Sethai

[quote who="Lord Xia" reply="11" id="3072170"] Quoting EviliroN, reply 10Brad has said before that champs are supposed to be like Sauron in LOTR, killing swaths of fodder. How much would it suck if Sauron had to stop attacking after he killed 1 unit? Give me a break. Too many people are going to complain and champs will get nerfed into oblivion and then this game will suck in a different way. Agree.[/quote] Should have mentioned this earlier, but I agree

[quote who="smakemupagus" reply="22" id="3072555"] edit, and of course, like you said the reach. in games with counterstrike or opportunity actions it's common to give spearmen First strike to simulate their reach, but i don't know what we'd do here[/quote] Yes. The reach and the first-strike thing are two sides of the same coin. I've got an idea for this that I'll talk about tomorrow.

Before I start what will be a long post, I want to talk about the R word: Realism. Whenever I use this word people shout me down and say "fun is more important than realism," and they're right. Units that run out of breath half way through the battle may be more realistic, but they are not more fun. But when my swordsmen stab your guy in the back i expect him to die because i stabbed him in the back, not do even better because he is wearing chainmail. This is intuitive. Inuitive i

[quote who="Stupidity10" reply="18" id="3072423"] Dodging is hard to balance because its a all or nothing stat and those only work if they can be evened out over longer combat, with the current system of everything dying in like 2 blows it's just too random and hard to balance. To make it work combat would have to be made longer and Dmg reduced.[/quote] Yes it would. But would combat where 50% of attacks did nothing at all really be more fun to watch or play? If, on balance,

It is at least faster now, and looks better (partially because of the higher resolution, and also the higher unit size). But fundamentally I question a few of the premises on which the combat is built and has been evolved: The game is still about 1 BIG ATTACK VALUE. No one pays any attention to accuracy because missing and dodging is still a fairly rare occurrence. So these stats have been implemented in a very piecemeal and half-hearted way. But at the same time, if we

[quote who="EvilMaxWar" reply="5" id="3069674"]@dragoaskani I think what would be nice would be a "retrain" option, where you basically pay for a new unit minus the value of the equipment of the old and the unit keeps its level. [/quote] Yes, we argued long and hard for an upgrade option, just as we did in GalCiv and we've basically ended up with the same situation we had in GalCiv2, where the only way to do it is instantly, by paying in cash outright. It

[quote who="Heavenfall" reply="6" id="3067508"]I like my random traits, honestly. It keeps things interesting and different from game to game. I can't plan on getting that Fire5 because I might never get there. [/quote] If it was me i'd just end up questing on and on until I got it. I mean, you've already decided on your specialization, so you're not going to start using your sov for combat at that stage just because you were forced to take one comb

What about keyboard scrolling? I always use this in other strategy games that have it. I dislike having to use my mouse hand for everything, even just idly looking around the map. Especially when I have another hand free to do this with.

[quote who="mqpiffle" reply="57" id="3056304"]One thing I notice in the screenshots of the generated maps are that all of the coastlines are cliffs...I don't see any 'beach' coastlines. It kinda makes the landmass look a little like they're floating. Maybe the map generator could incorporate both somehow?[/quote] It was the same in WoM. I've no idea why beach has always been at such a premium.

[quote who="Derek Paxton" reply="7" id="3055992"] A player could build exactly the same unit if they wanted. I must admit as a designer I was really tempted to keep some special tweaks to myself to make these guys really unique. But at the end of the day I think the game is better if all the tools are in the players hands. If you want army swarm type Magnar units for Yithril (or for your custom faction), you can make them. If you want to have every unique unit tog

If nothing else, the east looks so much prettier all round. The brown is dead! Long live the purple! With WoM I really struggled to explore the world or adventure, simply because there was enemy territory blocking off most routes, and in the hundred turns it would take to move around at a rate of 2 squares a turn, a lot could happen strategically. My sov was simply too crucial to be absent from my political frontiers for so long. Mentally I couldn't really think about micro managi

Good call on the population issue. If you're going to have a system where income is more of less proportional to population, it was always going to be tough to create an economic system that worked for empires of anywhere between 1 and 10000 citizens. Because then you have to have end game units that cost 1000 times the early game units (and for that to work, they need to be 1000 times as good). It was just too many orders of magnitude, and i think it would be better to simply start highe

Militia could be a cool feature. I'd like it if you could design them yourself, but that might be a little complicated. Also if you choose how many you want to have through using level-up bonus buildings. I'm going to throw my wait behind the siege mechanic idea though. Imagine what GalCiv would be like if you could invade planets without researching planetary invasion or building transports. That's how elemental plays now. While Heavenfall has a point that simply applying

Difficult to complain. It sounds like the old approach would hurt more people than it helped.

Good post. The problem with difficulty settings is to make the player feel challenged whilst maintaining the sense that the challenge is fair. This is why I (and many others) never play the total war games with battle difficulty above medium. Believing that the ai might have run his economy better so he can afford more guys is a lot easier than trying to believe that the enemy group of spearmen with identical training and equipment can swat aside your own. If this means the player is always a

[quote who="seanw3" reply="21" id="3014786"]I don't think it was the point of your post but technological differentiation is a huge part of the medieval world. I think living in the 21st century has blinded you to exactly how different weapons were in times of yore. Wars were fought and won over the unique resources and weapon techniques of ancient kingdoms. From the Greek Hoplite to the English Longbow, slight differences and advantages were present not in each and every nation, but also

Personally I think racial tech trees and similar are a poor solution to a real problem. Science is science and it's the same everywhere. The russians don't follow different laws of physics to anyone else. I know this is a game, but creating specific units, technologies and items and limiting them to certain factions is just reduces the number of people who get to see any given content. Look at RPGs like dungeons and dragons: elves don't have a different version of the fighter clas

So long as I don't get the occassional situation (as happened a couple of time in elemental) when i'd be attacked by armies of monsters that i could not by that point, have raised forces to defeat, I will not be too annoyed. The problem is not IMHO in the AI in this instance, but the all-or-nothing nature of assaults. You either get attacked and defeated in your main city (game over in the early game) or pretty much nothing happens. If bandits would demand gold

repost from elsewhere: save game located at: http://www.filedropper.com/3_102 Thought I'd do another play through and make some notes as I was going along. I respect the fact that no more work is being done, so I guess this is more intended for fallen enchantress and any more general interest. Teleport seems obscenely expensive for it's level and the point in the game it appears. I know that it was open to abuse (espe

[quote who="seanw3" reply="140" id="3008729"]Do you use the After the War mod? I know I have been plugging it on every thread, but it really is a great fix to so much of what you mentioned. [/quote] It looks really good, but you're right, i don't. If i play again before FE i will definately try it.

Thought I'd do another play through and make some notes as I was going along. I respect the fact that no more work is being done, so I guess this is more intended for fallen enchantress and any more general interest. save game located at: http://www.filedropper.com/3_102 Teleport seems obscenely expensive for it's level and the point in the game it appears. I know that it was open to abuse (especially by the player) at it&#39

[quote who="seanw3" reply="13" id="3002641"]You are both making points that are too abstract. The total size of the map needs to be the determining factor of how many city points are reasonable. If you want a massive civilization, it needs to be proportional to the size the map you have chosen. On a large enough map having 10 level 5 cities and nothing more should be the minimalist strategy that Sethai is arguing for. Bellack would probably have 40 cities at level 1-3 and one level

1 - It looks bad. 2 – All the settlements being spammed usually end up looking the same. They all end up at level 5, they all have the same buildings. You just end up doing the same things over and over again. 3 – It encourages a pioneer rush. If a settlement can eventually almost always become a self sustaining level 5 city regardless of resources, then (assuming no loss of territory) the guy with the most cities and land ends up the most powerful. You get &

For the record, I also have misgivings about the single queue. Not for fear of what it will do to game balance, but simply because I am no accustomed to thinking about buildings and units at the same time. My line of thought is usually “what buildings can i build now / afford” and then “what troops can i train with the remainder.” I don’t want to be constantly setting construction queues and then going back to change them to add in some units later in

Last week brad did a journal discussing the fallen enchantress economy. You can find the full text here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/411840 Since then I’ve spent a week or so digesting it since I didn’t want to react to strongly to a system we haven’t seen working in practice. But now I think it’s time to discuss our feelings and expectations as far as we are able to. Go ahead and make y