Sethai

I've said a thousand time before that the solution to this debate is in the very basic mechanics. Look at a game like warhammer, or D&D: the powerful characters have similar, but better attacks then soldiers, but the units of soldiers get multiple attack dice (to represent multiple arrows, or sword blows). To compensate for this, in the later game, powerful champions get multiple attack DICE as well. So while the two are both powerful, they differ in the fact that the characte

Please add me to the list of people calling for (somewhat) standardised starting locations. I generally only ctrl+n until I get an interesting, competetive starting location (so, a shard, decent tiles, and another resource or two), and I'm sicking of spending ages doing so and investing many hours into the resulting game, only to find out when I finally defeat them that my opponents were crippled from birth. Starting location matters so much, and to randomize it entirely for AI pl

[quote who="mastroego" reply="91" id="3184981"] Quoting onomastikon, reply 88Quoting Derek Paxton, reply 36 I don't like maintenance. [...] Instead I want to make the queue so central that you are making hard decisions about what to put it in. There are lots of things you would love to do, and that is your constraint, [/quote] I have always hated building maintenance and am glad to see this echoed up on high. If you give me a buil

[quote who="seanw3" reply="83" id="3184568"]Population starts higher than 10.[/quote] You're right, it appears it does now start at 30 and tops out around 1000 for a level 5 (correct me if i'm wrong). That's a 33x increase in population and income, before buildings are applied. In Medieval 2 Total War a capital city that ends the game as a huge city with 30000 poulation starts off about 5000. That's a 6x increase. My argument still stands: start the pop

[quote] Basing the economy, research and production directly on population is painful/impossible when cities can grow from 1 from 600 population. Whatever bonus we give for those resources on a 10 population city become 60 times as high on a 600 population city. [/quote] Why not start at 10 then instead of one? Seriously, most other games with income per person do not work through such massive orders of magnitude as this one. That's you're problem. Try it one day: start

A hideous monster volunteers to join your faction on the condition you fulfill it's insatiable appetite. Lose 1 person per turn at your capital until the beast is destroyed.

A mysterious being grants you a powerful item at the beginning of the game, on the condition that, at some unspecified point in the future you perform whatever it asks you to. This could be an unspeakable atrocity, a war against an ally, the sacrifice of your most powerful champion etc: the condition would be randomised and unknown to the player until the time came. Compliance would either be forced by the game, or noncompliance would cause the being to bestow a powerful curse on your empire.

[quote who="OrionM42" reply="13" id="3181907"]EXCEPT, a lot of us are not complaining about how easy the game is ... and I think among the future players (people who come new to the game, especially after the retail version is finally released) may well fall into that category. They will probably expect a learning curve, but I would bet that a lot of them will NOT consider the game too easy initially ... [/quote] But most of those new players WON&rsq

I don't see any reason NOT to equalize the starting locations. There can still be variations in materials, food, shards and the types of other features, but getting a really good or poor starting location can throw the whole game out of whack and adds a degree of variation the game just doesn't need. A lot of players on here will reload until they good a good one, and so long as the game encourages players to do that, it hands a huge boost to the player, which is silly when most of us

[quote who="Kongdej" reply="31" id="3178856"] Quoting Tuidjy, reply 30As for Total War, my mileage varies. Horse archers in Medieval II and Rome are all one ever needs to take over Europe. Which is realistic, and historically accurate, but kinda boring. I know, I never really used horse archers due to this, was no fun, but regular archers... -.- Sincerely ~ Kongdej[/quote] Yeah, never met a horse archer army that c

Making a straight connection between encumbrance and initiative is just plain sensible and should definitely happen. It’s simpler, and it will prevent people equipping daggers to boost spell casting. The capacity reducing traits can be reinvented as encumberance reducing traits. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the “special rules” side of the mechanics (like clink, backswing, counter attack and so forth) and would prefer it if these aspects were

[quote who="NorsemanViking" reply="20" id="3173965"] Nice touch to add essence to the founding of cities decission making.[/quote] What decision making? If a piece of land can support a city and isn't too close to another, I'm going to build one there.

I think there are just generally too many of them around. It's bad for performance, they get in the way, and often I'll encounter a level 1 champion in the late game that I just don't want. Even if it's a light advantage I just don't want the macro. I'd like a system where the higher level ones didn't spawn until later in the game and unclaimed lower level ones disappeared after a while.

[quote who="leeboy26" reply="9" id="3169448"] Mounts need sexing up to be sure. Giving horses a charge bonus if the rider has a spear and the warg a 'Savage Leap' ability (or just an attack after the rider does) might make this more flavourful. Also, there is no disadvantage at all to having a horse as far as I can see, and I'm not sure why they get a +12 to ranged avoidence- They are a larger target so +5 seems more reasonable. Fortify shouldn't work for them and spears

Is there any way to disable the reverting back to the starting angle? I'd rather play the game with the camera looking directly north. Also, the starting angle is not quite perfectly aligned to the diagonal, and the pedant in me is infuriated by this.

I'm still hesitant, but i'm inclined to agree. This is one of the main causes of turn-spamming, and it makes the while-the-queue-is-empty buildings useless, because in my case, they never are.

I'd agree about the early game techs Honestly, my typical games break down into three roughly equal stages 1/3 Unlocking things, building a basic couple of towns capable of supporting a couple of units and training champions up to survivability 1/3 Actually playing the meat of the game, improving my troops, fighting my first war and pursuing the things i want to, with some pressure still on me 1/3 mopping up because i've already won, and indulging in qu

What about a simple XP hit?

[quote who="Kalin" reply="10" id="3160494"]Whoa, whoa... wait... GC2 was a SERIOUS game? What? Did I dream up all those silly flavor text? [/quote] Yeah I know what you mean. Perhaps I just wanted it to be serious, because I find that more immersive. I enjoyed the silly stuff sometimes, but more often than not, when i'd get a message along the lines of "you have discovered frazzlybloop! +5% economy!" i just facepalmed. So much for the wonder of the cosmos. Regar

I like world events in general, but some of the ones in GalCiv2 just made me groan, guffaw or reload. The one where “weird radiation” doubles fertility rates was just a joke in a supposedly serious game. If you’ve got an intelligent system that maybe unleashes a demonic invasion on a faction who is in danger of winning the game and steam rollering everyone, then it can be really fun. If they’re done well they don’t need an off switch. On a related note, I

[quote who="BlackRainZ" reply="11" id="3160067"]There is a problem with this which I think maybe you guys aren't realizing. If you have to siege a town for 1 or 2 turns it would be way too easy to repulse the enemies with certain spells. If you are a fire mage and have those fire spells that attack armies on the map, do you know how much damage you could do in 1 or 2 extra turns with those fire spells? [/quote] You could just as easily do this without a siege system though, and in

Yes, some sort of delay is needed, and a system that does not make siege weapons compulsory is probably better for the AI.

Great post, and a warning sign for what the game does wrong, both in mechanics and presentation. Stardock have always tried to reduce the amount of stats in their games and use board-game style mechanics that anyone could follow through. But it seems like in Elemental the former has stood in the way of the latter, to the extent that too much happens "under the hood" leaving us unsure of why things go wrong when they do.

[quote who="sratner" reply="1" id="3158575"] Interrupt the spell on a critical hit, perhaps, for the assassins?[/quote] This is a better solution. Otherwise casting time spells just become redundant when facing ranged units. The line of site thing is tougher. If you just put a 50% damage penalty on it under the hood, then people just won't realise why some of their attacks aren't doing full damage. It would just be gay. And what about lightning bolts from the sky

[quote who="Heavenfall" reply="10" id="3158187"]There are good arguments to both sides, but in the end I think making roads not work in enemy territory would just make it a more fun game. I don't want a situation where a tech actually makes your defenses worse to such a degree. The logic should not be "well, i get 10% more gildar BUT I also get shitty roads the enemy can use". [/quote] This is a very strong argument to me: if we are going to make roads automatic,