DerekPaxton DerekPaxton

The coming 1.1 patch

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The coming 1.1 patch

from Elemental Forums
  We have been hard at work on the 1.1 patch.  Today we built an internal alpha which went to our testers and they began reporting issues, bugs, etc.  Our feature list isn't completely implemented yet, there are still a few things to checkin but I expect that they will be all in by Monday.  The team has been told to focus on bug fixes and polish between now and next Thursday (11/18/2010) which we are targeting as the date for the release of the public 1.1 beta.
  What is coming?
  Toby already posted about the two major changes coming in 1.1.  Global Mana and Population as a resource (in that improvements consume population).  Global mana is a significant change to the magic side of the game, and all the spells have been adjusted to account for it.  Population to improvements is a significant change to the economic side of the game, forcing players to balance their population between economic, production and military goals.
  There are a lot of UI improvements, one of my favorites is the city idle popup.  You now get warned when a city has nothing let in its queue, and you have the opportunity to jump right to it.
  But 1.1 also includes a rebalancing of all the stats, combat, equipment and creatures.  The goal here is to visit all the core stats, baseline them and make sure the numbers are reasonable.  Toby has been working on it and I don't envy him, its a herculian task and it won't be perfect right out of the gate but it will be a step in the right direction and we will be looking for opportunities to make it even better.
  One detail part of the rebalance is that we had to review what all the stats did.  This is was they do in the current version of Elemental:
Strength- Every point of strength over 10 gives +10% to damage.
Dexterity- Every point of dexterity over 10 gives +10% to your armors absorption (aka:defense).
Constitution- Constitution is added to your max hit points.
Intellect- Intelligence is used by various spells to adjust damage/effects.
Wisdom- Wisdom was kind of a non-used stat but in some places Essence was referred to as wisdom, Essence increased your max MP.
Charisma- Charisma is used to reduce the cost of recruiting NPC's (champions).  Charisma didn't do anything for champions.
  In 1.1 they have been changed to the following:
Strength- Modifies damage
Dexterity- Modifies dodge
Constitution- Modifies hit points
Intelligence- Modifies spell resistance, boosts some spells, required for Champions to cast some spells
Charisma- Sovereigns Charisma modifies Champion recruit costs.  Champions and the Sovereign give a prestige boost to the city they are in.
  That leaves us with the following formulas:
Attack (which is damage) = Weapon Attack + ((Strength - 10)/2)
Defense (which is damage absorb) = Armor Defense
Accuracy = 15 + (Level * 2)
Dodge = Dexterity / 2
Hit Points = 10 + ( (Constitution / 5) * (2 * Level) )
Spell Resistance = Intelligence / 2
Prestige Boost in City = Charisma / 5
  Elemental uses opposing roles for combat.  So if I have 23 Accuracy (I'm 4th level) and you have 5 Dodge (you have a Dexterity of 10) then we both roll from 1 to our rating and the highest roll wins.  I get a random number from 1-23 and you get a random number from 1-5, meaning there is about a 87% chance I will hit you.  The numbers are strongly weighted in the attackers favor as we didn't want to have long strings of misses going back and forth. (in fact as I look at it now I think it may now be weighted enough, we may need to change accuracy to level * 3)
  The nice thing about this system is that it never becomes impossible to hit or damage anyone.  It may become unlikely, but its never a waste of your time, and no creature is ever not a threat.
  Strength modifies damage as it did before but its no longer such a huge impact.  We were having problems balancing weapons because a 15 attack weapon on a 40 strength guy is 45 attack.  Now that would be a 30 attack, still huge but workable.
  Dexterity used to add to your damage absorption.  Which is fairly non-intuitive for Dexterity and kept us from designing more specialized creatures.  We want some creatures to be easy to hit and hard to damage, and others to be hard to hit but easy to damage, to makes them more or less difficult against different parties and attackers.  It gives us design room to grow into.
  Constitution now modifies hit points per level.  But the most important part is that hit points are now modified per level!  As your sovereign and champions levels up they will gain hit points, no more glass cannons.  We have played with a few numbers to get a progression that values level and the players constitution reasonably, but all the above formula's might be tweaked based on playtest feedback.
  Wisdom is gone now.  There are now 5 base stats (as there are 5 factions on each side, 5 tech tree branches, etc) and Intelligence is the "magic" stat.  We have to balance this stat a bit differently than most games because every sovereign is a caster but we don't want to make it isn't worth putting points in other stats.  We also use it as a limiter for what spells champions can cast, but your sovereign's don't have the restriction.
  Charisma is our non-combat stat.  We really wanted to allow players to build sovereigns that were never planned for combat.  They stay at home.  Charisma is a great stat for that.  The city your sovereign is in will get increased prestige, you can recruit cheaper champions (and let them fight your wars for you) and if you recruit high charisma champions you can use those in your cities to push prestige even higher.
  So why do we focus on stat adjustments?  It certainly isn't the sexiest part of the game, and many players will play without even noticing they changed.  From a code perspective removing a stat is harder than adding a stat (since you have to get everything that references it) so it's a lot of work without much direct payoff.
  The reason is that it's where you have to begin to balance anything after.  In order to balance the armor we have to know what the stats effect on armor is (formerly +10% per point of dex over 10, now no effect on armor).  In order to balance weapons we have to know strengths exact effect, previously we couldn't create high attack weapons because strength had such a huge impact that it was exponential.  Making strength more linear allows us to make weapons more varied.  Now that we have accuracy and dodge in we can create big weapons with high damage but penalties to hit, or small weapons with bonuses to hit or speed, but low damage.  We have more range to work with.
773,025 views 259 replies
Reply #76 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Silicor, reply 53
I think this combat system is better, but is still very weak.  Rolling a random number from 1-n with an opposing roll is so so random that it can easily frustrate players.  I almost prefer no rolls where everything is predictable.  Best melee system I've seen is Warmachine.  It has a roll 2d6 roll + combat stat opposing the the defenders defense stat.  If hit, damage opposes opponents armor value.  This system has one fixed value and one random value with a fairly small range of values.  You have to insure you have ways to handle very nimble opponents and heavily armored opponents.  With the new system, you just roll and pray.  Seems very weak to me.

 

Sry for double post, but completely unrelated.

 

I have a fix here that I've thought of.

Borrow from the old L5R RPG's

 

Instead of one dye roll, use 9 die rolls.

Recruit units get  the 5th best roll

Regular units get the 4th best

Veteran units get the 3rd best

Elite units get the 2nd best

 

Or something along those lines- that would reduce the randomness, while not eliminating it, and reduce the randomness most for experienced units.  Might be rather inelegant, but with computers, the number crunching wouldn't be an issue.

 

Reply #77 from Elemental Forums Top

It was said earlier (although not in thgis thread) that spells will have casting time.

That is the proper way to handle how many spells of which type can be cast in what time frame.
Right now that feature does not exist so the more powerful spell is always better.
If there was casting time, smaller but faster spells would be far easier to cast without getting interrupted. = choice.

The Political Machine 2024
Reply #78 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Gazz_, reply 73

Castable Spell Level based on INT:

I think that this is basically the right approach but character level should also figure into this.

Maybe the max spell level that a character can cast should be level x 2.
It shouldn't be too restricting but having lvl 1 nerd characters running around casting Meteor Storm doesn't look right.

If balanced right it would also encourage not putting all points into INT, nurturing the diversity of champions.

For instance, if you get 3 points per level but only 2 would be "useful" to put towards INT (if you just want the max spell level for this char level), then 1 point could be distributed elsewhere to create a "better" character. Or put it towards INT regardless for the damage bonus (or whatnot) for some spells...

I think that is a good suggestion, but it could make INT too weak, because the only benefit of high INT would be that you get a spell earlier and that you have a higher Spell Resistance.

Reply #79 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting econundrum1, reply 64

Why is that limit needed? Just because everything your familar with has it? Intelligence counts as a limit on the power of spells everyone but your soverign can cast.

Also not having a limit on spending per turn is more strategic, as mana will accumulate over turns like gold. If you use it all up in one turn then you'll be vulnerable for a while afterwards and may also be unable to sustain some summoned units and enchantments, if you where spending more than your mana income per turn. It's a resource to be managed.

Would you want units to have a gold you can spend per turn limit? Or your city to have a material spending limit? Mana is now a kingdom resource that's what you need to get a full understanding of.

Because it's really bad when you can fire off giant world-altering spells instantly. The reason all those other games have a casting points limit is that it lets you balance much stronger spells against the time to cast them. If I can cast "summon Wolf" in one turn, and "summon Chaos Lord" in one turn... which one do you think I want? With casting point limits, I can summon four Wolves in the same time as one Chaos Lord, and casting anything else slows down that summon further.

It's the same for the global enchantment spells some of us want to see. Something that puts a flaming wall around my borders and damages ANYTHING that tries to enter my territory is probably not something I should be able to instantly put up on a whim. Ditto with spells that enchant roads, spells that clear FoW, and of course spells that win the game. That last one is just plain silly. Where's the tension of starting the spell and causing the world to shudder as I gather so much powerful magic? Where's the chance for AI/other players to try and stop me from finishing that spell? I mean can you imagine a space race victory in Civ where you research "spaceships" and poof, you win the game? It'd be lame.

And it has the same problem in tactical combat. If I've got strong AoE tactical spells (which I hope we will), and all I have to do cast them multiple times is imbue champions without having to worry about casting points... I'll bring four of them to every fight. How much of your army will be left standing when I lob four high power AoE spells at you on turn 1?

 

Sometimes stuff put into other games is there because it solves a very real balance problem.

Reply #80 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Jean=A=Luc, reply 13
That same unit could roll 20 on its def. roll and still get "no defense" if the attacker rolled 21 accuracy, it's a moot point. Just like in DnD accuracy/dodge determine whether a unit is hit or not and then the damage reduction kicks in to provide the final amount of damage inflicted.


That's dodge, now. You roll dodge vs accuracy to hit. Rolling a 0 on your defense roll means that your 50 points of plate armor somehow fail to exist entirely for that turn. With how random the rolls are in Elemental, that was what caused a lot of the one shot wonder problems in previous versions. (and it also causes runs where you roll high every time and the unit is effectively invincible)

Reply #81 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Gwenio1, reply 18

Quoting Napean, reply 16With a global mana pool essence is not as useful anymore, unless it's used like AoW's Casting Specialist stat, where it would limit the amount of mana a champion can pull from your global mana pool per turn.  At least, that's what I think.

All posts so far indicate that is not the case, though it SHOULD be. Frogboy has previously stated that essense will be boolean: you have it or you do not.

So for practical purposes Essence as a mechanic is gone. There's no rationalizing. It's quite clear that it's gone as a stat. Now we have "isCaster" as a flag.

Over beta Essence was reduced so far in function that I don't care about it going away a whole lot, TBH. The original concept was pretty much non-existent in 1.0 anyway.

That said, we do need a casting points stat of some kind.

 

 

Oh here's a question - if INT is your spell resistance stat, is there a stat for spell hit? Or is it the same as the melee accuracy stat? And on a related note, what are the dodge/spell resist stats for normal trained soldiers?

Reply #82 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Gazz_, reply 75
Without any sort of differenciation, all weapons only scale vertically.  The "higher" weapon is always better than the lower one.
That's a one-dimensional progression and yes, it does work for 1000 simple games.

When one weapon can have a higher chance to hit but lower damage, weapons don't automatically become obsolete as soon as the better one is researched.
By your simple ruleset, damage alone would make the ballista one of the best weapons in the game for all purposes.

Now hitting a single man with a ballista would prove quite difficult so it would have a lower chance to hit. But if it hits, the champion turns into champion kabob.
That's a two (or more) dimensional progression and allows for far more depth in the entire combat system.

Right now the tactical combat system has practically no rules so it's abysmally boring because you can not make any interesting decisions.
Well, you can execute uhh... tactics like "move forward and start swinging".

But weapons can have the two stats as well. Example: Crappy heavy sword has 1 Attack and 10 Damage, Kickass tiny sword has 10 Attack and 1 Damage.

Stardock is making a complicated system that will end up working the exact same way as the "standard" system as far as I see it. Unless I'm missing something.

Reply #83 from Elemental Forums Top

Awesome.  1.1 sounds like it's going to make Elemental a whole new game.

Reply #84 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Agrik, reply 58
One thought on Charisma, I like the new utility of the stat but it *could* have some use in battle as well; Charisma could modify unit morale, maybe affect unit initiative as well depending what tactical systems are added eventually (sort of like command abilities in some of GMT's ancients boardgames, influincing order in which units move and/or how many you can move in an impulse or round, etc).

Yep. Increased combat morale would fit charisma really well. Though it shouldn't stack if there are multiple heroes present in the battle, only the highest bonus should apply.

Reply #85 from Elemental Forums Top

This is very exciting stuff. I can't wait for 1.1 now.

 

Something I'd like to mention: One of the issues in games like this where you want to allow heroes to have a non-combat build (in this case: charisma), is that a build, implies experience points, and at this point, the only way we have for XP gain is via combat. To truly allow non-combat builds, we need to have a way to gain levels outside of combat. The obvious candidate is XP from quests. Something to consider.

Reply #86 from Elemental Forums Top

Yep. Increased combat morale would fit charisma really well. Though it shouldn't stack if there are multiple heroes present in the battle, only the highest bonus should apply.

Or maybe morale should have an area of effect, or a unit limit. So that when you have a lot of units or they are too spread out, it would make sense to have more than one hero with them.

Reply #87 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting db0, reply 87

Or maybe morale should have an area of effect, or a unit limit. So that when you have a lot of units or they are too spread out, it would make sense to have more than one hero with them.
I'd vote for area of effect.

Am I to suppose that if I lower the Charisma to 5, I get negative Prestige? :P

Reply #88 from Elemental Forums Top

One of my grumbles with Civ5 is that the UI won't Let me end my turn until i've ordered every unit. Sometimes i'll know about a unit and want it to be idle. Now I have to click that for every such unit. Seems a waste of time for me. Have it as an option sure.

 

This city idle dialog sounds similar to me. If i want a few idle cities in a large map this could get Very annoying. Especially since global resources in Elemental often leave me wanting several cities idle to save resources. Please tell me there's either an option to turn this off an 'ignore idle' option for every city or at least the option to, say, produce wealth until told otherwise.

Reply #89 from Stardock Forums Top

I'm not a believer in adding more "stuff" to games just to have more "stuff", but it pains me to see Wisdom being stripped out.  Could you find no other use for it?  Maybe another non-combat application of a stat?  Bonus to tech or arcane research when in a city?

Reply #90 from Elemental Forums Top

Thx for the update. :)

 

 

Reply #91 from Elemental Forums Top

So why doesn't Toby get the honor of unveiling this?  Kael is Johnny-come-lately and steals Toby's thunder! 

Reply #92 from Elemental Forums Top

Ok, Synchronous notifications are nice and all, but they interrupt one's play style and force the player to deal with things he might want to ignore until later in the turn.

 

Think of Civ 4 and 10+ cities finishing construction on the same turn.  Jump from city to city to city....

 

A-Synchronous notification system + End of Turn warning would be much much better.

Reply #93 from Elemental Forums Top

Something I'd like to mention: One of the issues in games like this where you want to allow heroes to have a non-combat build (in this case: charisma), is that a build, implies experience points, and at this point, the only way we have for XP gain is via combat. To truly allow non-combat builds, we need to have a way to gain levels outside of combat. The obvious candidate is XP from quests. Something to consider.

 

Interesting point. How to level up a non combat sov. or champ. ?

Reply #94 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Lantros, reply 94

Something I'd like to mention: One of the issues in games like this where you want to allow heroes to have a non-combat build (in this case: charisma), is that a build, implies experience points, and at this point, the only way we have for XP gain is via combat. To truly allow non-combat builds, we need to have a way to gain levels outside of combat. The obvious candidate is XP from quests. Something to consider.
 

Interesting point. How to level up a non combat sov. or champ. ?
I'd suggest that they gain a couple levels when a city they are in levels up, but that might lead to tedious micro management being the best strategy.

Reply #95 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting db0, reply 86
This is very exciting stuff. I can't wait for 1.1 now.

 

Something I'd like to mention: One of the issues in games like this where you want to allow heroes to have a non-combat build (in this case: charisma), is that a build, implies experience points, and at this point, the only way we have for XP gain is via combat. To truly allow non-combat builds, we need to have a way to gain levels outside of combat. The obvious candidate is XP from quests. Something to consider.

Not sure how it works in Elemental, but in AoW heroes gain one skill point per turn regardless of what they do. Perhaps something like that + a bonus if the sov is stationed in a city?

Reply #96 from Elemental Forums Top

The stat changes do sound like an overall improvement compared to 1.09, bit I am disappointed that the essence stat has been removed.

Keeping essence would have been a great way to further diversify spells, tactical abilities, and/or units. At the very least the code could remain in for use by the modding community, especially since it was debugged and functional.

Oh well, maybe next time...

Reply #97 from Elemental Forums Top

The changes to combat look good, I would only strongly advise to give us a tooltip that tells us the hit chance against each opponent when we mouse over one of them while having our unit selected. This would much enhance the tactical decisions during combats. An addition to this would be to do it like Diablo 2 where more opponents of the same kind you fought more info about their strengths and weaknesses you could get, so maybe when you first fight them you know 0, second time you know their HP and 3rd time you know their dodge/defense stats so the game gives you the tooltip I mentioned above.

Also I would suggest using terrain to give both bonuses to dodge and armor(defense). Like rocks could give bonus to dodge due to weapons hitting that instead of the target while things like shrubs giving a small bonus to defense due to slowing arrows or interfering with sword attacks and such.

 

Also things on the battlefields that can burn enemies if they get close together with attacks that push targets would be great.

Then large beasts that do cleave attacks (hit more then one square), or that can stun with their attack if they do enough damage (this could be a bonus against lightly armored targets as they will take more damage) and so on...

Stealth assassins that always hit and do double damage with their first strike in combat (and are invisible to the other side until they do so) would be a nice addition. Two-weapon fighting, then melee weapons that have reach (and get an free attack when opponents walk into the square next to them to engage them). So many cool things could be added in the upcoming expansions (like flank), please do not be afraid to do so.

Reply #98 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Tridus, reply 10

Quoting Derek Paxton, reply 9 
Attack and damage absorb is similar but instead of comparing the numbers and the highest wins the amount of damage absorb (ie: defense) is subtracted from the attack.  So if I have an attack of 20 then I will do 1-20 points of damage.  If you have a Defense of 7 then you will ignore 1-7 points of that damage.


Im not looking at the code right now, there may be another adjustment, but thats the high level.
Ah. So it's still possible for a high defense unit to roll a 0 (or a 1) and wind up with no defense that attack? That's concerning.

On the upside, scaling HP and lower attack numbers from not having Strength act as such a strong multiplier could make it less of an issue then it was before (combined they lower the chance of a one-shot kill). Thanks for the info.


Yah that is kinnda scary, not sure if I like that system as it fluctuates too wildly. DnD Had it right in my opinion, 10+Equipment+Misc Versus 1d20+Attack Bonus + Misc...

I just want to be able to have a champion that I can use as a warrior and not just a living conduit.
Anyways, changes seem awesome! I look forward to playing this :) I kinda put Elemental down for a bit but I am excite. The new user interface looks good, I hope they add more management features to the UI.... Galciv had this down really well. The more I can manage my empire from a single menu the better.

Reply #99 from Elemental Forums Top

The idle pop up thing to me wasn't even needed.  On the left city icons, there is a yellow bar showing building progress and a red bar showing training progress.  Having these pop ups will get very irritating very quickly imo.  The problem with the icons was that you couldn't scroll them.  So if you had a few different champions walking around and/or tons of cities conquered, you couldn't scroll to see the ones on the "bottom" 

 

I like everything else, about the adjustments to attributes and effects on the battlefield.  Allowing more diversity and more equipment without blowing the balancing sounds great. Can't wait for 1.1 next Thursday.

 

Oh wait .... I have been waiting for what seems forever!  Not complaining, I'm glad to see the dedication, but just venting my frustration.

 

BTW, there wasn't anything about making changes on the battlefield so that attack turns were based on the unit instead of the army just taking turns, is this still planned?  IMO this will make battles so much more fun and more strategic (seeing which enemy units are coming up first and attacking them first, and knowing which units you have will be attacking first, etc.)  I know it is a HOMAM type of thing, but it made battles more unique and fun than just army 1's turn, unload everything you have, army 2's turn unload everything, then see who is left standing. Also, units which will not be so heavily armored will have faster combat speed or turn speed, allowing for more attacks than the heavily armored slower units makes much more sense and fun, allowing different tactics for units instead of just piling on the heaviest armor on all units.

 

Thanks though, I am appreciative that you guys give feedback/updates, and doing what ever needs to be done to make this the great game it can be.

Reply #100 from Elemental Forums Top



Because it's really bad when you can fire off giant world-altering spells instantly. The reason all those other games have a casting points limit is that it lets you balance much stronger spells against the time to cast them. If I can cast "summon Wolf" in one turn, and "summon Chaos Lord" in one turn... which one do you think I want? With casting point limits, I can summon four Wolves in the same time as one Chaos Lord, and casting anything else slows down that summon further.

It's the same for the global enchantment spells some of us want to see. Something that puts a flaming wall around my borders and damages ANYTHING that tries to enter my territory is probably not something I should be able to instantly put up on a whim. Ditto with spells that enchant roads, spells that clear FoW, and of course spells that win the game. That last one is just plain silly. Where's the tension of starting the spell and causing the world to shudder as I gather so much powerful magic? Where's the chance for AI/other players to try and stop me from finishing that spell? I mean can you imagine a space race victory in Civ where you research "spaceships" and poof, you win the game? It'd be lame.

And it has the same problem in tactical combat. If I've got strong AoE tactical spells (which I hope we will), and all I have to do cast them multiple times is imbue champions without having to worry about casting points... I'll bring four of them to every fight. How much of your army will be left standing when I lob four high power AoE spells at you on turn 1?

 

Another suggestion: how about tying INT and casting time?  A high int will allow the overpowered spells to be castable more quickly?