Sethai

[quote who="Istari" reply="3" id="2785330"]@Sethai How would this still be advantageous if Sovereigns will be able to cast spells from anywhere, and in any tactical combat that their units are involved in? What system could be implemented to make it worth it to still have magic casting offspring and imbued champions?[/quote] i was assuming that tactical spells could only be cast by a channeler if they were present in the battle. having more channelers means you can have cas

i hate to recycle posts, but i don't see any reason not to in this case i'm going to go against the grain here and say i really approve of the global mana pool, especially if it regenerates non linearly. i don't think there's any need for individual mana pools. with magic as powerful as it is (and there's nothing wrong with the power levels) making channellers autonomous units in

[quote who="Gwenio1" reply="4" id="2785044"] Quoting Sethai, reply 2horses are kingdoms only, wargs are empire only. it's pointless i know. and inconsistent as sovs can buy both. And you can use the other type of mount if you capture a city that has claimed the tile.[/quote] just tried it. right you are. i won't use the happy smiley because i think it looks sort of creepy. seems a bit silly not to let me use them myself then doesn't it? unless this i

brad, i've been thinking a lot about specialist slots since you first proposed them and would love a direct answer to this. the more i think about them the more pointless it seems as a concept. i would really love a direct answer to this. that would make my week. i really don't see what specialist slots do that population and the city level couldn't do if reworked properly. it seems to be just two ways of saying the same thing. as cities grow you get more specialists and once

this is a great list of the problems with the system and geta at a lot of what i've been saying all over the shop. i'd go a little further and make some of your ideas more mechanics rather than rules. relate food direstly to the population: great. but what if we not just make food a requirement for population, but a factor that affects growth? places that have more food (a general resource in elemental for the ability to support people) are always more attractive to peo

[quote who="Murteas" reply="21" id="2784778"] [sarcasm]Yeah, they weren't supplying free samples of candy at the store so I just stole some. I mean, they were asking for it by not providing free samples, right??[/sarcasm][/quote] the principal may be wrong, but it does happen like this. people don't take chances on games they aren't sure about, and when you've had as bad reviews as elemental has, a demo is a great way of winning back the good will people need before they co

i don't feel decieved, nor do i particularly care exactly what end up being called a patch and or expansion so long as they get the game right and offer good value for money and reward their loyal customers.... but i think they could be a little clearer/more consistent about what they're planning. i'm sure that it's just a micommunication rather than a change of direstion.

horses are kingdoms only, wargs are empire only. it's pointless i know. and inconsistent as sovs can buy both.

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

[quote who="Teslacrashed" reply="6" id="2784437"]Sethai, to alter your idea. How about if cities made by Pioneers can't grow beyond level 1 (still limited in number). Then you would get 1 UBER pioneer that can build a city that can grow just as much as your core settlement.[/quote] would also suffice, but i think if you get the game mechanics right (like i suggested) you won't need to limit people's settlements like this. they will want to do it themselves

i don't like the level bonuses as a concept at all. basically, because population has no meaningful effect on production of money or resources (and is completely out of the players hands until you get pubs and so forth) they had to come up with a way to make people care about levelling. at the same time, because there are very few ways to control your population growth, they couldn't do what city levels should actually be for (limitting buildings: if the meaty production was limited to later

i don't see the point in this (and a lot of the distinctions between the kingdoms and empires) can someone explain to me what getting three man squads instead of four, or multiple caravans instead of one, has to do with being an evil empire? (or whatever the current concept behind empires is) what does it add to the game other than making it more difficult to balance

[quote who="Robert Hentschke" reply="3" id="2784298"]I'm also against schools like Evocation (destruction), conjuration, and divination. Magic is already way too bland. Intentionally making it any more generic gets an overripe tomato from me. /snip I think shards should have some effect on magic but not a devastating one. If you want to play an earth channeler and there's not a single earth shard on the map, that would suck. [/quote]

i think it's an awful idea as well. why limit buildings by population when we have a perfectly good way of doing that already: building minimum city level requirements. if you want to force people to specialize, just say "choose one of the following level dependent buildings." why make me go back and check on my cities every time they build something, every time they level AND every time they spawn one of these newfangled slots. the two concepts represent exactly the same thin

the problem, as i say in every thread, is the way population grows and income is generated. if population growth for your faction as a whole was determined predominantly by the food available per person, and merchants generated 0.05 gildar per person or whatever, then the best way to play the game would be to build small villages to control resources (such as food) but only build the capacity for population to grow (houses) in big cities. that way you keep most of your population in t

it is a really good idea to make the elements more unique (ie, ice magic has a slowing effect, fire damages over time). most people want that i think. but you still get the completely random crapshoot of getting the right shards to match your spellbooks. until you make these two decisions independent instead of co-dependent you will still get - new players gimping themselves - more incidences of me having to restart games because i have a crummy starting location

why create a new mechanic to limit buildings by population when we have a perfectly good one already? ie, city level. i'd rather current game mechanics were better made use of and integrated than new ones added. so now as well as checking back to level up my city, or every time a building is finished, i now need an update flashed across the screen every time a new slot is spawned as well? or will i need to keep checking myself? if it's anywhere near as fine-grained as brad i

personally i don't think it makes sense to to say "you can build one workshop for every ten people." if you want to limit buildings by population than that is what city levels are for. and if you want to have production relative to population, then have a building that gives 0.05 gildar per citizen. then have a researchable upgrade available to it at the next level, that increases it to 0.06, and so forth. why make people build huge cities instead? the map's crowded enough already. be

i really, strongly, believe that the spells should be divided up into spellbooks by purpose not by element. the spellbook system is really silly at the moment, and this is the easiest way to fix it without redesigning all the spells. that's not to say you should remove the elemental shards that increase elemental spells: that is really important. let me explain. currently you choose between the elemental books at character creation. this creates the ridiculous situation where you

there have been some great posts on settlement magic and combat mechanics already, so i won't repeat anyone here. personally though, i wonder what specialist slots are and whether the game needs them. personally i believe this game has tow many reesources already. i personally don't really see the need for crystal and elementium to be separate resources but that's just me. question in point: if mana maintenance is coming in for spells, then will enchantment slots remain also?

yay for peope focus, that's what strategy should be about. so long as resource doesn't mean what it does for materials and so forth. if you have a system where income is generated as a proportion of population, and bigger settlements get a bigger %, then you really encourage building up a few, good cities instead of spamming loads to get the minimum bonuses they all give. if you have a system where food is shared amongst your population, and that combines with other factors, l

[quote who="Tasunke" reply="34" id="2782101"] And as to "Hidden" costs ... these costs wouldn't be Hidden, I'd say everywhere (in the tool-tips, in the building icon, in the Hiergammemnon) that a Market would "cost 1 gold per turn globally, and boost local gold by 50%" ... by tying the gold maintenance to the global treasury as opposed to local profits, you avoid the possible mistake of calling the penalty before the bonus. But yea, the building itself would say (-1 gold

meh, there are bigger priorities.

[quote who="Kalin" reply="15" id="2781824"] Food: - For Kingdoms: Research Adventuring twice for Exploration, The Lost Bounty, this will spawn two food source, best done before expanding so as to focus all food production on your capital. Then Research Diplomacy, Trade, Build Caravans, send them to your food producing city. Make new cities, make new caravans... rinse, repeat, you'll never run out of food. - For Empires: You can't research to spawn

the issue is not whether it's a reasonable abstraction that the buildings people live in consume food, or the buildings they work in make the money, but whether it's necesarry, fun, or adds to the game. it doesn't. until population growth is modelled in a realistic, intuitive way and it makes you more money to keep people in big developed cities than to move them out, spam cities and grab resources, then the settlement mechanics will always produce bizarre, unfun results. and worst of all, pl