Winnihym

Hey, Folks, Also seeing a CTD after initial city build, I think it's been reported elsewhere. What I'm also seeing, however, is that the medallions for the factions are missing, and in the main display, the medallion in the center of the info bar is missing (giving me a "pie chart" looking thing for the progress bar on population or production). I can't post DXdiag or debug.err files ATM, as I'm at work. Is there a tutorial (for us slow to learn) on how to put those

Brad, It may be useful, as part of the beta, to have a screen where the calculations ARE explicitly called out. Not on the info card, and if you want to pull it out as the game gets polished, I can understand that. But at this point, as a beta tester, I would want to see how the software is arriving at its calculations in all the gory detail, as that helps me find bugs. As an example, if I'm just seeing that it takes 25 turns to build an inn, and I need 15 lumber a

It seems a lot of this has to do with what happens if you lose a resource while a unit is in production. It seems that we could make this simpler if we just said that you could finish the unit you had in your queue as it is (i.e., no degradation), but then that unit is "greyed out" in your unit build. Other (assumed lesser) designs would be available, but not the one needing these lost resources. If you regain control of the resource, you can bring the units back through the

I kinda thought this question was tied up in the resources part of the game. My understanding was that since caravans were moving resources from mines/bee apiaries all the time, there was at least some of a given resource heading to a town at any time. Those resources would start into motion when you made a build, that would (invisibly to us) start to move iron/bees/etc toward the town in which the unit was being built. The upshot of this was, to deny a player building the H

Wow, Frogboy, seeing those screenshots really...uhm...Hertz. What phase of the beta is this? What's the frequency that we'll see updates? Is there an NDA for this? Do we have to cosine any agreements?

So, we've heard what won't be in the first beta, what will be? I'm guessing this is a chance for us to grind through the economic engine and the diplomacy engine. Is that correct? edit: For the economic engine to work, there also (at least in theory) must exist a technology research tree, so that units can be improved. That would also imply that the unit building portion of the build exists. Hmm. I guess we'll know soon enough.

I've gone round and round on this, and I'm still not sure where I stand. As part of my work, my group engages with software developers both for control software (for robots that we use in the lab), as well as for analytical software that helps us make sense of the massive amount of data that the robots are capable of generating. And in both of those cases, I think having code earlier is better, and having "microupdates", that we do every software turn (3 weeks for us). We

Why can't Winni sleep? Because Frogboy's game has hold of his cortex, and won't let go. In thinking about the diplomacy system, these are what's swilling around in there now: 1: Instead of the usual "love-hate" single slider along which all of the other AIs see you (and therefore make choices of diplomacy based upon), how about 3 sliders that color the AI's judgement of you? "Trust-Distrust", "Respect-Disrespect", and "Love-Hate". The trust scale is based

Wait, wait... ALL of the betas are cloth map? *cries*

Posted by Legerdemain: [quote]Spell-locked Flying Invisible Warships.[/quote] Absolutely! 4 of those things could tear through 9 of the blue dragons that protected the best spirit nodes on Myrror, and net you a couple new spellbooks. I think that was one of the best parts for me in MOM; that I could hunt around in dungeons on the overland map, and find new spellbooks to improve my wizard. The whole thing of putting cities near precious resources (like adama

Looks good, Brad, tell the team to keep up the good work. I have a quick suggestion on research, based on what I'm seeing. It looks like currently that you can't see the whole of the tech tree at one glance (a la Civilizations). I think that may be a good idea, since your tech tree is somewhat randomized. Beelining creates certain issues in gameplay when there's a best known path through the tech tree. Not knowing the tree in advance until you're researching

Training a new unit should take the longest time. Something like 10 turns. Once a unit is trained, upgrading his armor/weapon/helm (the only three slots we've heard about) should be instantaneous, provided the MR is available in that town. No new training required for upgrade. Caravans should go the most quickly. Let's say that a caravan on a road should take 5 turns to cross a major continent, one side to the other (perhaps a quarter of the map under normal ma

Brad, it might be worth you guys thinking about Beta 0 being just this; the economic model alone on the cloth map. No combat, just unit design and moving resources around. Economic models, especially since you good folks want E:WoM to "redefine 4X economies", will underlie both the research trees (magic and tech) and the unit production model. Maybe it might be wise to take some time now, early, and get this part right, or as right as it can be when something is designed by

I don't think warehouses in each city with unused/unusable NR and MR are necessarily a bad thing in a pull based economy; they're overstock, sure, but they're not actually causing any harm (assuming they don't decay in the warehouse, or that the economy slowly devalues them as they become obsolete, or some other "real world market" physics happens to them). They become stockpiled in various cities, awaiting being called for by the next build order somewhere. THe thing reverts to a

Okay, that's an interesting idea; a totally pull driven economy. All the base resources are harvested and accumulated locally, and only actually shipped when a build order in some town requires them. The time to build in a given town now includes the time to transport the goods, as climber has mapped out. When you design a new unit, then, it pulls both NR and MR from wherever is closest to start building your unit. Would towns that have intermediate MR then accumulate

We're kind of getting back to camp 1, though, aren't we? If the AI is making the decisions about where a resource goes based upon what buildings are in what town, then the complexity is still there, you just don't exercise direct control over it. Now, instead of having to micromanage a caravan route set, I have to micromanage what buildings are in what towns over time to affect what trade routes the AI sets up for me. I still have the huge number of trade routes (essentially

Okay, here's what I don't like about camp 3 as I currently understand it. In order for a resource to arrive at a town, a corresponding structure must be built there (ore needs smithy, swords needs barracks, etc). But, from what we've seen so far, the town spaces have limited land resources to build structures on. This forces you to downselect what a city will be doing very early on in it's development, and then you have to stick with it. Changing your mind based on cha

Climber's making some excellent points on the risk of overmanagement of the resource streams. He basically owes the company I work for a day of my pay, since I thought about this problem instead of what I should have been working on...Climber, I think they'll take a check. ;) One of the things that is central to the argument is whether or not we want to have the caravans as a physical entity on the game board. The benefit from a strategy sense is that now I have something

I've lost where Kael responded to this, so I can't quote him, but I liked what he had to say; ultimately, it's about what kind of game you want to design. For me, a 4X game is about building up your forces; conquest victories are the most common type. This question leads into what victory conditions will be. If it's possible to have a purely economic victory, then you'd like to have the economy have all the richness and depth it deserves. If the point of the economy is

One possible way to do an effects based system would be to separate effects into the five elements, along the lines of what the spheres have influence over. Heal based effects could be in a "life" sphere, levitation in air, root/snare in earth, and so on (I get to say "and so on" like I know what I'm talking about, but really, I'm a little fuzzy on this concept myself, so I'll use it to hide my lack of knowledge. ;) The innovation I was really hunting for was to be able to combi

I'm not sure I want to see spells at all. In keeping with the mantra that Stardock seems to be pursuing of "build using basic building blocks for maximum customization", I think I'd rather see us research spell effects, rather than spells. Effects, like spells, can be grouped into spheres of magic. Effects like heal, target (self, other, ranged, AOE), damage, bind, free, vision, summon, create, destroy, lift. Combine these together (at various levels of effect) to cr

Hi, folks, Hey, has anyone seen any information about whether mixed magical styles will be available? Some life + fire magic, for example? Put me in the "graphics look great" category. While you're at it, go ahead and drop me in the "amazing, deep game mechanics with multiple options are better" category, too. ;) Winni