In RPGs, a similar exercise is when you go through and try to smooth out the leveling curve.  In this RTS, I think it is more difficult because your 'level up ding' is from completing research and obtaining new techs and such.  The solution in other games is to tweak the number of turns it might take to achieve a given tech at the start (thus addressing your issue associated with 'rush').  But that has the negative side-effect for me of increasing the time between those very fun 'dings'.

How are you approaching this balancing pass, with respect to "..the values grow so much, so fast"?

Python, eh? *cracks knuckles*

While you are busy checking into the weapons balance ...

Think a little more about weapon type and armor type.  This is an area of the game that is really weak.  When you get down to it there is not much variation.  You have really boiled it down to two types; ranged and melee.  These two attack types have a number associated with them and the bigger it gets, well it just gets bigger.  This would be great IF and only if the unit battles were played out on the strategic map as complete unit stacks.  When you take this concept down to the tactical level, it loses a lot.  The tactics simply turn out to be take out the unit that has the biggets offense value before it hits anything. 

Maybe this is good for the AI as it keeps everything kind of simple, but it makes all those cool units I made seem pointless because as I level up my tech I begin to realize that every unit is just the same as any other, just with a bigger stick.  There is no tactical combat dance on the tactical level because there are no other priorities than take down the guy with the biggest stick(highest attack value). 

Things would be more interesting if I had more things to worry about.  For example, instead of having spears just be a weapon that does X damage they should do X modifiedby Y when attacked by cavalry.  If that were the case then I couldnt just take my big stick cavalry and run over everything because there might be spear/pikeman in my way.  Things like this will go a long way towards improving your tacical system. 

I suppose the trick is getting the AI to evaluate the type of system I am proposing and making a plan to counter the things that counter it. 

I wanted to edit this to add a disclaimer. As I have not maxed out a tech tree, I dont think, maybe there are techs in the tree somewhere that makes units of pikeman more effective against cavalry and or other things like that?  If there are then my post is pointless, and I appologize.

I agree - as it stands now you can dominate the game quickly if you tech rush up to warhammers.

A solution might be to have a building which is required to produce weapons with an attack value above X. Maybe "weaponsmith" available at city level 3, and "master weaponsmith" available at city level 4. Just a few thoughts - really looking forward to your AI changes.

Yes!

Yes, yes, yes!

As it is, units deal way, way too much damage. Or have way too few hit points. No weapon should kill an elite knight in one blow. I actually multiplied the health of basic units by 3, and somewhat reduced the damage of late game weapons. And it really works. The best armor a regular unit can wear is around 25, and that's a very expensive armor. The best non-hero-only weapons should be higher than that, but not by leaps and bounds.

Actually, early weapons are maybe a bit too weak in this picture, because with the base unit having 15 HP means an early spear should be in the 10-15 damage range. Bows are utterly useless. They should deal in the 10-20 damage range. Maybe a late game version should deal almost 25.

Also, please, please make it so that dead squad members don't contribute to the damage. Attrition and skirmishes to reduce the strength of the opposing army should be a valid tactic, and it isn't so yet. Squads are better than they use to be, but they're still quite overpowered because their dead soldiers still fight.

Ugh.   I wish you wouldn't tell us stuff like that.

Might I suggest while you're modeling tactical combat after a cartoon, you might slip in playing a few *games* that do grid based tac combat well. You sell a couple in your own Impulse store.  See how they handle things like combat speed and initiative, movement, counter attacks, target selection strategy, unit roles and tactical variety , which would in turn grant more desperately needed diversity to the unit design process which the game is built around.

With respect, and with apologies for being grumpy, we've had years now of  pie in the sky posts about  fluffy conceptual goals based on Tolkien or your favorite anime, that have gotten us to where we are currently at.  By your own admission during your recent posts, the dev team had become too enamored with that sort of thing during the dev process, at the expense of basic gameplay.  We need nitty gritty, down to basics, fundamental redesign of tactical gameplay based on proven mechanisms that work.  Not "I want it to be like Dragonball Z...that show is cool!".

I don't know why it was *this* post that I finally snapped on. I've been very supportive on the boards. I think I am just despairing, because this week I actually wanted to play a game that did fantasy tac combat really well, so I re-installed Kings Bounty, and it made me realize just how far removed Elemental currently is from anything that functional, even if it's unrealistic to hope for that much depth to the system in what is basically a "tacked on" combat mode that the game really should have been designed entirely around. It really needs ripped out and rebuilt from the ground up.  The Gal-Civ like combat system is completely ill-suited to balanced tactical combat with depth and diversity. 

I'm really afraid at this point you guys would be better off getting rid of tac combat altogether, and just focusing on the deep 4x grand strategy kingdom management you guys are good at.  You do that well, when you focus on it. I just think you're in over your head on the tac side...I've yet to hear any compelling evidence you really understand why it isn't any good, other than the fact that a bunch of high profile people have criticized the game (it didn't seem to bother you when beta testers would tell you it wasn't ready).  Best case scenario, if you successfully remodel combat, that wont really make it into the game for at *least* a year. (if you honestly believe you can get to a polished, successful new combat system in less time from where you are at right now, it just cements the feeling you're out of your depth on the tactical mechanics.)

It's clear I can't handle another year of posts like this from Brad, leading to more disappointment, so i guess I need a lengthy vacation from thinking about the game. It's cool you've made some humbling posts in recent days about that state of the game, but posts like this don't indicate any real change in design philosophy, and I have no desire to play through these mechanics with incremental changes over the next 6 months. I'll check back in a year to see if the game really has fundamentally become any better. 

Sorry for the negativity, but "Avatar:TLA"  design goals broke me.   Good Luck with the game, and I mean that sincerely.

It's scary how accurate this post is

I must agree with Spyndel on this.

Then don't read his journals. If you want to bitch about the game, find somewhere to do it. We're done with it here. The team is well aware, painfully aware, of what needs to be done in the near term. 

Consider this a warning. Back off. If you can't show a little respect or at least a little restraint when talking to us, then you won't be welcome to participate in the forums.

I concur. This approach can be somewhat acceptable in a Pen and Paper RPG - but not in a video game (and not in most non-video games). Mark Rosewater, R&D of Magic the Gathering at WotC, could write a whole novel with what is wrong with that approach: it ends up with things that are cool to look at, but in the end extremely frustrating because they do not possess the complex interactions and large set of valid strategies which make a good strategy game. Turn Based strategy games are first and foremost based on intellectual challenge and decision making. And as such, what "good decisions" are should vary from game to game, and from style to style. For tactical combat to work on Elemental, it needs to work on a spreadsheet first, not on a TV screen. 

What I read in all the drama surrounding Elemental is how desperately this fraction of the gaming community wants a good TBS game.  There are so few, if any.  This genre was largely abandoned in favor of interactive movies.  However, TBS is the style of game that engages your imagination. 

I've waited years for a good TBS.  I can wait another while this game evolves.

While I agree, perhaps an Avatar reference kinda put me at edge (not an anime fan) I'm not going to hold it against them. Brad and the devs still need to have some fun making this game and programming it. Don't take that away from them because it'll be at the expense of the game no matter what they do.

Anyways, Brad and team, check out some of the recently released mods for a direction to head on item balancing. You guys should also implement some of the "hidden" armors that are unused and locked away while your at it.

Good luck!