Frogboy

"Equipment" is a bit of a catch all for "everything else".

Prestige will suck people away from other cities so if you have a bunch of crummy cities you are vulnerable to migration.

Beta 2 ADDS multiplayer but its focus is integrating suggestions and feedback from beta 1G.

We're feeling pretty confident about the date. The thing to understand is that the *game play* hookup in Elemental is a relatively minor part of the development. Nearly all of the work goes into the engine which isn't even part of the beta until Beta 3. Ultimately, the users will be deciding when Beta 3 is.

Death Magic isn't about killing things. Death Magic is about using the energy released when death occurs.

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[quote]last time I heard the CEO of stardock was outsmarted by a mouse, [/quote] It was a very smart mouse.

Spent the evening playing. Got my butt kicked.

Scorpiana has it exactly right. If you want to build an army of armored Fabios you better have plenty of metal mines, roads connecting cities to get supplies in, armories, smiths, etc.

I hate Hexes. I know I'm in a minority on this. Consider this: It takes just as many turns to take the red path as the white path. The closest distance between two points should be a straight line. With Hexes, that's not necessarily the case. I know squares have their own issues t

Starcraft 2 is #1. The second part of Starcraft 2 is #10.

I'm not sure I fully understand how this is different than what we have. You can build outposts in Elemental. You don't have to use essence to build a city, you only use essence if you want to build on dead land.

[quote]Will be interesting to see the mechanics that go into it. I'm hoping for a breeding rate trade off.[/quote] Precisely. Lower birthrate but you can use all your population.

Later on, as you research better weapons, armor, equipment, etc. You can upgrade your guy. Here's Fabio later on...

[quote]Can you combine different units? [/quote] You can combine units into an army that will fight together as one. In the cloth map beta, it's not terribly impressive. In the actual game engine, it's considerably better even in pre-beta: This is a single army which is made up of my sovereign, a

Here's kind of how it works: Researching: In Elemental, Logistics matters even if it's abstracted. You don't research a type of unit. You care about things like logistics, training, equipment. This is how you get access to different sizes of units: <img src="http

Hi Roman: When you train a "unit" you decide how many soldiers will be in that unit. Different factions have different formation options but here's Altar's: A unit can be either: An individual soldier A party of soldiers (4) A company of soldiers (10) A Battalion (50) Brigade (250) Legion (1000) The more soldiers in your unit, the longer it takes to train BUT you get significant cost saving

On the low end, I'm requiring that it be able to run on a netbook (1024x600). My Thinkpad X40 (5 year old laptop) will be a test box. Regarding 64-bit: You're really not missing out. It's just that we expect to have larger sized maps and more eye candy.

[quote]Sorry, if it's redundant, but I have the same questions. Hopefully we will be able to change the full AI logic.[/quote] That goes without saying. You can't make different types of games if you can't redo the AI.

[quote]What about AI modding? Possible? Impossible? Can change C++ code? Can change only Python code? Only XML settings?[/quote] Python. I'm a beginning at Python myself but I have to say, it's pretty wonderful. It's simple yet elegant. It's what BASIC should have been back in the day.

This Thursday we WILL have beta 1G of Elemental. Anyway, one of the things that I am finding more enjoyable than I realized when we were designing it is the unit design because of the way it UN-abstracts what raising armies means. In Elemental, when you design a unit, you literally grab a r

The EMPIRE uses death magic. A Fallen race could be on the side of the Kingdom.

Once I have this up and running I won't need any of you anymore! Ha!

I dunno. You guys have to realize, from our perspective, Firaxis are the good guys. It's a small industry and we're friends with these guys. Soren Johnson, at Firaxis at the time, is in the GalCiv II credits. He's not there but it gives you an idea of how close knit our group is. That's why it always pains us to see people taking sides. We're all on the same side. I realize people who aren't in the industry may not see this but for us, we don't see Civ

One nice thing about cities in Elemental is that they don't really require any micro management if the user doesn't want to mess with them. There is no morale or approval or what have you. You want a mining outpost? No problem, plop down your keep, build the mine and you're done. Your entire civilization gets a benefit. Want to increase that benefit? Build a road to it.