I would like to help an participate. I am very critical and somewhat verbose, but, hopefully, always constructive and responsible in my commitments. Have beta, but also have a job and a family, so that while I "have time", I don't have a lot of it every day or at the same specific times at every day.
[quote quoting="post"] That doesn’t mean that the battle system won’t be heavily modified to be richer than we currently have it but it does mean that we will not have cutting versus slashing damage. [/quote] OK -- but then you WILL need to have something to allow for unit countering. CivIV, Dom3, WCIII, SC, AoW, etc. -- all have unit types to which they adhere (e.g. CivIV "knight" and "tank") and unit families (e.g. "melee" or "mounted" or "archer"). If y
[quote who="Tormy-" reply="36" id="2428724"] Quoting Tasunke, reply 34 Does the demo version of Dominions 3 disable the player from magical research? IIRC no, but it's capped at X level. Correct me if I am wrong. [/quote] (I think this belongs in a different thread. The answer, however, is that the demo of dom3 allows research, but caps it. Also, the game is capped at turn 40, I believe.)
Good! I look forward to this game becoming a LOT less like a mixture of Civilization and GalCiv in a fantasy setting, both of which seem to be the dominant influence-givers so far. Haven't seen tactical battles yet, but I hope it won't be too HoMM. May Elemental truly be unique!!
Good! I don't particularly like the way it has been portrayed yet either, mostly because what we have seen of the "tech tree" so far looks like a watered-down version of something like GC2. There is no "tree", only 5 independent branches. To make it more of a tree, you will need more - branching - possible causal interaction between branches (in order to unlock (the bonus attained by) milestone X, you need to have researched milestone Y) - choices - less distin
I think a good spy should yield more than just information. Depending on the quality and level of the spy, spies should be able to truly influence an opponent. Think of highly influential whisperers in George R R Martin's F&I saga: A spy might plant some seed of doubt, of hatred, of vanity, of fear, of heresy in some commander's ear, so that for a turn, the commander moves off in some random direction (much like the "insane" flag currently works in Dominions3). A spy might be able to canc
[quote who="onomastikon" reply="62" id="2416090"]Many of the questions you pose will depend on one major factor about which we do not yet have conclusive information: Will, like in most games, areas only be able to contain units of one side? That is, whenever a unit or an army of one side enters a tile occupied by another player, will there be a conclusive battle so that only one side remains? Many games treat tiles like this; but not all. If not -- that is, if tile occupancy is not disj
[quote quoting="post"] A citizen produces gold and research points. The default rate is 0.10 gold and 0.10 research points per citizen. Players will be able to change those rates based on what they build in their city. All cities in your kingdom will receive 1.0 of a resource per turn when any city is using it. A city will receive an additional 1.0 of that resource per turn if it is connected by a road. This amount
Yey! Still can't get it to run however :( but one day soon, I know for sure!
Many of the questions you pose will depend on one major factor about which we do not yet have conclusive information: Will, like in most games, areas only be able to contain units of one side? That is, whenever a unit or an army of one side enters a tile occupied by another player, will there be a conclusive battle so that only one side remains? Many games treat tiles like this; but not all. If not -- that is, if tile occupancy is not disjunctive -- that opens up a whole new set of optio
Take your time! Why rush? All of us here are patient -- or if not, need learn this virtue. Additionally, the feedback you will get on the economic system won't be fully meaningful until later, when we can understand what the economy is good for; currently, since we do not know yet whether more Resource R1 or Resource R2 will help us get more bang for our buck, our input will be suboptimal anyway, since we do not know what we need to make our butt-kicking armies kick more butt. <p
[quote who="SaberCherry" reply="23" id="2408441"]Frogboy plays Dominions? This is great news, and vastly improves the chances of Elemental having coastal illithid-hybrid tentacle monsters! ...keeping my fingers crossed for a blood magic sphere... [/quote] Forget it! I think Brad knows of Dominions, and may even like it, but he's aiming for something much more streamlined and accessable here. Mechanics like fear, morale, routing, weapon length, awe, unit attribute
I thought that was a good survey, I would have liked to have more differentiated choices the next time, should you wish to continue your valuable efforts.
I feel better about that now, too. I tend to post what I believe to be (constructively) critical comments in the hopes of helping to improve your products (well at least you have liked my GalCiv2 posts!), but many "fans" appear to believe that anything short of permanent unconditional praise is "flaming". That makes me sad. It's like in any serious relationship (spouse, parent, friend, whatever): you have to be able to give and accept constructive criticism if you want your relationship to fl
I was under the impression that "cool things" (original Brad W. wording) would be things which do something "very very interesting" (B.W.), such as make a particular entity visible or change the way an economic factor works, rather than change an existing gameplay parameter by a certain quantifiable measure (such as: increase damage output by 3%). It therefore does not appear to be the case that continuing to research Mining (or Advanced Mining or whatever you want to call it) will cr
[quote who="Frogboy" reply="64" id="2403294"] Consider the opportunity we have: It's been years since a turn based strategy game was designed fresh from scratch. We can toss out all the early 90s notions of what turn based strategy games have to be and work with what is possible today. [/quote] I welcome your approach and do not doubt your sincerity, but warn against making your claims and promises too large. You will have great difficulties in "tossing out" previous notions
Oh no. I hope, however, that focusing on a tech will not give a linear bonus according to the amount of additional research spent on it; that would be gruesome. At the very least, diminishing returns should be built in by default, and there should be a (slider) setting in game setup options which allows users to set the global default amount of boni additional research adds *per unit*. By that, I mean that the first time you finish re-researching your Tech 1 (say, Mining), you might g
I'm also for lots of interesting stuff on the map, even if it makes it cluttered -- at least let this possibility exist! You could always introduce filters which let you sort what is visible and what isn't, for example filter the map view by tech prerequisites (e.g. show me only resources I can see with "farming" techs, etc.).
For what it's worth, I would have liked to see my humble contributions added to the "Gameplay" section, if that would be ok. Victory Conditions: https://forums.elementalgame.com/361897 Tactical Combat: https://forums.elementalgame.com/360204 (Hmn, I do not know how to link to individual posts in threads -- that last thread has 10 posts of mine about tactical comb
Many things look promising, but this from the perspective of a person who has still not been able to get past the intro screen without a CTD, so sadly, I have not been able to get my feet wet yet. One thing, however, does not look promising yet: the way combat is handled. I think this is important because it plays a role in how you want units designed. So far, it appears (again, I can only go on appearances, since I have not seen any other data) that combat is undercomplex; much of it
For what it's worth, I feel Option C, if handled correctly, will also probably be the classiest solution. Still, the combat system seems to be vastly undercomplex so far; it almost seems like a form of CivIV, instead of a decent and variable combat template like Dominions 3. Here, you seem to have little room for implementing spells to change the values of statistics which should underly combat mechanics, such as a unit's dexterity, strength, etc. Armor just seems to add HP, instead o
Since I cannot get past the introductory screen in the Beta (immediate crash), I still feel compelled to have some sort of discussion regarding the questions on gameplay content!
Exciting for us too! In your Questions for July thread I had posed some questions about the upcoming work on Elemental AI which I hope you will answer at your convenience. In the meantime, may I ask about a fundamental AI concern with Elemental? It seems that your job with the AI gets easier the fewer numbers of variables are involved; thinking about the undercomplex combat system in GalCivII, for example, an
It's almost October, and I am just wondering if the questions that have been posed here have been deemed unworthy of attention? I could imagine that the people at Stardock want as much constructive criticism as possible as early as possible, do you think that some FAQ will be forthcoming? Thanks much!
Thank you! I would like to say 2 things. 1. I REALLY LIKE the new screenshot on the Media page which shows the cloth map and what appears to be sovereigns and other figures as avatars resembling figurines, complete with pedestal. I think that is an EXCELLENT solution to the cloth map, a perfect blend of abstraction and concreteness. Bravo. And it even looks good. 2. I am still skeptical about the Family Dynasties, for two reasons. Reason 1: Internal Lo