IGN: Elemental: War Of Magic - Preview

[NTJedi]

Originally Posted by Foodstamp

For years we have seen games drift from being hard to being very easy. It's refreshing when a game comes around that offers challenges such as the sovereign death = game over.

And thus there's no reason why the sovereigns death cannot be an optional setting. Personally anyone who feels a game should only serve their purpose is being selfish.

Originally Posted by Foodstamp

I think Dwarf Fortress is a great example of how a game can be fun and very difficult. It shouldn't be a matter of naming current TBSs that use the mechanic, and the reason why is because I don't want to play a game that has to have rules that have been done before in a TBS. I don't mind if this game strays away from the ordinary. And it sounds like losing your Sovereign isn't going to be a thing that just happens on a dice roll. It sounds like it is going to be very difficult to lose a sovereign.

Stardock has a solid history of being able to provide very difficult games. As I mentioned earlier having the Sovereign's death tied to losing a game means the player will use him less and less likely during middle and late game. If you need to better visualize the effect than picture what would happen if the next Dominions_3 patch meant instant game over upon a pretenders death. The first result would be no pretenders with low hitpoints(10 or less) and the second result would be no pretenders being used as SC's during middle and late game.

Originally Posted by Foodstamp

It creates another win/lose condition to the game. Enough people are clamoring for it to be gone that it doesn't matter anyway. They will remove the feature or they will make it where you can toggle it on and off.

And with a toggle on/off option the game still has the instant lose condition... simply it doesn't force everyone to play the same way. Personally all this instant lose condition will do is have players hide their sovereigns since even being unlucky while traveling can kill you. I'm all about providing very difficult games where the AI opponents have a strong advantage and sovereigns death being game over would be more useful for the human player than any AI opponent.

Originally Posted by Gregstrom

I certainly never thought Total Annihilation was a bad game because Commander death = game over.

Total Annihilation was an RTS, big difference from TBS.

[LDiCesare]

Originally Posted by Foodstamp

For years we have seen games drift from being hard to being very easy. It's refreshing when a game comes around that offers challenges such as the sovereign death = game over. I think Dwarf Fortress is a great example of how a game can be fun and very difficult.

I totally disagree with the asertion that sovereign death = game over makes the game harder.
On the contrary.
Kill 1 unit of the ai, and you've won.
I never managed to like Dwarf Fortress, but in roguelikes, when you die and it's over, it's cool because you're playing one individual, because it makes the game harder.
In my opinion, Elemental is adding a mechanism that the ai can't handle to defend itself, and I am not interested in playing an individual but a nation in such a game.

[happygeek]

If I understand correctly, the talk was now having an exceptionally poor workaround for avoiding sovereign death: if defending, the sovereign automatically retreats to the nearest friendly city, instead of dying. That seems to me to be a particulary poor way of removing penalties for risky use of a sovereign.
Even though I would much prefer to have the game end (or some very serious penaly) if my sovereign "dies" -- perhaps he goes to some MMORPG-type of purgatory from which he must return -- I would be satisfied if this were an option I could turn on without having to mod. I believe it would increase the RPG-type of feeling.

That said, I am greatly disappointed with the little bit I have been able to see in Beta so far. It looks like the combat -- and hence the entire mechanism behind military victories, behind constructing units and research military power -- is vastly undercomplex; it looks even less promising that the combat system of GalCiv2. Or maybe I am misunderstanding everything.

[LDiCesare]

Originally Posted by happygeek

That said, I am greatly disappointed with the little bit I have been able to see in Beta so far. It looks like the combat -- and hence the entire mechanism behind military victories, behind constructing units and research military power -- is vastly undercomplex; it looks even less promising that the combat system of GalCiv2. Or maybe I am misunderstanding everything.

Give them time, the real combat system isn'tt even implemented. what we have now is but a placeholder.

[Mithras]

I wander about the whole sovereign death thing; my rather fuzzy memory suggests that the game had a dynastic focus, especially in regards to diplomacy. So the simple solution would be to make full use of that and require that you have an heir to keep playing if your sovereign dies. This could lead to a more interesting diplomatic system, what if you married your only heir to a competing royal family, what are the consequences of having an underage heir and so on.

Just seems as though the developers aren't thinking everything through from what I can see.

[LDiCesare]

The dynasty thing is a rather late idea. The core idea has always been to play an almost divine individual. Dynasties are for vassals.
Now I don't say that it's consistent, but we will see whether vassal dynasties diplomacy has any meaning if it all revvolves about killing enemy sovereigns.

[Foodstamp]

Originally Posted by Mithras

I wander about the whole sovereign death thing; my rather fuzzy memory suggests that the game had a dynastic focus, especially in regards to diplomacy. So the simple solution would be to make full use of that and require that you have an heir to keep playing if your sovereign dies. This could lead to a more interesting diplomatic system, what if you married your only heir to a competing royal family, what are the consequences of having an underage heir and so on.

Just seems as though the developers aren't thinking everything through from what I can see.

Thats the general idea ala Total War series. Where it strays from it is the idea is that you are the sovereign, not his/her heirs. So you can have kids, grandkids etc but when you die, your out of the game. This may have already changed or probably will change as the community molds the clay to look more like other TBSs but as of the last time I read it, that is the way it worked.

[Foodstamp]

lol @ my lack of apostrophes and commas.

[theenemy]

Been a while now and still no EW:M.... Starting to feel slightly depressed

Here's a picture of a cat just to prove the authenticy of this post

[Balakirev]

The kitten rules.

In other matters, the one thing thus far that I don't like in what's been shown of E:WoM is the inability to limit world rulers (okay, I want to say pretenders, so I will!) to specific spell groups by type. What I mean is something along the lines of what Master of Magic and Dominions 3 do: you take X many books/levels of Nature, and you get Y many Nature spells. Other pretenders without Nature chosen at the start can't get those spells. Tends to make for more customized and distinct pretenders, in my opinion.

Otherwise, I'm very interested in the way E:WoM is going. And Stardock has a history of turning out games with excellent AI, so I don't think we'll see a repeat of the problems along those lines that dogged MoM.