Crazy excited to get into this, and mod up yet another great campaign. I'm already drawing up my drafts.

Crazy excited to get into this, and mod up yet another great campaign. I'm already drawing up my drafts.

Two requests:

1) Hoping you'll consider nerfing monster and non armored archers/mages when defending against melee attacks (they take SO long to kill) - it seems ridiculous that they defend as well as non archers (if not better sometimes). Maybe a defense penalty when attacked by melee and double when attacked by mounted units, etc.

2) And of course I'd love to see terrain bonuses (or penalties like attacking across a river) so mods could make special units that are better in hills or forests, etc.  -  and we could use terrain as a defensive strategy.

Well, that didn't take long   

This guy sounds smart, keep listening to him.

So I'm looking forward to the end result

[confluence title=""]https://stardock.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SDEnt/pages/2935390227/Elemental+Dev+Journal+19+Preview+of+Beta+2[/confluence]

My main concern on Legacies is whether the AI will be able to track and correctly respond to/play around Legacy effects.

The Traditions mockup reminds me of Metaphor: ReFantazio's Royal Virtues. From prior description, I expected something more like the current level trees for heroes, except applied to factions? This system seems less versatile than that?

I think it would be cool if some Tradition choices were mutually exclusive. That is, I'm thinking like in World of Warcraft's system where some talents give an option between two abilities, and when you select one, the other is then impossible to receive. In particular, this would work well with the trait system for Brave, Intimidating, Etc.

As listed, it seems like the faction at hand is, Kraxis? Yithril? I don't think those traditions would fit Resoln well, much less any Kingdom.

I would lean more towards implementing the same as the current hero system, except for lineages, with each sovereign starting with some particular Tradition tree that's set at sovereign creation, maybe with four built in trees to start out with, and more possible via modding and/or future updates?

[confluence title=""]https://stardock.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SDEnt/pages/2916286465/Elemental+Dev+Journal+18+Dynasties[/confluence]

As someone who started playing Total Annihilation in 1997 when I was 10 years old, graduated to TA Spring later, then Forged Alliance, Supreme Commander 2, Ashes of the Singularity, Planetary Annihilation, and most recently Beyond All Reason - I can say that you seem to understand some of the aspects that make this particular genre so great.

In particular, I'm glad that Ashes 2 is going even further in the direction of macro-oriented low-micro playstyle - this is the direction that RTS games NEED to be moving in as a whole already. The latest two examples or RTS games that attempted to replicate the micro-heavy Starcraft style of gameplay, Battle Aces and Stormgate, crashed and burned in spectacular fashion despite being multi million dollar projects. 

For me that's a message from the RTS community, loud and clear, we want to move in the direction of epic-scale, macro-oriented battles. The heavy micro small scale RTS games had their heyday, and that era is now past. So the recent trend of RTS games like Warno, Broken Arrow, Sins of a Solar Empire 2, and now Ashes 2 means we're finally moving in the right direction.

However, I do want to both emphasize the final point you made and also urge a word of warning:

You are correct in saying that the 2v2 style Player vs AI battles are ABSOLUTELY the most enjoyable and replayable parts about these games that keep people coming back forever. However, ALL of that is contingent on having a good AI.

Just as a prescient example, Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is probably the best RTS made in at least a decade in EVERY CONCEIVABLE WAY that is held back by one profound design flaw - The AI is absolutely atrocious. Even with massive resource cheats and huge advantages over the player, it is so incompetent and irrational in its decisions, it cannot be relied upon to make interesting or close games.

This is a shame because it's like making the highest quality sports car known to man, then forgetting to include the driving wheel, the gear shifter, or some other intractably important component that the game can't survive without. Games like Sins 2 and Ashes 2 will NEVER have a big and consistent enough community to always sustain the large PVP style games that people love, and even if they did, most players just don't enjoy PVP. 

There are 3 major ways to handle this:

1. In 2025, the easiest and most sensible solution is to find a way to make machine learning work for you. With all the modern AI options available to developers, there's simply no reason you could not invest in a machine learning solution that would create - without any doubt - the best and most advanced AI ever created for an RTS to date. The upfront cost of developing this system might initially be problematic, but once the system was in place, the algorithm basically teaches itself. 

This is the best option not only because it produces the best possible results, but because of the NOVELTY of the approach. You can advertise Ashes 2 as being the first major RTS ever made to use machine learning to create an unbelievably powerful AI that does not need to cheat or be given unfair advantages over the players just to keep up. This creates more hype and excitement about the game as not just another RTS sequel or TA spinoff, but something profoundly unique and interesting in its own right. 

2. Make the AI moddable to players, or alternatively, allow players to create an AI from scratch for the game.

This is basically crowd-sourcing the AI to your own community, but nonetheless, the community will be willing to create a better AI in most cases than your team can, and for free.

Again, a big disappointment I have with Sins 2 that I hope you can learn from is that they have one of the most modder-friendly and easily accessible modding architectures of any RTS ever made - except for the one area that actually matters the most - allowing the community to tweak and develop the atrocious AI. 

3. The third option is the traditional method of just hiring some very experienced developer(s) to create an AI for you, but I find this to be the weakest and least attractive option of the 3. It doesn't have any novelty, it's what every other RTS is already doing and has always done, and in the end, no matter how talented the AI devs are, once the players understand how to beat the scripted design, it becomes boring and the outcome is pre-ordained. 

The value of the first 2 options are NOT ONLY that they can create better AIs and that they will continue to produce better AIs until the end of time, either by machine or community - it's the multiplicity of different AI engines that you are capable of creating by either outsourcing this to machine learning or modders. 

So my final thoughts are, learn from Sins 2's tragic mistake. If you're going to make a game designed around PVE, then God damnit, make a game designed around PVE. Do something no dev has ever done before and structure this design axiom into your game from the ground up. If you launch the game with a mediocre and predictable, scripts-based AI, while calling it an epic scale PVE game, don't expect people to review it well on Steam. Expectations are high, and you have to have something that sets you apart from the pack.

As someone who started playing Total Annihilation in 1997 when I was 10 years old, graduated to TA Spring later, then Forged Alliance, Supreme Commander 2, Ashes of the Singularity, Planetary Annihilation, and most recently Beyond All Reason - I can say that you seem to understand some of the aspects that make this particular genre so great.

In particular, I'm glad that Ashes 2 is going even further in the direction of macro-oriented low-micro playstyle - this is the direction that RTS games NEED to be moving in as a whole already. The latest two examples or RTS games that attempted to replicate the micro-heavy Starcraft style of gameplay, Battle Aces and Stormgate, crashed and burned in spectacular fashion despite being multi million dollar projects. 

For me that's a message from the RTS community, loud and clear, we want to move in the direction of epic-scale, macro-oriented battles. The heavy micro small scale RTS games had their heyday, and that era is now past. So the recent trend of RTS games like Warno, Broken Arrow, Sins of a Solar Empire 2, and now Ashes 2 means we're finally moving in the right direction.

However, I do want to both emphasize the final point you made and also urge a word of warning:

You are correct in saying that the 2v2 style Player vs AI battles are ABSOLUTELY the most enjoyable and replayable parts about these games that keep people coming back forever. However, ALL of that is contingent on having a good AI.

Just as a prescient example, Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is probably the best RTS made in at least a decade in EVERY CONCEIVABLE WAY that is held back by one profound design flaw - The AI is absolutely atrocious. Even with massive resource cheats and huge advantages over the player, it is so incompetent and irrational in its decisions, it cannot be relied upon to make interesting or close games.

This is a shame because it's like making the highest quality sports car known to man, then forgetting to include the driving wheel, the gear shifter, or some other intractably important component that the game can't survive without. Games like Sins 2 and Ashes 2 will NEVER have a big and consistent enough community to always sustain the large PVP style games that people love, and even if they did, most players just don't enjoy PVP. 

There are 3 major ways to handle this:

1. In 2025, the easiest and most sensible solution is to find a way to make machine learning work for you. With all the modern AI options available to developers, there's simply no reason you could not invest in a machine learning solution that would create - without any doubt - the best and most advanced AI ever created for an RTS to date. The upfront cost of developing this system might initially be problematic, but once the system was in place, the algorithm basically teaches itself. 

This is the best option not only because it produces the best possible results, but because of the NOVELTY of the approach. You can advertise Ashes 2 as being the first major RTS ever made to use machine learning to create an unbelievably powerful AI that does not need to cheat or be given unfair advantages over the players just to keep up. This creates more hype and excitement about the game as not just another RTS sequel or TA spinoff, but something profoundly unique and interesting in its own right. 

2. Make the AI moddable to players, or alternatively, allow players to create an AI from scratch for the game.

This is basically crowd-sourcing the AI to your own community, but nonetheless, the community will be willing to create a better AI in most cases than your team can, and for free.

Again, a big disappointment I have with Sins 2 that I hope you can learn from is that they have one of the most modder-friendly and easily accessible modding architectures of any RTS ever made - except for the one area that actually matters the most - allowing the community to tweak and develop the atrocious AI. 

3. The third option is the traditional method of just hiring some very experienced developer(s) to create an AI for you, but I find this to be the weakest and least attractive option of the 3. It doesn't have any novelty, it's what every other RTS is already doing and has always done, and in the end, no matter how talented the AI devs are, once the players understand how to beat the scripted design, it becomes boring and the outcome is pre-ordained. 

The value of the first 2 options are NOT ONLY that they can create better AIs and that they will continue to produce better AIs until the end of time, either by machine or community - it's the multiplicity of different AI engines that you are capable of creating by either outsourcing this to machine learning or modders. 

So my final thoughts are, learn from Sins 2's tragic mistake. If you're going to make a game designed around PVE, then God damnit, make a game designed around PVE. Do something no dev has ever done before and structure this design axiom into your game from the ground up. If you launch the game with a mediocre and predictable, scripts-based AI, while calling it an epic scale PVE game, don't expect people to review it well on Steam. Expectations are high, and you have to have something that sets you apart from the pack.

faction specific quests to evolve your faction or get your faction powers in the first place. could be tied to fame accumulated to time when you can get it. maybe even have chain event to get multiple powers. 

maybe adding quests to everyone depending on starting location to improve faction , like you settled next to a coast , your harbors are better or you settled on a river you get better transportation or desert you get better resources when placing buildings on desert tiles etc.

auto resolve battles and then manually fight them if you dont like the result is in a lot of games today and i like it

So if I have a settler selected then the tool tip. If I hover over a land then will tell me what the land might give me if I settle on a city. 

[confluence title=""]https://stardock.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SDEnt/pages/2891513864/Elemental+Dev+Journal+17+New+vs.+Remaster[/confluence]

[confluence title=""]https://stardock.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SDEnt/pages/2881814535/Dev+Journal+Preview+of+Internal+Alpha+1[/confluence]

[confluence title=""]https://stardock.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SDEnt/pages/2881814535/Dev+Journal+Preview+of+Internal+Alpha+1[/confluence]

[confluence title=""]https://stardock.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SDEnt/pages/2875686913/Dev+Journal+25.11.20+-+a+Tale+of+Two+Terrans[/confluence]

[confluence title=""]https://stardock.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SDEnt/pages/2875031600/Elemental+Dev+Journal+16+The+Road+to+Beta+2[/confluence]

[confluence title=""]https://stardock.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SDEnt/pages/2846556167/Dev+Journal+Strategic+Space+in+v3.10[/confluence]

[confluence title=""]https://stardock.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SDEnt/pages/2845900818/Elemental+Dev+Journal+15+So+viele+Sprachen[/confluence]

Ashes of the Singularity is a real-time strategy game set in the near future in which players fight for control of worlds. The scale of the maps tend to be very large and are broken up into regions. Controlling a region gives the player access to the resources within which can be extracted to be used in the war effort. Each side starts with a central base that if destroyed, causes them to lose the game.

Resources are consumed as they are used rather than up-front, meaning a player can order the production of units and buildings without having to stockpile the full amount. Instead, the skill is in trying to spend the same amount of resources per turn as you are extracting, making economic skill become one of the factors towards victory.

Because of the scale of the game, the pacing tends to be somewhat slower than has traditionally been seen in the genre. Unit composition and placement matter most and, in fact, units do not have special abilities that are activated by the player. This is a game about conquering territory through military and economic strategy. Fast reflexes (actions per minute) do not play into it.

Now, if you love RTS games like I do, you probably wonder how this game compares to other games of the genre. I’ve seen Ashes of the Singularity I compared to Supreme Commander (or Total Annihilation) a lot. This is mostly because of the scale and the “streaming” economy. This makes me a little sad because it means that the streaming economy mechanic didn’t become the main way resource management in RTS games were handled.

In my opinion, from a fun point of view, I much prefer not having to wait to build a barracks or queue up units until I have saved up enough resources. Having resources spent as they are consumed is probably the biggest reason Supreme Commander (and Ashes of the Singularity) don’t require a high APM and I really wish more games adopted that innovation. Until then, we’ll just have to keep polishing our statue of Chris Taylor.

Below I will put the broad strokes of the RTS family in a table. If you disagree or if miss something, please add it in the comments below. Note: this chart is ridiculously over-simplified.

I’d like to add more rows to this, but it’s a challenge since we don’t want to get into the minutia. C&C is particularly tough because it depends on which iteration. This isn’t really meant as a feature comparison, but rather a way of seeing the different “families”. I really should have Dawn of War here instead of Company of Heroes, but I felt, given the thousands of hours I put into CoH, I owed it to that game even though Dawn of War came first. I also feel like Northgard deserves an entry. Of course there are new games that have picked up the torch like Tempest Rising, which comes from the C&C family, and Stormgate, which comes from the StarCraft family.

Other shoutouts would be Homeworld, Majesty, AI War: Fleet Command, Kohan, and Myth. I list these in terms of being progenitors of RTS mechanics. You could argue that WarCraft 3 is different enough from Warcraft 2 to deserve its own spot, and Warcraft itself is progenitor of StarCraft. It’s just turtles all the way down. And who will be first to mention I didn’t list Dune or Powermonger? Powermonger the FIRST RTS. There, I said it!

Anyway, post your thoughts and I’ll do a newer, better version of this. The hard part (for me) is coming up with 1 or 2 word descriptions without trivializing the feature.

Ashes of the Singularity is a real-time strategy game set in the near future in which players fight for control of worlds. The scale of the maps tend to be very large and are broken up into regions. Controlling a region gives the player access to the resources within which can be extracted to be used in the war effort. Each side starts with a central base that if destroyed, causes them to lose the game.

Resources are consumed as they are used rather than up-front, meaning a player can order the production of units and buildings without having to stockpile the full amount. Instead, the skill is in trying to spend the same amount of resources per turn as you are extracting, making economic skill become one of the factors towards victory.

Because of the scale of the game, the pacing tends to be somewhat slower than has traditionally been seen in the genre. Unit composition and placement matter most and, in fact, units do not have special abilities that are activated by the player. This is a game about conquering territory through military and economic strategy. Fast reflexes (actions per minute) do not play into it.

Now, if you love RTS games like I do, you probably wonder how this game compares to other games of the genre. I’ve seen Ashes of the Singularity I compared to Supreme Commander (or Total Annihilation) a lot. This is mostly because of the scale and the “streaming” economy. This makes me a little sad because it means that the streaming economy mechanic didn’t become the main way resource management in RTS games were handled.

In my opinion, from a fun point of view, I much prefer not having to wait to build a barracks or queue up units until I have saved up enough resources. Having resources spent as they are consumed is probably the biggest reason Supreme Commander (and Ashes of the Singularity) don’t require a high APM and I really wish more games adopted that innovation. Until then, we’ll just have to keep polishing our statue of Chris Taylor.

Below I will put the broad strokes of the RTS family in a table. If you disagree or if miss something, please add it in the comments below. Note: this chart is ridiculously over-simplified.

I’d like to add more rows to this, but it’s a challenge since we don’t want to get into the minutia. C&C is particularly tough because it depends on which iteration. This isn’t really meant as a feature comparison, but rather a way of seeing the different “families”. I really should have Dawn of War here instead of Company of Heroes, but I felt, given the thousands of hours I put into CoH, I owed it to that game even though Dawn of War came first. I also feel like Northgard deserves an entry. Of course there are new games that have picked up the torch like Tempest Rising, which comes from the C&C family, and Stormgate, which comes from the StarCraft family.

Other shoutouts would be Homeworld, Majesty, AI War: Fleet Command, Kohan, and Myth. I list these in terms of being progenitors of RTS mechanics. You could argue that WarCraft 3 is different enough from Warcraft 2 to deserve its own spot, and Warcraft itself is progenitor of StarCraft. It’s just turtles all the way down. And who will be first to mention I didn’t list Dune or Powermonger? Powermonger the FIRST RTS. There, I said it!

Anyway, post your thoughts and I’ll do a newer, better version of this. The hard part (for me) is coming up with 1 or 2 word descriptions without trivializing the feature.

[confluence title=""]https://stardock.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SDEnt/pages/2814246922/Elemental+Dev+Journal+In+a+sea+of+bugs[/confluence]

We're shocked and grateful and humbled by the community response to Elemental: Reforged. In the first week since Beta 1 hit Early Access, we’ve hitwishlist numbers and sales approximately 6X higher than our most optimistic projections.

Congrats to the team!

It also highlights that this genre seems to be very popular and that there may be enough demand someday for a true successor - a ground up game made in a 64 bit engine made natively with late 2020s era graphics (or early 2030s graphics).

Your support means I get to steal er borrow er assign more engineers and artists to the effort.

I'm glad to see that this means that the Reforged will be a more ambitious overhaul than originally planned.

Also, can we build roads? I'm hoping we either can or will be able to, I loved running my armies around on the roads!  

In any case, I'm really excited to be trying the newest game in this series - I've enjoyed all of them. 

Carol

With that said, my number 1 ask would be improved mod support. In some cases, releasing guides might actually be more valuable than actual in game code. Mod tools to assist in importing mod made models would be great. As having good mod tools causes the game to accumulate content faster, I expect that having these sooner rather than later would be positive.

As the game progresses, there's a tendency for units to abandon the more varied category of clothes for the less varied category of armor. I would like if there were variant armor types within, for instance, leather armor. There is Altaran Leather Armor, which is a cool one off. And masterwork chain mail. I think more items of this sort would be cool. I think it would be cool if there were some system for selecting variants of the same item, with purely cosmetic effects, so knights in heavy armor don't all appear identical.

I would like more terrain types, mostly for cosmetic reasons. It would be very cool if the world displayed more regional differences, such that you could easily see that you were in say, the far west, not merely because of landmarks and such, but because the entire world looks different over there. If you look at a Heroes of Might and Magic map, I think those are very pretty, in a way that Elemental lacks.

[confluence title=""]https://stardock.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SDEnt/pages/2792620033/Dev+Journal+-+Week+of+October+30+2025+Overwhelming+Response+Technical+Foundations[/confluence]

[confluence title=""]https://stardock.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SDEnt/pages/2764046499/Elemental+Dev+Journal+12+It+Begins[/confluence]

My largest concern with this direction is that the factions/characters become generic/repetitive. For instance, the new hero system sounds like every faction gets all the same heroes? Which also means that every hero is as willing to follow any faction as any other. They don't have any particular drive that the world should be one way, and not the other?

I also have a sense that more different factions make the world seem more alive. Where later in the game, territories controlled by different factions present different threats, different opportunities, and simply look different. I have a sense that the system as currently presented causes most of the world to become generic “enemy territory” by the time the player reaches it, and all AI factions will look and interact with the player in the exact same manner.

This seems like a less moddable experience. Strong factions create a lot of levers for modders to introduce their own stories, mechanics and aesthetics, with the largest barriers to this being systems which can do stuff, noting particularly that the current random event system simply is not set up to be a load bearing system that works locally and per faction and that the AI is not set up to handle weird and somewhat arbitrary rules.

In terms of proselytizing faction unique content, per-alignment content might make sense instead? Where factions/characters choose between say, three inbuilt alignments, and arbitrary additional alignments could plausibly be modded in? Then quests/hero recruitment/etc could vary on alignment, making it easier to generate a basic new sovereign or faction that reuses more pre-existing content, but also giving room for more in depth mods?

I always preferred tech trees personally. It gives me a sense of direction, like I'm shaping my faction's strengths. Buildings unlocking other buildings is too restrictive sometimes, especially if you lose one and suddenly can't make something.

classroom 76

I always preferred tech trees personally. It gives me a sense of direction, like I'm shaping my faction's strengths. Buildings unlocking other buildings is too restrictive sometimes, especially if you lose one and suddenly can't make something.

classroom 76

[confluence title=""]https://stardock.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SDEnt/pages/2738388993/Elemental+Dev+Journal+10+Gameplay+Updates[/confluence]

[confluence title=""]https://stardock.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SDEnt/pages/2726854679/Dev+Journal+7+Tech+Trees+vs.+Building+Upgrades[/confluence]

[confluence title=""]https://stardock.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SDEnt/pages/2726854679/Dev+Journal+7+Tech+Trees+vs.+Building+Upgrades[/confluence]

I agree 100%

As you already know, early access equals early reviews and early reviews are often unfair. 

[confluence title=""]https://stardock.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SDEnt/pages/2677604353/Elemental+Dev+Journal+8+-+64bit+features[/confluence]