lord ebonstone

The progenitor 4X's, Civilization, Master of Orion, and Master of Magic, didn't have campaigns. The origins of this genre eschewed campaigns. The genre would eventually move on to scenarios, which I think was a fine idea, but those were either special rules or special condition matches. Story? I think Sid realized that stories come from individual sandbox matches, not some poorly written hackjob script. Reynolds came along and realized

[quote]What suggestions or preferences do you have?[/quote] Right now with 1DN you're rocking (something similar to) the age-old problem from Civilization 2: a Spearman can kill a Panzer. 1DN does bizarre things. I've said this before, but it's my opinion that every strategic combat system should have these five logical, statistical premises: 1.) Attack. Chance to hit. The very first principle o

Something needs to change in Tactical Combat. Right now the setup looks like electronic football: (Really, it plays kind of like electronic football too). A more isometric default angle would help (if you want a King's Bounty/HOMM look). Or, a change from a rectangle to an isometric square (for

[quote who="solidsmooky" reply="11" id="2768182"]It's okay. People have bad taste in games all the time. I mean people like CoD. You don't have to like MoM, just people who like good games do.[/quote] ^ this. MoM is [b]fun[/b]. That's more important that AI and balance combined. And then multiplied. And then raised to a healthy power, like 10 or 12. (NOTE: Please notice the present tense in "MoM is fu

[quote who="Nack210" reply="10" id="2767577"]- All units behave the same regardless of their equipment. Spearmen act the same way as swordsmen, macemen, and even cavalry. The only difference is the damage they inflict, and how much they can move. Spearmen aren't better against cavalry, cavalry is just a faster unit, no charge hability or anything of the like, etc. This means you can just make 1 type of units with high attack and high defense and just spam the hell out of it. Attach some skill

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="103" id="2765685"]We agree with you. It's going to be modified coming up.[/quote] Good man.

[quote who="cephalo" reply="63" id="2764465"]MP is the way to fix the single player game most quickly and thoroughly.[/quote] I have no idea where you got this idea from, but it's just horribly, offensively wrong.

Oh god, all this mea culpa nonsense needs to stop. Everyone wanted this game to be great. Everyone was really excited thanks to Brad. The game was released and sucks. Now everyone is mad in some flavor. It falls in three camps: -Emotional disappointment. Typically the type that expected MoM2 and is crushed that, fifteen years later, the thing touted as the spiritual sequel is a failure. You see

Rolling chance to hit and damage together into one stat is silly and unbelievably stupid. Separate them or you tac combat will always suck. I hate to say it because it's bandied around so much on this forum, but in this case you absolutely should have copy/pasted the core principles from, well, Age of Wonders, or Heroes of Might and Magic, or King's Bounty, or Master of Magic, or any other 4X I can think of right now, or every RPG that I can think o

[quote who="searro" reply="11" id="2762581"]How about a + b ,since 'a' can serve 'b', 'b' could serve 'a' and vice et versa ? [/quote] b does not directly serve a. You fix your house's floors before throwing a dance party. [quote who="GaelicVigil" reply="12" id="2762590"] I don't think that's a fair question. The "bugs and performance" will probably never be completely gone - ever. They have been addressing these issues sin

I think a fair reward from a monster is (average cost of a force with a 85% chance to beat the monster) * 1.25 ~ 1.50. Play well and you can do it with a weaker force, making the return better (well, once tac combat is challenging). Steamroll it and you've gotten (some of) your money back from buying the force required to kill it, but in exchange you risked your stack, spent time training, spent time moving, spent materials, etc. Example: If you want t

[quote who="FutileEmotion" reply="4" id="2762146"]I would like teleport to scale with the number of troops transported, or perhaps the distance travelled. Seems to make the most sense, and this way it would scale late game. As it stands it is a huge crutch that you can use to defend your territory.[/quote] ^ This.

Just a weekly cut-and-dry changelog please, and maybe one preview of 1.1. I think it's a very wise move to stay away from the journals for now, Brad. General opinion outside these boards is that you were starting to dig yourself out of a hole.

[quote who="solidsmooky" reply="7" id="2762562"]what else do you have to lose?[/quote] Time to actually fix the game, time to re-design the game, time from throwing netcode and all kinds of other crap on top of code that doesn't work particularly well as-is, the time required to deal with the massive chance for a deluge of bugs and side-effects (yes, in single player too) from a hasty implementation. Multiplayer is a minority. You can tell d

1.) The game needs to be working, well-documented, and fun to play in single-player before multiplayer is even a twinkle in anyone's eye. Rushing MP ahead of everything else results in a buggy, poorly documented, boring multiplayer game. 2.) Polls are next to worthless. 3.) A poll might distract Stardock from re-designing the game because they've proven to have some odd compulsion to follow their customer's design ideas (wh

[quote who="JamesMoriarty123" reply="24" id="2758434"] And yet I'm beset by self-important pricks like you who can't just read a comment and take it for what it is without resorting to insults. The fact is, AoW is a great game, it was on release and still is now, my original points hold true and if all you can muster is some adolescent insults you ain't gonna go far buddy, but seeing as you've opened the door, I don't mind getting a little verbal here. Ever a

[quote quoting="post"] So coming to the faults and solutions :- [/quote] AoW's magic was mediocre and GalCiv2's tech was about as exciting as watching paint dry. Really your whole post is just farcical, considering you overtly say Stardock should have just made Elemental: Age of Wonders 3 and then completely mis-identify AoW's strengths (hint: it's the tactical combat and unit diversity, everything else in the game is ho-hum). &nb

I've heard nothing but bad things. Well, actually, there's one 5-star review on Amazon that's (apparently) written by Brad's wife. I very much doubt that it's actually his wife, but it's a pretty damn funny troll.

Oh, one more thing. There is no reason to "invest" in Elemental. You don't get anything special for it. Just buy the game when it's done or when it's dirt cheap. Unless you want to play it RIGHT NOW, just wait.

[quote who="TroubledWaters" reply="37" id="2756950"] Quoting Qyth, reply 36I got it for $40. I've put Elemental up for now. Playing Tropico 3's expansion from the current sale while I wait for my Civ5 pre-order. I will get back to Elemental now and then. This is a great idea. I bought Tropico 3 from a sale on D2D, do you have any idea if the expansion will work with that? I've already been burned by Impulse's copy of Oblivion not being compatible with some mo

You know, after seeing how this went down, I'd go ahead and get rid of your QA entirely and instead just hire outside consultants that have absolutely no stake in the game at all. Internal QA + self-admitted "blind" developers/CEO with emotional connections to their work + featurecreep = "yes sir yes sir three bags full."

Just use Crack's Call. Oh wait. There's not a single spell as unique and fascinating as that in Elemental, is there?

$15 at most. Really, $0. It's not worth the time, heartache, or disk space. Check back at first expansion. Assuming Stardock is still in business at that point, of course. King's Bounty: Crossworlds comes out in two weeks, and Civ5 a week or two after that. Spend the $50 on those (KB:C is $20, and there will be a $20 discount on Civ5 at release in some stores). Since you're not actually buying a produ

Review reads like a 4, and the reviewer makes great points supporting his opinion of 4. 4 or 5 is exactly what this game deserves, even at 1.7. It's a completely and utterly embarrassing mess, and they even did Stardock a favor in not reviewing 1.0 (which is what every review site says they review -- the gold master). The game is poorly designed, poorly programmed, and poorly executed. Really, it's in such a poor state

Great review, and sad to see the rabid fanboi echo chamber already chomping for Tom Francis's (a well known and well respected reviewer) throat. Maybe the game wasn't released "early," but it was certainly released in an "unacceptable" state. Let's ignore, you know, rational argument about that fact, or the almost 50% disappointment rating, or the well-written reviews spelling out exactly why this game isn't where it should be, or the general state of the forums,