Frogboy

Yea, the main thing about having background threads is that I can have the AI do things that are not turn related. It wasn't something I was expecting to be able to get into Elemental 1 (certainly before an expansion pack) but with the full team staying on Elemental post-release the systems needed to do this have gotten in.

The tactical combat is in the process of being redone completely. When I can grovel marketing approval, I'll start putting up screenshots. Basically, the "sides" don't take turns anymore. Instead, individuals take turns based on their combat speed and each "turn" they can either move, start an attack, start casting a spell or start performing a special ability. So there are no longer overall "turns" in tactical combat per se. It's per unit.

[quote]Any chance of some information on the first Expansion pack? I think I remember reading that Tactical Battles are getting an over-haul?[/quote] I'd love to share those details but my PR minder would have me killed. Poor Steph, she's been a real hero these past few months. Imagine your job being keeping me out of trouble?

We'd love to bring back the beta intros. ;)

Just view the refund policy. Stardock provides refunds. I don't know why you needed to post it here when the information should have been included in your order.

[quote who="Cervomix" reply="109" id="2795902"]Thanks for the explanation, yeah I kinda misunderstood what you meant by "engine". If you were in the beta you would know how much of the game design changed during the course of development, much of it based on issues like engine limitation, scope, budget, etc. Well I was/am actually in the beta team then I have seen that a lot of stuff indeed changed. But you know how we are, we're fans, we've seen what you did on

[quote who="cpl_rk" reply="111" id="2795910"] Quoting Frogboy, reply 104 10 small cities will still probably beat a single big city. But 10 outposts would likely get wiped out by 1 metropolis fairly easily. Well, I hope you plan on putting a great big army in that great big metropolis while it's taking forever to build up all those nice buiding improvements, because I'll take my 10 to 1 combat unit production with each of my 10 dinky outpo

Thanks. We're having a good time working on it and interacting with you guys. This week I've been working on the new outline for a re-done manual for v1.1 since it's such a significant departure.

[quote who="Cervomix" reply="106" id="2795698"]Brad, we understand that you have an extremely heavy weight on your shoulders and that the game is your baby and it's painful and stressing to see people spitting on its face, but despite I agree with some of your points, I have to say that Engine is not the problem. I really mean it, I'm afraid you don't see it and probably most other players agree on this point, like you can read on other posts. We can live with some CTD, funky graph

[quote]1) Incremental maintenance (city cost x-1 of a certain resource -usually gold- to maintain). So as you build more cities, you get increasingly harsh maintenance. This forces you to develop less cities to keep maintenance at a manageable level, and you'll only take on new cities if you know you can offset the cost. Basically, the CIV way.[/quote] This is actually what we had during the betas and it was a nightmare. v1.1 is going to be dramatically different economically

Sethai, I don't think you'll ever like elemental's economy. I just don't agree with your viewpoint at all.

I'm not affiliated with Dropbox but everyone here shoudl definitely try it. It's a real game changer IMO. http://www.dropbox.com.

[quote who="cpl_rk" reply="69" id="2795175"] Quoting Sethai, reply 66 Quoting Frogboy, reply 12 Ive been thinking of requiring food to construct an outpost. Thoughts? it'd be better, but it's not a long term fix. An "outpost" is just a city, so I take it this means all cities will cost 1 food in addition to a pioneer in the future? This still makes no differentiation between town types, rather just makes th

Re Tom's idea, that's a map generation choice. Players could, for instance, do exactly that -- you can create monster lairs now. It's part of the base game. We just don't currently create randomly generated maps with resources guarded by monsters (though this is, indeed, an interesting idea).

[quote who="plzblv" reply="65" id="2795162"]Here is my list of turn offs. 1. No day one multiplayer. 2. Constant take backsies on 1.1 patch eta. 3. Complete lack of understand of the direction of the economy in this game. See patch 1.08 gutting gold from creeps then 1.09 adding it back in. Food for merchants etc. This practically forced city spam for caravans which as the devs pointed out many times was not the intention of the game.[/quote]

Sethai: It's a game, there is no "proper" way. Suggesting that we completely toss out the existing economic system in favor of a totally different one that would have its own challenges isn't really viable. There is nothing wrong with having population growth tied to prestige as long as higher level cities provide more of a punch than they currently do.

October-ish.

[quote who="Gwenio1" reply="60" id="2795104"] Quoting Frogboy, reply 56 5. Buildings require population to fill them. 6. An Outpost requires 1 food to maintain (thus you better be bloody sure you want that outpost). 7. You can build multiple of a building as long as you have the population and city level to do so. Thus, lucky resource placement is not so overwhelming. Unless population growth is also under going an overhaul, this will not

Well, Impulse has a few advantages over Steam in that way.

None of the updates should be more than a few megs really.

[quote who="MOIISKA" reply="54" id="2795023"]So, what is being done about all of the things you listed?[/quote] Different things for different issues. First, let me detail what an N^3 mechanic is. It's a mechanic in which a player can exponentially increase their standing with relatively little effort. For instance, if I can imbue a hero and that hero can now cast fire giant then it makes sense to imbue lots of heroes. In short order, I can have an army of fire g

City spam is caused by a poor decision on my part to have resources totally dependent on natural resources. Players are practically forced to city spam. This is something we're addressing in v1.1.

Thanks guys.

For those of you who are late game feel free to post in this thread a Dropbox link to saved game adn I'll try it out. From your saved games, I can see how other players play the game and use this information for everything from game balance, AI improvements, performance optimizations. Most of the reason why Galactic Civilizations II has good AI is because of players sending me their saved games and explaining their strategies.

I'm very interested in seeing what people think of Nym because he's not a Channeler but has crazy combat abilities. Polistes - regarding the Nook, can you PM me your B&N order number to see if I can get Random House to help us on that? Regarding characters: Mirdoth will be an important character in the game franchise later on. He's not a titan however. Galor is the son of Relias. There's no invisibility in the game universe. Rather, it wo