Solar,

I think in a lot of those other examples people more or less held their peace - they were unsettled but took a wait and see attitude. I think in this case a few things happened - some of the slightly more hardcore people are feeling that time and again the path of least resistance, i.e. the "simplify everything" path has been taken and that is now reaching a point where it seems that is the path that can be assumed to be taken until there are indications otherwise, and two, once a few people start venting, expressing concerns or frustrations, there is a tendency for anyone that had been holding back to also pile on and it kind of develops into a sick downward spiral. That's my take on it anyway.

That is all nice and good. But "complex economy, family trees, quests" without good combat just sounds like 4x Sims game.

Even in MoM the school of Magic mattered and I wish it had mattered more.Something I'd want in any MoM sequel is more differences between combat spells (and more non-combat spells).

Well what comes with a damage type is a resistance to complement it. In the end, Mundane is the damage type and Corporeal is the resistance.

Well I'm done in this thread for the forseeable future, don't see any point in posting my opinion and defending it any longer. Said what I felt. Sorry to leave you in Froglingrad Denryu. [JOKE]

Family tree is something new. We will see how it will do in the game. But battle ... Most of the game will be around that. Every way to achiev victory is to battle or threaten to. Even the non-bellicist ways to achieve victory need to take a hold of some terrain. So you'll always need some warriors to defend yourself. And battle isn't interesting if there isn't choices.

Let me repeat it : choices. If you have 3 choices that are the same you no longer have a real choice. If you have 3 choices and one of them is hugely better than the others, you no longer have real choices.

We need strategic choices in warfare. What if the point of designing different units if they all do the same thing : more or less damage ? What is the point between chossing a falme sword or an icesword if your opponenets have high "arcane defence" and then resist whatever you throw at them ?

Anyway, if they don't include different kind of armor, morale, flanking, surrounding, bravery, etc. I'll mod them. I just hope the battle logics will easily be available.

I strongly disagree that battle is the most important part of the game.  Perhaps it is in some games (like dominions), but those games barely had an economy to worry about.  however, the setup of battles is quite important as well (choosing what units ot build and getting resources, designing cities and such to get the chosen type of forces, getting heros together, etc.)  Battle is important, but just one of many elements of a game.

As for the battle itself, there are plenty of differences between units, and choices to make related to those differences.

This is exactly what different magical damage types are.  (They do the same thing, just with a different name).

There isn't much difference between an ice sword that does cold damage, and a fire sword that does the same amount of fire damage.  It just means you pick a different type of resistance ot counter them, otherwise, the units are exactly the same.  This means that the strategic choice isn't too interesting either (It's pretty much a rock/paper/scissors choice, without much influence from terrain, resources, and such.)

Therefore, kingdom management (population, buildings...) should be top priority as all the game is around it. From where did you get your army if not? Random mercenaries in the huts? How do you pay for them each turn? And where do you get the equipment from? Loot maybe? Maybe you solo the game?

Ah, but combats sells more than kingdom building. Just like "simple systems" sells more than "complex systems". Notice the use of "", please.

Man, I feel evil.

NONE of this discussion has anything to do at all with spells.

This was purely in the context of unit design.

People need to "wait and see". There is so much reading more into these posts than is remotely warranted.

If someone found Master of Magic's combat too simplistic then they'll probably find our combat too simplistic too.

But in battle, players will be hurtling fire balls and ice storms and magic bolts and picking up pieces of mountains and hurtling them at each other or blasting the ground with earthquakes.

However, what we are NOT going to do is have the unit design screen include anti-earthquake equipment.

Modders, however, will be able to go crazy if they want.  If some modder wants to create a race that uses various types of poison in their weapons and wants players to defend against it by equipping their units with various types of antidotes they can do that.  But as a player, I don't want to have to design a unit that has an anti-nightshade antidote kit because I'm fighting Bill who happens to have focused on not just having poison-tipped swords but nightshade based poisons instead of say hemlock (oh damn, I chose hemlock antidotes).

By contrast, in the middle of the battle, if I have a channeler or wizard in the actual battle with the capability to cast "Poison army" that's different. We're likely to have such a spell that causes a swath of units to start taking 10 points of damage per turn (complete with gasping animations) with the other side able to cast cure.

But even then, we're not going to have people research "immunity to poison" techs for use on their soldiers. There are likely to be SPELLS that do this but NOT in unit design.

Do you guys see now how people are reading too much into this stuff?

This is a game where players are designing their own units. And we have to be very thoughtful on what is part of a unit design and what can be handled by spells within a given battle.

So you mean the "kits" to get the "fire resistance" won't be used in the design unit screen ?

And why not a system where you can create templates with your units ?

You create "Bob the ultimate unMan", with a sword, a bow, a chain mail and a fire kit. Before battle I chose between sword and bow, then where I apply the "fire kit" (on armor it would enhance the resistance versus fire and on a sword .. well .. it's a flaming sword)

Preparing yourself before battle is a huge thing in strategy. If you didn't choose the right resistance, then you didn't scout enough ! If you're aware your opponent has a very strong tech in poison, you should at least get some thing to lessen potion or disable it.

I'm sorry to have misread that sentence :

But ... you said there weren't anymore fire or frost damage. Only arcane damage. Nowhere you speak about being able to flag the damage as coming from "fire" or "ice". Maybe I misread.

May I rewrite ?

"The battle system has been monkeyed with several times this week internally.  The current system has Attack along with a range for that attack.  There is also no longer “fire” or “frost” damage but instead simply Arcane damage and Arcane resistance, but you still can track where the damage is coming from (fire, water, wind, earth).  It’s very similar to what Master of Magic except we have Combat speed in there too."

Good news, thanks for the clarification.

So since I am assuming that a "army resistance to ice spell" would indeed lower doamage from ice spells but would not afford any protection to a fire spell, there will indeed be damage types and resistance but just not at the unit design phase. Is that correct?

Sounds like it, which would be great news. I think that's all that most posters were hoping for.

It looks like the punch-counterpunch will be, in terms of "damage types" at least, a function of tactics rather than of strategy.  This makes sense to me.  At least then you have a fighting chance.  How often in GalCiv2 do you not even both with defensive tech because you only have 33% chance of guessing "right"?  Fire/Ice/Lightning/Earth/Blunt/Pierce/Chop would be even worse.

Pretty much. Makes me happy

Indeed.

I am also much more reassured.

I'd rather have <i>all</i> magical spell damage combined into one thing.  (Since even spell research can have the same sorts of issues as resistances in unit design.)

I’m glad that has been cleared up and the more melodramatic members of the forum can pretty much rest at ease. Good clarification post Brad.  

You took the words out of my mouth Rish.  Having to run back re re-equip your entire army does not sound fun, but having just one type of magic damage/resistance also does not sound fun (or strategic) either.

Frogboy, with respect, the DAO example you gave, there are damage types and resistances.  The extra damage a weapon does is shown numercially, by color, along with regular damage, and it can be resisted (small amounts are not show nit says in the rulebook, to reduce screen clutter).  Civ has damage types and resistances,  Age of Wonders too.  Does that mean I want or need for Elemental to be the same, no.  But I think I, and others, seeing the name "Elemental", and hearing about how customizeable all the units could be, had imagined creating all sorts of units, with all sorts of special attacks and defences, and then, imagining all the possible amazing attacks/counters that might create.  So when they/I heard (only 1 magic resistance type), all that "imagining" seemed lost.

But I know this is the early beta stage, so I'm totaly putting my worry on hold, and waiting till a much later build to put in any more imput on this particular topic.  I loved Sins and GalacCiv, so I'm very hopeful about El too.

I think the secret here is to go not overboard.  If you make resistances obvious and somewhat uncommon than you aren't going to give the player huge headaches about unit choices.  Not everything needs an exact counter.  It seems like this game will be involving mainly human armies.  Things like fire resistance/immunity should be hard to make in my opinion.  You shouldn't be able to make whole armies that are resistant to fire.  These aren't ships where they all have shields and point defenses, resistances should be something special.  If that's the case it reduces the number of choices you have to make and it doesn't become cumbersome.

What's really a shame of course is that Elemental is a closed beta and thus no one will get to try out the battles before shipping thus whatever we are thinking is good right now is what is going to be what ships.

And make no mistake, you all must buy whatever we decide today because if you don't, we'll blame it on pirates. 

(just kidding)

$10 says someone gets pissed off at you for saying that and sends you a PM

You know what ? You could choose whatever you want for combat or economics, I know I'll play that game. Even if I weren't in the beta. I love the kind of work Stardock is doing. I would give my money just to support companies like you.

Keep up the good work (even if sometimes I strongly disagree with some things).

Frogboy (and Stardock as a whole), just do your thing.  Thanks for keeping me (the future player) informed, even if I get somewhat confused at times.  And thank you for clarifying those confusing points to the best of your ability and/or availability.

Basically, I'm really looking forward to this game and love hearing about it.

If only we didn't have so many pirates in the beta, we'd have a better game. 

Btw, I know the focus is on land battles, but we really should pirates into the game as some sort of anti-DRM easter egg or something.  It'd be hilarious.  Have them show up on your coasts frothing and foaming (so to speak) at the mouth, only to enter your Library and University locations, copy everything down, and then leave.

Oh, that would be so great, if any unregistered game had pirates that invaded more and more as the game went on.

The pirates would figure out a way to remove the pirates

RELOADED Presents...Remove the Pirates from Elemental V1.0