Elemental: War Of Magic

[DaveV]

Latest news: they've hired Kael as producer!

http://www.stardock.com/about/newsitem.asp?id=2056

[Brian Shanahan]

I've had a look at their technology tree, and it's quite disappointing.

http://www.elementalgame.com/hiergamenon...s/kingdoms

They have quite a few technologies that just seem out of place or lack flavor:

Farming Guilds - apparently, to farm requires a guild badge in Elemental's universe.

Refined Farming\Production\Mining - general name for technologies that give a bland +10% to respective activity.

Economics - not only this name seems rather immersion-breaking for a high fantasy game, but it also leads to Education. Also, it gives "Trade Center" improvement, which is a name that I remember from their sci-fi game Galactic Civilizations, so it doesn't sound medieval at all to me.

Education - this leads to housing, which in turn leads to literacy. Buh?

Literacy - leads to "Higher Education", which allows building of a university, whereas basic "Education" allowed the building of a school. Now, there's a reason that in Civ Writing unlocks library rather than school - until industrial times, there just was not that much interest by the ruling classes to educate the commoners. So having schools come before universities seems strange.

Furthermore, I'm not sure I like the way their tree is constructed - every technology has exactly one prerequisite, so there is no interweaving; it seems more like a shrubbery than an actual tree. It's probably a lot easier to code an AI to understand this, but it does take away more immersion - we can do complex negotiations with other realms without basic literacy or effective bureaucracy?

I would like to quote a few words from "Night Watch" by Terry Pratchett (a satirical High Fantasy novel):

Every day, maybe a hundred cows died for Ankh-Morpork. So did a flock of sheep and a herd of pigs and the gods alone knew how many ducks, chicken and geese. Flour? He'd heard it was eighty tons, and about the same amount of potatoes and maybe twenty tons of herring....
...and the wool coming in, too, every day, the cloth, the tobacco, the spices, the ore, the timber, the cheese, the coal, the fat, the tallow, the hay EVERY DAMN DAY [SIZE="1"]pp 389-390[/SIZE]

For any sort of fictional scenario to be immersive it has to be set in a working society, so for me those kind of technologies have to be in the game too, otherwise there wouldn't be the society to support the more magical side too. If you want another example of this kind of thing in High Fantasy, pick up "The Riven Codex" the compedium book to David Eddings' Belgariad and Malloreon series.

[Maksim]

I would like to quote a few words from "Night Watch" by Terry Pratchett (a satirical High Fantasy novel):

<snip>

For any sort of fictional scenario to be immersive it has to be set in a working society, so for me those kind of technologies have to be in the game too, otherwise there wouldn't be the society to support the more magical side too. If you want another example of this kind of thing in High Fantasy, pick up "The Riven Codex" the compedium book to David Eddings' Belgariad and Malloreon series.

I think you missed the point of my comments there. I agree absolutely that versimilitude must be present in a fictional scenario. What my complaints are about is that versimilitude is sorely lacking in the examples I gave.

Take "Farming Guilds", for example. A guild is an association of people who share a common trade (jewellers or tailors), who can control the admission of new members and ensure limited supply of their goods, thus increasing their prices and profits. That's what guilds are for, essentially. One of the pre-requisites of organizing a guild is having a job that requires specialized skills not easily obtained. Farming, on the other hand, is something that a lot of people did, and thus had a very low barrier to entry. So having a guild of farmers is non-sensical.

Economics - the word in its modern sense is a science that is most readily associated with Adam Smith and his "Wealth of Nations", written in 18th century. It certainly seems out-of-place for a medieval-style society. Its place on the technology tree (before housing and literacy?!) is even more so.

Perhaps the worst offender is the Empire 'Cooperation' tree technology named "Propaganda". The word, in its common usage, refers to influencing the masses' opinion on a particular subject. Truly effective propaganda has to reach the people easily - via books, radio, television and Internet. This was not something you did before the rise of the nation states and mass media. Prior to that, religion was the keeping the people in line before then. It did not really come into its own before 20th century, so once again, seeing it in a high-fantasy environment is jarring.

Latest news: they've hired Kael as producer!

http://www.stardock.com/about/newsitem.asp?id=2056

Now, this, on the other hand, gives me great hope! If Elemental is not to be Master of Magic 2, it could at least take a page from Fall From Heaven.