Sethai

a further note on static (linear mana generation) it leads to two possibilities in my mind. in one scenario mana will accumulate slowly without limit in which case a magic strategy will be about maximising your generation early on to increase the total mana generated over the course of the game. i think that's really far too long term and punishes people in the middle game who didn't know about this at the start (esp new players). it encourages strategies to be devised for the entire

mostly this is great, but the more i think about the decision to ditch essense the less i like it. mana maint makes sense for summons and enchants definately, but not for channelers because they cannot be dismissed and are largely permanent. i also dislike the idea of generating global mana at a fixed rate per turn because it allows the possibility of 0 or negative generation scenarios. and it leaves the question of what is the maximum mana i can hold (if any?) and what determines this number

[quote who="cpl_rk" reply="60" id="2823531"] The more I looked into this game system, the more I see the over-simplified combat mechanism that it is: Int only used for spellcasting, no magic resistance (or rather magic resistance = to physical defensive strenth ????), shields that alway apply when worn (which should be missed in a flank/rear attack in even very simplified combat systems), a combat system that is basically an "attack range" vs a "defense range" and takes everything f

as much as i was pleased by the last dev journal, i also mourn the disappearance of essense as a stat, but possibly for different reasons. more than anything it means there is no longer any personal penalty for a sovereign when he imbues champions (sure, there's a mana maint, but that's a global penalty not a personal one). while the global mana pool discourages spamming channelers for more mana, this change seems to do the opposite. i don't get that. i also think that making int the on

sorry, double post.

[quote who="VR_IronMana" reply="49" id="2821836"] Absolutely. I never understood why food is so abundant in the game when the world is supposed to be so broken and shattered - and even less when my channeler didn't have to pour her Essence into the land to revive it - giving some of her very life/soul/power to the land to allow it to live. I agree with your whole post.[/quote] well, the problem is that the system is so rigid and in the event of a food shortfall y

have never managed to get a deal with a faction with a high power rating than my own (which is most of them, and seems to contradict the fact that most of the cities i attack have no more than one or two defenders). in the absense of technology or resource trading there is very little i want from diplomacy. all i ever used it for was getting extra channelers by aquiring other sov's daughters (whic is ridiculously easy).

[quote who="Tridus" reply="117" id="2822353"] They could make kids not start as casters, which would fix it easily. Though IMO the dynasty system is so disconnected from the rest of the game that it might make more sense to just ditch it entirely and solve the problem that way.[/quote] I would prefer it if kids had to be imbued as well. and i would also like inheritance to give the dynasty system more meaningful (though this would probably require more customization of ki

some great stuff here. especially the stat reforms; people have been crying out for that since the beta. it's just a shame it's taken so long. it achieves nothing to say "told you so," so i won't. great work i recall the idea that essense would be become a boolean (either you have it or not), and that's the only thing about this that concerns me. the shift to global mana is great and will reduce the effectiveness of spamming lots of channelers to boost mana production, making the b

[quote who="hfbrooklyn" reply="3" id="2821025"]1.1 determines whethert his game goes into the Great Bad Purchase file of 2010 or the First I Game I bought That Didn't Suck Past 2008 file.[/quote] likewise. not going to play again, buy any expansions or recommend the game until i know that some of the fundamentally flawed mechanics have been totally reevaluated.

the problem is not that players spam settlements to grab resources. it's that all of these settlements end up growing at the same rate, largely regardless of how many are built. everything ends up becoming a huge city eventually, which was not how the game was envisioned. there were supposed to be a few large cities with additional client farming villages or mining towns that did not end up becoming cities and sprawling over the map. this was intended to be done with food. ie, you wou

probably not, because they are not touching population growth. so long as your faction gets a fixed number of people per turn per city, then your population will increase at a rate proportional to your number of cities. now that we have specialist slots and population is even more valuable, city spam will now likely be even more important.

better solution: ditch level up bonuses so people don't have to worry about these sorts of things. if you want cities to be able to specialise as they level up, assign these specialisations to buildings that require a certain level (and that you can only choose one of from a selection). that way players can do the specialising as and when they choose, and all the info is contained in one place: the buildings list. level up bonuses are a clunky, half hearted way to make people

[quote who="FishSlayer" reply="106" id="2817819"] agree. But I think that until the game is completely balanced/fleshed out this will be a problem. I feel that once they have unit and item balances to where they want them, they will be able to fix "random" number rolls. But this may be wishful thinking. [/quote] why balance for an existing (bad) system when you're just going to change the system soon anyway? i'd rather they got on with implementing somethin

the problem is population growth. regardless of whether you make cities themselves capable of production (the current situation with every town having 1 merchant etc) or require population to do things (new regime, with specialist slots) you will STILL GET CITY SPAM so long as population increases proportionally to the number of cities. fact. this is currently the case as each city gains a fixed number of citizens per turn related to prestige. so more settlements = more people. this i

i want the hp system reformed to be determined primarily by level (whether squad level or sov level) instead of directly linked to CON. so a sov gets 10hp + 5/subsequent level while troops might be 8 + 4/subsequent level then apply constitution afterwards as a multiplier (so level 1 sov with 11con gets 1.1 x 10 = 11hp) this would seem like a more consistent system. we are also then open to nice possibilities such as racial characteristics (ie, ironeers get 11co

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="86" id="2795464"] Sethai, I don't think you'll ever like elemental's economy. I just don't agree with your viewpoint at all.[/quote] i guess this is my last post then. :(

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="71" id="2795177"] If city levels provide more benefit than they currently do combined with better balancing of the amount of food in the world, you end up with a scenario where you can choose to build lots of cities that are low level or few cities that are high level.[/quote] this is the crux of the issue i think. food USED to be the prime determinant of population growth because of the cost of housing and the scarcity of food. however, because it was

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="12" id="2794602"] Ive been thinking of requiring food to construct an outpost. Thoughts?[/quote] it'd be better, but it's not a long term fix. only way to do that is to charge food per population instead of for buildings and units and then have the ratio of food:person then determine population growth. this way more settlments = slower growth and less people/city and the player has to choose between lots of settlements and territory, and having high

[quote who="random_target" reply="13" id="2793592"] The problem is that the monsters are one of the main reasons I feel I need to spam cities in the game. If I have two good cities that are not close to the other, and I send a caravan between them, the caravan will most likely be killed (many times) unless I fill the gaps in the area of influence with tiny useless towns. [/quote] the problem is again population gr

i personally don't think that "it makes the ai competetive" is a good reason for allowing a unit that i also believe to be overpowered to remain so. players could just as easily abuse this themselves.

i think i see what the op is getting at. i really wish that there was some incentive for channelers not to take armour, but at the moment there really isn't. the best way to do this without ticking people off, would be to simply add some magical robes that improved casting power (INT bonus?) but could not be work with armour. as for the archers, if people choose to make their archers more flexible by giving them armour then let them, but those of us who want to save the pennie

so after starting this, i reinstalled x3 and instantly realised why i hated it. i don't think you can seriously promise people a snadbox game and then force people to use gates to move from planet to planet. in the modern age i think you have to give people the ability to fly anywhere within a solar system, of their own volition. x does what it does pretty well, but it's not what i want, and i don't think i'm alone in this, as for more action oriented games, i remember starfox and rog

i'm going to be specific not because i'm making demands, but because i think "better" doesn't help people very much i would like to see - bigger scrolling buttons and generally everything to be designed so i very rarely have to scroll anyway - the tech, spell research, diplomacy, dynasty etc buttons displayed on the main screen so they're always one cllick away - consistent format for where the "close" button goes: sometimes it's at the bottom, sometimes in the

the OP's idea is a better way of doing trade as a food production bonus, but.... i don't think i'll ever be happy with trade being a method of producing food instead of generating income. i mean, seriously? total war does trade in a much more intuitive way, i will agree, though it doesn't have a good way of disrupting overland trade. personally i'd just make the production a constant regardless of caravan location, and then just have production pause after a caravan is killed,