What's the point of balancing weapons when ...

MoM had a To Hit base of 30%, +10% per bonus to hit.

What made MoM good IMHO, was the special attacks and defenses of each unit. Thrown, Fire Breath, First Attack, Armor Piercing, etc.

It was more complicated than simple Rock ,Paper, Scissors. Some units, like Paladins were very tough to counter, especially flying with guardian wind.

And Heros were Heros when they got to Demigods. A Demigod Mortu or Torin simply owned. Health and Mana scaled with level.

IMHO, A 12th level hero should not have 11 health, regardless if I put any points into constitution. A level 12 hero with 22 Int should not "miss" a 2 hp spider with an area-of-effect spell either.

I am pretty happy with Elemental city building. More stuff would be nice, but I am good with that. The tactical combat is where I would like to see the most attention. Then Magic. I want good things from magic tree. I have played through 4 Elemental games where I have not researched any magic. Teleport is all I need.

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With the shard multipliers, magic gets pretty potent.

Melting Touch or Morrigan's whatever is just plain scary with one or two shards. Int x 6 in damage. OUCH! Or Int x 3 in a 3 by 3. The other serious problem with Elemental's combat is how important starting first is. With a few mages I can wipe out most forces on the first turn. This is compounded by the I hit/you hit combat sequence. The first hit in combat is so decisive its silly. I think a system where damage is dealt simultaneously unless someone has first strike. That or separate initiatives for each unit.

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 2

Two letters: AI

I am not sure about what this exactly means:

- Is balancing weapons needed to ensure that AI can survive

- or changing the combat system will have a too important impact for the AI

BTW, any weapon balance or combat system change has not only an impact on the AI but on monsters stats also: AI sovereign must be able to handle monsters

I am wondering if the problems the AI have with attack and defense aren't linked with how combat work and the small effectivness of armor. It is perharps easier, from an AI point a view, to handle gaussian like repartition than uniform repartition when trying to evaluate combat outcome and designing armies: with a gaussian repartition, you are more likely to get a value near the middle of the range than with an uniform one.

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I'm sure Stardock want to do more to enhance the combat system and as many have said this will probably come with the 1.1 update. I'm very grateful that Brad has taken the time to rebalance the weapons to help make it a less one-sided choice as it is now at the moment. They could've waited until 1.1 to deliver any sort of balance changes but I'm happy that we'll get some now to help improve the gameplay while we wait for additional tweaks later on.

As I remember Brad saying during the beta, features in Elemental revolve around the fact that the AI must be able to use it so Stardock can't be too drastic with changes until the AI system is updated to take any changes into account.

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Quoting Sethai,

reply 13

a hell of a lot of people in these threads

https://forums.elementalgame.com/393547

https://forums.elementalgame.com/395308

don't agree.

A lot of people also thought the world was flat. Generally, I find the more people support something, the more wrong it's likely to be.

The problem is the scale is off, not the system. 1-N works fine if the maximum value for N is limited. Without it it's impossible to balance, there's far too much randomness in the system. Limit N and you can use hitpoints to balance it out - if the maximum attack is 10, then a 10 hitpoint unit will require at least two attacks to kill, providing they have armour. You can then balance it on a combination of hitpoints (higher hitpoints = more resilience) and combat speed (more attacks = bigger threat).

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Wintersong

Join Date 07/2006

+235

I would be happy with just getting rid of the "Attacker first, then defender. Repeat until one side wins.". The attacker having some bonus to initiative? Fine. But in the end I would prefer unit acting according to their own initiative in a single turn instead of "Attacker Turn" -> "Defender Turn".

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A lot of people also thought the world was flat. Generally, I find the more people support something, the more wrong it's likely to be.

The problem is the scale is off, not the system. 1-N works fine if the maximum value for N is limited. Without it it's impossible to balance, there's far too much randomness in the system. Limit N and you can use hitpoints to balance it out - if the maximum attack is 10, then a 10 hitpoint unit will require at least two attacks to kill, providing they have armour. You can then balance it on a combination of hitpoints (higher hitpoints = more resilience) and combat speed (more attacks = bigger threat).

It's not like there is no arguments for getting rid of uniform 1DN (yes the real problem is the uniform distribution) in those threads.

Reducing range of values to 0 to 10 would be a good idea if : there would be enough stat to differentiate units (attack that is both "to hit" and damage is a bad thing), enough combat effects that don't do damage, or very little (think whip, bolas, net, smoke grenade), combat effects that add something to damage (think haleberd to do a huge sweep, maces and hammers that break armor, flails that negate shields)

I just hope that all combat mechanics will be able to mod.

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Yes its is weird the way the game works in combat and it does need tweaking.

Quoting Archonsod,

reply 30

Quoting Sethai, reply 13
a hell of a lot of people in these threads

https://forums.elementalgame.com/393547

https://forums.elementalgame.com/395308

don't agree.

A lot of people also thought the world was flat. Generally, I find the more people support something, the more wrong it's likely to be.

Interesting fact 101: A lot never thought that, no Europeans at all since at lest the 14th century, likely most never really thought this for a long time before this (and even some that we think did likely didn't, it hard to say for sure though, due to what we got is mostly theological doctrines), I would guess that seafaring cultures would believe in a rounded earth no matter what. TBH I find it funny that a lot of people still believe this. *Cough* The Flat Earth Society *Cough* goes to show that there's are loonies everywhere.

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Let's get some magic resist up in here. Add a black king bar from DotA. Also, add Slardar as a playable Sovereign.

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Interesting fact 101: A lot never thought that (and even some that we think did likely didn't, it hard to say for sure though, due to what we got is mostly theological doctrines), I would guess that seafaring cultures would believe in a rounded earth no matter what. TBH I find it funny that a lot of people still believe this. *Cough* The Flat Earth Society *Cough* goes to show that there's are loonies everywhere.

Greek knew that earth was round, thanks to the moon (the shadow that earth drops on the moon is always an arc from a circle(I don't know the english word to describe it), and only spherical objects have that property).

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Quoting nasebee,

reply 18

GalCiv had the rock/paper/scissors mechanic, of different attack/defense combos. Elemental has a rock/hardplace mechanic. No choices or subtlety or countering.

SD philosophy of game design...

Ai > Fun.

But this time even the AI sucked.. That why this game is a massive fail.

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Ai > Fun.

That isn't an excuse. HoMM had a fairly good AI. King's bounty too. Fantasy general too. Elven legacy too. X-COM too.

Why is there so much games with complex systems out there that have a fairly good AI ? Brad is good at it, he should be less humble about it, and try to develop AI for complex system.

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"All of Elemental humanity was united in celebration, we marvelled at our own .... as we gave birth to Elemental AI"

and that leads to The Elemental Matrix, and the Elemental Agent Smith.

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Tridus

Join Date 03/2008

+110

Quoting Archonsod,

reply 30

A lot of people also thought the world was flat. Generally, I find the more people support something, the more wrong it's likely to be.

The problem is the scale is off, not the system. 1-N works fine if the maximum value for N is limited. Without it it's impossible to balance, there's far too much randomness in the system. Limit N and you can use hitpoints to balance it out - if the maximum attack is 10, then a 10 hitpoint unit will require at least two attacks to kill, providing they have armour. You can then balance it on a combination of hitpoints (higher hitpoints = more resilience) and combat speed (more attacks = bigger threat).

And a lot of people who don't like something simply because it's popular have no idea what they're talking about.

The system simply isn't very good. Boosting HP to eliminate one shots is a bandaid, and gets harder and harder to do as attack numbers go up due to squads growing in size (and shards boosting the damage on melting touch). The system is so random that you'll still get the extremely unpredictable results that we see right now with large attack/defense numbers.

Slapping a minimum value on the rolls would help quite a lot to make it more predictable and less frustrating. If the goal really is to keep this system, that's a better way to go. There's nothing worse then having 17 defense and still being killed in one hit because you happened to roll a zero.

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+1 to idea of splitting tohit/damage and armor/dodge (but the latter seem to be already separate values)

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Quoting Archonsod,

reply 30

Quoting Sethai,
reply 13

a hell of a lot of people in these threads

https://forums.elementalgame.com/393547

https://forums.elementalgame.com/395308

don't agree.

A lot of people also thought the world was flat. Generally, I find the more people support something, the more wrong it's likely to be.

The problem is the scale is off, not the system. 1-N works fine if the maximum value for N is limited. Without it it's impossible to balance, there's far too much randomness in the system. Limit N and you can use hitpoints to balance it out - if the maximum attack is 10, then a 10 hitpoint unit will require at least two attacks to kill, providing they have armour. You can then balance it on a combination of hitpoints (higher hitpoints = more resilience) and combat speed (more attacks = bigger threat).

completely agree with everything that's been said about splitting attack and damage, magic resistances, elemental resistance, 1DN, everything.

the reason why i'm harping on about fixing combat speed is because i think it's the easiest and most obvious change that could be made. rename combat speed action points, and give weapons a different AP cost per attack instead of changing the overall pool. it won't require any new stats, it just does what the game is supposed to do now, only better and with less confusion. i really don't see how that would be an AI issue at all. if the ai has any hand in designing units, it's only thought process would be "always take lord hammers," and all that would do would be point out how broken the current situation is.

if they're tweaking the attack and CS of some weapons in the next patch then that's great. but post 1.1 there need to be some big changes for me to overcome my frustrations and start playing this game/buying expansions in the long term.

if the mantra is to give people the opposite of what they want, then clearly stardock should develop a game that causes my desktop to enter search and destroy mode, and mince my genitals with the CD tray.

boss is coming! gotta go!

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There is a lot of wisdom here...lets hope that Elemental devs reads that.

Cheers!

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Will we get more diverse units as well, other than weapon balance? What about flying units, stealthed units, magic immune units, units that are only hit by magic weapons, fire immune units, etc., and on and on.

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Quoting Archonsod,

reply 30

Quoting Sethai, reply 13
a hell of a lot of people in these threads

https://forums.elementalgame.com/393547

https://forums.elementalgame.com/395308

don't agree.

A lot of people also thought the world was flat. Generally, I find the more people support something, the more wrong it's likely to be.

The problem is the scale is off, not the system. 1-N works fine if the maximum value for N is limited. Without it it's impossible to balance, there's far too much randomness in the system. Limit N and you can use hitpoints to balance it out - if the maximum attack is 10, then a 10 hitpoint unit will require at least two attacks to kill, providing they have armour. You can then balance it on a combination of hitpoints (higher hitpoints = more resilience) and combat speed (more attacks = bigger threat).

The system is messed up if only because to hit and damage are the same stat. Higher attack does both better, and that's throwing it off. So the counter is to make the insane randomness where one time you might hit for 25 with that 35 attack weapon, and then next time...2

If weapons had their own damage and their own to-hit separated, that would solve a lot of the problem. You then limit your N (which would be damage) without messing with to-hit.

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Quoting Archonsod,

reply 30

A lot of people also thought the world was flat. Generally, I find the more people support something, the more wrong it's likely to be.

I wonder just what your eating habits are... Do you actively avoid eating the things that most people support as being healthy or at least not dangerous to your health if eaten in moderation (which include most food you will find in the local super market) or do you make an exception for food? How about exercise? Lots of people support the notion that exercise is good for you. And knowledge too, come to think of it.

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hard to say for sure though, due to what we got is mostly theological doctrines), I would guess that seafaring cultures would believe

Heheh, but serious fear that the AI becomes at one point to smart. I mean already in a dev blog was once mentioned that it got a mind of its own.

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If the 1DN doesn't change, the modding community can give about 30 alternatives within an hour. The only thing we need is the AI to know how to use it.

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The system is messed up if only because to hit and damage are the same stat. Higher attack does both better, and that's throwing it off. So the counter is to make the insane randomness where one time you might hit for 25 with that 35 attack weapon, and then next time...2

If weapons had their own damage and their own to-hit separated, that would solve a lot of the problem. You then limit your N (which would be damage) without messing with to-hit.

There is no "to hit", in the strictest sense. Every attack hits, the only difference is in damage dealt. Sure, the game displays "Miss", but that's only an abstraction so that it doesn't have to show hits for 0 damage. The engine is designed to assume that every attack hits, and only calculates the damage of the hit.

While adding a to-hit mechanic will definitely be nice, I think at the moment they should focus on making the core combat flow well and be reasonably fun, before adding new elements into it (to-hit, line of sight, etc).

It is okay to assume "always hit". A to-hit mechanic isn't essential to creating a tactical battle system that works. It will be a simpler system without the fluff, for sure, but the important thing is for it to work predictably, flow well, and not make people want to rip their hair out. Once the core system works, I'd love to see it expanded a bit more in complexity to include some basic LoS for ranged attacks, as well as some more To-Hit (other than the shields' dodge bonuses).

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Quoting Annatar11,

reply 48

There is no "to hit", in the strictest sense. Every attack hits, the only difference is in damage dealt. Sure, the game displays "Miss", but that's only an abstraction so that it doesn't have to show hits for 0 damage. The engine is designed to assume that every attack hits, and only calculates the damage of the hit.

Well, see - I wish it would have put "no damage" or "ineffective" because as you see, it confused me to how the system worked.

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Quoting lord ebonstone,

reply 22

Rolling chance to hit and damage together into one stat is silly and unbelievably stupid. Separate them or you tac combat will always suck.

I hate to say it because it's bandied around so much on this forum, but in this case you absolutely should have copy/pasted the core principles from, well, Age of Wonders, or Heroes of Might and Magic, or King's Bounty, or Master of Magic, or any other 4X I can think of right now, or every RPG that I can think of right now:

Attack = Chance to hit.

Damage = Damage dealt when an attack lands.

Defense = Chance to avoid getting hit.

Resistance = Chance to avoid getting hit by spells.

These are the freakin' amino acids of RPG tactical combat. You can derive all kinds of fun sub-mechanics from them... but, at the bare minimum, you need these four stats on every unit. Your combat will suck and make no sense without these basics.

Aside from ruining your mechanics and making your tac combat a laughable boring chore, leaving these out breaks the suspension of disbelief harder than sneaking a peek at the Christmas presents in your mom's closet and later having them given to you from "Santa."

^ This

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