Frogboy

[quote who="Lord Xia" reply="44" id="2790683"]Yea, one for champions i sa great idea. And ponies.[/quote] We're going to be making one for improvements too so that players can enable and disable their various improvements. I'd like to see one for all units and armies and such as well. Originally, the empire tree was supposed to take care of all this but it's really not proven sufficient for this kind of detail.

[quote who="CherryWheat" reply="39" id="2790646"]No no, I'm happy about this. It's good. It's one more step towards a game that I'll spend some serious time playing some time in the future. I'm one of what seems to me (from periodic lurking over the last month or two) to be many who have already paid their bucks and are now patiently waiting for the game that we keep being told is coming. And that's fine. It's a bad business model, and I won't be purchasing anoth

[quote]Ok, I got you wrong then on your initial post, this I can understand, compromises are never really satisfying. But just one question there, shouldn't the design be mostly finished before you start developing? I wouldn't start a big web application before I have a good technical concept. Of course there is always something that won't work out and then you have to find a workaround or a different solution. But designing while the engine is developed sounds like a bad idea to me. Anyway,

I think I generally agree that we need very very obvious distinctions between calvalry, archers, and melee units each with their own pros and cons. The challenge is coming up with ways that are FUN, INTUITIVE, and can easily be explained to the user in a way that makes sense. I think this is one of the most important challenges that we need to address for the mundane technology tree in the future. In the traditional strategy game, you would just solve this with pre-mad

[quote who="klaxton499" reply="4" id="2790451"]May i make one suggestion? Is is possible to flag the population or city level number to show which cities need more housing to level up?[/quote] Good idea.

[quote who="charon2112" reply="344" id="2790434"] Quoting Frogboy, reply 343 Quoting solidsmooky, reply 342You guys are completely brainwashed. Civfanatics is like the No More Mutants of Civ forums where they have insane and aspergers people sperg out about the craziest thing. Civ 5 is a better game in every way and I think Stardock realizes this since they're pulling inspiration from the game. To say otherwise is being just as bad as the psycho civfanatics people. Solid,

Well the fact that Elemental is built off a new engine is hardly an excuse for it's issues. It may be a reason, but not an excuse. What does that even mean? If the context is that I should hang up my hat as a game designer then yea, it's quite relevant. It boils down to 'the engine wasn't ready' instead of 'elemental wasn't ready', both equate to the same underlying failure.

[quote who="solidsmooky" reply="342" id="2790406"]You guys are completely brainwashed. Civfanatics is like the No More Mutants of Civ forums where they have insane and aspergers people sperg out about the craziest thing. Civ 5 is a better game in every way and I think Stardock realizes this since they're pulling inspiration from the game. To say otherwise is being just as bad as the psycho civfanatics people.[/quote] Solid, I'm really getting kind of tired of reading your posts to be

[quote who="shadowtongue" reply="77" id="2790350"] Quoting Xan, reply 70 Uh, I don't think Elemental has backstory problems. You may recall that Elemental has a book on the shelves. A book, I might add, that is pretty good. It is good to have a book on the shelves, but the book itself is not good. My opinion of course, but bleh, it was not good.[/quote] You're entitled to your opinion of course. But I think the point the ot

One of the things I should clarify about game design -- I don't enjoy the game design part but that's not the same thing as not being reasonably good at it. I've seen a lot of people talk about the various flaws in Elemental's design as evidence that I can't design games (ignoring the 15+ years of successful games I've designed). With an unlimited budget, unlimited time, and an infinitely capable engine, I can design a helluva game. :) I just wouldn't enjoy the process of

1.09 this week. Sept 30 1.1 in October.

You wouldn't necessarily destroy thecshop. You'd just close them if you needed to draft people into your army.

I think it's worth noting that we helped get the ball rolling on AOW being in digital distribution -- it's on Impulse right now. We're big fans. But like any new IP, it takes time to get it quite right, especially on a limited budget on a new engine.

I was chatting with a friend of mine yesterday about what we like to do. He likes to design games and make mods and such. For me, I'm in it for the community. To be honest, I'm in it for you guys. The only coding part I enjoy is the AI. I don't like designing games really. I write design documents and such for our games but I don't enjoy it. It's a chore. I'm mainly interested in participating on the forums and talking to other gamers. Elemental's initial rel

One thing that I would request is if peopel coudl start posting their saved games. I would love to look at how people (real people) are playing the game. I would look at it from both an AI and game balance point of view.

[quote who="kryo" reply="58" id="2789473"] I was thinking something a bit lazier like a scouting pack that lets a unit go through tiles belonging to another player. Be heavily exploited though if it weren't mutually exclusive with weapons.[/quote] Yea, that's the trick. How do we justify a pack keeping a player from having weapons? The unit design has definitely been a challenge because realistically, there should be 3 basic paths: 1. Melee 2. R

It's in for v1.09.

It was a cosmetic issue. They looked ugly in game. We're still working on different ideas for how to make this look pretty and compatible with the modding system that allows user created tiles.

I was thinking something a bit lazier like a scouting pack that lets a unit go through tiles belonging to another player.

Unfortunately, in v1.08 and before the pUnit->GetCombatRating() function wasn't returning the value of the army it is in IF it is in a city. hence, the AI would go after a city thinking it could take it because it was only looking at one unit in the city. This is what I mean about new engines and such. In GalCiv II, the various APIs that I had available to me were mature and robust. In Elemental, they're still babies. It's one of the reasons why sequels tend to be b

Guys, please don't use our forums to bash our friends' game okay? Firaxis is different from other companies in our industry. They're our kind of people. We're not competitive with them. It's not an us vs. them thing. Most of you guys don't know the game industry well enough to understand what makes Elemental different than typical games anyway. Elemental, at release, was, unfortunately, a buggy mess. And ANY serious developer can explain how that sort of thing happens. Think "

We added the section, now we need mods there (it's empty right now since we just launched it).

This is really interesting, David. Great work!

We made more as retailers requested them. But the cost of these are high so we won't be making more. I'd be surprised if there are many after Christmas.

Thx for the report!