Awesome screenshots. If you only could make some sense out of the game tiles when looking from that angle. I still feel it's a huge shame that it's so hard to make sense of tiles in general without the cloth map view.
By the way, is there some purpose to have the attack roll be 0-ATK/NumTroops? I feel like that it's kind of backwards to have ATK be the combined squad attack value, especially when you already have the NumTroops value available! The attack roll should be 0-ATK of a single troop and for UI purposes you can display the total squad attack value as ATK*NumTroops.
[quote who="LikeTheWhirlwind" reply="7" id="2758907"]Each member of the attacking squad rolls (0-ATK/NumTroops) vs. a unique defender roll of (0-DEF/NumTroops). All positive results of the attacker rolls are totaled and damage is dealt. [/quote] Could someone please confirm that I've understood this right. Let's say you have a squad of 8 units with ATK 10 attacking a squad with 2 units with def 50. Does this work so that damage is the sum of eight max([0
I kind of wish I could tune out and forget about Elemental for now, and rediscover it after a year. The Gamespot reaview is quite accurate. This game is really just an incomplete mess. I hope the points about visuals and sound effects are taken seriously by Stardock too. Even those parts that aren't really related to the broken game mechanics are really meh.
I don't really see why Syndicate needs a remake at all. Maybe a Special Edition like the Monkey Island stuff going around. HD Graphics etc, but the same game itself. I really liked the Syndicate games but I don't feel like there's a need for a new one.
[quote who="Simsum" reply="160" id="2753993"] Firstly, I'd like to see the team post a complete list of the changes they intend to make to turn Elemental into a "fantastic game" instead of a patchwork of good ideas executed badly. And by complete list, I mean exhaustive detail. If you revise the combat mechanics, post the complete revised system so those of us who care to, can examine how and if it works. Yes, I am suggesting this because I don't believe you guys really understand what's
Thanks for the post, Frogboy. You must be going through a whole lot of unpleasant thoughts and emotions right now. I feel really sorry for you guys, and I hope you don't take this blow too hard and manage to come back stronger than ever. I wish you all the best. It feels really wrong for a dev team like yours having to go through this. You deserve better, but then again this is one hell of a valuable lesson to learn.
What I can't for the life of me understand is Brad telling me that he'd be really surprised if the game received bad reviews, a couple of days before release. For some reason the development team was clearly oblivious to the state of their game. If I had to guess, I think it had a lot to do with the team working for so long making the engine that they kind of thought that having the engine working decently enough was enough and slapping an almost working game that plays on it was OK a
[quote quoting="post"] Sorry for the dissertation, but if you are bored while waiting for Elemental to get fixed and want to contemplate the silliness of the human psyche.... I must admit I don't understand all the anger/people saying Stardock should have delayed releasing Elemental until February 2011. It seems to me that EVERYONE is better off with the game released and in players' hands, rather than having Stardock work on it internally for another 6 months
Demiansky, it's great to have the dynasty system in place for the modders though.
I can't help but love you guys. After reading this any dent in your shield from the scandal yesterday is completely mended in my head. Have a nice vacation, and all my support to the whole Stardock development team. I wish we could just fast forward and see the Elemental of the future already. [e digicons]|-)[/e]
I feel sorry for everyone. The reviewers, Brad, the Stardock team, the community and myself. There are no winners in what's going on with Elemental. The best of luck to you and the team Brad. I hope you make things right and make this game realize the potential it has. Next time we'll all be wiser.
This feedback thread really hits some of the most prominent issues I have with Elemental. It's excellent that Stardock will keep patching this game and a year from now we probably couldn't recognize this current version as the same game we have then, but I honestly do not think that it is in any way fair or wise to release a game this bugged and this unpolished to the market. I can't for the life of me understand why, when Frogboy keeps saying that Stardock being privately held and it
I guess the most intuitive system would be to have a separate Resources window where you can build a new farm / mine / library if you have any untapped resources within your area of influence. Kind of like a city build menu, where you have all the resource improvements listed and the ones you don't have any free resources of are greyed out.
Considering your last caption and reading initial feedback about the balance and other issues, I would say that it would be best to wait a month or so. That way the community can give ample feedback and Stardock has some time to implement the most important improvements and tweaks. I myself will test the game in a minute and then probably wait a few patches after the next try.
[quote who="Frogboy" reply="76" id="2720692"]But it is, imo, the best game we've ever made.[/quote] Reassuring. I probably worry too much. I so much want this game to become as good as the game I imagined when this was first announced. I also feel like you deserve to be recognized along the Meiers and Sawyers and Wrights, I hope Elemental will make this happen.
I am very, very worried about how the game will be received at day 0. I personally won't have any trouble waiting multiple months for the game to evolve into what it should be. The problem is that if the game feels as a work-in-progress title for consumers and gets bashed in reviews, it might end up in poor sales and hurt the modding community a lot. Also if the game isn't received well, I'm afraid that it would hurt the morale of the developer team behind the game. First and foremost
[quote who="VR_IronMana" reply="44" id="2704335"] As long as the XML remains available to us, I don't have a dog in the fight, so to speak. However, the tone of the thread seemed to be "down with XML, use UI only" which seems to imply to just remove the xml entirely. [/quote] I never understand why people often have a need to put such a strong spin on things. I haven't seen a single person in this whole thread claiming that we should get rid of the XML option. It's abs
I too am worried about not having any limitations when creating a new race/faction with XML. It feels like cheating when you don't have any points restrictions and can do whatever you want. If that is the only way to create a new faction, I will probably have to skip custom faction creation myself (which sucks) and wait for the modding community to post a package of balanced new factions. Meanwhile I'll just have to play with the predesigned ones. This is something I NEVER do in 4x ga
What? No the roads shouldn't adjust when new inns appear. New inns could be spawned along roads. Roads could just prefer to go by existing inns if some happen to be between the two cities. It's just an idea. The other one, about new inns spawning along roads is the one I like more (and would be easier to implement), anyway.
[quote who="John_Hughes" reply="276" id="2696194"] "I like the automatic road system, but Inns should really work as road magnets. If there is a inn along the road between two cities, the road would make a slight detour in order to go by the inn. I seriously also love the idea of inns only spawning along roads after some have begun to form." That would require a massive change to Inns as they are setup in game now though. They spawn on the map at the start, before any
Forcing a peace should only work when you're in neutral terms with a faction. If you're already at war, then diplomatic capital shouldn't be of any use. It's all very well IC in this case. As for forcing a diplomatic victory, I don't see a problem there either. When you're at peace with all players, forced or not, consider having the required diplomatic capital meaning that you have the backing of the collective people of the whole world, no matter which empire or kingdom they belong.
I'm pretty confident that rivers are still in. They have some problems with them and since they aren't such a huge priority, won't probably be addressed during betas.
[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="115" id="2695595"]I haven't read the whole thread, but I don't understand why some people are so chagrined that diplomatic capital will have no use in human only multiplayer game. Being able to have an actual dialogue with another human being renders such a mechanism irrelevant. If something like me having less diplomatic capital than another player forces me to pay more in trades even though I know the human at the other end would pay much more for it
I wouldn't want diplomacy to hurt the other gameplay elements though. Making me unable to do too many things, for example unable to recruit, trade, make friends with other players or unable to make cities grow just sounds like a bad time and no fun. Would be best if diplomacy would just be one more avenue to pursue for your own gain. As in you can obtain minor factions with it and you can force peace with it. Not screw up the enemy.