Dr Franknfurter

Starting options in gal civ2 have settings for event frequency and major event. Sins has quickstart, settings for different rates of income/culture spread/research speed etc. So, how about elemental has some of those, whichever are thought best and some new ones? such as: "starting major event" enables a random event in the first turn or on turn 5 or 10. Playing with a major "production disabled for 100 turns" event would be very different or "a Necromancer has risen" type eve

you mean the interludes? I liked them, although found they were distinctly functional... caused lots of planet growth. If you mean something else then I found it easy to forget. Still, I love the extra sense of acomplishment with achievements. I wouldn't want any or many achievement to make the game easier I think everyone is agreed on that. Making the game harder however, isn't as objectionable. Still I suppose bragging rights should always be the main thing. Either that or presented

(I think he's refering to Demigod... not quite stardock but the shared forums makes it easy to mistake GPG for stardock)

This should probably be in the unique cities post, but for achievements ala demigod... I would much rather if achievements earned in game could allow you to play with a 'gimped' character against even harder enemies. If you've earned many victories the game can't be too hard and require you getting a large bonus, although you should be able to capture the bonuses or half the benefit should be to you. Picture this: Normal mode unlocked through playing tutorial Hard unlocked from a

Just want to add encouragement. I'd love for the characteristics of a city to be varied and not all set on founding. Also, having base and derived stats, or other seperations could be interesting. I suppose you could make it as complicated as you want for calculating population growth or production as long as you don't add new things. Say if you had your races default values for health/education/craftsmanship/magical aptitude/belief in you/etc. of 11/13/11/11/11/etc and have them leve

small comment but master of magic had bugged spells and growth formula's, alot of the spells didn't work and those that did weren't as intended. Sometimes trying to reduce an enemy city's pop would cause a pop explosion. Still I did like being able to do things one tile at a time, but 'cleanup' spells and 'corrupting' spells would be nice to be able to leave on automatic repeat cast... or similar. I'm not sure where I stand on micro/macro... I think you need a significant amount of mi

I've never played dominions3... so i'm not sure how close the idea is. Although if you can see bits that worked in another game you could probably say what you liked or didn't like about it based on your experience? Edit: Just glanced at the strategy wiki of scales/god design in dominions 3 "Every province has a set of scales that measures how the land is influenced by divine might", quite similar in some ways to what I was thinking. Although I wasn't thinking of using it as a faction

Just thinking about a way of implimenting that... how about a few variables hidden at the start for weather? it could begin at any value, -100 or less for iceage, +100 or more for burning deserts with any changes in this resulting in changes over time to the landscape and regions. I did like the warming start to ffh2 although resources being destroyed or swapped, rather than revealed was a little annoying... although interesting. I would prefer if the changes were visual mainly and more gradu

I suppose what I was picturing first was something akin to Conquest of the new world, where "gold vein" was an object on the map at the centre of a circular mask of boosted gold/mineral production. The same with fertile land. You had a decreasing bonus with distance. So in reality if placing a single farm you'd place it directly on top of it. Which would be quite similar to elemental now, with a mask of 1x1. In conquest outside the mask/region was normal production, elemental would be 0 or mi

I was thinking about different resources and wondered about how big they can be, a single tile, 2x2 tiles, how about if some resources are presented as regions, say a 5x20 area or larger in shapes defined by the contours of the environment. Breaking up the world into magic rich areas, fertile grounds or more interesting ideas (wasteland, toxic, plague ridden, draining, corrupt). The difference would be that you'd either gain a benefit/penalty simply by controlling that region or would gain ac

I was just thinking more about what you'd be getting out of this system. I think it'd be a rock-paper-scissors situation (with some twists) Even with identical fire magic sov's Going full power with a hero or two and a small army should beat another small army with some elite troops (firebolts could pick them off or your lancelot with a flaming horse could do it), but lose to a large army from sheer force of numbers. (also should be on equal footing with another going

I would like elements of this to be taken seriously, even if we don't get something as complicated. Imagine having to make choices that would lead to two otherwise identical factions fighting in very different magical ways. One with area spells with buffs and the other with single target spells with long duration (as an example). Take life spells, group buffs/army healing with short 1-3 turn duration vs the other approach of boosting a hero with powerful "vengence", "invulnerable" spells with

Just thinking... I'd love to craft " cursed " onto an item. An invisible attribute that allows you to choose another say 4 slots that only apply to the item if it transfers ownership. They'd be invisible and have an activation. or passive feature. Imagine looting the one ring, equip it and get 'cursed' and 'passive wraith transformation'. And now you have to decide, it gives +++atack, ++health, ++def etc but you have to gamble with it... you already know that after 'n' turns it

I liked the concepts in FfH2, including the armageddon counter, worldspells and traits. I'm sure everything could be implimented and balanced better in elemental though. Certain worldspells were really really annoying and unbalancing if you played the wrong race. Pick Scions and struggle with population and lose it against a few vampire worldspells that give -2 pop per city, vampires were a little OP with vampire units eating population for exp, very cool mechanic and fun, nice to inclu

How about a 'specialist bonus' given to an empire that has the same (large) building in each city? therefore if you have a small empire , 3 cities with lots of buildings they would get an empire wide bonus to a few areas while an empire with 50 small or different cities all with only a farm in common would get empire wide farming bonuses but no empire wide research bonus. If the large empire used farming cities to support the rest, and had the rest with alchem

I think that's a very interesting look at things. I have to say I did enjoy Homm and sins of a solar empire, but fighting stacks of 1000 dragons is insane and the ability micromanagement in sins seems to be turning on and off autocast, which is almost but not quite like setting the behaviour or gambits. (micro option for automation, to set gambits for ability use or actions... in sins it'd be for retreat at low health for delicate ships, to adjust highest threat targets...something to make it

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="1" id="2468400"]Looking better...... one small nitpick though: ugliness should decrease the liklihood that somebody will want to marry the soverign in the first place, not how often (s)he will procreate.[/quote] maybe both... afterall there would be less activity in general... just a thought

that does sound quite nice. I like the attribute trade offs and the % benefits. Not sure about the traits... more of them and more magic related ones. I also liked master of magic's traits that required other picks to be enabled. Perhaps each trait could have a stat requirement?

I'd like some to be gameplay changing. Maybe some that use all but 1 or 2 points to choose. Or had massive penalties. Like playing master of magic with no magic. Necromancy -15 points to start with (more than you have to spend). So to pick it you have to give up all the good traits and pick 5 bad ones, like repulsive... it could be as unbalancing as you like in the end game if it made you relatively weak against rushes at the start. Or it could be free but cause war w

I'm a biologist, I'd had a long day and it seems I wrote alot about living buildings... I hadn't realised till just now that all my suggestions seem to be alive. But I suppose that's the point. Anything else would be a purely physical feat. A library or tower or bridge... unless it was alive why would it need your essence to build? But just because it's alive it doesn't mean it can't be used quite simply to improve your food/income/production/research/weapons whatever... but it needs a story.

(Tiny Wall of Text Tm ) I like the Orcanth thread for ideas, but I was thinking of the mechanics of implementation. I like the idea of wonders that may or may not require essence, or some other cap or limit. I also like set building design pieces that require essence. To make an impenetrable wall you add 10 segments each 1/10 of a mountain high to bridge a gap between mountains. Ditto with the tower. What I'm wondering at the moment is: Should you build these wonder

I just wondered if anyone at stardock had seen googlewave? I know it's only in a preview form right now, but since you can make your own version when it's out, any thoughts of using it, or features of it for the forums? I'm playing around on the preview/beta but I think it'd work well if it was used in part for the forums. You'd be able to see people typing and have instant conversations about a topic, or use it for developers conversations and post the results as a new wave for us to

I suppose without any fiddly software you could manually set it. When you are about to leave your computer for a while click an "idle-automate" or "away-automate" button in impulse and let it do stuff for you. I wouldn't want it to be automatic as I sometimes use mobile internet connections and there's a useage limit. To be honest it's not a problem with a high speed connection but if your connection is slow or the demo is in GBs, like demigod or higher, then I wouldn't mind the computer

How many years before that actually happens? or better yet your computer playing on the stock market with loose change, (or your savings) and saving up to buy you a game it thinks you'll like? I can see preload prediction working: If you've got a TB free it'll download every game on your 'games you may also like' list when the network's quiet. Then give you subtle reminders that you haven't bought the game yet but should. Things like: Computer: "did you know: With your computer you coul

I'm just wondering if these should be done as: initial traits at setup, with balanced positive and negative like +1 attack in biome, -1 outside... +speed inside -speed outside, +production -production etc. or should be pure positive (magic or essence to enhance troops/things in selected biome) or pure negative for opponents in selected biome you control (you still wouldn't want to follow them into their fores