Your archers and warriors are in a single unit or in stacks? As the game progress the heroes armor will be high enough that single unit attack always miss. A stack of 12 warriors with 6 attack rating each will have 72 attack rating and will have a higher chance to hit the enemy as oppose to a single warrior with 6 attack rating.

Higher int affect spell damage and attack rating too. On the first game my sov just pump essence and find that my spells always miss or deals little damage, on my other playthrough I just pump int all the way and let my essence increase my buildings and my sov is a terror to behold. I suppose I will only pump essence if i want to abuse an army of fire giants

#3 i agree with partly.

It would be easier though if they had swallowed their pride and learnt from earlier successful games and then added additional components say roughly MOM/AOW combat + magic then added questing/dynasty/civilization aspects but instead they tried to go their own way  everywhere (or worse yet copied straight from Gal civ)

That's why you got a mess.

Right now I see signs they are trying to fix this.. e.g 1DN rolls will be modified for example, implementation of global pool of mana... But we will see how far SD can learn from their mistakes..

And no.. I'm not trying to turn EWOM into a copy of MOM, and this is despite EWOM having benefited immensely from the buzz as the "spiritual successor of MOM" (something they have not gone out of their way to distance themselves from), but there are certain standards of the genre you do not touch..  

In-game, design your unit was a cool idea that was mooted by fans a lot, but in hindsight it was not a good idea, particularly when coupled with the straightmark RPS style of SD. Microprose could probably have pulled this off since they would just throw in every unbalanced trait and ability in there to make the game fun, balance and AI be damned, but SD was never that style.. so their unit design is pretty much pointless..

The interesting thing is SD were far more ambitious than i expected.

Compare say Galciv and Moo series.. the later is a lot more unbalanced with more features.. while galciv series tend to be more restrained in fetaures..

I kind of expected a "magicciv" type experience..with a resrtained feature set.. but instead SD acted as if they were Microprose.. throwing in huge feature sets. But given they are SD and not Microprose, they couldn't pull it off.. They realized the AI wouldn't handle it (Microprose wouldn haven't cared and just gave insane bonuses), so each feature set though in theory powerful, was restricted (spells are roughly the same, unit design didn't matter, few special abilities) until it looked empty and pointless..

Ok, this makes sense now. It was hard to tell what the original intent of the system was in its current, broken state. Thanks for the clarification.

I retract the summed attack and defence idea, however, I still like the idea for a potential synergy bonus to individuals defence values for larger groups.

1: I really would much rather perfer that every unit did a base damage of something and then weapons would only modify that damage by a very small amount. Swords, maces, axes and spears should all really do about the same amount of damage. But gain an advantage or disadvantage vs the type of armor you are wearing(blunt,pierce or slash). Then add base damage bonuses based on the skill level of the unit. Those skill levels could come through research or through specialty buildings(trainers) or just plain experience. Two-handed weapons and bows would be a bit different, with bows maybe making one or two incrimental improvements throught technology.

Armor should be based on the protection it provides vs certain attack types and balanced with movement/combat speed restrictions. Lightly armored guys move quick, but dont last long and armored turtles resist a lot but take forever to do anything, maybe getting killed by a rain of arrows.

All in all though there should be many different types for each weapon, swords, axes, maces and such. Like for swords, a longsword might be good at slashing, normal with blunt and suck at piercing. Its not going to do great vs chainmail(which is good vs slashing and sucks vs piercing). But a Gladius(Broad Roman sword) is great at Piercing, and maybe normal at blunt, less than a longsowrd at slashing, but guys in chainmail wont wana fight you.

That way each player could build a unique civilaization based on what they want, not on whats the best weapon. So I could have spearman who carry round shields and wear scale breastplates as the mainstain of my unique looking army. Maybe through exploring sites I might find a mastersword smith who suddenly changes my civs whole combat outlook or maybe an armorsmith was the one who taught me scalemail to begin with.

The Huns and the Romans were two very different opponents to face. So should the other factions you face, with the player having to adapt depending on the opponets that are around them or the advantages they can make for themselves.

 Also Groups shouldnt stack attack values, they should just get more rolls to attack with maybe a bonus to hit considering various factors(armor vs weapons vs group sizes).

Now how about some examples.

Joe Bob is my starting peasent he does a base damage of 4 has an armor of 0, he uses a club (+1 vs blunt,+0 vs anything else.) and he wears padded armor(+1 vs blunt, +1 vs slash, 0 vs pierce.) If Joe Bob lives through his first battle it will only be by luck.

Sir Charles is my swordsman, he has been trained in combat at the keep, his base damage is 6 and an armor of 2, he uses a Gladius (+1 vs blunt, +1 vs slash, +3 vs pierce.) He weares scalemail (+3 vs slash, +1 vs blunt, + 1 vs pierce, -1 move/combat speed)

Joe bob should still have a chance to hurt Sir Charles, but he will most likely die, badly. Even several Joe Bobs probably wont win verse Charles, but enough of them might. Hitpoint amounts would still play a factor along with how you determine damage, but it is essential skill vs numbers.

That is the choice you are trying to present players in combat. Do I have enough skill to win vs the numbers? Can I find an advantage to exploit that will allow me to win vs greater numbers? Should I just zerg them with bonk master peasents in padded armor? Will that even work?

After writing all this, it occured to me someone has probably already said all this, just like me. Oh well, you did say we should tell you what we want to see. So I did.

7: You could really cut down on the rapid expanding by uping the population costs of pioneers, either in a flat rate or scale it according to how many cites you already have.

Now I want to add one.

11. FAIR GAME PLAY: For the love of god, please stop punishing the player for playing. Monsters out of control groups, insane damage inbalances, speciality skills way overpowered. If I wana play a punishing game, make a diffcutly level for it or a toggle.

 A.I. Players that dont follow the same rules players do, A.I. pioneers/combat groups wandering care free next to those same monster groups, bonuses givin to A.I. players to make them more difficult instead of making them smarter or more ruthless. A.I. Players dont try to win the game themselves(Alliance victory, Spell of Making), they are only roadblocks for the players. Please steer clear of anything Sid Myers may have taught you...The key to making a game more fun does not lie in making the A.I. cheat.

Punishing players for researching tech. Players advance to gain advantages they can use, not to spawn more difficulty. Please see Elder Scrolls:Oblivion on how not to handle player advancement. 

No benefit for keeping forests in your kingdom, they only spawn monsters, every one of them should be burned to the ground or turned into desert. Give some kind of bonus to having forests in your kingdom, maybe a so much food bonus per forest square amount. 1 for 10, 20 ,60 forest squares...something.

Allow me to build harbors anywhere there is water. Just transform the land for me, its ok, you can even take the mana if you need to, I wont mind. I do mind however, guessing if the beach will really be beach that I can put a harbor on, or wondering why I can make buildings to harvest shards, but building a harbor off a cliff is impossible.

I like the game, I would like it alot more, if you we could find some common ground here or if you dont like my ideas, then at least make it possible for me to make the game that way.

good AI is only available when there are good players input to the developer. Why? Because the AI can only as good as it's maker when he / she plays the game. So, definately, playing hard AI is just like you play against Frogboy one by one. If it suck, then Frog boy is suck as a gamer That's why Developer tend to let the AI cheat. Because they know that AI won't improve if not edited by it's maker.

My input about AI is that the developer need to upgrade the AI regulary so it can stand against the player playstyle. Or just open the AI source code so the Modder can improve it in the future. Someone doesn't sastified with the current AI? just look for the Mod list. Who know, he'll meet a better AI that created by a better gamer.

#3: Too many ideas...

I agree with the point about that since many things are brought to the table maybe Stardock should stick closer to formulas from other games where these ideas have been shown to work.  But I like that they are there and getting rid of any would be bad.

#6: No city damage

Attacking cities should be handled differently.  The way that exists now is fine if the city has NO defensive barriers.

But as soon as defensive walls go up, I would like to see a different system.  A hedge or stone wall impartiing a defensive bonus to defenders is too simple and feels wrong. 

And alternative would be that if walls are up, the attacking army needs to lay seige.  For hedge walls, the seige duration could be one turn, for stone walls, say five.  Or have it so the city walls take damage based on army strength.  Once the walls are destroyed, the city is attacked as if there are no walls, and walls would need to be reconstructed once the city is taken (or defended).  Catapults, rather than being glorified archers, would increase seige damage.  You could have a spell like earthquake which for a high mana cost could also weaken stone walls.

This would greatly buff city defense in the game, but I think that's a good thing... it makes the alternative victory conditions more attractive, or forces you to attack the Hinterland outposts before going for the capital city.

I think the stack size of 12 is fine.  The one thing i started thinking about today was, what if only 1 stack was allowed per square?  this  would allow you to hold up defensive positions (choke points) and get a better idea of what kind of army is running around.  As it is now, there could be multiple 12 unit stacks in a square, pretty misleading. (i'm using unit as the stack slots. ex. sov, 1 company, 1 squad = 3 units.)

I had a battle today where i saw 1 stack of units heading toward a city and the AI attacked me 8 consecutive times.  the first two battles where from 12 unit stacks, the rest were 1 unit stacks.

Just picked up a mace on turn 2. My god does it kick arse!

Yeah! Lots of stuff like that. E.g. Multiple Spies – nasty.

Give it time, when the game gets out of beta they will have this stuff sorted.

Have much less of an issue with this then with lots of other stuff. Still some rough edges could be smoothed. Any further than this, and I think each point should be taken individually.

Oh, by the start – do you mean the start of a game of Elemental, or the start of development?

Agreed that the tactical map can not cope with large stack battles. Not enough squares. Can cope with 3 units a side – but 12?

I had a battle where at least 11 units attacked one of my cities with around 50 units in. Units seemed to get stacked on each square on the tactical map, and lots of stuff did not seem to work properly.

Limit stack sizes, or just except that after a certain size you have to use auto combat (or rewrite tactical combat so there are more squares).

Lots of bigger problems, but yes what you are suggesting would be better. At the very least you should not be able to have two versions of each improvement – Empire and Kingdom. Various options here.

Just been looking at a post about this. My theory is have all cities except the capital have an extra food upkeep, plus reduce the impact of caravans – max it at 25% not 100%, and set a min city level of 2 for building caravans. So the food supply limits the size of your empire, at least at the start.

Eh! they are? Thought they were an attempt to help the player over their cash flow problems.

AI is always a problem in any game. As long as they continue to improve it, I don't think you can really pin this on them.

I guess they did not want it to be too blatant a copy of Civ. Still Civ is the result of twenty years of development. An almost exact lifting would work, and I suspect will be quickly modded in if necessary.

I tried that, lowering and raising land to make a beach, for whatever reason the game didnt like any of the beach I created and still wouldnt let me build a harbor. Just seems kinda silly not to have an auto option unless there was some specific tile that I couldnt turn into beach.

A couple of other points.

First I think also that Labour Pit and hut should be the only things buildable at size 1.

Secondly there should be more incentive to build more than one size 5 city. You get a big ouf with the first - Tower of Erog, Mint and trade centre. But no particular reason to build a second, it being more useful to raise a size one city to size 3 than a size 3 city to size 5. Maybe put more big buildings, palace, wonders in size 5 buildings, only allow the best units to be build in size 5 cites; that sort of stuff.

So the way the game is structured now, we build one size 5 city in best gold producing city as many size 3 cities as food can cope with (for Temples of Essence) then full the rest of the map up with as many size 1 cities as can pack in.

City sprawling is bad as it reduce the number of cities you can fit into an area.

In fact thanks to caravans, if you have taken the time to ensure one city has two food resources, then in the end game you can should be able to use caravans to upgrade all cites on that continent to size 3.

First off, Great Discussion and the OP has some valid points...  There are Brilliant folks in this community, (some to much so for their own good) but nonetheless brilliant for it.

#2  What you discribe is not an exploit when the game mechanics intentionally exist to allow for it.  Are there bugs in the process? maybe?  But Bugs do not make an exploit.  This game is so new that even the devs do not seem to know what is a bug and what is not yet... so we DO need more and continued interaction and patch support to resolve bugs such as the confussion spell which allows for exploitation.  Then there is the essence base pool which limits how many Champs can be recruited.  I for one think the summoning and caster champ route should be viable as well as the Quest route and Research route and Diplomacy route and Warmonger/conquest route to victory.  The Caster route does need to be balance the AI needs to be able to respond in kind.  But that is a AI / Balance issue not an exploit so while I agree on teh general area of work to be done with you I disagree on the verbage and litteral way you make your point.

I roleplay the ole fart hermit caster who recruits young champs to fight for a cause! wield magic and arms for said cause!  But my sov is a facilitator and director not the tip of the spear past turn 50-75. 

#3 I like all the elements but agree that they need better balance between them all.

In general, I agree with most of the rest of you points, with minor disagreements in some of the specifics. 

Coming from a fan of HoMM games, If they could somehow make the random mobs a bit more similar to how they were in those games would be awesome.  Most of the valuable resources were guarded by the mobs, and if not attended to they would generally get stronger and stronger.  Having something similar set-up for elemental would be awesome, with certain mobs guarding precious resources, but then having others prey on unsuspecting caravans.  A bit more rhyme and reason to the resource placement I believe would be needed for this though.  Seeing an earth shard, but having to fight some trolls in order to clear the way to it would be awesome.  Any peoples feedback on this idea would be appreciated.

 Also some sort of limit to how many champions you can imbue with your essence would be a nice balance.  Some one had mentioned in a post about putting a bigger focus on your sovereign having to use his magic to improve the land in order to found a city in an area.  I really liked their suggestion as it fits with the whole restoring the world.  

It seems they run out of money at some point - that means limited special abilities, no flying units ( I remember AoW 1 where dragons and airships ruled versus most ground units ). How about more ranged units - some crossbows , ballistas, add some warships and so on. The lore is simply not represented in the game - we have dragons with huge wings walking instead of flying, and the levitation spell from the intro is not to be found in the game.

But there are also easy to fix things - like the density of resources in the world and a shortcut for "New Game".