Hello Elemental players !

So, 1.09q was another good step forward. I see lots of improvements, the game is definitely going towards a better direction. In the end... it's really nice. Armor values are balanced, cities now produce the gold they should be producing, the AI is less and less dumb. I'm starting to enjoy the game. 

There are still quite a few issues, and I'd like to discuss them and the solutions that could be used to fix them. So, let's start:

-City building: The "population as a resource" thing is still almost unused. It's there, but mechanically, it only does something in the 10 first turns of the game. Then, you forget about it. What could you use it for? 

The problem has many origins:

-Buildings don't use the population that much, armies are never big enough to make population an issue.

-Other resources are the limiting factor, etc. When Frogboy introduced the system a few months ago, he said that map resources wouldn't be as important as population and that most of the resource flow would come from the population. Well, it's true for materials and gold, to an extent, but for the other resources ? It's not. So in the end, the game is still about looking for map resources and use them.

But the most important issue is:

-There is nothing to build but studies and a few workshops ! We need a lot more choices for level 1,2 and 3 cities, Choices that use population a lot. We need moderately powerful buildings that use 30, 40, 50 people at once. And we need huge, population-eating buildings for level 4 and 5 cities. We need to have to spend that population, and we need to feel like we *won't* be able to build everything and have to make choices. Otherwise, population as resource is utterly pointless and can be removed. That's the point of having a resource: preventing us from doing everything and forcing us to make choices ! So, make us spend it a lot, lot more.

Also, make population use a local resource, so that it at least become a local issue.

-Tech tree: We can still beeline and rush late tech by ignoring early ones. Since the increase in tech research time is dependent only on the number of researched techs in that line, gamebreaking late techs can still be obtained way too quickly.

-Balance: There's been significant progress made here, but as some people (myself included) discussed in other places, there's still a lot of work:

-All spells need to be useful, not just arcane arrow and teleport. Actually... well, other damage spells are actually nice for non-primary casters, but for the Int-heavy casters, elemental damage spells are for the most part useless. This is in part due to an issue with spell power scaling: some spells scale with intelligence, some don't. Those which don't should be stronger than those which do for a 10-Int caster, making it ideal for secondary casters (melee heroes imbued as a mean of weakening the enemy before he arrives). I think that the scaling of spell damage should be reviewed. 3/4 intelligence is a bad, bad idea, for instance: it's better than strength for weapons, and it cannot be resisted by armor ! I'd rather see something like: base damage 6+1/4 Intelligence for arcane arrow.

-Being able to cast spells several times in a round is a bit (lot) overpowered.

-Touch of entropy is a joke that I can cast 3 times a round. Seriously, no spell should deal more than 25-30 damage a round (remember: armor not factored in, so that's still enough to almost kill a veteran-level unit). And such damage should be costly. Otherwise, it encourages Sovereign/Champion/Elite Unit sniping. It's not fun if the enemy can easily kill your very best units: he should have to work for it. Touch of entropy could be: deals 20 damage+1/5 intelligence, and deals 5 to the caster as a drawback.

-Fast weapons are really useless as it is. They're supposed to be good against unarmored units, but in the end, the slow weapons are better in all situations. Except with tremendous strength, but here's the issue I have with that. If daggers, longswords, and other weapons are available to regular units, then there should be reasons why you'd sometimes equip your units with them. If a weapon depends on strength to be useful, then it should be a champion-only weapon. Otherwise, you're just testing if the player is smart enough to not equip his units with a weapon that has no use.

-A few weapons need some love. Slow weapons need to be a lot better in the current system, and maybe the warhammer/broadsword tier and maces need a very small boost. They're just under the armor values of their tech tier (full light plate + shield =17, broadsword = 15), leading to a few too many blocked results still. Giving them +1 damage would probably make them just right. Bows also need a small boost, most notably the late game bows.

-A few late-game weapons are too strong. The great scimitar, for instance, could be slightly reduced. Not only that, but that new weapon giving +65 damage and -10 Constitution is way too exaggerated in both its effects to be interesting. 65 damage is a one-hit kill on almost anything (I saw it early game, which exacerbated the issue). 50 damage would be more in line with the rest of the game. Oh, and -10 consitution ? I'll just arcane-arrow the user to death.  

-Resources: That's a subject of debate on this forum: some people seem to like the way adventure techs spawn resources, but I've seen quite a lot of people who dislike this feature. I'm one of the latter. The problem I have with it is that it utterly kills a source of strong gaming dynamics and diplomacy: the war for resources. Everyone gets his own little crystal crag, so there's no reason to explore to find one, there's not reason to want to steal one from the neighboring country. Not only that, but when other people gets the tech, the number of crags in the world increase. Wait, isn't that supposed to be a rare resource ? So yeah, it inflicts a big blow to the overall feeling of the game.

If resources were spawned randomly at the beginning, it would have the following effects: the map wouldn't be balanced anymore. And while I'm a supporter of giving everything a use in the game ("mechanics balance"), I'm also a huge supporter of geopolitics imbalance. Why ? Because when someone gets a crystal crag and no one else has one, he gains a source of power. And what happens to the other factions ? They becomes envious, see the need to capture that resource and make that source of powers theirs, and go to war. And you've introduced a very interesting source of conflict in the game ! Even better: weaker factions could ally, put aside their differences to go and steal that resources. They could agree on beating the crap out of the current owner, and then fight between themselves to decide who'll get the resource once it's been reached. Si it's not only a source of conflict, but it's also a source of diplomacy.

So please think about it, Stardock, because I really think it's a shame that those resources are so conveniently placed at our doorstep, 1 per faction

Edit: oh, and those children dealing double or triple damage in one blow... I think there's an issue here. Actually, I think the assassin's power is too exploitable: put a lordhammer/great scimitar on the guy, and go sovereign hunting with 110 damage !