Sethai

some great ideas here. one thing i must point out first: i myself usually am able to block off my vulnerable ranged units with melee units. only because however, the maps are so small and usually seem to have a choke point about 5 squares wide. that is not a good thing. however, due to the sheer size of squares, making maps big enough for this, better system (which as you rightly point out, is used in many other games) will look rather odd with current art assets, and be difficult to

[quote who="dragoaskani" reply="7" id="2775243"]except Iron isn't needed to Win, sure it helps, but just like in Civ 4 if you don't have bronze or Iron, well shit that sucks but gotta work with what you got. That being said, there is something to be said for having a "balanced start" option like civ IV had for the players who can't handle having to think outside the box. 1 more point I should let you in on. You seem to be under the misconception that you get 1 of a

[quote who="p22" reply="28" id="2775416"]When two weapons are given at same tech, or two very close techs and they do pretty much same function, one needs to be cost-effective one and other powerful-expensive one. This is something that I also found lacking in armor department. They usually unlock two armors, one stronger and one weaker, but taking stronger is just no brainer. In fact sometimes weaker armor is even weaker from strong armor from previous tech level. [/quote]</p

[quote who="KingHobbit" reply="10" id="2774063"]I like that no one should have magic except the sovereigns. If a couple things have a talent than I would be okay with that. [/quote] if mana becomes global (as planned) and mana maintenance is added for summons, then this won't really be an issue anymore.

[quote who="LDiCesare" reply="118" id="2773986"] Walls must be walls. NOT bonus to hit points. Walls, visible on the tactical map, requiring special units to breach. Or fly around. Or send arrows above. But generally, units without engineers/crushers/sappers/miners/catapults/trebuchets can't take out walled cities. [/quote] this is a really good ultimate goal. even if you allow people to build siege weaponry on site over a couple of turns ala total war games, it will still r

global mana is a great idea. this way your faction's mana regen rate isn't a product of the number of channelers and imbuing becomes what it was always supposed to be: a method of sacrificing your individual casting power in exchange for the flexibility of having channelers all over the board. currently it's stupid not to imbue four or five people, because it increased four or five fold the total amount of mana you'll get.

personally when i look back at GC2, i would happily have sacrificed the entire campaign concept if it had meant getting a sensible economy, or properly integrated united planets, or carriers, or a better tactical battle system. more than anything, i don't think stardock has the budget and production values to do all the unique models, voice over and what have you necesarry to do the sort of campaign people expect anyway.

i'm against campaign changes because to my mind it results in two flawed games instead of one good game. when i look at the campaign stories for galciv 2, i can't help but think that there's no story there that could not have been told better and more easily by just incorporating it into the campaign as an optional extra mega event (ie, like an improved version of the dread lords event, but with multiple and more specific missions leading up to it and following on after). similarly if

i've never played this game (and personally i find myself feeling slightly "umm.... alright" when people make these kind of posts, usually for this reason. however, i do agree the game definately needs more stats. you can't represent a war of magic with only 4 stats. total war games and many other games that are considered far more casual than elemental still have vastly more complex (and more numerous) stat systems than elemental. even games that people play far more often like Wo

[quote who="Stmorpheus" reply="4" id="2773209"]i like scaling, alot. i especially like infinite scaling, where there is no end. as long as the scaling is balanced, and i am sure thats a hard thing to accomplish.[/quote] well, one could argue that the current system is a million miles away from being balanced and that should not be considered an obstacle to a radical overhaul. especially if you believe the principals behing the new system are better. is it so wrong

@OP i really don't know. the way that spells in this game are assigned to books is really confusing to me. i think they should just reorganise them all like this https://forums.elementalgame.com/396590

[quote who="sagittary" reply="2" id="2773149"]Scaling spells is a good thing; it eliminates the issue where in the late game, you have a bunch of ineffective spells you never use or early game research where you just ignore the lesser spells and start researching the high level ones. I would say though that spells with more utility would be good. Instead of 20 different spells that all do damage in 3 different ways, mix up what spells and special abilities do.[/qu

i am also unconcerned about campaigns. in my ideal world the two become one: i never played the gc2 campaigns, but from what i know of the story i can totally have imagined them being incorporated in a sandbox as an improved version of the dreadlords event. also, if brad is thinking about it, i'd also wish NO to unique tech trees. it bothers me a little already that there's such an arbitrary line drawn between kingdoms and empires. to my mind technology/science, even in a fantasy sett

so we're getting global mana and that's great. to my mind this principle is a good one for the idea that sacrificing essence means less individual magical power in exchange for greater flexibility in having casters all over the map. however, some fundamental problems with spells and shards remain: 1 there is little incentive to learn spells because your basic lightning bolt scales up so well with int and shard numbers. other than maybe getting chain lightning as well, you don't really

i accept a lot of what you're saying, but personally i'd take the themes even further and make the books independent of elements entirely: ie no book of fire or water, but a book of lesser destruction, a book of minor summoning, a book of minor enchanting, then give EVERY spell in the game an elemental association so even a sov with only one book will get a benefit from any shard, but sovs with more books get more benefit. then create a common system for researching all spells&nb

[quote who="Wizard1200" reply="7" id="2772439"] Quoting Gene1966, reply 2 Increase the penalty for focusing on one tech even more than it is today, this would be a simple and yet effective tool to persuade folks to level their research across each of the tech areas. just my 2 cents... I think it would be better if all tech trees are useful. Currently only Warfare and Civilization are really powerful and Adventuring, Diplomacy and Magic are le

i like global mana. currently if you want to play the magic game you need to imbue as many people as possible to increase you overall magic regen. if mana is global and essence determines the max power of spells you can cast then imbuing becomes what it's meant to be: sacrificing the individual casting ability of the sovereign in return for the ability to have casters helping out all over the map. of course, for this to work, the power of spells needs to be based more o

i too am getting the archer bug. i'm just going to add my voice to the choir.

personally i have never been able to build a harbour myself. mostly this is because there simply don't seem to be many beaches on the maps i'm getting. imo about 1/3 of coast should be beach. there are enough things fighting for my settlements already without having to worry about the 5 beach tiles per map. personally i prefer option 1. i don't see any advantages in the other one beyond more micro.

use food supply. spread food available over all settlement in proportion to their level. the higher the food supply, the faster the population growth. due to other negative factors (like overcrowding and special buildings), the population growth eventually levels out and population becomes static until food supply or other factors change (see total war games). so if you build lots of settlements, they level out at lower populations than if you just had a few. so you have to weigh those level

ultimately, i don't think anything will really cut it in 2010 - from both a visual and gameplay point of view - other than real time, total war style battles. i say this as someone who generally hates real time click fests like starcraft. if you don't believe me, play a total war battle. it's real tactics and a satisfying scale that's completely unabstracted and you can take ALL THE TIME YOU WANT. unfortunately i don't hold out any hope for this for elemental. not elemental 1 any

this always annoyed me. the mana costs are almost the same, they're in the same books, so..... i don't know which is better, but if one is stronger then they're imbalanced, and if they're equal one's redundant. so which is it? so many redundant spells in this game. i'm still not sure which "haste" type spell to take, if either.

[quote who="sagittary" reply="52" id="2771162"] Total War only has a handful of combat stats. Attack, Defense, Morale, and one or two others. Victoria 2 also has a handful; Attack, Defense, Discipline, Morale, Movement, and Teamwork (or something). All these stats are also broad and generalized while addressing factors other than pure equipment; they measure skill and mood. But they mimic combat far more accurately and satisfyingly than Elemental at the moment. The poin

[quote who="AlixeniusTheGreat" reply="34" id="2770876"]Wjatever happened to originality in the gaming community these days? I always use personally significant names, usually from book series I have read/am reading, so I always have a list of cool sounding fantasy names for my cities. If all else fails, I name them after the municipalities surrounding my city, or after myself. [/quote] well perhaps we want to play in the game world of elemental that has been created for elemental

[quote who="sagittary" reply="25" id="2770848"] I would say that a bunch of very specific statistics is bad. For instance, if there is magical lightning damage reduced by magical lightning resistance and that's one of several magic types, that's pretty darn specific. You're not likely to see that stat come into play every combat or even every other combat. It's not really meaningful or significant to get lightning resistance outside of very specific situations. It's complexit