Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

I think that option is already available (a clustered start I think its called).

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

That option is known as "Clustered start for allied players" and is set at game creation.


http://koti.welho.com/ehalttun/publi...teredstart.jpg


As you can see, they start quite close together.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Just out of curiosity: I know allies can steal from one another if the original owner doesn't leave any troops behind on their square. Is it possible for an ally to steal their friend's citadel and put them out of the game?

Allied troops can move past one another and coexist on the same square between turns, right?

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Yes, and yes.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

If no unit is there then the first to walk in claims it just as if they were not allies. But if a unit of your allies is there then you cannot combat them.

However....
I have hidden inside my allies fortress. I have stationed troops inside my allies fortress to help defend it when he was weak. And (possible exploit warning) I have done dangerous summonings inside my allies fortress in order to force his troops to help defend me if the control fails.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Im sorry. I dropped the Druid / Baron Alliance AAR.
I think I gave some idea of what that alliance offers in a fun game. Enough to spark some interest.

Now I have started another alliance. The High Cultist (Rlyeh/Cthulhu) nation is allied with a Troll King nation. Not quite so friendly an alliance. They overlap in their needs. But if played properly it can still benefit both sides.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=48331

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Interesting. This is a bit of odd way of doing it don't you think? I mean I can understand a loose alliance where your "ally" can possibly take advantage of you when he sees your undefended castle. But then why wouldn't it when he sees you defending your castle with one single soldier if it's a loose alliance? If it's opportunistic, it should always be opportunistic I think.

So anyway... We have about 2 weeks until the target release date. Does it look like we will meet that target?

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

I dont mind the arrangement. It makes it easy to decide what things my ally can or cannot have. If I want him to hands-off then I leave at least one unit to say "excuse me but you cant have that". But if I want him to have it then I just march my troops off as soon as he is in the neighborhood.

It makes it easy to give iron or gold if I want him to boost his troops. or give him a castle if i want him to generate more of a presence in that part of the map

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

As far as "on time" Id guess so. We dont stop coming up with changes, but i dont think that will stop anything. And sometimes we do introduce some really nasty bug but Johan tends to fix that in a day so that shouldnt hang us up either.

The only thing that might concern me is that I still havent seen anything about who and how it will be distributed

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Ah I see. So it's done that way as of sort of a site trading mechanism. I guess it makes sense if that's the only site trading mechanism.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

I dont know if its why it was done. But I sure use it that way. :)

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Using the Druid/Baron alliance as an example, could the Baron player take away the Druid's forests if he moved through them?

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Yes, if there are no troops there, the baron will deflag the forest when he moves through.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

preordered!

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Do the summoning rituals always summon the same type of creature or do they vary?

Do the recruitment sites have some alignment preconditions such as certain troops not joining super evil characters like high cultists?

On a side note, I've seen that CoE2 had elve classes in it, but both were removed although the dwarves remained. I wonder if the designers have something against elves?! Actually it would have been nice to have a 'good' character class for a change. Most of the other classes seem to be just different grades of evil.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

That's kind of the thing with the Dominions and Elysium-verse though. It has never been about good versus evil, its been about mythological and sometimes real creatures as well as ancient civilizations fighting each other in a death match of awesomeness.

What exactly makes elves "good" anyways? They are still out to kill everyone and conquer the land like the rest.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Summoning rituals summon a random creature from a predetermined set. E.g. the Necromancer lesser summon can summon anything from this list:
- Dispossessed Spirit (variable number)
- Ghoul (variable number)
- Dire Wolf (1)
- Ghost Warrior (variable number)
- Spectral Horseman (variable number)
- Shade (variable number)
- Mound King (commander, 1)

There were a few more, I think.

So you are not guaranteed anything when you summon. Some of the summonings can be a complete crapshoot, you can get utterly useless stuff or something that can turn the tide for you.

As far as elves being removed from CoE3, there is nothing to say that they could not come back in some form, but rather as one nation than two. And the idea that they would be somehow inherently good is not what I'd bet on. The CoE2 Elf Queen was more of the fairy court, benevolent kind of class, but the Elf King was the king of the Dark Elves and I'd hardly characterize him as "good".

I do expect that patches will add additional classes. The first addition is likely to be the Cardinal of El, since the High Priestess class description features him rather prominently as the main opponent of the cult of Baal.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Well, elves have their origins in the norse mytholgy, therefore it's not something Tolkien just came up out of the blue.
I think they were called Ljosalfar, "Light elves" and kind of related to the Vanir gods which were more into creation than the bad *** Aesir warrior gods. The evil dark elves of D&D and Warhammer were if I remember right more a product of a misinterpretation since with the dark elves were actually the dwarves meant. Of course there's no exact yes or no since a lot of things in mythology allow different interpretations.

However, with Tolkiens impact, the elves generally have more of a tendency to higher moral standards which can be more interpreted more of less as 'good'. Which in gameplay terms could mean that they are less likely to use blood sacrifice and such.

On the other side, elves could be added with neutral alignment and the player decides if he plays them more like high, wood or dark elves.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

I started a new thread about some game variation ideas that the game supports so far.
Just based on the nations and possible alliances.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=48335

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Well, as Edi says, even the Elf Queen was more of a fairy court sort of elf than a post-Tolkein kind of elf. The thing with fairies is that even though they have what you'd call "high moral standards", they wouldn't be considered human moral standards. The tradition I'm most familiar with is the sidhe and unsidhe (Or seele and unseelie sometimes), which is less "good and evil" courts and more "dangerous and even more dangerous". Even the "good" faries sometimes kidnap children and take them to their realm. And if you anger one, you are pretty much in huge trouble.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

So I was playing some CoE 2, and noticed something really annoying, and that was that normal frontline commanders (Like the Barbarian Leader) get beaten up and there is seemingly nothing that can be done about that. Is there anything being done in 3 to change this? If not, it might be a good idea to have certain units with guarding ability that will cause them to have a chance to take damage for normal sized (IE, not the Troll King, who would be too large to guard :p) frontline commanders so they aren't turned into pulp the first turn of combat.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

For front liners there is only the equipment. But every nation has backliner leaders available also.

For backliners (mostly mages) many of them can summon familiars which stay in the back to absorb some damage and assassin attacks.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

New question:
If I loose, can I keep the game running to see which AI won?
Or better yet, can I go AI and see if I win?

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

No, and no.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Oh, an observer mod could be great. Even for watching AIs with different settings duke it out.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

If ALL of the players are AI then the game shuts down.
Sorry about that. Thats my fault. It was a server request to keep a server from running a dead game continually. It was a hassle with Dom3 and would be even more with CoE3 since there are no turn files I could even check the last turn-in date on

However, if you have "Common Cause" turned on, and you have an AI ally, then you can continue in the game watching your ally play. But that is because you actually have a chance of coming back.

If you want to watch your own nation play out as an AI (only possible in server games altho you can host your own server game just for yourself) then you would have to have another human player in the game. I have started games where I played 2 or more nations, then set some of them AI just to see how they would continue. It can actually be fairly instructive early on to watch the AI play.

The game could support tourists. The game makes it much easier to switch out who it is playing a nation. If I drop then the next connector sees my nation as "open" for play. They can step into the game taking over where I left off. So an old game that people arent interested in anymore could stay running to allow people to step in and do a few turns

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Understood.

However, if it were a flag like --enable_observer_mode that defaults to false (as in no dead games) then we could enjoy a life game sim like experience w/ CoE3. That sounds like a lot of fun to me - like start human, grow a nice kingdom and then switch AI and check how it's doing every so often :)

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Edi and Gandalf, credit where credit is due, I really like the AARs. Good job on those. Made me more interested in the game than most of this thread :D.

Ps, this page http://www.illwinter.com/coe/index.html says shrapnel has a free download of COE2. I could not find it myself. So if that isn't true anymore. You might want to advise illwinter to remove it.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Our_Games/Free_Games.html

I play it on my lunch breaks sometimes.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Aw right, it isn't on gamersgate, nor is it on the our games page. That is why I couldn't find it.

Thanks Samoht.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

I'd really like this feature too! I'm planning to run some AI tournaments like the ones I've seen in the dev log.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Not mine. Done by someone at a developer forum
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHWiHC-i5b4

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Excellent. I'll watch it right now.

I wonder if it would be worth it to spread the word to various game review websites or podcasts. I know one of the guys over at the Three Moves Ahead podcast is a big Dom3 fan (helped write the manual?) and they've done a couple podcasts in the past that discussed Dom3. It probably wouldn't hurt to try to get the word out or something.

For all I know there could already be something in the works along those lines, but I bring it up because so far the only discussion I've seen has been in other forums.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

It was very interesting to watch.
(A) he was obviously learning the game as he did it.
(B) he is obviously good at doing that. he made only a couple wrong assumptions

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

As a random announcement, it can be said of CoE3 that as of this writing, there are no statfixes that need doing that I know of. :)

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

I have three days off work. If it can be said of CoE3 that it is released, that would be better :)

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Hmm, would be great if the game was released a week early. (holiday for me next week)

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

I hope there will be some modding options available in the future.
Most of what I'm seen looks good or at least okay, but the all black cmbat screen is a bit too boring for my taste.
I'd have either left the map in the background or added a nice backgroud image of the combat terrain and shown a combat window with front, mid and back rows for attacker and defender.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

I agree ArkhanTheBlack.

I actually like the game map. The way it changes with seasons etc. but yes the pitch black combat screen is a little depressing. At first, I honestly thought it was that way because the game was in Beta. Now, I am not sure what would be a good replacement for it since in a way black let's you see the armies better but the combat screen could definitely use some improvement.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

I dont think background screens would work well. We have some great variety in the images. Background screens would just make it hard to see. And the effect of some units, such as shades, would be ruined. They are a dark grey and give the impression of their invisibility in the combat

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Then maybe some nice frames with different design per class?

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

If we do get those, it won't be for the release version. The scope of things to be added in patches is greater than the scope of the new things that we can expect to be added at this late stage in the development, given that the release date is just a week away.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Yes, that's the reason why you have to use a combat window.
The combat window has a clean dark background color, but the background surrounding the window would be the map or a background image. I think the red background color of the unit description windows would even offer a much softer contrast. Black is a bit extreme.
Info windows are used by most strategy games nowadays, even by CoE3, therefore I'm a bit surprised that it wasn't used for the fights.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

I very much prefer the black background that CoE3 uses. The background inside the infoboxes is actually dark gray, unless opacity set to 0, in which case the background is black.

I rather intensely disliked the Dominions 3 red background, it made all graphics seem indistinct and blurry. The Blue GUI mod was a little better, but not a whole lot.

Some of the sprites in CoE3 are the exact same ones as in Dom3, but they look so much better on the black background that I thought they were entirely new sprites (Sirrush, Watcher).

You can even see it when you turn opacity up to max and the background is dark gray instead of black, the visual quality immediately becomes worse.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Well, it's indeed grey(checked it with paint). I guess the redish appearance comes from the red panels in some of the windows.

I'd also keep it diplomatic. Just use a good looking background for the units. ;-)
However, I wonder, if the unit images look so much better with black background, then why wasn't it used for the unit images in the description windows?!
Actually I like grey better than the pitch black. Black is not a natural background.

However, the actual point wasn't the background color of the units but that it was used for the whole screen.
Just keep it in a combat window and you have both, good unit contrasts and a nice background.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Makes perfect sense. Thanks!

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Watching some videos im wondering why the scaling system from d3 was killed. In dom 3, a normal human had all 10s to represent him. That way it was easy to gauge the power of a skeleton or troll. It seems in CoO3 even dwarfs only have strength 4 or 5. Why the rescaling ?

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

It's using the same scaling system as in CoE2. I like this system better. Besides, once you play for a while, gauging the relative power of units becomes second nature.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Not sure. Might be because its CoE2 being redone so some of the game is pre-Dom3. Its Dom3 that changed things.

It might also be that the increased range in Dom3 made things harder to balance, and more micro-managery. Just guessing

Edit: Edi beat me at the same time :)

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

I understand that, but still.
Firstly, from a lore angle, scaling everything by 10 is easy. if a human is 10, then a orc is pretty much 12, maybe 13, while a elf is likely 8 to 9.

But if the base is 5, the relationship becomes more difficult.
I always liked all the details in Dom3, and the ability to imagine a creature by comparing its stats to a human always appealed to the nerd in me.