Frogboy

It's more of a tea room. ;)

[quote who="StevenAus" reply="7" id="3020282"]Will the AI be doing quests this time around? That would make a big difference in breaking the human/AI dichotomy, where the AI players were noticeably different from the human players. That, and having a more intelligent AI rather than HP/Monster Immune/Production/FoW cheat etc. megaboosted AI. Best regards, Steven.[/quote] That's the intent. The XML of the quests is supposed to guide the AI through how to

LOL. Well these days, most of my interactions with Derek are lobbying for things to help the AI.

[quote who="TheProgress" reply="21" id="3020127"] Quoting Frogboy, reply 18I suck at tactical battles. Brad, you're good at the TBS aspect of AI right? Then why not apply the same logic to the tactical battles? Instead of thinking of the tactical battle as something different, approach it the same way you'd normally approach the TBS portion of a strategy game.[/quote] Strategic != Tactical. Very different animals. As for the Derek vs. AI, we quickly ran

I suck at tactical battles.

The Fox girl does a lot of the art in Elemental. Pretty much all the icons, spell icons, ability images, etc.

Derek is currently putting the first FE build of the AI (first build I've checked in) through its paces. It's a 3 person game, tiny map. We'll see how it goes. As the 0.26 version makes clear, the AI is about 25% done. I'd put the odds of him winning at about 50/50. The AI is still pretty piss poor compared to what it'll eventually be.

There's an outpost in there, a couple of keeps, some mines. I think town centers have to be at least 10 tiles away. Obviously you could build up the land but I think what your'e seeing is an outpost (in FE, outposts != settlements).

It's a mad house! A MAD HOUSE!

[quote who="Kantok" reply="32" id="3016954"]Frogboy, I'm curious how you steamrolled the AI when all the indicators showed that they were competitive. What did they do wrong? Not trying to stir trouble, just curious what the AI got wrong that caused such a drastic change in the picture so quickly. [/quote] Their forces were too distributed. I put my best units together into a single killer army and walked through them. They reacted by tryi

[quote who="Alstein" reply="11" id="3017541"] Question: will SDC precede the FE beta?[/quote] Yes. The only way to get the FE beta will be on SDC.

One thing about Impulse that people don't often talk about (and I've told Gamestop they should push this a lot more) is that it is faster than any other service. And I don't mean a little bit faster but massively faster. I feel for people who bought BF3 directly via Origin instead of Impulse. With Impulse, the download speed is typically limited by your connection. By contrast,with other services, I get around 300k per second typically. YMMV. But

I have gotten some new features added that should help all involved. First, there is now a "gold rush" option. You can rush build units. That will help a lot. Second, I'm working on the AI scouting so that it will keep track of the most powerful army it encounters so that it can prepare for it. Third, cities have their own militia.

Worst case scenario is that you'll just use our upcoming Stardock Central system to get your stuff. It's not very much like Impulse/Steam/Origin but instead just focused on getting your stuff to you really really fast and simply. The ETA on that is in the next few weeks. In the meantime, I'd contact Gamestop's support to see what the deal is.

AI is doing fine on mana, she was just using it. The problem was I steamrolled them.

Speaking of which, HOW do you set up your own server?

I couldn't find it. I think I'll have Stardock set up a few.

[quote] Looks good, but still looks underwhelming in terms of gameplay. Just like to repeat some points I've mentioned in various suggestion posts... now I know you want to skip watching... Just take Archivist in the screenshoot as an example, we need to have Archivist levels like Archivist I, Archivist II ...

You should assume anything with the words "plan" in it means "plan" not promise. A plan is, by definition, tentative. I'm sorry you assumed that we were committing to a course of action rather than planning a course of action. In the future, if I say in a forum post we're planning something you can assume just that -we plan to do it. But it is by no means definite. If that "pisses" some people off I'm sorry for that. &nbsp

There will be an archival based on v1.4. @Tridus - there is a difference between pre-release feature considerations and post-release sales policies.

I'll be writing up a lengthy AI XML piece soon. It's pretty boring and frankly, I don't want to give away too much but it is important to us that each faction play differently. In WOM, by end game, every faction played pretty much the same way (bunch of guys with lord hammers). That was obviously not be design but rather due to the AI calculating what the "best" weapon/armor combo was and becoming predictable about it. Best, as we all know, is subjectiv

Hi Eben, Perfect timing! v1.4 is going to serve as the basis for the new archival DVD which just came out. I'm not sure the status of its duplication date but I think it's this month. There will be an email on it.

[quote]Brad, how do you tell when you've reached the point where a chapter is good enough and well paced enough to be considered a final version? Where do you draw the line, stop iterating and move forward? I'm having trouble with that... and character development... and spelling, but mostly that.[/quote] When the publisher tells you you're out of time. :)

Actually, the plan presently is that users who purchased WOM will get FE via the new Stardock Central app. FE will certainly be available on Impulse (or whatever Gamestop ultimately brands it as) but our users will be directed to download it from us directly.

There isn't a world population per se. Instead cities have a growth rate which is dependent primarily on city prestige (how nice the city is) and faction prestige (how prestigious your faction is). The more cities you build, the more diluted your faction prestige gets for each city. We aren't modeling births or immigration specifically. The focus is on growing your city's population and strategies to increase the growth rate.