Elemental Status: March 2014

Published on March 4, 2014 By Frogboy In Elemental Dev Journals

Lots of cool stuff going on around here.

Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes 1.6 is due out in April and there will be a new DLC released shortly after that. It involves spouses. That’s all I’ll say.

Legendary Heroes 2.0

Also, as some of you may have heard, Legendary Heroes 2.0 has been approved and budgeted. This will be a free update of some significance. I don’t have a due date for it yet but it does have some interesting changes in it including ZOC for monster lairs and possibly some changes with regards to the way champion inventory is handled.

Other things on our “want” list for Legendary Heroes 2.0 include:

Updated diplomacy options to help build longer term relations
More performance boosts (we’re working on redoing the way trees are handled)
Some tweaks to the way magic is done
More effective alliance handling (this is something we really want to see)
Some changes to the way the Spell of Making is handled

That’s just a bit of it.

Obviously, this all boils down to having enough revenue to pay for it. The numbers for LH are quite promising. In January, about half of LH’s revenue came from the DLC. So that’s a good sign.

Next DLC

Like I mentioned, we have new DLC coming out next month. It’s already in QA. Kael has gone pretty crazy with it. Anyone from the Civ IV world knows the crazy stuff Kael can do so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. But it’s pretty neat.

But AFTER that one I have two questions I’d like to get your views on:

1. How OFTEN do you want to see new DLC? (Monthly, Quarterly, Every couple months, etc.)

2. What would you like to see our NEXT DLC be?

a. Stamps pack (for more random map generation interest)

b. More tactical battles maps

c. More magical spells

d. New factions

e. More loot

f. More quests

g. Something else (if it involves writing c++ code, it’s not DLC so has to be content that is downloadable).

Other sneak peeks…

Stay tuned!

Comments (Page 6)

rahal

on Mar 07, 2014

DsRaider

reply 50

The problem with adding in a new faction is that it would be hard to make them unique and AI friendly without editing C++. The Dead are a good example of this.

Aren't "The Dead" getting AI attention in the next patch?

DsRaider

on Mar 07, 2014

rahal

reply 76

Aren't "The Dead" getting AI attention in the next patch?

It doesn't mention any AI stuff in the 1.6 changelog, or anywhere else as far as I know. Besides even if they do it just proves my point, you need to at least tweak C++ in order to make a good new faction.

highwayhoss

on Mar 08, 2014

Crastiloowa

reply 60

Quoting DsRaider, reply 55I hear a lot about tech trees but personally don't think they have much to do with factions playing different.

Just to pick out this one item - you could (potentially) do a lot with a wholly alternate tech tree. Just to name a few examples

Simple re-organization so that "late game" techs come early and early techs late. For instance, a "horselords" faction could have a tech tree that re-positions mounted warfare at the start of the warfare tree.
Assign different costing to nodes, so that e.g. magical techs cost less than warfare techs (relative to the "standard" tree.)

Even if the AI researches at the same rate, different costings will end up "pushing" them down particular tech paths

Prune out any techs that the AI or a particular faction can't use effectively (e.g. Sion tech.)
Purely cosmetic changes for look and feel (e.g. instead of building a Storehouse, an insect themed race could build a hive)

These kinds of changes don't even necessarily require entirely new tech trees, just different prerequisites for unlocks of existing techs.

You can create unlocks that are wholly inaccessible to other factions (though again, you don't necessarily need a new tree for this, just different prerequisites) - similar to the "Black Quire" spells granted in the Empire tree.

To your point about playing differently, it would mostly be about "pushing" the choices in a particular direction. This would be most helpful for the AI; the player can already choose to rush particular targets.

I like these ideas. Having research affected by a faction's traits can be a easy, effective way to make races feel different. Different traits could affect the costs of certain techs: for example, in addition to the Scholars trait giving 10 percent to all research, you could have traits giving research bonuses or penalties to specific nodes: for example, a warrior themed race could gain a 15% bonus to military techs; likewise a race like the Ironeers could have a penalty to magic research. More traits with free techs are possible too

Ashbery76

on Mar 08, 2014

The present factions need more differentiation both visual and gameplay rather than adding more generic factions.

More Loot is always good.

A naval game added.

New heroes with a little more imagination.Some Heroes have a few sentences.Not the best for immersion.

Frogboy

on Mar 08, 2014

Rudy_102

on Mar 08, 2014

Reminded me of Fantasy wars.

That's compliment, by the way.

amanadark

on Mar 08, 2014

As soon as the new patch comes out i'm buying all the DLC.

highwayhoss

on Mar 08, 2014

j_wl_b

reply 70

So what is needed to make a more immersive, visceral, and epic game? First make cities feel like cities. While not taking up a large amount of space on the strategic map find a way to make them feel like real, living, breathing cities full of bustle, life, and centers of things. Cities are the centers of a civilizations culture, economy, industry, etc and they in some way should feel like it. How to get this effect in a limited space I am not sure but for the game to become epic I feel it is necessary. Also the land around a city, it's area of influence, should automatically change as land is cultivated, minerals are mined, villages with Palisades created, etc. What better way to see your civilization make an impact on the world then to have your territory change and develop over time. The player need not manage any of this it would simply be a graphical representation of the people of your nation spreading out from your cities and taming the surround world within you territory. To add even more depth and a more visceral feel two more things should be added to this. When monsters or enemy armies inter your territory they should leave a trail of devastation though the fields, villages, etc which will take several seasons to fix. This will make a more visual and thus visceral feel to people invading YOUR territory. Second the degree and quality of the improvements in a cities surrounding territory should be greatly influenced by your cities level.

One idea I had is for an invading enemy in a city's area to affect a city depending on the invader's size and power. Penalties like reduced/negative growth as people flee, seriously increased unrest, food and production reduced etc.

j_wl_b

reply 70

Make armies feel like armies. Having armies represented by a few men immediately kills immersion and leaves a sense of... for lack of a better term... un-epicness. An idea for this might be to have armies in tactical battles take up multiple squares rather then just one. This would allow for two things. One more troops can be seen for each unit of men making a company of soldiers feel like an actual company of soldiers. This in itself would automatically increase immersion and make a battle feel like a real battle instead of a few people beating on each other. Second it would add more depth to tactical battles. There could be other ways to make armies feel like armies that would require less in the way of coding. If there is then by all means run with it. Just give me the sense that I have an army and when my army meets an enemy army I want it to feel like an actual clash of armies. To make the game more immersive, visceral, and epic armies need to feel, look, and act like armies.

The Immersion mod actually did this as far as numbers go. Other things would include tac maps with elevations, LOS, different movement effects, limit ranged weapons. Another thing would be for an army to be deployed in battle formation (unless its surprised).

Sunray242

on Mar 09, 2014

Tactical terrain: Swamp tiles to limit your movement and defense, wooden areas to reduce damage from ranged attacks, arrows that can be stopped by obstacles that are in the line of sight, hills (height that give a +1 attack bonus to damage), catapults that will destroy fortified tiles and so on...

Traps: An option option to setup traps at the strategic and tactical level at a cost.

Treasure: when conquering a town you get: 0$ and 0 items. Can we gain a little loot please or my followers will abandon my rampaging urges!

Healing Champion's injuries: There must be a better way than to ruin my economy to buy an expensive potion to cure 1x condition. (infirmary building?)

Loot: It would be nice if we could get more loot when defeating enemy champions (items and or gold).

Tattyhat

on Mar 09, 2014

Stop being so cruel. I haven't got any money left.

Sunray242

on Mar 09, 2014

No arrow shooting in close combat or a penalty...

highwayhoss

on Mar 09, 2014

More differences between mounted and foot soldiers. Give all unmounted units the ability to fortify. One handed spears available to all (initiative bonus but no immunity to counterattack.) Mounted Units cannot use two handed Melee weapons. Have the ability to unhorse units.

highwayhoss

on Mar 09, 2014

OK since Navies would be difficult to code, how about using water movement in an abstract way? Have units be able to move instantly between cities with Docks/Harbors (within limits) Basically. a unit could move instantly from a city with a Dock or Harbor to another city with a Dock or Harbor within a certain tile range. Capacity would be limited by the improvement.

rahal

on Mar 09, 2014

Frogboy

reply 80

Is this a preview of the no-rotate view thing you were talking about?

Alstein

on Mar 09, 2014

DsRaider

reply 77

Quoting rahal, reply 76Aren't "The Dead" getting AI attention in the next patch?

It doesn't mention any AI stuff in the 1.6 changelog, or anywhere else as far as I know. Besides even if they do it just proves my point, you need to at least tweak C++ in order to make a good new faction.

It's unlikely the AI gets much attention for this point on. Brad's busy on GalCiv III, and he's pretty much said the AI is about as good as he can make it without it being really inefficient to work on. The Dead do need some work bad, or a way to disable the AI from selecting them (a mod can do this, but base game needs this added in)

The AI in LH is much improved over FE, coding fantasy TBS AI is one of the hardest things out there- no one has ever really done it right, LH came closer than many others.

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