The mop up phase shouldn't be as tedious as other games thanks to the quest winning conditions, or the research winning conditions or the fact you can change terrain/alter reality with spells.

I just hope this end-phase won't "just" be "find every one of them and kill". I hope that there will be some interesting mechanism like culture, like nations stealing heroes from other nations (and it seems it will be possible : i opened the english.str to see if I could translate, and I saw that there was some string for a loyalty).

the quest could add some strange way to achieve victory like (you are faction A) "Make faction B and C make a peace treaty". Or "Be sure that faction B kills sovereign C without being at war with B nor C". Or things like that where you HAVE to be smart, not just powerfull.

Mop up is not just boring but also very anti-climatic. Many players want to live out storybook-style adventures, clutching victory from the jaws of defeat at the last moment, not securing a victory half-way through the game. Things like the master quest or ascension victory from GalCiv 2 accomplish this (in theory). In reality, nobody attempts to secure an ascension victory without already dominating militarily, and probably similarly the average player will not attempt the master quest without already being the dominant power. Of course, the master quest could be easy enough that one could complete it without being extremely powerful, but then the victory feels cheap. This is a very difficult thing to get right (obviously nobody has done it perfectly to this day).

In conclusion, the goal of the game is to give the player a victory as soon as the player knows he is going to win or turn the entire match on its head with some extreme random event so that the player no longer feels secure. Imagine if in Lord of the Rings, after surviving the battle at the Black Gate and watching Sauron die Aragorn had to hunt down every orc encampment and then go after the corsairs in Harad. That's boring. Once the ring is in the fire, the viewer knows it's over, and similarly once the player knows it's over the game should reward him with a victory screen at the climactic moment. Unfortunately games can't read minds so it's all about balancing the victory conditions to require real dominance to acquire but also be immediately achievable as soon as this dominance is gained.

Of course, if you just want a game where you kill every last town to win, simply only play with conquest victory. Enemy kingdoms will NOT disappear after the sovereign is killed, I'm sure. The heirs will likely divide the kingdom as you described. Otherwise, what is the point of heirs? For the rest of us who hate the mop up and want a drama instead of a simulation, the other victory conditions will be an integral part of the experience.  

Glad to see someone agrees with me on this, i always hated regicide in Civ3 because as soon as your leader was killed, all the cities went to the victor. It's just not realistic, some would, as you said, revolt in the name of the king. Not that realism needs to be strewn out to the max, just that I think realism needs to be the foundation.

I somewhat disagree. You do bring up some good points though. It can be anti-climatic but only if you're not seeing the big picture. If you've defeated a enemy Sovereign and now you're just killing off his surviving children then killing the Sovereign himself was the "Climax". As long as the player is smart enough to know that then I don't see an issue with anti-climax. It all comes down to understanding and perspective.

You bring up a good point about the "Master Quest" though. From what I've heard this victory condition works by you completing the "Spell of Making" and becoming a God. I don't imagine they'll make this easy to do. I foresee a very long "Quest Chain" to be able to achieve this. You'll probably have to hunt down powerful items, spells, and spell components just to be able to get any part of it accomplished. Hopefully they're smart enough to make this challenging while allowing you to pull victory from certain defeat if needed. It just has to be balanced properly.

That's very true, but, haven't you ever wondered what would happen if the story kept going? I think most of us play these games with the understanding that they are Empire Building Simulations in mind. Personally I don't expect to see a "You Win" screen until all my enemies have been defeated or subdued or have joined my empire and acknowledged my superiority. Just because you know the war against one powerful enemy is over doesn't mean there aren't more powerful enemies still out there. In the full game of Elemental I hope they give you an option to keep playing on a map after all the other Sovereigns are dead. What happens if you kill all the other Sovereigns in the world but there is still a big bad Dragon on the map that no-ones killed yet? Or what happens if you achieve a military victory but you still want to cast the Spell of Making and become a god? I'd like to see them take this into account.

That's one of the best things about Stardock. They always do a great job giving their players lots of "Options" to chose from when setting up a game. They'll hopefully follow their Gal Civ 2 model in this respect with Elemental.

Clearly a button to continue playing right on the victory screen is the solution.

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"Congratulations you've won!"

[stats] [keep playing] [next]

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BK, no-ones talking about teleporting here . This is about Mop Up. I hope teleporting like you're talking about Isn't allowed. If the teleporting of whole armies is allowed in Elemental it should only be from a static Point A to Point B. Not to anyplace on the map you want. That destroys mechanics as you have already pointed out.

I'm not talking about a "Sovereign Hunt" either. This is for when you kill an enemy Sovereign. This thread is about what's left after they're dead.

That's a Great idea.

Alright it is not about teleporting, but the left over armies if they just 'magically' disappear, that is certainly an invitation to go  straight to the leader, instead than fighting a military campaign!

I figure if the sovereign dies, the empire splits into a few neutral factions, kind of like the neutral factions in GalCiv2.

You are not forced to conquer these people to win, but if your looking for more land, they you can.

I think it's a given that, whatever the victory conditions may be, there should be a "keep playing" button after victory is achieved for those that want to "mop up". Nothing should be there to stop you if you really want to hunt down each and every last enemy unit and perhaps even fill out the tech tree and develop your civilization further once you've no enemies left - not a playstyle I favor myself, but for those that like the mopping up, go for it.

Really the only thing that's arguable is when we should get that victory screen, for those of us that don't want to get stuck mopping up - obviously no game has gotten this perfect yet, but overall I think the more victory options (options mind you, these would be things you could turn on or off at game setup) the better. Personally I love victory by conquest, but try conquering a truly massive map with dozens of enemies (up to 32!) - by the time you conquer two or three or ten nations and absorb their territories into your own, you're so far beyond any single rival that there's no challenge in continuing, yet you still have hours left of conquering helpless enemies before victory is 'official'. In this situation, even if you love conquest, you might find yourself looking for another option.

As an example of a way to solve this dilemma, I'd love to see a quest that opens up when you've achieved 50% of the world population/territory/or military strength (that is to say, when you're as strong as all your rivals put together). You have a choice, if you accept this quest all remaining rivals will cancel their current wars and ally against you, but if you can then gain control of your strongest enemy's capital and move your sovereign there, or seize an artifact that spawns in enemy hands (or both!), then you can crown yourself "emperor" and your enemies will submit, ending the mop-up. And like anything it'd be purely optional, you could just as easily decline the quest and conquer your enemies the hard way if that suits you. The idea being that this can force a huge, drawn out game into a single decisive lord of the rings-style climax, a battle over a single city or item that decides the fate of the entire world - if you want it to.

Edit: just for fun, lore that would justify the above quest. Your minions have found, in the ruins of a recently conquered city, an ancient crown once worn by a king that (legends say) ruled the world from his throne in the city of [strongest enemy's capital] in a golden age long ago. If you choose to wear this crown, your enemies will know you seek to repeat this ancient empire's dominance of the world and ally to resist you to the last. If you are able to overcome their forces to capture [city mentioned above] and seat your sovereign upon its throne, your enemies will be forced to obey their ancient oaths and swear their loyalty to you, the new king. Alternately you can forget you ever found this crown, discard it before your enemies hear that it has been found, and continue the game as normal.

You make some very good points. With this part you mention here though, think about this. What will happen six months after the launch of Elemental and you sit down to play a game? You'll know exactly how everything works and what everything does. You'll know how to auto win every battle you play without losing barely any men. What will stop you from playing the way you just mention above? You'll be able to get through the beginning of the game rapidly to tell how you're empire will go. I do that in Gal Civ quite often. It takes a good 15-20 turns to find out if there are any decent planets near by and whether or not I'll be able to get a "good start" so I know if it's worth going for turn 300 or 500.

I agree here 100%. I'm hoping they'll have an option to keep playing. Same as you, I think once all the enemy Sovereigns are dead you should win. The only fear here is I don't want it to be easy to get to a enemy Sovereign if he has a huge empire. They definitely need a way to avoid a "Sovereign Hunt" to some extent.

I agree 100% here as well. I particularly like the quest idea you give towards the end. I'd like to see exactly what you suggest as a stage of the campaign. This should definitely be a "mode" of play to select from.

Quoting Ocie1,

reply 18

Some mop up is fun. It's nice to see the momentum swing your way after 'the turning point' and you can pay back some past greivances. After a point thought, it can get tedious.

One thing I would like to bring up is there may be ways to make the inevitability of the Win less predictable and thus make mop up less boring. It would be interesting if there were several avenues of magic research or quests available to losing realms that lead to unpredictable results... last chance forbidden magics, so to speak. Something that the winning realms wouldn't want to do due to negative effects but losing realms have less to lose. These should have a high chance of hurting the losing realm itself but have some global effects that affect everyone or element of randomness. For instance, something that unleashes vortexes that randomly move across the land. Turn an army into powerful undead who die after 10 turns. Obviously, a lot of thought would need to be put into balancing this .

Also, this type of option would be nice if *I* were playing the 7th ranking realm of 8 realms and want to play with some chaos magics out of despair.

That's an Awesome idea as well. An idea that comes to my mind is a losing kingdom deciding to open a door to the underworld to make a deal with a demon. There's a chance the Demon ends up going to war For the kingdom that set it free. Or, there's a chance the Demon goes to war On the kingdom that summoned it. After it destroys them it sets about rampaging the lands until some army or hero put it down and send it back to hell.

Alright then, my opinion is very simple: in this kind of games you either go for simplicity or for realism.

If you go for simplicity you can just have the left over of the empire become rebels, like in AOW or in Total War, and just have those guys attack anybody in sight.

If you go for realism the death of a leader IS NOT the end of an empire. He either has a successor (like in Total War, where you just get a new leader); or, if the succession is disputed, (as happened to Alexander the Great's empire, for exemple) his empire can be split between different new leaders, and you get several weaker new factions. In any case a nation doesn't just disappear!

Since it has been said that the death of a leader is the end of a faction, and that is not going to change, we are pretty much stuck with this leader hunt deal and this mopping up problem, which is completely unrealistic and boring... but also the only possible solution. Also I really don't see how being offered by the game a choice to "mop up" or "forget about it" could be of any interest.

Just let them become rebels, it's the least silly alternative.

The reason why I keep going back talking about the leader hunt, is that the real solution is precisely there: if we want to avoid the mopping up problem, let the sovreign became very hard to kill, but not by making him a uber-unit (that would only invite players to use him in battle, which in the end would get him killed even more easily). Just give him the chance to ressurect if he has enough mana left, or a new tower like in AOW... In other way AVOID the mopping up problem altogether! (alright there will still be some mopping up to do in the end but let a sovreign die only when he doesn't have a large empire anymore).

On that line of thinking maybe a "life force temple" could be built in cities and as long as one of those temples is still active (the city has not been taken) the sovreign is immortal (respawns if killed).

In a way that would create a proportion between the size of a sovreign empire and his ability to come back from death... thus anding up with with a lot less mopping up to do and a military campaign directed at conquering cities instead than killing one unit.

Not if it's seeded in such a way that you will always get the same result within the same game, no matter what. *At least for things like this*

I thought we were talking about a Demon with a random chance to obey you or destroy you....