Frogboy

Great discussion. A few things I would throw in here: Beware of designing game mechanics to deal with balance issues. How "scarce" something is happens to be purely a matter of balance. Food to plentiful? Then fewer fertile land spots and such. Higher levels not providing enough benefit? Have more buildings that require those high levels. The scarcity of a given thing is a matter of balance. The game mechanic shouldn't come into play.

[quote who="strager" reply="28" id="2599093"]Don't suppose we can get it a bit before July 4th so we can start modding during the long weekend eh?[/quote] The key date for us is Beta 3. Beta 5 is scheduled around 6 weeks after the start of Beta 3. Beta 3 is when the actual game comes together. Beta 4 is when we add tactical battles (during which time we will continue to be enhancing the game). By the time Beta 5 hits, the main game has to start being pretty good.

Strager - let me see what I can do.

Yep, it's coming out next month instead... (just kidding). It'll come out sometime between August 2010 and February 2011. :)

BTW, one of the reasons I'm anxious for beta 3 is that that is when I get to start seriously programming the AI. The longer it takes to beta 3, the less time I have for the AI. The game's schedule itself may be fungible but mine isn't unfortunately. :)

[quote]Does that include the global population? Thats the one thing I really think should be local. If a town gets wiped out it should be more impact than "I just lost 40 population". Materials, etc. are defiantly fine the way they are.[/quote] Population is local. It keeps track of your global population but from a game mechanic point of view, they're city by city.

I think it's safe to say that global resources are here to stay.

I like the idea of replays. Won't make it by 1.0 but definitely can be looked at as a post release update.

Not until it's fun to play but rather until the basic game mechanics are in and the game is solid. We don't want to rely on the pretty graphics as a crutch to hide weak game mechanics. From what I've already seen internally, it would have been a disaster had we turned on the graphics engine early because the city building is enthralling enough to cover up weak game mechanics (i.e. I fear it would have made Elemental migrate in the direction of Caesar IV - a great game to be sure but n

[quote]Err I vote No.... even if it was crash free at this point. It just has too far to go to be ready for even basic MP. That being said, I think the MP test should be moved to Beta 4.... Beta 2 should be what Beta 3 is planned.....[/quote] You do realize that that's a recipe for us just throwing out user input on things? Anyone is free to make their own game but on this game, we will set the milestone conditions. :) Beta 1 and beta 2 are about stability. Beta

This is interesting. I want to stay away from having "residential tiles". This isn't SimFantasy. :) But I am intrigued at the concept of certain improvements consuming people. The issue I would see there is added complexity versus the benefit. You'd need to be able to see both the population of the city and the available population of a city which adds another layer of complexity. This is okay if there is a pay off for it but I'm not sure if the pay off is sufficient in

See the report form so that we can learn a bit more about your setup.

Well personally, I would like to see us get to beta 3. I'm anxious to start the actual game stuff.

[quote]Hm... can surplus food production be stockpiled?[/quote] No. We very much want to stay away from the micro management of food. It isn't fun. It's never been fun (for me anyway). The reason other resources can be stockpiled is because you use them when you build something. People, by contrast, continue to consume food. We don't want to get into a situation where people are spending time having to deal with internally created food crisis. It wasn't fun

[quote]And once you get this down, you can add an autosave, which will greatly diminish the damage done by the inevitable crashing that will continue as long as new lines of code are added.[/quote] Auto save is already in and on in the currently public build. [quote]"The crash descriptions"=a thread I started, if that's what you were referring to. (It hasn't gotten many replies apart from me posting the files, so I'm not sure at all what might be going on.)[/quote]<

Food isn't stockpiled presently. It's based on your production because it's perishable.

[quote]Hopefully whatever changes you make will actually allow me to play the game. (It will be nice ot actually see all the features that everyone else is talking about here.) [/quote] You'll need to work with us then. If it's crashing before you load the game, you need to talk to us and give us mroe details.

[quote]Going to a Beta 1ZZZZ1 is fine with me if we get all of the random crashes, stuck turns, and glitches taken care of.[/quote] :) Well, perfect stability and such isn't a prerequisite. Just a reasonable level. I think the next build will do it.

[quote who="EadTaes" reply="7" id="2595450"]I can tell you I still suffer from the black white screen syndrome created by anti-aliasing.[/quote] nVidia 8000 series eh? We're yelling at 'em.

Not a bug, just a temporary change.

[quote]One thing I think is missing from the current system is city placement decisions having a larger impact. Currently, all i need to do is build a city close-ish to a resource or two, and I can make the city awesome if I choose to put the population there. Perhaps there needs to be a mechanic in place that requires certain characteristics of the surrounding countryside of a city to make people want to settle there. Meaning, not Every city is able to be housed up to lvl 5

Ok. Will keep an eye on.

You can't change the resolution to 1024x1024. It's not related.

Trig: In your documents\my games delete the Elemental folder.

Do you have roads (caravans) built by chance?