I'm not one for multiplayer in these games, but in reading your post it seems the Fantasy 4x genre might be best served by a MP only game. Or MP focused at the least. With human vs human you remove many of your obstacles and could really dig into some cool things. I'm sure I wouldn't be the target audience, but it seems there are a lot of loud voices both here and on the Steam community boards for LH that would really love Stardock take on a project like that.

Any thoughts on that?

I find a large problem with magic based civilization games are the units themselves in the mix of things. Inevitably people want to see mundane units on the battlefield as well as magic. But magic will just destroy these units without a blink of an eye. It is the equivalent of 20th century army facing a stone age army. Seriously, they could beat the tank for 2 - 3 months and not cause any structural damage. This is the equivalent of magic to army, why have an army in the first place.

The model of making a magic game could be taken directly from Magic the card game. A wizards duel. It sounds very much that is the approach being tried here. I really like the idea of asymmetrical goals for a magic game. Doesn't have to be a contest of who creates the ultimate forge first. A goal could easily be to get the Black Cauldron and resurrect all the warriors past. Hence, you have will domination, or sheer I control all death on the map. Make nature bend to your will by collecting the seeds of control. These goals in essence are precisely what wizards fighting would try to do. If I were a wizard controlling a civilization is such a mundane thing, I would leave it to someone else as I have better pursuits.

I look forward to Brad / Derek / Stardock's ideas on Elemental 2. I look forward to the asymmetrical but equivalent goals of pursuits of power.

The Cloth Map, like many other ideas in Elemental, was a really good idea. The funny thing is that I hardly ever use it, I really enjoy looking at the actual forests and terrain. Yet strangely enough, I really like that it is "there", inside the game, and on occasion, when the empires get big enough, I zoom out and take a peek. It just "adds".

Taking cities IS tedious. Sieges are tedious. Storming walls is tedious and frustrating buisness. Even in a game that has been specializing in this kind of thing its tedious... I've played Total War a lot, starting at Medieval II, then Shogun II and now Rome II, and even in a game where the action is the central point it is very, very tedious. The first five cieties are fun. The next five cities are ok. By then you've seen most of the citiy types and realized that despite the different layouts the tactics usually remain the same - if its a big city with lots of armies you starve em, if its going to be easily overwhelmed you assault along a broad front and at the same time barge through the gates, and if it has no walls you trample over it. Rinse, repeat ad nauseum... the unrest mechanic only forces you to slow down by means of cultural conversion and troop placement in provinces so you cannot simply steamroll over the entire continent in a large wave once you have three or four good assault armies, also known as Stacks of Doom. That is, unless you want to destroy a few large empires and leave a scattered and rebellious husk behind ( a valid tactic if you lack the resources to actually occupy). I really enjoy the combination of civilization and magic. Yes, it comes at a price... mostly this will be balance. Whereas in pure civilization mechanics are "easy" when it comes to combat, magic and a turn based combat system makes the game incredibly hard to balance. Cast a DoT effect? Cast a Graveseal on the strongest unit and keep recasting untill it sticks, all the while killing off the rest? Chant "lightning bolt lighting bolt lightning bolt"  and electrocute the lot? The problem is that even if the AI is very, very strong in the Civ department, if it manages to mess up the combat it will get owned all over the place. And then you get to gimp the magic because it is too strong. Yeah, the AI in MoM was, in so far as there was an actual AI, 'orrible. Yet I played it over and over again, because I could make my own stories, armies and troops. Add a few good sandbox elements in and you are golden... but people these days expect those games to be like movies or books, and expect to be able to do anything... reshape the world and the AI should be able to cope with it right, because how hard can that be? Right? Right? They are forgetting that if a real life opponent prepares a plan, and you are caught unaware you're probably doomed as well.

How does the AI prepare against this:

- build a few troop producing fortresses

- grab a few heroes, make a few henchmen

- queue up a load of units, they need not be overpoweredly strong, just enough to support your heroes and henchmen, a combo of range/melee... jus tleave em in the city... keep casting spells and using gold to rush production...

- conquer a single city in the centre of the map whilst your armies build up

- Move all those units, henchmen and heroes outside the cities...

- Cast "Call of the Titans" in the centre of the map...

Probably, if I were the AI, by screaming at the CPU that it should have seen this coming, and then executing the memory as rage-quit Because thats what a human would do if confronted by this.

Limits are great.

I don't think that concept would work, because then it would be for the player, get the shards, defend them, win.

That's easier than conquest.

I think part of what made FFH2 work so well is that it was low magic.

I like your words. I agree.

I like the comparison with the Rogue-Like.

Making something such as this work would be an interesting spin-off of the 4X Genre. Wonder how hard it would be to make it work, a 4x is fundamentally more complicated than a rogue like. 

Also, The randomness could potentially break some instances of the game. Like some mazes in a rogue-like are death traps, or like some Solitaire games can't be won.  Some games are easy some hard, you never know in advance. 

Heart shaped man is seriously on to something. 

The genre needs to move forward and that sounds like an EXCELLENT way to do it.

agree

The main question is what level of magic do we use.

We separate them to 3 very rough categories:

Low level: part of your toolbox, usually affecting one creature, used all the time

Medium level: rarer, A weak world enchantment, affecting a city or a a few units, used occasionally and affects the tide of battle

High level: a strong world enchantment, decides a battle

MoM has a wide variety of spells from all 3 levels, from a simple Haste spell to a Zombie Mastery spell. Many of the spells in MoM will fall into the Medium level

FE has a small variety of spells, mostly from the low level and the medium level. While you can cast Haste or Chain Lightening, I can't think of any "Oh god, he just cast that spell I really hate, now I gotta go disjunction that".

AoW3 has a lot of low level and a few high level spells, with a bit of a lack of medium level spells. This just mean that there is a shift between early game and end game. (note- some of the "spells" are passive bonuses, so they do not really enter this, though they would've been counted as medium, usually)

A tactic such as you described, raising a mountain ridge around a city, is not all that effective. It will mean starving your city in order to delay the enemy. Not only that, while you had to raise 9 mountains, all the enemy has to do is lower one (and yes, I'm assuming that if you made mountains impassable that wizards know how to deal with that).

As a reference to this tactic, MoM sorcery school has a spell, I think "city in the sky" or "sky fortress" or something similar, that prevents all ground troops from attacking the city. This could be countered either by disenchanting the city, or recruiting/summoning flying units. Another reminder- most races had a high tier flying unit.

The AI shouldn't have such a bad time, with the proper tools. Helping him work out certain tactics can be a problem (such as kiting), but on the other hand he is expected to be much more optimized. For example, if buyout cost on buildings is reduced at certain production points, the AI knows when to buy it so as to pay the least and get the building the fastest. The same goes for micromanagement- building an army in one city to defend another, the AI can send the units each turn to the right destination or wait and send them in a group, while for human players it can mean a hassle or that they forgot/made a mistake when sending troops.

In FE for example the AI has much easier tools to decide if -10% unrest, an outpost (to connect territories) or a +1 production/material will yield the most production. For me that tends to be a bit of a hassle, and I follow a per-determined order of buildings, even if it's not the correct choice.

All in all, I don't see why the AI is inherently inferior to players, or why high magic setting causes a problem for AI. Saying that the AI has a problem in AoW3 due to magic is like saying that the AI has a problem in civ5 because of the 1 unit/tile or some other reason for it in civ4.

This is what I am looking for in a game. This is the fun part of 4x games. I try to bend normal 4x games to be a bit like this. Choosing dense monsters in FE, pressing end turn 5 times at the start of a Warlock game to make it more challenging and stuff like that. In Heroes IV you could choose moving monsters. If you got into their zone they would attack. This made the game a real challenge for me, though most people regard it as the weak brother in the series.

When a 4x game is cleared out of random stuff and monsters, and the slaughter of the AI remains, I will often start a new game. The first 30% of a 4x game is ALWAYS the most fun for me. Make a game where the goal is to rise from some tiny empire to reach a lofty goal while fighting the world with monsters, a mad king, sour magicians and other stuff that is in my way. I dont care about a balanced AI opponent. I want random events to twart my progress. Make the game and me tell a story that is unique each time.

first.  great screenshots - am i the only one that finds that aesthetic and ui more engaging than what weve got in fe/lh?

second.  the op broke me.  so many ideas shot into my head at once that my brain ended up like a jackson pollok painting on the wall behind my chair.  when i stand back and take a look at it the most prominent theme appears to be not only that there should be a few universal, opposing victory conditions related to the world-at-large (instead of the other factions), but also that each faction should have a unique one, that relates to their unique play-style.  given that the world-at-large is shared by all the factions, conflicts and comraderies will arise naturally as each attempts to fulfill their own quest(s).

for your specific elemental universe, factions - their unique strategic & tactical powers (magic), playstyle, and victory condition(s) - should all be derived from the elements.  factions of more than one element will naturally be more versatile, but less focused; each with its own strengths and weaknesses.. different strokes for different folks.  every power (spell) will need to be created not only with the player in mind, but also embedded with ai conditionals.  this means that every action will need to have an equal, and opposite re-action, so that the ai will be able to compete (offensively), inherently from the dualistic & oppositional effects of the powers.  a faction that dominates the wind and the skies should have an opposing faction that dominates the underground; a faction that dominates the over-land should have an opposing faction that dominates the waterways and the seas.  these are just extremes of course, permitting gradated combinations.  not every opposition needs to be present in each game, but they should all be developed for a balanced pool with which to randomize/customize from; especially for the ai.  a school of magic with a low-level "create river", mid-level "create lake", and high-level "create moat" spells will need to have an opposing school with a low-level "create hills", mid-level "create plateau", and high-level "create mountains" spells.  a universal victory condition to conquer 75% of the map should have an opposing victory condition to ally 75% of the map.  a faction trying to cover 75% of the globe in water should have an opposing faction thats trying to cover 75% of the globe in land, and a faction trying to dig to the center of the earth should have an opposing faction thats trying to reach the sun.  ..and the ai will have to be taught to utilize all of them, OFFENSIVELY (key!), using a combination of geometric and go(the game)-like tactics.  defensive ai will as usual be a collection of as many pattern recognition conditionals as can be mustered - a database which ideally expands over time with player input.  however, in an asymmetrically balanced game-world, offense is much more important than defense; and stories become much more adventurous.

head

too

fast

for

hands

KAPOW!

addition: implement seasons and youve got another layer of elemental abstraction for players to bite off of when creating strategies..

Interesting thread.  I really like Frogboys Dev Journals, and I generally find myself nodding as I read along... generally agreeing with his thoughts.

But can't say that's the case here.... don't get me wrong, I understand the point and it's an interesting discussion - but I don't see Magic as a "problem".  As others have already suggested, it depends on how you you handle it... sure if you're going to have magical nukes and spells that destroy a city / army at the wave of a hand.. then yeah that can be crazy hard to balance and hard to code AI for.  But magic doesn't have to be like that, and just because it's not super powerful that doesn't have to make it less fun.  

Just because it's fantasy, doesn't mean super powered magic is a must.  Subtle magic can be fun.  And I don't see why we can't have a fantasy 4x with magic, that is fun, and has reasonable balance.

Hell, FE:LH is proof that it can be done!  Last time I checked it meets all those criteria, and is a heck of a good game.  And there are other examples as already mentioned.

I'm not convinced that the magic problem is that much different from having to balance technology advances in a space based game.  For example... in a space game X you can research amazing advanced technologies that let you blow up planets, or make an inhabitable planet habitable., or create ships that can warp greater/faster or are 10 times the size of other ships... or whatever.  How is technology in space 4x any more unbalancing than magic in a fantasy 4x?   And how is conquering other cities/factions any more boring/tedious than other genres?

Seems the suggestion is that gamers "expect" powerful magic to be central focus of fantasy 4x... but i'd argue that is not necessarily true.  I love 4x games.... and fantasy is my preferred setting (over space and historical)... but LH hits the sweet spot for me, I don't need/want uber magic thanks.

Anyone remember Sword of Aragon from way back?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_of_Aragon

Now that was a cool game... yeah sure it had some issue but in a lot of ways it has similarities to FE:LH.  It's fantasy, turn based.... pretty much 4x... but like FE:LH has RPG elements included also.  It was low magic.... and it was damn fun.  What makes it fun (at least for me)... choosing a starting "sov" with a number of class options, designing my own units, exploring, diplomatic elements, rpg elements, the fantasy setting and the way those elements interact in different ways each time the game is played that creates a story.  And that's the same stuff I love about LH. 

I think it's just different ideas of what makes a great fantasy strategy game.  For a lot of people it's MoM.  For me, I tend to think of Sword of Aragon.

So fair enough, I think it's great to explore different game ideas - and good luck with the new project.  But I just hope we get the next generation of FE:LH at some point in the future because it's already unique and strikes a great balance of game styles as is, and I think there is still room to grow in the direction FE:LH has/is going.

Warlock 2, FE and Eador IMO have all made steps in that direction, the fun in them was mostly the PvE. But even so, I have yet to see a satisfying endgame formula.