I'm not sure if this has been addressed or suggested before... or maybe in planning but here we go.



I've been thinking that adding some luxury resources and anomalies that can ONLY be found in ocean/coastal/lake tiles would make coastal cities more valuable and hopefully on par with land-locked cities in certain situations. Of course, this might include special improvements for these water resources. To magnify this effect, perhaps they could make district borders include ocean tiles as well and not just the LAND of the districts... Cargo Ports can be built multiple times and behave like normal districts, but they have to be connected to the coastline. No extra trade route benefits from extra Cargo Ports. Exploitation tiles would extend one more tile towards the ocean.





Also, will you consider adding minor underwater factions, perhaps like a race of Naga-like beings or mer-people...?



So here's the summary:

1- Adding Luxury and Anomalies that can only be found on water tiles (lakes/oceans/shallows etc.)

2- Ability to build multiple Cago Ports on water tiles, and they behave like normal Districts when leveling up and city borders etc...

3- Minor underwater factions in the ocean (Reptilians/Naga/Mer-folk etc..)





The overall effect would be to make coastal cities and exploration of oceans more dynamic and worthwhile, as well as make Island maps more interesting especially of there's water everywhere. This would make Endless Legend almost completely superior over most of its competitors like Fallen Enchantress and even Age of Wonders 3!



Thank you for reading this...



EDIT: I forgot to mention, if these ideas prove difficult, at least add some water ruins to explore just like land ruins. The ruins would include things like the corpse of a long dead sea monster, floating treasure chest (a little cliche I know, hehe) or a floating patch of some kind of lightweight strategic resource... and of course quests

I would certainly agree with this -- right now traversing the waters almost seems like a means to an end -- there is no reason to actually explore it other than to get to the other side of the waters, wich Auto Pathing would do for you.

1- Adding Luxury and Anomalies that can only be found on water tiles (lakes/oceans/shallows etc.)

Adding in water (even lake) specific resources would add on an interesting dynamic: for example, having Aquamarine or Saphire (as a generic name) grant a bonus for water based trade routes (for example, improving the Science gains from it) or movement over water. That would be extremely useful in Island maps, and not so much in something like Pangea (w/o world wrapping) but it would not make a difference as it would be useless and not needed anyhow. The movement over water, however would only serve to drive the point of water being like that odd uncle who visits from time to time, and everyone thinks is strange and therefore avoids.

2- Ability to build boroughs on water tiles, at least lake or shallow coast.

Technically, we are already able to do that with the Cargo Ports -- they do count as an Expansion District, I just wish you could build more than one sometimes as, before, Auto Pathing would not go through them for disembarking. That appears to be fixed, though.

3- Minor underwater factions in the ocean (Reptilians/Naga/Mer-folk etc..)

This is an excellent idea! The only issue with this would be how do you fight something that is in water? There are currently no ways to have any battles on the ocean (as far as I'm aware), and if it were to play out using the current battle system, there would need to be proper naval units, which I don't believe is currently in the plans for this.

4- District borders including ocean tiles in some districts, especially if they have the above-mentioned water luxury resources/anomalies to exploit.

As far as I know, they do already -- that is part of the wonders of Dust Dredgers/Centre for Rivers and Ocean. However, the addition of water/coastal anomalies would be quite interesting!



All in all, I believe that is a really good idea, but the implementation of it could be difficult with where the game seems to be going -- It appears to be very focused on the land and not the oceans/waters (other than rivers).

I had made out a big elaborate reply to this then accidentally closed the windows while switching between tabs waiting for my post timer to reach zero. So I'll just say this:



Water anomalies would be awesome, I don't think districts over lakes etc would look right though. But I totally agree if we have lots of water and no naval battles atm, it just seems like a big waste playing in any continent but pangea.

renycs wrote:


Adding in water (even lake) specific resources would add on an interesting dynamic: for example, having Aquamarine or Saphire (as a generic name) grant a bonus for water based trade routes (for example, improving the Science gains from it) or movement over water. That would be extremely useful in Island maps, and not so much in something like Pangea (w/o world wrapping) but it would not make a difference as it would be useless and not needed anyhow. The movement over water, however would only serve to drive the point of water being like that odd uncle who visits from time to time, and everyone thinks is strange and therefore avoids.





This is an excellent idea! The only issue with this would be how do you fight something that is in water? There are currently no ways to have any battles on the ocean (as far as I'm aware), and if it were to play out using the current battle system, there would need to be proper naval units, which I don't believe is currently in the plans for this.



As far as I know, they do already -- that is part of the wonders of Dust Dredgers/Centre for Rivers and Ocean. However, the addition of water/coastal anomalies would be quite interesting!



All in all, I believe that is a really good idea, but the implementation of it could be difficult with where the game seems to be going -- It appears to be very focused on the land and not the oceans/waters (other than rivers).

tbh, I don't actually own the game right now due to budget constraints, but I am definitely planning on buying this.

I played this at a friend's house a couple of weeks ago and I went straight for the Small Islands map as Wild Walkers. Needless to say, I LOVED it...

Your reply makes a lot of sense to me



1- There are LOTS of ideas at work here. A good anomaly would be perhaps a Magma Fissure. I would look like a large red fissure in the ground underwater with a small ash cloud swirling above it. It could provide 1 or 2 production and/or science. Production is great cuz water tiles generally don't have it.

A luxury resource might be a Bivalvia Gigas (a giant open clam with a shiny pearl inside!) giving trade route bonus like you said and some influence income.

Another anomaly: Coral Tower (a huge multi-colored coral reef extending out of the water with many holes in it) Gives exta gold and science



2- Not sure if they changed that yet cuz I haven't played in weeks. It seems some players are requesting that embarking become exclusively from the Cargo Ports, but it might make naval exploration somewhat slower since you can only enter water from your city instead of from anywhere... :/

As you said building multiple cargo port (connected by bridges) perhaps extending deeper into the ocean to reach distant anomalies and resources would look awesome! although they still need to make ocean tiles give a FIDSI income instead of only the coastal ones.



3- The minor faction town would be partially submerged with the main building/tower extending out of the surface. You can see one of the creatures floating ON TOP of their town. You would fight them from your ships (if any) while they would try to sink you.. similar Age of Wonders 3



OR just pacify them by sending a ship, like a diplomat and give them gold





I seem to be in the minority among 4X players. I actually enjoy naval battles and island cities when playing 4X games, especially in Civ 5. Most players don't care much for water stuff so there's little demand for it. But I really think it would be more fun in Endless Legend in particular cuz it has so much potential! Overall I agree with you though, it might be difficult for them to make these additions before release date given their priorities... I just hope they do it sooner or later without expansions or DLCs

1- There are LOTS of ideas at work here. A good anomaly would be perhaps a Magma Fissure. I would look like a large red fissure in the ground underwater with a small ash cloud swirling above it. It could provide 1 or 2 production and/or science. Production is great cuz water tiles generally don't have it.

Having some form of production from a water tile would certainly be nice -- alternatively, that could also offer additional Dust (and possibly open up some backstory from where the dust came from -- ie does it come from Auriga (the planet/earth) or elsewhere?) for the empire that founds a city near it.

2- Not sure if they changed that yet cuz I haven't played in weeks. It seems some players are requesting that embarking become exclusively from the Cargo Ports, but it might make naval exploration somewhat slower since you can only enter water from your city instead of from anywhere...

As far as I know you can embark from anywhere, but it will consume all of your movement points. If you embark from a Cargo Dock, it will let you use remaining movement points. I sincerely hope they do not change that -- embarking from only the Docks would be really annoying, and would make playing on Islands near impossible as you would have to age up to Tier Three to gain access to this.

3- The minor faction town would be partially submerged with the main building/tower extending out of the surface.

*immediately though of The Legend of Zelda, Wind Waker*

You can see one of the creatures floating ON TOP of their town. You would fight them from your ships (if any) while they would try to sink you.. similar Age of Wonders 3

The only issue with this is the current battle system -- when you battle, it will open up the map and have a sprawling battle across multiple tiles. This would not work if you were fighting on a ship, unless it zooms into the ship to initiate the battle. This would not work, however, due to the ability to ignore the battle while it goes on and you are busy doing things like manage Cities and move other units.

I seem to be in the minority among 4X players. I actually enjoy naval battles and island cities when playing 4X games, especially in Civ 5. Most players don't care much for water stuff so there's little demand for it. But I really think it would be more fun in Endless Legend in particular cuz it has so much potential! Overall I agree with you though, it might be difficult for them to make these additions before release date given their priorities... I just hope they do it sooner or later without expansions or DLCs :P

I actually never really cared for Civ -- I found it too slow for my tastes. I much like the pace of this one, with the quests it feels fast(er). Otherwise, I've never really experienced the water battles in Civ V as I don't think I really ever made naval units... oops

renycs wrote:


The only issue with this is the current battle system -- when you battle, it will open up the map and have a sprawling battle across multiple tiles. This would not work if you were fighting on a ship, unless it zooms into the ship to initiate the battle. This would not work, however, due to the ability to ignore the battle while it goes on and you are busy doing things like manage Cities and move other units.





I actually never really cared for Civ -- I found it too slow for my tastes. I much like the pace of this one, with the quests it feels fast(er). Otherwise, I've never really experienced the water battles in Civ V as I don't think I really ever made naval units... oops

Oh well, looks like we're gonna have to accept individual ship units/transports VS sea monsters instead. I guess we can't have everything, hehe



I think the pacing of the game is all about the research tree. The faster research progress, the quicker you get to the mid-game and end-game. In Civ 5, the mid-game (industrial era) is where things start getting real slow, unless you're at war. The quests in EL indeed make progress faster I guess, giving you things you might not get without research, like an advanced refinery. PLUS in EL, we don't have to research everything to get to advance, which is really cool!



Naval battles give me the PIRATE experience I've been looking for. In civ, I especially like building privateers. Arrrggh!

While not everything here would be easy to implement, I have to agree that they should try to do something at all with the water tiles. Right now, the oceans are just an inconvenience, not a resource. I never play on small pangea maps for that reason. There's such a huge, multi-region swath of water that's entirely pointless on them.

Hmm, I would like water-battles/minors/ressources very much.



But I think that's a lot to do, and at first the land-System has to become perfect.



But what with an water-Expansion-dlc? new race (water-creatures), minors-water-race, battleships etc-`?!

LordVladec wrote:


But I think that's a lot to do, and at first the land-System has to become perfect.



But what with an water-Expansion-dlc? new race (water-creatures), minors-water-race, battleships etc-`?!

I think if this becomes a DLC it might cause compatibility problems for multiplayer. More likely it can be a patch...

Just a +1 agreeing to this idea, even though they red-lighted it in the prospective features list.

I fully support this suggestion, especially the first part, it's very needed for map types with large bodies of water. Also it will be good to have water ruins.

+1 to this idea. Water regions feel bland, and this would be a great way to add interest and fun.

We need naval fleets/heros and the ability for naval battles, I've droned over this time and time again. The oceans are so beautiful but boring as hell lol.

KrimsonVagus wrote:
I'm not sure if this has been addressed or suggested before... or maybe in planning but here we go.



I've been thinking that adding some luxury resources and anomalies that can ONLY be found in ocean/coastal/lake tiles would make coastal cities more valuable and hopefully on par with land-locked cities in certain situations. Of course, this might include special improvements for these water resources. To magnify this effect, perhaps they could make district borders include ocean tiles as well and not just the LAND of the districts...



In order to exploit these extra resources and anomalies, perhaps there could be the option of building boroughs on shallow coastal tiles (kinda like the city of Venice ).



Also, will you consider adding minor underwater factions, perhaps like a race of Naga-like beings or mer-people...?



So here's the summary:

1- Adding Luxury and Anomalies that can only be found on water tiles (lakes/oceans/shallows etc.)

2- Ability to build multiple boroughs on water tiles, at least lake or shallow coast.

3- Minor underwater factions in the ocean (Reptilians/Naga/Mer-folk etc..)

4- District borders including ocean tiles in some districts, especially if they have the above-mentioned water luxury resources/anomalies to exploit.



The overall effect would be to make coastal cities and exploration of oceans more dynamic and worthwhile, as well as make Island maps more interesting especially of there's water everywhere. This would make Endless Legend almost completely superior over most of its competitors like Fallen Enchantress and even Age of Wonders 3!



Thank you for reading this...



EDIT: I forgot to mention, if these ideas prove difficult, at least add some water ruins to explore just like land ruins. The ruins would include things like the corpse of a long dead sea monster, floating treasure chest (a little cliche I know, hehe) or a floating patch of some kind of lightweight strategic resource... and of course

quests

I love the idea of underwater ruins and a water-based minor faction. Underwater luxury resources and anomalies will give us more choices and provide us with more ways to play the game.



Unfortunately I think it's too late for the developers to implement this to Endless Legend. The new resources would be used in new technologies which would need balancing and tweaking.

DotBeta wrote:
We need naval fleets/heros and the ability for naval battles, I've droned over this time and time again. The oceans are so beautiful but boring as hell lol.

Yes, we really do. The ships could use the same model as the transports, and all battles could be auto-resolved, but the oceans and lakes shuold not be a save zone to just park an army on so it can not be attacked.

I made slight modifications:



2- Ability to build multiple Cago Ports on water tiles, and they behave like normal Districts when leveling up and city borders etc...