That's sad to hear.  Don't get me wrong, even though I am a bit underwhelmed by the scale of the battles, I actually like Elemental much more than GalCiv 2 even without the huge tactical battles for a lot of reasons.  First of all, I think Elemental has a much higher upside that GalCiv 2: there will be more modding and multiplayer.  Secondly, I love the rich fantasy world much more than GC2, there simply seems like there is more to do in Elemental than GC2.

To be honest, I think the battles will become far more epic once the AI has been improved and multi-player has been implemented.  Nobody is saying that these epic battles can't happen, we're just saying that they haven't been necessary yet because of the weak AI.

That's something else on the List -- we need the ability to setup on the tac map, like in Total War.  Give us 'side' on the map and list our units then let us place them in our starting area.

It's a no-brainer, and would fix the 'some of our units placed across the board adjacent to the enemy' and the 'multiple units in one tile' problems.

That picture above.... unless they are really low-end troops (i.e no such fancy full armour troops), unkeep cost of such side of troops will exceed 50+.

Which shouldn't be a problem once you adjust the economy model to produce real amounts of money instead of this 1 and 2 crap...lol.

Assuming both units are in combat range at turn's start -- it would depend on unit movement speed.  If you're faster you should be able to attack before they move.  If they're as fast, whoever has initiative would 'go' first (I'm assuming there'd be initiative).  If they're faster, they move off before you could attack (assuming their movement takes them out of weapon range before the attack occurs -- ranged attacks will be different from melee, etc.).

If there's an auto-follow feature, yes.  Being TBS you could manually 'follow', or do a combination of both from turn to turn.  Knowing pathfinding problems of many/most games, manual is generally 'safer'.

That's one of the tactical benefits of a WeGo -- you shouldn't always know where the enemy unit is moving to, or if it's moving instead of attacking, etc.  Fog-of-war and all that.  It allows more chances for surprise/tactics/strategy/etc.

Some of this depends on how far a unit can move in a turn -- the greater the distance the more chance of 'surprise'.

Consider how to handle enemy cavalry -- with IGoYouGo you have an idea whether it's coming at you or flanking or moving off before you make your move.  In WeGo you don't know, you have to intuit while making your move.

As per request by RavenX here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/396516

Against those "Epic" Battles. Epic isn't in numbers but actions.

Just replying here in response to Raven X's petition thread... while epic battles are cool, does it make sense to work the economy towards this until tactical combat is improved? Right now it's boring enough with a few units, but having to do the same thing with dozens more cookie cutter troops will be very tedious. Once the combat model is improved to add actual "tactical" aspects, this may become interesting.

Even then, I'm not so sure. It's one thing to have an epic battle in Total War, where you set up your formations and plans ahead of time and watch the action in real time, doing the odd adjustment here and there. But this is turn based combat... having to issue orders for so many units every turn doesn't exactly sound very rewarding. You'd need some serious gameplay thrill to be added to make it worthwhile.

I can't see any way that "epic battles" in TBS can be made interesting enough, rather than diluting what could have been an interesting 10 minute battle into a tedious 30 minute brawl.

Oh and Raven X, I suggest you make a post in that thread telling people to come here to debate it. Your note about that is far down the post and most people won't read that far before posting debate about it.

My opinion regarding this thread here and this one:  https://forums.elementalgame.com/396516 .

At the moment I strongly oppose raising the number of combatants per battle only because some people think that would make battles more epic. I strongly believe that currently there are more urgent tasks to do for SD. And it seems to me they are on a good way. I´m really looking forward to the city screen announced for 1.08.

Epic, at least in my opinion, has nothing to do with the number of soldiers on the battle field but with the dedication to their cause and the impact the outcome of the battle has.

I don´t think butchering the last remaining Zerg drones with a big Protoss army after a succesful campaign is very epic. But confronting Diablo in the Chaos sanctuary as a sole adventurer is.

JK

 

 

 

I'll just keep things simple and say that I don't think that the number of units in a battle necessarily has anything to do with making the battles feel more epic. Nor are more units in a battle in and of themselves sufficient to convey a feeling of "epicness."

My sovereign all alone battling a dragon for survival, casting spells and resisting the dragon's fire abilities could well feel epic to some people.

Another possibility is that in a big battle with a few hundred units things don't end up feeling epic for some people but rather feel boring and tedious, with even more units to click on, advance a square or two, watch mediocre animations that take forever to complete, and so on.

Making the battles feel more epic and less bland is a worthwhile objective, but there's much more to it than scale. A lot can be achieved with a good, well balanced and strategically deep rule-set combined with good art direction.

blah blah I'm against arbitrarily increasing the amount of units fieldable simple for the sake of "epicness". 

That said, I do think being able to put more units into a Stack is beneficial. That is, 50 Peasants or 10 Well-Trained Soldiers. The stack limit forces quality over quantity (when quantity > 12). 

Then again I'm just a gameplay purist 

The point is ... the more soldiers you can have in the battlefield ... the stronger Monsters/Heroes can be, and you can choose to field an army of weak mooks to try and take down a few overpowered Monsters (not possible with a "fair" take on the current numbers)

 

So yea ... its for more variability in battles, not cause we always wanna see "more" ... its just so we can have Quantity be a Quality all of its own (fielding "Russian" armies vs enemies)

or in other words, more choices.

Well I've read through the rest of the replies in that petition and I don't see anywhere any discussion on how the game mechanics can be changed to make the "bigger" battles more exciting. As far as I can see, the people signing it are happy to see the current combat system retained and these "epic" battles are basically going to be much longer versions of what we have now. I'm not in favour of quantity over quality.

I don't have a problem with it being done, but I think there are far more important things for the devs to be working on than this. AI, balance, more stuff for a "builder" player to do, adding strategic depth, adding a tactical combat system, making magic more interesting, etc. After all that's taken care of, they can look at "epic" battles. But honestly, I don't think any TBS battle can be as epic as a Total War battle.

Also I object to the way the thread's been titled and structured. It is asking only the supporters of that idea to post there and using those responses as an "Official majority vote by the community". You should have made a poll with at least three options:

- Yes, as soon as possible

- Fine, but only after AI, balance, tactics, depth, magic, etc are fixed

- No, stick to quality over quantity

And see how the community responds.

It's not even that. Basically "epic" means... instead of showing, say, 4 models, display SIXTEEN. Then, times all the stats by 4. The gameplay would be 100% identical. Which is why it's silly. Elemental performs only marginally well as it is (on my machine, at least). We don't need further complications. 

Second, the title is terribly misleading. Only a "loser" would say no, eh? 

If it was titled "Petition for Larger Model Counts In Game" it would be totally different. Instead it's "Official", RavenX is self-proclaimed voice of the Community and ... ITS EPIC. >> 

Now, I do think that the stack limit should be increased? Why? Because it enables 50 Peasants versus 10 Soldiers. Right now, quantity is a bad choice (quantity in excess of stacks of 12, I mean). 12 Peasants always will lose to 12 Soldiers and there is no way to beat them. 2 sets of 12 Peasants won't win because the Soldiers can take them fine 1 at a time. But that's a gameplay change, not an arbitrary and unimportant aesthetic change that does nothing but slow down our computers and give the illusion of grandeur. 

Well, with the mechanics I'd LIKE to mod in ... believe me having more soldiers will actually count for something. Its not like its stupid HOMM battles, nah. I mean I want the battles to be as "Credible" as possible within the settings of fantasy (as opposed to within the settings of real life or, say, a Random Number Generator) ... even if it means battles will need to last a *long* time (many turns).

So yea ... even numbers, battles won't last that long (probably....). But given assymmetric armies, it could take a while (many weak vs few strong).

 

To give you an idea, my basic premise is at the one extreme a Sea of Red Shirts, and at the other extreme a party of heroes.

 

//

I'll take a moment to say ... I DON'T want invincible heroes, but I DO want an incentive for leveling up and coddling your heroes till they are big n strong.

As for seas of red-shirts ... I want large numbers to always have its advantages. Just because you have a horde of mooks DOESN'T mean that the heroes will always win. It just means that the fight (if its ALL mooks vs ALL heroes) will likely be a LONG one.

Heroes vs Heroes may (or may not) also be fairly long ... yet Mooks vs Mooks should be relatively short.

That's exactly what I'm saying. From a gameplay perspective, removing stack limits is good. Because it enables quantity v quality arguments to actually be valid. Raising the stack limit is good, for that reason. 

Arbitrarily increasing model counts so you simply "see" more fighting... doesn't really make any it more epic (except, perhaps, when your Champion destroys 80 men with one blow). It is, again, just an illusion of grandeur. 

This game is obviously not designed for "epic" scale. This game is not designed as an "army" level game  but rather at "company" level. For those of you that are interested in epic fantasy battles in a new game on an "army" scale, I recommend Dominions 3. Frankly, I like both scales as a strategy game player. I would not want to see the stack cap incresed in this game as it will just lead to longer battles that will end with the same result.

Instead of larger battles, I'd prefer to see more quality with existing battles & units. More a variety of weapons that actually have differences on the battlefield, more variety of terrain that actually has an effect on units in the battle, more a variety of movement beyond 2 squares per round. As of now, the AI is weak both strategically & tactically. This is something that needs to be addressed before all else. This game has great potential, but as of now is broken as far as the weak AI .. it's a walkover for the human player. 

Obviously the combat system needs improvement first (along with other things) ...  but this game was originally concept designed to eventually evolve into NATION-STATES fighting against each other ... not just whoever gets a Company of War Hammers first.

We can have 144 soldiers on the battlefield already. We could easily multiply this number by 2 or 3 just by tweaking a few numbers, so I don't think Stardock should dedicate any resource in this direction as it is. It'd be a pain to balance (how do you balance single units/heroes with armies? Kind of difficult if you think about it) and would require having to create a very advanced and complex combat system in order to have such a system work well. Considering the state of the game and the combat system/tactical battles, I do not think this is something they can do: it'd require someone with advanced wargame design skills.

King's arthur the roleplaying wargame found an elegant answer : a hero can't be alone, he is always attached to a troup and give them bonus/abilities. The hero fights and can cast spells.

The game is a little confusing when it comes to armies, stacks, units, etc.  Here's a refresher with all the technology unlocked:

1 Unit can have up to 12 Soldiers

1 Army can have up to 12 Units

So, in total, we can have a maximum of  144 Soldiers per battle per side and 288 Soldiers per battle.

I don't really understand why an Army should be limited at all.  You should be limited only by your population, gold and materials, not some artificial cap.  If I want to waste all my resources creating 1000 peasant warriors, I should be able to do that at the expense of other goals.  This should be a strategic decision left in the hands of the players, not set by Stardock.

In my opinion, Stardock does not have to balance anything at all.  They simply need to remove the Army cap.  Let players themselves find the gold, materials and population to create their armies however large they want.

 

The problem with this is that it would probably cause the game to crash every other battle. These cap limitations were proably put in place more for game system reasons than any other reason (I'm supposing). Also, could you imagine how long it would take to manually resolve a battle with 200 4-man squads, a dozen champions, and 500 single warriors??? It would probably take the better part of a day just to resolve one battle of this magnitude on manual, so I'm for the cap more for efficiency (I don't want to spend 8 hours on one battle, and I don't want to risk such a large important battle to "auto") and system (avoiding crashes) reasons than anything else.