Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Recruitment in CoE3 is a curious thing which has an entire page dedicated to it in the manual. There are two types, standard and special. Special recruitment has three different subtypes.

The short version is that you an always recruit from the standard list and doing so ends recruitment at that castle for that turn.

The three types of special recruitment are commanders, announced units and unnannounced units, which can be either be one-offs or multiples and which either end recruitment or don't.

Commanders and announced units always generate a recruitment offer message. Unannounced units don't, so for those you need to check every turn. Most nations don't have them, only some (like the Troll King). One-offs vanish from the list as soon as recruited, multiples can be recruited in several castles, but only once per castle. Some one-offs don't end recruitment, so you can recruit them and something else, but they are not common.

You can always recruit all commanders on offer, even if you already ended recruitment at that citadel. As long as you have the gold, of course, and in some cases iron as well. And all special recruitment offers must be reacted to immediately, they won't be there next turn.


As for resources, the hammer symbol is iron. The brown symbol is a cart full of goods and represents trade points (no trading between players, just exchanging gold for a special resource or vice versa).

Leveling up mages is a curious thing. Some (usually class mages) may or may not have rituals that upgrade them to more powerful status. Most esoteric mages (i.e. other, non-class mages) must first find a booster item and then learn higher level spells. New spells can be acquired, but the opportunities are finite. Level 3 is the maximum level of spells.

Experience stars work much the same as they do in Dominions. The bonuses are a little different but the basics are the same.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Whee more silly micromanagement.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

That's relevant for three classes out of the current 17 and all of those classes work under the following constraints:
- basic recruitment list makes a glass jaw look sturdy (e.g. goblins)
- relies mainly on summons (Priest King) or supercombatants (Troll King) for muscle
- get either summons or supercombatants before they can amass enough gold to buy regular troops
- unannounced special recruits cost significant amounts of gold and iron
- or their unannounced special recruitments are available practically every turn

Having played with all three of these classes, the additional micro is negligible. Generally you don't ever have enough gold to blow it on unannounced recruitment anyway and announced recruitments are usually either something you don't need (very often anyway, like regular captains or equivalent) or will empty your treasury to the dregs (apprentices, mercenary wizards etc). If you even have the money for them in the first place.

You're assuming the management of things in CoE3 works exactly like Dom3, which it does not. It works much more like CoE2, except it's orders of magnitude better because the visuals allow you to identify things without needing to click on everything to inspect it in detail.

A typical Dominions 3 game has more micro by turn 15 than a CoE3 game has by turn 60.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Nope, I'm not assuming the micro is the same as dom3, I'm just challenging the idea that some recruits should be hidden, while others are not.

The way it was described it sounded like a "****, I forgot to check recruitement last turn". Just like you always forget to rehire the dom3 mercs. (At least I do).

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

I dont tend to miss too many. The important ones get announced in the messages at the beginning of the turn. And no purchases need renewed.

Also, it is only one menu to check. Not like dom3. When you open the recruit menu then all of your recruitable location are icon'd across the top. You can click on any of them then purchase the unit, then click another location and purchase something else. The only way you can miss one is if its not one of the announced ones (rarely) and you dont open the recruiting menu at all that turn (more often). I dont think I miss many.

I am more plagued with messages of specials being offered that I cannot afford. :(

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Edi said, "The short version is that you an always recruit from the standard list and doing so ends recruitment at that castle for that turn."


So it sounds like you can only recruit one unit, per unit-recruiting-location, per turn? In CoE2 you could essentially recruit an unlimited number of units at a citadel or tower or fort, etc., assuming you had enough gold.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Is 'Dragon Lord' available in CoE3, like in CoE2?
Really like draconian armies.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Correct, one recruitment per turn per citadel plus the commanders and one-off specials of a certain kind.

Soyweiser, for the classes that have unannounced special recruitment, it really is not a problem. Most of the time the recruitment offer messages are more annoying than missing unannounced specials, because missing those is not a big deal. Playing Bakemono, missing out on 3 Dai Bakemono or 3 Dai Bakemono Archers is not going to be crucial, they come and go, likewise for the Jaguar Warriors, Moon Warriors and Sun Warriors of the Priest King and the lesser units available for the Troll King.

Missing the recruitment of a troll may be annoying, but trolls generally cost an arm and a leg and you can practically bet the next 20 turns' income that as soon as you do recruit one of them, the next turn there will be a wizard or a giant on offer, and those are always announced stuff.

Missing one turn of unannounced stuff is nowhere near as bad as forgetting to renew mercenaries in Dom3.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

It is one unit at one location but the bulk units come in bulk sets. They might come in 5, 10, 15 so that one purchase can be buying 15 infantry with a cost high enough that you tend not to do that every turn.

@Thilock I havent seen any Dragon Lord yet but there are apparently still some nations to be added in.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Are combats still fought the same as CoE2? There, every unit on defense gets to attack before anyone on the offense, which means you often need an army that's twice as powerful to go on the attack. It'd be nice if the attacking ranged units could shoot before the defending melee units, at least.

Morale wasn't in CoE2. How does it work here?

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Same as CoE2 in the order of battle.

If it was changed, it would have to be changed so that each classification of units would go separately in a turn based fashion, but you would have to include all of the steps (spellcasting/ranged/melee) in every phase (see my previous post on classifications), which would lead to a lot of repetition and possible error chances. I can ask Johan about that, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Fear attacks target morale and if fear damage is greater than morale, the unit runs away.

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:cry:

COE2 combat was godawful, frankly.

That's hardly difficult. See Emperor of the Fading Suns (circa 1995), combat worked exactly like that - indirect, direct, melee and psychic phases per turn for all units possessing a particular kind of attack. That alone would improve on COE2 combat immensely.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Difficult doenst play into it much. That might not be difficult but it would be time consuming. The developers are still doing it as a fun hobby. We will have to see if Johan wants to.

Personally Im not seeing much problem with it. The game could be made more micromanaging but Im not really missing it even though usually like a high level of MM

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Keeping MM to a minimum is a major selling point for me.
I'm playing dominions for years now and I'm sooooo tired with it's emphasis on MM. I'm looking fwd to playing casual CoE3 games that don't take forever to do a turn.

That said, an initiative based system for combat, resolved automatically, will only enrich CoE3.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Look if they are developing it for fun, that doesn't mean people cannot still comment about it. Especially if it turns out to be a bad game.

And probably it is going to be one of those shrapnel super expensive games again. Which I would not be that interested in.

At least dom3 had interesting combat mechanics. That isn't really used anywhere else.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Im not stopping the commenting. Suggestions and requests are fully expected and appreciated. Im just explaining so we dont get into long arguments about what should be done and why which might derail the whole project.

And again, no one has said it will be a Shrapnel game yet. If you have some reasonable suggestions feel free to post them

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Heehee. Im too slow. Edi has already started a new thread in the beta forum about the combat suggestions. With a long and well written explanation of what has been brought up so far

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Desura could be an option to release the game through. It support both Windows and Linux.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Desura looks to be shelfware/marketing style.
Im not sure that Illwinter is ready yet to go that route but I will mention it.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

The issue of the combat sequence has been raised. We'll see what the answer is, though likely as not I'll only learn the results after the 13th, since I'm out of the country from 4th to 13th of January.

Like Gandalf said, anything that has a label of "lots of work and requires lots of time" is unlikely for exactly the reasons he listed.

A sequential 3 phase combat with spellcaster, missile and melee phases would probably only alter combat sequence mechanics (basically the order in which who does what they already do now) and I don't have any objection if the current system is changed to something like that. I don't have a vested interest in the outcome from a personal point of view.


However, anything like adding an initiative system would require some or all of the following:

- unit structure changes (and making them to all 650 (as of now) monsters)
- significant AI rewriting for 17 (as of now) separate AIs
- complete rewrite of the existing combat sequence code aside from damage mechanis
- significant rewrites of magic mechanics and spell structures, if magic initiative was to be spell-based rather than unit based
- integrating unit initiative of spellcasters with spell initiative of the spells they know
- since weapon and spell mechanics are essentially identical, initiative for weapons? And same problems there as above.

And then you would need to debug the whole shebang, which would be definitely be a non-trivial and very time-consuming task on top of all the time consumption that goes to the bullet points above.

Yes, there would be enrichment. But at what cost in time and effort required? Going "This would be awesome" is easy enough but making it a reality is another thing entirely.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

The good thing to do this, is that you get the game out to a bigger audience :)

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Yes but shelfware and marketing requires a substantial layout by the company. To convince them to take you on usually means signing away rights. And then there is a year or two of payback before any profits get sent to the devs.

Its a good plan. But it is a gamble in hopes of higher returns. Which isnt such a big thing for them.

Of course players like those companies because when sales slow down the game ends up in a bargain bin while the company tries to recoup its costs.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

I'm not really sold with CoE3 at all due to it looking like it'll be far too simple, especially in terms of combat, but seriously, if you release your game in Steam/Desura you can still sell it on your own website and those two services, especially Steam allow a much larger audience.

Dominions 3 scene is small and slowly dying. If the game was a 5 euro/dollar sale game in Steam for the holiday seasons, you can bet there would be many new people trying it out. Right now the price is so ludicrously high and there's absolutely no visibility for the game that influx of new players is far lower than what it could be.

I believe that it'd be a terrible business decision for Illwinter guys to release CoE3 like Dominions 3. Having the game easily accessible with a cheap price of maximum of about 20 dollars / euros makes people buy it just because they are interested and it's cheap.

If on the way to get the game is to buy it for closer 50 euros / dollars from some fairly obscure web site, you won't get that many random people buying it after just trying the demo. After all, for 50 euros you can get a big distributor main stream game. Sure, that game could be worse, but people do regardless seem to feel like that game is worth more - and in economical terms the price is more justified since the production costs are probably hundredfold or even thousandfold.

Also underestimating the marketing potential of those distribution platforms, especially Steam since it's by far the largest, is not a good idea.

So, really, I see no logical arguments against at least asking what it would take to get the game published on Desura/Steam/Gamersgate/Whatever.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Im sure they will be asking. But Im not sure it will be taken. Even a few concessions just for profit would probably shoot it.

And there are pros and cons to building your player base off of small price sales. Dont you use those forums? :)

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

If you somehow are implying that people on the other forums are evil people who are bad for the community, well, I have to disagree, but even if they were, how on earth is that connected to low price sales? By me using the forums and arguing that low price is probably better solution financially?

I would like to point out that, for example, majority of the quality mods used by people are developed by people who do write to the other forums too. What you seem to be implying is that it's somehow a problem if the game has community very interested in developing quality content that probably desireability of the product and a community that also is very experienced and loves the game.

In any case to be on topic, more players means a more thriving community. More players means higher probability of getting talented people making content for the game. More players means more players for multiplayer. Though since CoE3 seems to be more single player orientated and if I don't recall wrong might not even have modding capability on release, a community matters considerably less.

Regardless, I do still stand behind my argument that lower price than that of Dominions 3 is probably financially better for Illwinter. I would also guess that it's probably better for the players too.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

CoE3 is more SP oriented than Dom3 in that it can be played in SP against the AI and be a challenge, but it has MP also and I expect that would be where a lot of the action would be when it comes to communities.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

@elmokki What? Im also one of those other forum peoples. And yes most of the most popular mods come from other forums.

NO I was referring to the forums for some of those $5 and $10 games!
I feel there is a definite difference between Dom3 players and people who will only try a game because its cheap.

As far as those other forum communities (and the one you are apparently referring to) they are going to be very necessary since so far CoE3 is fleshing out to be primarily either solo play, or IRC blitz, much more than Dom3 is.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Its up to Kristoffer but Johan thinks probably not at release.
But he says maybe in a patch later.

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Well, regardless, price of the game doesn't correlate with the community alone. The type of the game does too. Dungeons of Dredmor for example has a very civilized and nicecommunity and the game costs like 5 euros.

Like I said, the more passionate players a game gets, the better it is for other players due to extra content and more multiplayer opponents (provided those things are possible).

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Uh, Steam don't ask developers to alter their games and as long as your game works you can pretty much get it on steam. If Illwinter really want to get their game out to a wider audience then Steam is the best option.
That's an exposure that you simply aren't going to get putting it for sale on 1 or 2 websites.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Well the discussions of Steam wont happen here. Of course players who use steam would want it. More interesting are the discussions by developers. Particularly those on the Stardock forums after Stardock decided to start using Steam considering the background with Brad.

As for exposure, the distribute/publicity business model is pretty good for indie developers as it involves no debt of funds.

Personally I wouldnt be too bothered if it was off Shrapnel. That would mean that I can market it as I could not Dom3. I will be making my own recommendations to Illwinter. And I promise any suggestions made here will be brought to their attention also.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

:up:

That's understandable, if attack speeds weren't written into the system to begin with, retrofitting them in would be a royal pain in the ***.

However, how about some plain old random factor affecting the order of units within a phase? That shouldn't be any big deal to implement. The way I imagine it, all units about to participate in a given phase are enumerated, sorted randomly and act in that order. The defending units could get some bonus in order to keep some of that "defenders go first" advantage (which *is* reasonable when not taken to such extremes as in COE2), like all shifting a couple of positions up the sorted list.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

I see a lot of praise for Steam. Personally, I detest that particular model of distribution for one simple reason: If I buy a game, I should be able to run it without needing a massive system resource hog third party application on my machine, which additionally requires registration and all that sort of thing.

There are other distribution channels even online which don't have such onerous handicaps associated with them, the most famous probably being Good Old Games. Sure, they require registration, but you don't need a massive software infrastructure associated with it.

However, as Gandalf said, the publishing discussion won't be happening here.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

That's one of the reason I suggest Desura (the other reason is it's also available for Linux). With Desura you don't need Desura client to run the game you purchased.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Steam DOES NOT require you to have your game use it in any way for non-Steam distribution. Steamworks API is rather simple and you should very easily be able to make the Steam version for Steam and a non-Steam version for whatever other ways you distribute it with. Of course it is extra work, but seeing Steam's market share it's financially probably easily worth it in nearly all cases.

There are many games that can be bought from Steam or can be bought from elsewhere and played without Steam.

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I think steam even supports different pricing schemes. So you can put a game on steam for 5 bucks, and sell it at your personal website for 10.

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Well, recently there have been more successful models for indie development. They way minecraft did it for example. Or the way a lot of other indie developers do it, by interacting with all your fans. (Examples to numerous to count). Dungeons of dredmor for example had regular blog posts what they where doing.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Even if it were $5 instead of $50 (and we pretended that was profit), do you think there would actually be 10x sales? And, would there be ten times as many content Dom players? I doubt it.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Well, If we look at other indy game makers like say, Fractal Games; They probably had immense benefit from selling their games on steam.

The first games they made were the Penumbra series witch was sold as boxed copies and (probably) as digital copies from their homepage. (They are now) It was published by Paradox Games.

There are no numbers what I can find of how many copies they sold of Penumbra + expansions, but when they were making their new game, Amnesia, they expected to sell some 20-40k copies.

Amnesia was a similar game and should have sold a similar number of units. But they did things different this time around. They put Amnesia up for sale on Steam. And well, in the first year Amnesia sold 400K copies!

Although probably not all of those extra sales are due to steam. Well, it still paint a pretty convincing picture.

Amnesia was priced to 15 euros/dollars but 75% of the copies were sold during sales so the price was marked down. It was still worth it in their opinion because the sales generated 50% of their revenue.

Eh, you people can read more about it here: http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/...l#comment-form

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

On steam, yes. Steam is odd, it is the amazon of selling games. (What works, only works for them, and it works great. But copying their business model will fail, and if you compete with them you will always have to deal with them).

So if dom3 was on sale on steam it would sell like a ... thing that sells. Because steam has a huge impulse buying community. Sadly shrapnel doesn't have this.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Bringing up the same information over and over isnt likely to change anything.
The fact that Steam (or something like it) could sell more games to more casual users has been mentioned many times already.
Its recorded and acknowledged. Lets move on

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Yes. Tenfold sales aren't impossible in any way. $5 is a price where people pick it up at the price just to try it and with Steam it's like three clicks for any Steam user to do that. $50 is a price where very few people buy it before trying it and even then it probably takes some consideration to pay the price of a full AAA game for it (yes, dom3 is better game than many of those, but those games did still cost a lot more to make so they do feel more entitled to get $50 if I happen to buy them in the first place). As a bonus buying from a random site usually requires you to do more than just click three or so times.

As for tenfold content, obviously not. Probably still more content than with $50 price though.

Minecraft is a good example of a game that got huge exposure with just spreading the game on their own site. It's not really something you can compare CoE3 with at all though. Minecraft was revolutionary in terms of gameplay. It's also very easy to access even if you aren't really a gamer. It also cost just 10 euros at start which is why I bothered to buy it in the first place back when I did. CoE3 doesn't have those selling points and is bound to be more of a niche game. The game mechanics aren't probably going to be revolutionary for more than small parts really, and more than that, it's going to be a turnbased strategy game. A genre that you need to streamline really well to appeal to casual gamers.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

I'm not trying to change anything. Past experiences have made it pretty clear that it is futile trying to argue here. Just pointing out misinformation. Like Elmokki did.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

I'm just posting to signal a small error in the progress page: the dates goes from 30th December 2011 to 1st December 2011, looks like the month and year have not been updated in the changelog.

Oh, and happy new year eveyone ! ^_^

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

What misinformation?

Distribution channels were discussed and the Steam vs Shrapnel model has been discussed many times with regard to Dominions 3 and it is absolutely irrelevant to this discussion.

Of the online options I've tried, Steam is the one I detest the most due to the extra requirements (other software), so I would not personally prefer that, but that's basically the extent of what has been said against it. Availability also on channels outside Steam at the same time is a different issue. Given such options, I would choose a non-Steam option while someone else could go for the Steam version.

Steam or other such online distribution mechanisms are possible for CoE3 or it could be something more traditional, but the point of fact is that that decision is going to be made by Illwinter and nobody else and they have as yet said NOTHING.

The pricing of CoE3 has not been discussed at all, except by the non-beta testers who brought it up. And that's another issue where there is NO information whatsoever to be had, since it is another thing which is going to be up to Illwinter and whichever distributor they ultimately choose.

Now can we please bury this particular tangent, or would someone else like to flog that particular equine corpse some more?

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Misinformation about how steam works, (exclusivity). And how mass reduced pricing works for steam and non steam distributed games. And how cheap games have bad forums.

Sure the remarks have been made again and again. But people keep bringing them up wrongly.

I'm not trying to make Illwinter change pricing, distribution etc. From the beta testers remarks it is clear they do not value non beta tester input.

It is normal that in a discussion you sometimes go a bit offtopic, esp when people make remarks you think are wrong.

Also, reading back in the thread. Gandalf himself asked for reasonable distribution suggestions. So discussing them isn't that strange, and not really a dead horse.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Soyweiser I dont tend to take offense to much (and experts here have tested that) but that post irritates me. Congratulations.

A) "not value non beta testers input" is probably purposely trolling. As beta testers BOTH Edi and I have made sure that all opinions get passed. We might not argue in favor of them but we do pass it and point out where the discussion is occurring so the devs can read it themselves.

B) stating your opinions, and me stating mine, is fine. But harping on the subject does NOT improve its chances with the devs. Are you new here or something? Havent you seen the result of please & thankyou as opposed to "idiots are missing the obvious" style of discussion in actually getting things changed as far as the companies involved?

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Sorry, but both of you are constantly are dismissive of any remarks made here. So as I cannot see into the beta forum, and a lot of behind the scenes stuff on this site has a questionable reputation. I'm skeptical. And never made it really clear that any information is passed along (Reading back, I see that I'm wrong it is mentioned that distribution suggestions would be passed along. My bad).

On the first page you already voice your opinion that releasing an open dev log is a bad idea. Not really something that fills me with trust. And first you ask for information regarding distribution channels, then both of you are very dismissive of any input. Most suggestions are either to expensive, creates horrible forums, or one of the beta testers detests the given option. Or it is just ignored. (How many times have people suggested that there are made youtube movies?)

Just look back at the thread, almost every suggestion is being dismissed by either you or Edi. Our (normal forumgoers) ties with Illwinter are not that close, we do not clearly know or understand what they want. (Actually, the times that I know it I do not understand it). And you made it pretty clear that even you guys have little influence in how it goes. So then it isn't that far off to think that I as a non beta tester have no influence whatsoever.

Sure it might irritate you, but this ivory tower dismissiveness of suggestions also irritates me. Especially when remarks about steam are being labeled as a dead horse just when there was a request for distribution suggestions.

So either we should shut up and not give suggestions (which are mostly dead horses anyway... this isn't meant as a troll, dom3 ai, and gui simply isn't that good. shrapnel pricing/distribution the same) or we should give suggestions which are then passed on to the beta forum (without being dismissed as irrelevant). There cannot be both.

I have no problem with the explanations of stuff and the updates however, those are nice additions.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Hey I was trying to be supportive. Its not the suggestions being made. Its how they are being made.

Discussion here direct to the devs with no filtering I think has definite drawbacks. But so far the ones that I feel are being done wrong tend to shoot suggestions in the foot that I didnt want to pitch anyway. Im no longer a moderator. I can be selfish. I shouldnt have to try and be diplomatic and support things I dont agree with. So, fine. Go for it. I will back off and let it flow.

Re: Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log
 

Fair enough, from replies it seems concensus [Edit: apparently "consensus", sigh] is that it would increase sales tenfold.

But the other bit of my post was that IMHO you would not get ten times as many happy Dom3 players. I just don't believe there are ten times as many people out there who would think Dom3 was great, or even playable. It's such niche audience.