Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log

[Legendary League]

Question: is there a way for the baron to change where the annual levies spawn (for example, I had a start where I was stuck in the south, with a river forcing me to move through two cannibal village squares before I can get to plains, which makes levies a pain in the arse to move, while it would be infinitely more convenient for it to be raised in the city outside that damnable position).

[samoht]

Originally Posted by Legendary League

Question: is there a way for the baron to change where the annual levies spawn (for example, I had a start where I was stuck in the south, with a river forcing me to move through two cannibal village squares before I can get to plains, which makes levies a pain in the arse to move, while it would be infinitely more convenient for it to be raised in the city outside that damnable position).

Oh my goodness I wish there was an option to do that, but I'm afraid there isn't.

The baron is one of my favorite classes to play, but the problem you described is easily one of the biggest limits on his power. The only thing I could think of doing would be hoping to get a pyromancer so you could burn down the forests surrounding your starting castle, but I don't know if that effects cannibal villages (probably not), and I know it won't help if you're stuck behind mountains or swamps.

[elmokki]

I'm very dissapointed. The game has very good potential, I give it that. Commanders (mainly mages and big things, but still) feel more personal than in Dom 3 due to being so much more important and I kind of like the square based map with settlements and wilderness as opposed to Dom 3's every province being a settlement. It's also kind of nice to have very varying mechanics for each "nation".

But, first of all the controls are horrible. In Dominions 3 it's tolerable that we can't queue movement (so that it automatically provided nothing major happens nearby continues next turn) because apart from very late game it isn't that big of an issue as generally you don't have to spend that many turns moving, and even if you do there aren't that many commanders. In CoE3 you have to be moving things all the time and it's very frustrating to move things 10 squares by clicking at the map every time for 10 turns in a row. Turns are so much shorter. There are also minor gripes with the UI, but in general that's the major thing bugging me.

Secondly there's far too much pointless micromanagement. You can only hire troops from those big settlements so it's a lot of micromanagement if you wish to garrison your mines and villages so that some random snake won't take over a big city alone. Alternatively you can hunt down things, but it's even more micromanagement with coms. I don't have anything against micromanagement when I feel it has interesting effects, but here it's just frustrating.

Gameplaywise the game starts fairly slow since (depending on the "nation") you might not be able to do much at all to anything near you. Especially some of the "nations" have a HUGE luck factor in with what they start near to. For some it's a lesser issue though.

I would've wished the combat to have more tactical choices as opposed to "choose list of what spells my mages can cast if they feel like it". Dominions 3 style scriptable combat would've suited this game equally well with some modifications due to smaller numbers of units in general. That said I would've wished the whole game to have somewhat more tactical and strategic choices.

In general I have to sadly say that this was pretty much a waste for my money. Illwinter, however, can fix a lot of this with patches if they wish to. Given good tools to help with the annoying micromanagement of defending your settlements from snakes and bears this might be a somewhat enjoyable game. Oh, and anyway, I've gotten enough enjoyment from Dominions 3 to not mind this being a waste of money.

[shatner]

Yeah, here's my contribution to a CoE3 thread from another forum:


Conquest of Elysium is actually pretty underwhelming. I was stoked at first but having soaked six or so evenings into it, I can say that it feels a little flat. The various factions are interesting and they really do play quite differently from one another, and trying them out has been the main thing that's been holding my interest so far. However, the game is incredibly unforgiving about going into combat without enough troops/support/mage power. That all-encompassing fact makes the early game quite slow and punishing and the mid game feel kinda the same regardless of faction.

The thing is, for almost all nations, troops are expensive and hard to come by (5 bottom of the barrel spearmen cost 50 gold and in the beginning you are generating 3-4gp/turn). You will lose 2-3 troops in a good battle and often times more than that if bad luck so much as glances at you. That means it takes a long time to build up your forces to critical mass so you can conquer without taking inordinate losses. Also, your two starting commanders are, for almost all nations, indispensable (the game is more-or-less about your head commander's rise to power and losing him is generally cause to call it quits), which is fine except that combat is always an all-or-nothing affair where both sides fight to the death and, unlike Dominions 3, there is no running away and regrouping later if you underestimated your opponent or had a run of bad luck. Therefore, the game heavily, heavily incentives conservative play which I find a little boring. Plus, it really doesn't feel like the AI knows how to play this game, so I'm often playing against indie-mobs and opponents who flail around more-or-less at random.

Since it lacks almost all commander scripting, all troop placement (and troop scripting) and nearly all research, I find combat to be mostly just getting enough dudes to overwhelm the enemy. If it had even half the tactical depth of Dom3 I could see myself enjoying it a lot more. Once the joy of discovery runs out, there doesn't seem to be much left to sustain the player's interest.

I don't know. Maybe I need to give it more time to grow on me... some games are like that. Or maybe it'll take Illwinter a few feedback cycles to get the game in it's proper form (Dom3 has certainly undergone extensive changes over it's lifespan). Regardless, I'm leaving it alone for now.

[Angry_Hominid]

Originally Posted by shatner

Conquest of Elysium is actually pretty underwhelming.

Couldnt agree more. I was into it for about 5 hours or so when I was stoked and sure that their was a layer of complexity bubbling underneath the surface, when that turned out to be false I stopped playing.

Roguelikes are deep with options, COE3 is not deep at all and really the only choices to be made are very simple risk vs reward decisions and usually only early in the game. After that it becomes a summon, recruit, expand grind with no tactical, and only little strategic decision making required.

I was umming and arring between this game and dom3, however bought this because the reviewers stated that it was a better single player game. Having bought Dom3 and played it exclusively single player (trying to get some MP going tho) I can heartily disagree with that, Dom 3 is just a MUCH better game all round.

[samoht]

Originally Posted by elmokki

I'm very dissapointed. The game has very good potential, I give it that. Commanders (mainly mages and big things, but still) feel more personal than in Dom 3 due to being so much more important and I kind of like the square based map with settlements and wilderness as opposed to Dom 3's every province being a settlement. It's also kind of nice to have very varying mechanics for each "nation".

But, first of all the controls are horrible. In Dominions 3 it's tolerable that we can't queue movement (so that it automatically provided nothing major happens nearby continues next turn) because apart from very late game it isn't that big of an issue as generally you don't have to spend that many turns moving, and even if you do there aren't that many commanders. In CoE3 you have to be moving things all the time and it's very frustrating to move things 10 squares by clicking at the map every time for 10 turns in a row. Turns are so much shorter. There are also minor gripes with the UI, but in general that's the major thing bugging me.

Secondly there's far too much pointless micromanagement. You can only hire troops from those big settlements so it's a lot of micromanagement if you wish to garrison your mines and villages so that some random snake won't take over a big city alone. Alternatively you can hunt down things, but it's even more micromanagement with coms. I don't have anything against micromanagement when I feel it has interesting effects, but here it's just frustrating.

Gameplaywise the game starts fairly slow since (depending on the "nation") you might not be able to do much at all to anything near you. Especially some of the "nations" have a HUGE luck factor in with what they start near to. For some it's a lesser issue though.

I would've wished the combat to have more tactical choices as opposed to "choose list of what spells my mages can cast if they feel like it". Dominions 3 style scriptable combat would've suited this game equally well with some modifications due to smaller numbers of units in general. That said I would've wished the whole game to have somewhat more tactical and strategic choices.

In general I have to sadly say that this was pretty much a waste for my money. Illwinter, however, can fix a lot of this with patches if they wish to. Given good tools to help with the annoying micromanagement of defending your settlements from snakes and bears this might be a somewhat enjoyable game. Oh, and anyway, I've gotten enough enjoyment from Dominions 3 to not mind this being a waste of money.

Just a couple points.

-You can move your armies by using the number pad, not just the mouse. That might be useful? I personally prefer the mouse, but most people I've talked to don't.

-Picking different eras to play effects what kinds and how many "monsters" wander around the map. So that might change your level of enjoyment. It feels a lot less annoying when your mine is taking over by a chimera instead of a deer.

-Its important not to think of CoE3 as a 4X game like Dominions. It isn't. If you're expecting that type of gameplay you will be very, very disapointed. It is a roguelike with armies instead of just single characters. The randomness is a feature. Sometimes you'll have easy games due to a nice starting position, sometimes you'll be defeated by a wandering monster in your first year. Its all just a part of the experience. It seems to be just as much about exploration of the land and discovery of the mythos as it is about conquest.