Bingo!!! SD was never ever going to have a real chance of creating a real spiritual successor to MOM , anyone who wants that will be disappointed even after 2 expansions I bet.
I think that there's something that needs to be pointed out here. The lead designer (Kael) on all the post-1.1 content is actually very very good. If you haven't played Fall from Heaven 2, you should really do yourself a favor and do so. The areas in which Elemental falls short were very good, possibly the best in any fantasy TBS game I've played, in FfH2.
1) Bland factions- The factions in FfH2 were wildly different. Meaningful and very fun differences from one to another.
2) Lack of lore- FfH2 was just dripping it. Kael is a pretty decent writer in addition to being a great game designer.
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Yes, Derek is the hope , I've mentioned it a few times. He seem to be making the right noises anyway based on what I have seen on the forums where he agrees with certain threads, but we will see how much clout he has and whether he can carry over his style of game design compared to Frogboy's style. Also, one wonders if he will be limited too much in other ways.
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And one non-Kael factor...
3) The AI- I always thought that the AI in GC2 was pretty good, it was a better player than I ever was. Even though Elemental is an order of magnitude more complex, I think that if anyone can get the game's AI up to par, Brad can. It just take time and testing.
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Hard to say. It's clear that Brad is good at making AI for Galciv level complexity games (plus the practice of having designed AI for Galciv 1). Not sure if it will carry over to EWOM/MOM level games. I noted some people saying that the AI was a lot weaker in the expansions, which makes a lot of sense since the expansions made the game more complicated with custom tech trees..
EWOM is yet another order of magnitude more complicated.
Personally I see the dilemma here, SD makes relatively simple games that suit the AI. But the games are fairly bland.
It's one thing to be a mere mod maker in FfH2 and add in fun features, then shrug when people ask about AI, and say it's the best that can be done, another to actually be able to work on the game and AI directly.
Personally if it's between fun and super strong AI that kills you (not that Gal civ 2 was that, though i remember Frogboy posting that if you could beat the AI beyond tough without cheating withsave games you are a master player or something to that effect, which I thought was a joke), I'll go for slightly weaker AI that cheats a lot
MOM's AI wasn't that strong, but most people can't win on impossible (massive cheating!) without using specific tailor made strategies and "hard" was a 100% win but still fun neough.
It's a slightly different mindset from what Brad usually does I bet, but in shooting for a super strong AI, you actually might get something worse.
I kind of like one of the ideas, where Brad talked about designing a system such that it would disadvantage a human by making it difficult and boresome for him to min-max each turn while being trivial for the AI. Obviously tons of players would complain but I would be okay since humans have so many other advantages (saved games cough cough)
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