I'm your typical fantasy fan who enjoys settings that include men, elves, dwarves, orcs, etc. but the world of Elemental portrayed in the book with the concepts of the Fallen, the "immortal" Titans and other unique inhabitants is intriguing.  I like what Brad W. came up with for Elemental and wouldn't miss the elves, etc. as a result.  I hope to read that sequel someday!

I've already confirmed with frogboy in the IRC channel that you could mod the stack size for larger armies and you can change the size of tactical battle maps as well to make them large enough to be able to take greater army sizes. In this way you would be able to have large epic battles while not making a unit with a single member like a champion completely worthless. Since the balance issue was due to unit sizes ranging from 1-1,000, not having larger army groups.

Combine this with tweaks to recruitment cost/time and you could easily have larger armies on the field all around imo.

I've mentioned the continuous animation thing before as well and I think it'd go a long way to making the tactical battles at least feel a bit more engaging. I doubt something like that is within the power of modders though, at least at present. Everything else can already be accomplished if you know what you're doing.

I did forget to check if we could have it choose smaller maps for small engagements and larger ones for big engagements, that'd likely be a very important aspect of a mod that increases army sizes.