Research: BETA and beyond

Paradoxical

Join Date 04/2010

Research: BETA and beyond

Impressions on the system and what I feel is required

Before I begin, I'll preface by saying I understand that at this stage what we're getting is only a bare minimum of what's to come (hopefully). Also, I'm Australian, so I apologise if my liberal use of the letter 's' (or spelling in general, for that matter) offends anyone.

At the moment one of my biggest concerns is the current research system, as right now it shows little variability. However, this being said, although we've had it since virtually the beginning, the research system inherently depends on everything it produces, and as it effects every other aspect of gameplay, it is difficult to point out what is wrong with just the system itself. I do have a few suggestions here however.

1. Research should be an addition to founding a civilisation, not a prerequisite. With the setting being the construction of fledgling kingdoms after a cataclysm, I very much doubt that a 'kingdom' consisting of a town centre, a mill, a library, and maybe a command post would have the capacity to research an understanding of how shards - which essentially hold the power of the elements and underpin magical power and dominance - work.

2. Research, as a means of advanced and varied kingdom development, should not be required to gain basic needs. Although I really like how the food system has developed, I dislike how research is required to build farms (or their opposing equivalent), which are critical to the whole game, especially during the founding process.

3. Building on the previous points, the current research system is too beginning focused, which I feel is totally counter-intuitive. It is quite easy to get to a point very early on where you've researched everything you need and everything else is just fluff to idle away the time. I think that instead of having a funneling system, with huge variability with many minor research options at the start of a game, narrowing more and more as your research capabilities and civilisation grow, it should work the other way. A kingdom would logically begin from a basic framework and grow into its uniqueness.

4. Research should not, absolutely not, get quicker simply for the sake of getting quicker, it's just stupid (and I apologise to Stardock for this, I love your work guys, I really do). By the time I am able to research advanced spell mastery, I shouldn't be able to do it in 2, or 4, or even 10 turns. Advanced research should take a long time, even among more research-focused kingdoms and players. At the moment it just feels as though I'm clicking the next button over and over again every two turns.

5. This one I know is definitely a product of this being a BETA, but I'll add it just in case . There is simply not enough possible options at the current time, I've finished almost all research long before I even consider looking at designing my troops to begin producing troops for some foreseeable conflict in the distant future. This also seems counterintuitive because it means that by the time research should be in full swing, it's virtually defunct.

Because I feel that I've been going on and this is turning into a rant, I'll make that my last point. I love you guys at Stardock, and I've loved every version of this BETA you've put out, despite your adamant reminders that we shouldn't have been having any fun whatsoever. I know that this is going to be a fantastic game, and I feel that at this stage the really critical stuff needs to keep coming, because platitudes, although pleasant, are useless to making the game better. Good job on everything so far and I'm looking forward to version 1.0.

Best Regards,

Paradoxical

elemental

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Carewolf

I kept coming to the conclusion that what's currently in the form of building, just doesn't seem all that interesting past the first standard group of things. After that there almost doesn't feel like there is much of a point really. But then again I know that and temper my expectation based upon factors that these are just placeholder values and presented systems.

One problem I have with the city building part of the game is the fact that build orders are pretty linear as you point out. I am pretty much doing the exact same thing every game. Different build orders need to be introduced. Not only does this add to the replayability of the game but as I mentioned in my other posts it provides the player with a decision. The consequences of his decision will determine how well he is playing the game (this will of course need to be communicated effectively to the player).

One easy way to do this is to have certain technologies have a building requirement. In other words, not only does researching new technologies give the player access to new buildings but better technologies should REQUIRE specific buildings to advance further down the tech tree. This way, a player can plan in advance what he is going to build: "OK, this game I'm going to go for a strong hero with masses of low-level troops to act as meatshields" (focus is on adventuring tree). "OK, this game I'm going for strong mounted units with powerful spell casters backing them up" (focus is on magic and warfare). The player will have to save up resources to get the specific buildings he wants that will let him create the army he wants. In other words the player will have to plan ahead.

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 17

Now, all this gets to the second issue brought up in this thread and others and that is that right now, you build everything in every town. There's no real sense of specialization and every game feels the same.

In Galactic Civilizations, we solved this issue by having planets be the place you started "cities" (colonies) and those colonies would have uique resources that lent themselves to specialization.

In Elemental Beta 3-B, the resources, not the cities, will provide the resources (gold, research, arcane knowledge, materials). The cities will instead act as multipliers to those resources that are nearby.

You'll still be able to build a few basic things (merchants and workshops) that produce a trivial amount of a resource. But libraries, universities, marketplaces will act as multipliers of what you are already producing in a city due to the resources you control.

A resource only has to be in your zone of control to acquire (which you acquire by clicking on it and choosing to build the appropriate improvement on it and it then gets magnified by the nearest city).

Thus, while you CAN build a university in every city, it would be pretty silly and expensive if that city has no research going on in the first place.

As a result, the objective of the game becomes clearer -- conquering the resources you need from others because YOU need them.

The map generation, that got handed over to my AI in beta 3, has gotten updated dramatically to help seed the world with lots of interesting resources of various kinds of various rarirites with some certainty that there will be a few near you.

Now, in some games, you will be better off going down the diplomacy route because there are resources that give you influence points that you can then build improvements that magnify that influence which you can use to get good trades.

In other games, you may want to go all magic because you got a few ancient temples in your empire that let you get spells a lot quicker than others.

In the CURRENT build, everyone just goes of the Civilization path because the ONLY resource that acts the way it will in beta 3B is food and the civilization techs benefit the most from food and the Civ techs allow you to produce your own resources making the other categories a lot less important.

I dislike quoting huge chunks but I have to say that this is exactly what I've been wanting to see. The interplay between research and civ development is crucial, and in seeing how city specialisation and variability is going to be a much more important and salient aspect of the whole system, I've got a lot more faith that the research system is going to have a better place in the scheme of things.

As has been said before, we've tested pretty much everything else individually, and now it all comes down to synergy. Looking at the quoted post, we're starting to get somewhere.

Thanks again Frogboy and everyone else,

Paradoxical

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One has to wonder though given the general state of the world if part of the challenge ought to be surveying the land and building your kempire based on what you have at hand. It's what I'd expect nations to do after such a world wide disaster. That probably comes at the expense of choosing what kind of game you want to play though. . .

I somewhat fancy the idea of a particular city becoming powerful and influential due to its unique access to vast farmlands or magical resources.

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I'm going to return to this post to say just one thing.

What happened?

Seriously, in between beta complaints and your dedication to add more content and variation where did you decide to draw the line with less variation and content, and more blandness.

Really,

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I think most of what you said still applies, especially #s 2 and 3.

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