Lord Reliant

I like it. It's more organic, less micro-management oriented, and more than anything else, it would encourage you to build a military to keep areas "safe". One of my biggest problems in games is justifying building up an early military that I know will get wiped out easily/quickly when I can invest in another city or economics instead. Even just being able to promote existing villages into cities as a managerial power would be cool. And there wouldn't have to be anyt

Good point. I think in GalCiv2 (it's been too long since I've played last), in addition to the fancy graphics, you would also see a text read-out. It's nice to have a visual indicator of what is happening, but it's also good to see an actual log of events, too. On this front, some sort of combat effectiveness analysis tool would be a nice feature.

My card has not been charged. Are you sure it was for Elemental, though?

Bear Calvary army vs. Pink Space Ponies army. Who will win? My vote- bear calvary. This reminds me of an old SNL skit of Bill Swerski's SuperFans: Bob : Ok Gentleman, the [bear cavalry] are preparing to defend their crown, and gentleman, the only question is not will they repeat, but how many times? Pat : You know, I don’t think were talking a repeat, a three peat, or even a four peat.

Wow. I thought the bear cavalry stuff was mostly light-hearted fun among forumers alongside a legitimate request. I never would have thought someone would view it as a problem. This is a minor "issue" that highlights the nature of forums- there will always be loud people for both minor and major issues. Stardock realizes this (how long have they had forums now?) and so do the other forumers. But, without loud people, some really good, positive changes wouldn't

Thankfully, the Pink Space Ponies "thing" from Sins of a Solar Empire hasn't carried over to Elemental. However, as I've been reading through the forums, I see more and more references to bear cavalry (and not just from one person). So, at least for now it seems like the Bear Cavalry is the new, official mascot of Elemental. Granted, the Beta hasn't even begun yet, but that's only a matter of time. Growl? [e digicons]:thumbsup:[/e]

[quote who="Luckmann" reply="2" id="1961728"]Yeah, it's unfortunate, because for some reason, it just feels like games like GalCiv2 and Elemental would fit perfectly with Linux. I don't know why, I can't put my finger on it, but it's just like they resonate with eachother, the same spirit, the same kind of soul.[/quote] Linux users, generally, like to tinker with their computers. This probably also equates into being strategy-oriented as well. Even though it's not suppor

From the screenshots, it looks like there's still the mana pool concept, but whether or not it's for both combat and outside of combat is probably unknown at this point. I agree- if you're going to bring your channeler into combat, it'd be sweet to not have to spend mana points to be effective in battle.

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="22" id="1961921"]All pre-orders will get access during the beta phase. But we are likely to have some qualifiers for beta 1 which we're still trying to decide. [/quote] Maybe something like participating in active forum discussions? (hint, hint)

Brad- Any chance you'll allow the community to also create and submit their own AI personalities? Given the nature of Elemental to have user content, I could see submitting AI personalities as an option. Also, you may want to let folks know that if they pre-order they have to play online. Not a problem for me, but something those who preorder may need to know.

Thanks for the follow-up info, Zubaz. [e digicons]k1[/e]

Cool. When users submit entries, how long does it take for them to get reviewed? And is that done by a panel of folks or does the first reviewer to see it rate it? And can you appeal a rating? I'm not familiar with the way this currently works, so sorry for the barrage of questions. It'd be sweet to see SD farm out some of the reviewing to select individuals such that you could customize your content to show: Elemental release stuff only <l

Cool concept. It allows SD to release either mod packs or individual units for real money along with the possibility for the same from users. Hopefully a vibrant modding community will collectively contribute great content as well as the opportunity to purchase high quality stuff from SD. This will really enhance the replayability of the game over time and allow a continuous revenue stream for SD, which seems like a win for everyone.

[quote who="Solam" reply="10" id="1951207"]hell I just bought a pc now and for some reason I yhad a feeling Vista was still new stuff. Now with what I hear it's old stuff And I will need to get another OS. Did Xp not last for 5 or 6 years or soemthing? Now vista is in for 2 and it's game over... What am I missing?[/quote] I think everyone's looking to Windows 7 to correct the past sins Microsoft committed with Vista. Things have gotten much better with Vista th

I think obtain control of a shard should be possible through a variety of measures, which you have listed above. Some examples could be: Casting a spell that "finds" one. This would likely be useful on very large maps where easy exploration is not possible. Whether you could actually "get" the shard versus just know the location is up for debate, but given good play balacing I could see either option possible (obviously casting a spell to get a shar would not

[quote who="Ninakatarina" reply="5" id="1948274"]That's one of the fun things to do with any variation of Civilization (did Civ1 have it? don't recall) - after you finish a game you play the cinematic that shows your cities as they're born, flourish, and die. It's to you see big sweeping color changes across the world map in a short time, especially when those wars took so long (relatively) to play through.[/quote] I forgot the Civ games showed this. This, too, w

This will be a really tough feature to balance. I think their original idea of making a story generator was too large in scale. However, I do think there are probably some innovative ways they could tie together a bunch of important events and make it easy to read, view, and post for historical/post-mortem features. The cool thing here is that this function would not only be great for players and devs, but people like Brad who post really, really long summaries of what a g

If there will be spying, what better way to do it than... Ninjas! That would be pretty sweet. That and some magically enhanced creatures specialized for spying/scouting.

Interesting... Take a look at this picture- https://www.elementalgame.com/Screenshots/Kingdom_Worker_Cloth_1280.jpg (on the Elemental site here) Now take a look at the screenshot of the same thing at WorthPlaying- http://worthplaying.com/press/300/Elemental_WarOfMagic_04.jpg What's different? Look at the

Maybe they could borrow the wall tool from The Sims. ;) Seriously, though, something like that would be nice for determining the placement of walls, unless that just happens automatically for you and you just need to choose to have them or not (assuming you can afford them). Or maybe walls will just be included. I mean, realistically, how many large cities in a fantasy land wouldn't just build in cities as they expand? I've often thought having to specifically build wa

How do you search by post author? And can you specify between a reply and a post? Great job!

[quote who="ImperialDane" reply="7" id="1941712"]@Ron Lugge: Point, but if we go by that train of thought.. shouldn't most of the game be automated then ? [/quote] But it's our job as the benevolent dictator to make sure these guys are doing their job and sometimes step in and do it for them. At least, that's how it works in the real world. In strategy games, too often you're both roles, which equals zero fun later in the game.

[quote who="psychoak" reply="9" id="1941509"]I'm guessing the factions each have their spheres, how I don't know. Since there are 5 spheres, it can't just be one each. I'm guessing the sixth faction isn't going to be magic void since the channelers are the main character, perhaps an archmage with all spheres, perhaps the other five aren't even single sphere characters themselves.[/quote] Even though there are only 5 spheres, Life and Death occupy the same "slot", so you ca

Thanks for the input, everyone. I have no issues coming up with certain justifications, but I was just curious what you guys thought. Jokingly, it seems like whenever we have any sort of unknown in the game we'll just answer it with MAGIC! "Why does population grow so quickly in one turn?" "MAGIC!" "How can I research advanced agricultural improvements in a non-industrialized culture?" "MAGIC!" "What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?" "MAGIC

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="6" id="1941762"] should be keelhauled With bears?[/quote] You gotta drop the bears, Annatar! ;)