Conquest of Elysium 3 dev log

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Tecnócrata

At least will be finished and fully patched, unlike AOW:SM, which was promised to and never fulfilled. What a botch and disappointment that game it was.

Dom3 still has a lot of bugs. And some GUI improvements would also be great. So lets not go there .

[Gandalf Parker]

Yes but many of the most common complaints about Dom3 are no longer easy patch fixes. They would require extensive rewriting which is one of the reasons I think the new project was started. To incorporate lessons learned.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Yes but many of the most common complaints about Dom3 are no longer easy patch fixes. They would require extensive rewriting which is one of the reasons I think the new project was started. To incorporate lessons learned.

Yes but many of the most common complaints about Age of wonders are no longer easy patch fixes. They would require extensive rewriting.

(See what I did there ).

So CoE3 will have good moddable AI then?

[Ighalli]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

There are no formations. And you can only select spells from the wizards spell list but not script them.

Can you choose fewer than 3 spells prepared for a level 2 caster? I just played my first games of COE2 and was pretty frustrated when my Necromancer would cast Finger of Death (target resists!) instead of lightning storm against a stack of swordsmen. It'd be really nice to tell them they can only cast the spell you think is most useful in the battle coming up instead of picking 2 less useful ones too.

Is it going to be rows of people COE2 style? Can you choose which rank your officers & soldiers go into, at least?

How similar to COE / Dominions is the recruiting?

[JonBrave]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

So CoE3 will have good moddable AI then?

Ummm, define good?

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

So CoE3 will have good moddable AI then?

Not sure about the moddable part.
But the AI is much better. Instead of one generic AI, each nation has their own and will make logical decisions that match that nation.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally Posted by Ighalli

Can you choose fewer than 3 spells prepared for a level 2 caster?

No. But there are many chances in the game to increase the number of spells you can select from. So a favorite mage can easily be upgraded to where you have enough spells to choose ones you think are good.

The spell casting is equally random between those spells Im afraid. Other than we are continually tightening it so that spells wont be cast against units that are immune to that spell.

Can you choose which rank your officers & soldiers go into, at least?

Afraid not. The rows go infantry, then pole arms, then shooters, and finally casters.

How similar to COE / Dominions is the recruiting?

I dont remember CoE2 well enough so I will copare to Dom3.
You purchase from the available list. Each nation is different. There are always some items always available to you, and then specials that show up. So I might alternate between getting 5 infantry then 5 archers for awhile until a commander or wizard shows up available to get.

And you dont set numbers of purchases. They come in bundles. If that nations has it llisted as 5 infantry then that turn thats all you can get at that location.

And there are much less locations you can purchase units than in Dom3. The MicroManagement is far less even if you play on the "insanely huge" maximum size map.

[Edi]

Originally Posted by Ighalli

Can you choose fewer than 3 spells prepared for a level 2 caster? I just played my first games of COE2 and was pretty frustrated when my Necromancer would cast Finger of Death (target resists!) instead of lightning storm against a stack of swordsmen. It'd be really nice to tell them they can only cast the spell you think is most useful in the battle coming up instead of picking 2 less useful ones too.

Is it going to be rows of people COE2 style? Can you choose which rank your officers & soldiers go into, at least?

How similar to COE / Dominions is the recruiting?

You cannot choose less than the maximum number of spells to memorize, but you can choose which spells you memorize. Mages will cast random spells from those memorized, but not completely useless spells (e.g. fireball against fire elementals, which are fire immune, or fire ward on own units if the enemy is entirely spearmen who have no fire attacks).

This is intentional, because otherwise the magic system would be wide open for abuse and many, many things would have to be severely nerfed. There are spells there, which would be instant, automatic "I win" buttons if they could be specified as the only spells being cast. That could vary situationally somewhat, but in general, the randomness factor is a good thing.

Think for example of the druid, who unsurprisingly has some spells to charm animals. A very large portion of independent monsters on the map are animals. Druid sets Command Beasts or Domestication (both aoe charm animal spells) as the only one being casts, then goes looking for large stacks of animals (who also have low magic resistance as a rule) and WHAM, instant army, I win, thank you, good night, hope you had a nice game.

There are other things which could be even more severely abused if not for random spellcasting. To the point where you might as well quit the game the instant an enemy mage shows up with that spell in his spell list.

The armies are largely rows of units in the same style as CoE2. Pure spellcasters are in the rearmost ranks. Missile units/spellcasters are in the rows second from the back (some monsters can cast spells, but count as ranged units instead of pure mages) and melee/ranged/spellcasters (units which are primarily classed melee, but can cast spells or also have missile weapons) are in the front ranks. The placement of commanders follows their classification (e.g. barbarian warlords lead from the first rank while captains, despite not having missile weapons, are grouped with the missile units).

Spellcasting from the first rank is very difficult, because the unit is engaged in melee. From the second rank they can cast spells as normal, the difficulty is only if they are in the first row.

[Ighalli]

Thanks for the great information, Gandalf and Edi!

Gandalf, that sounds exactly like COE2 recruiting. Does that mean if you're on the lookout for e.g. a scout that you have to go check the recruiting screen each turn until one shows up? In COE, there would be announcements when wizards or heroes were available for hiring but not for normal commanders. Do the commanders stick around for more than one turn if you don't hire them immediately?

Does the hammer resource represent Dom style resources? What is the brown resource (supplies?) that seems to be common to the characters?

So how does one level up the mages in this game? Are experience stars helpful to spell casters? I know there are booster items; do they make spellcasters go to a higher level or add more known spells? Is there also something equivalent to Dom empowering? We've seen what level 1 and 2 guys get on the screenshots, but what about level 3 or 4 casters?

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by JonBrave

Ummm, define good?

Reacts to all player actions. Uses intelligent moves, and not just a large random generator (ps, a large random generator can work, if you just log which results worked and which didn't). Detects cheesy anti AI moves and counters them. etc.

Ow right, you wanted to bait me into trying to define something that could not be defined, amirite?