A strategy game has to have interesting, almost painful, decisions to make. The opposite of interesting decisions is “false choice” - the illusion of a meaningful decision. A false choice is when you have to make a choice, but it makes no difference to the game or there is only one viable choice. False choices kill a game because they waste your time without being interesting. I heard this concept well discussed on a podcast that I wish I could credit, but I cannot find it.
There are several issues to work on, but my biggest disappointment thus far is that the tech tree seems like one big false choice. The game advertises five distinct research paths and strategies: civilization, warfare, magic, adventure, diplomacy. But squads are so strong that a warfare-based strategy seems to be the main (only?) way to win the game. All four other paths are huge false choices – at best, they are useful supplements to the warfare approach (e.g. you need just enough civilization to get the resources going). But it feels like there is only one way to play/win this game.
This is a shame because the other paths are where a lot of the fantasy/RPG flavor lie. Also, having really different paths to domination was a key, still unrealized, idea of the game design. Plus, they’re interesting; one of my gripes with the Civ series is that you are more or less confined to a single tech tree. In Civ, it seemed that just being ahead on the tech tree was more important than the order you chose things. The fact that most of the research paths in Elemental are not viable or interesting is really holding the game back.
First, I think there needs to be a substantial effort at rebalancing so that each of the 5 paths is a viable way to win the game … more or less on its own. For example, I tried an (almost) pure adventuring strategy in my first game that fell flat on its face. The champions are weak and could not leave my borders to get to the adventure locations because spiders and bandits would kill them. What good are adventurers that cannot stand up to some monsters? There are some good points here already. They made sure that adventuring brings a variety of rewards – I was pleasantly surprised when it revealed some new food sources. A variety of rewards helps each path be viable on its own, but you want each path to have its limitations/weaknesses as well.
Second, after each path is viable on its own, there should be some interesting ways to blend paths to achieve synergies. Blending the paths will open up more options. Maybe civilization/warfare gives you large but mundane armies whereas warfare/magic gives you smaller but more exotic armies. Here again, the game has the outlines in place with the unit design system, but tactical battles need to work better before this pays off. An adventuring/diplomacy path could consist of just one or two cities but with champions that go out to exert influence over allied factions (e.g. I’m thinking Gandalf and his circle of wizards who coordinated the free peoples vs Sauron). The possibilities are endless once you get these combos going. And, maybe some combos are not meant to work together if adventurers tend to upset the carefully laid out civilization, etc.
Third, the map and overall game situation should steer you towards a certain strategy or blend of strategies. The best games force you to adapt from game to game (depending on the map and opponents) and even sometimes within a game. There are some opportunities here: what resources are available determines which path you might go down. So, finding a cool resource might convince you to focus on or blend in a particular research path. But, there should be more ways to adapt your strategy as the game evolves. Right now, you mostly create your sovereign before the game. You have a few points to allocate as the game progresses, but I haven’t yet felt like they make much difference. What if your sovereign started out pretty generic and you could build/adapt him as the game went on? Do I allocate a point to him now to get the immediate benefit or wait until I explore a bit more to see if he will be a wizard or a warrior? What if questing led to a more interesting set of rewards and loot? Maybe getting some really good treasure might convince you to tailor a strategy around it? And why do we need to buy spellbooks only at the beginning? It would be more interesting to say “I just got this fire shrine – now I need to go off on a quest or whatever to develop fire magic.”
