onomastikon

Great! Summer also seems a bit optimistic, unless September is also considered summer. The only thing I am still majorily skeptical about is tactical battles, combat mechanics, and unit statistics. I am sure everything else will work out. [quote quoting="post"] The base amount of money, research, spell learning and prestige is based on the city level. Outpost: 0 Hamlet: 2 Village: 4 Town: 8 City: 16 Money is spent on upkeep based

Thank you. Yes, that all makes sense, and I am for it -- under three conditions. These being 1. that there be no *disadvantage* to a suboptimally organized city other than or in addition to its own suboptimality 2. that there be various ways that a city might be optimized; there should be no "exclusively one single correct optimal" plan. (Of course that doesnt mean that some choices are just not as good as others, but there should not be only ONE way of (at least always)

I like the general tone of your posts and the general gist of what you are saying. I think you are headed in the right direction. If I may, I would like to offer constructive criticism and questions on 2 things you mention: [quote quoting="post"] we created a system where building a smaller number of larger, older cities is rewarded. [/quote] Good. Smaller numbers of cities means more personality to each. Yet how will the rewards be done exactly? <

While I agree with most posters above and like it, I also think that it will not be terribly important; I think people will end up purchasing the game because of things they hear about it, not on an "impulse" (no pun intented) pick-up in a store. ... yet having said that, there is a conspicuous lack of large firm scantily-clad breasts, hypertrophied muscles, and flashy colors; I believe those things are normally what people put on boxes to sell ... other

This isnt exactly an example for multi-branch research, the main point of this thread, but here is an additional suggestion for other ways to "mix" research with other world entities / events: Unlock Action: "Shield Wall". Any squad (a squad is a group of units with similar abilities on the tactical battle screen) can choose the "Shield Wall" action if - the units posses a shield item - the untis have been trained with the technology "Advanced Shields", in the Warfare

Thanks, WS. Could you compare it to Deus Ex?

Hello all, I have recently become smitten with Dragon Age:Origins, primarily because I enjoy a good RPG with good characters. I have heard Mass Effect 2 mentioned as being similar in that regard. Since both are made by Bioware, I am wondering if I am missing something by not trying it out. First, the questions: 1. If my machine can play DA:O, will it be able to play ME:2? If not, the rest of the questions become superflous. I have a non-gaming rig, which does, however, play DA

[quote who="BoogieBac" reply="35" id="2526933"] You cannot claim to restrict us to the cloth map to ensure we judge the fun of the game on its unaesthetic merits alone and yet deprive us of fun. Which is why we've been saying 'don't expect the game to be fun until Beta 3....not because that's we'll turn on the 'pretty gfx', but because we'll only move past Beta2 when the game is enjoyable on the cloth map. It's less a contradicition and more a 'sad truth'. <

One commonly recurring element in many of Brad's posts I see as self-contradictory. Let me explain. (Please take this as constructive criticism. I believe that the team at Stardock will benefit much more from constructive criticism than permanent servile flattery.) In reference to fun and beauty, Brad claims he wants to keep the 3D engine offline so as to play on the cloth map only, because -- quite correctly, I think -- he wants the game to be fun without flashy graphics. He wan

Very good examples, Campaigner. Soft counters are the way to go. Star Chamber worked in exactly this way, and this is the principle behind Chess as well -- a pawn will beat a queen just as easily as a more powerful piece will, given the right circumstances. [quote who="vieuxchat" reply="13" id="2524477"]And why not some kind of decreasing cost when you build a building that already exists ? Or synergy bonuses ? (you have 2 forge AND 3 barracks ? Then your warriors here will

I suggested elsewhere on numerous occasions that every unit in the game have attribute statistics much like those an RPG-Sovereign would have, and at least one of these attributes (which I called Charisma so far) also reflected Mental Magic resistance. I would give the Charm spell the flag: "Is_Mental_Magic", and modifiers such as mental magic resistance would help deflect this. The game would go through a series of checks: First, it checks if the target has a mind. (Undead, for examp

I recently got Dragon Age Origins and am loving it. It runs like a charm on my mediocre laptop. I have settings on max except for "Anti-Aliasing". But what does it do? Is it a big power-drain? Does it require a lot of juice? I think I have the settings at 2x anti aliasing, but that was just a guess since I am clueless as to what turning it up or down will give me in terms of risks and boni. Thank you.

[quote who="RisingLegend" reply="9" id="2523134"] Because you see, thats what I always ended up doing in CivIV: going to war for no reason just to give me something to do. [/quote] Me too. I didnt realize how boring that was until after the third playthrough. I do not see huge potential, however, for "builder"-like challenges; CivIV really shot themselves in the knee, however, by only allowing 1 building per type per city (e.g. one temple, one forge, ...); maybe Elemental ca

This surprised me. I just got my disk about a week ago and I am smitten. I have played 10% of this game so far, according to the in-game documentary, and I have spent 24 hours of non-stop enjoyment so far on it. I am talking about the RPG Dragon Age: Origins. You should understand that I am not a Bioware fanboy, although I DID really enjoy Baldur's Gate 2. I despised Neverwinter Nights and Icewind Dale and have not played a Bioware game since. Boy am I glad I changed my mind a

Great, thank you. Some of the things I was thinking of I had elaborated in a post in which special maneuvers for units could be unlocked if the right techs and preconditions were researched, and it would be the maneuvers which added additional layers of countering. Still, I think chess is is not totally irrelevant, because some pieces in chess are better than others (usually) precisely because they are different; in chess, all attack and defense values are identical. In other

INTRODUCTION In a recent post, a person on these forums complained th

An excellent list, nothing terribly important "left out", although I would have mentioned unit building in your shoes, but points 5, 6, and 9 were, at least to me, if I may say so, either underspecific or suboptimally worded. 5. Tactical Battles. I think that you should make clear that you want to ensure that it is not the generation and visualization of tactical combat which is the priority, but a deep and rich combat system which will enable and/or require a player to think an

From C-RPGs, perhaps the most memorable city I enjoyed was Sigil from Planescape: Torment. I liked Tarant in Arcanum as well. also I liked the way Tokyo (?) was presented in Deus Ex; in fact, I liked the way most cities felt in that game, even though it wasn't truly necessary; I'll never forget the cyborg dealer you can meet in the subway saying "I'm never goin back to prison, BITCH!" in that wonderful voice acting. That felt so alive, so tangible. A city in which NPCs mill about aimlessly, i

[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="18" id="2505757"] I want a strong variety of strategic choices also, but I believe I'll be happier if the majority of them involve the magic system and not the differences between a Mongol composite horsebow and an English longbow. [/quote] Exactly. Yet if I may: When I said *strategic choices*, I meant strategic choices! In other words, not choices which give incremental advantages, or superficial differences,

Dr. Frankenfurter, are you thinking of Dominions3 scales? I see many parallels.

The Civilization series tried to do at least something along this road, the CivIV iteration was perhaps "best" in that respect (although I still was not enthralled by CivIV as most were), in that breakthroughs were reached by the fastest researchers (scientists), but the implementation of the inventions could have been hampered or enhanced by suboptimal / optimal "government" (e.g. windmills are great if your "society" is an "ecological" one, watermills or something odd seemed to be grea

I am worried that the way technology is working is currently too unilinear. If the number of choices I have are 5, this will make obtaining breakthroughs in these paths slightly more interesting, perhaps, the first five or six times I play the game, but will not give strategic satisfaction -- it will, in essence, remain the "guns", "diplomacy" and "shields" research paths we had in GC2, with some randomness strewn in. Forsake multi-path breakthroughs at the expense of strategic choice

I disagree. For one, I do not see implementation being hindered by explicit graphical representations, firstly because I do not think that each different type of action need be represented with an animation; in fact, I would be perfectly happy with only one or two animations, that is, no matter what type of attack is used, the skeleton still swings its sword (or whatever weapon is equipped), and if it is a defensive maneuver, it holds its weapon up parallel to the ground, or whatever.

Your first two paragraphs describe well a phenomenon which the Civilization series did, as one of the few things it did, at least handle, if not particularly well. A little "corn" field, in the CivIV iteration, gave you a bonus without doing anything, and a bigger bonus if you exploited the bonus with an improvement, and a bigger one if your technology was later improved. I think this idea could be adopted for Elemental, with a few twists. I like your idea, and would merely like to ad

I agree in general with the OP. That is why I suggested (in the Abilities thread) elsewhere a series of "feat"-like abilities, which I also called "actions" or "moves" or "icons" (as represented on a radial choice menu for units), at the very least in addition to increased "attack" and "HP" values -- e.g., a unit with an attack rating of 5 might be able to perform a simple default attack on its foe, but with researching the right technologies, that unit might be able to unlock special "moves"