LOLCHRIST

I should start off by mentioning Spell Blast from MoM. It was far too powerful: I seem to recall that every one mana counds against the 3 an enemy wizard is using in their current casting. Spell of Return? I think not. I mentioned a while ago Terry Pratchett's Sourcery, where all the wizards build towers and throw spells at each-other. The spells mostly bounce off the tower defences and lay waste to the surrounding lands and their inhabitants. What I'm trying to say, is that epic wiza

I wouldn't be overly surprised if elephant riders were in there since they've actually been used in historical battles (and because of that Oliphant picture in the art thread), but I think mammoths could be quite fun.

I suppose that whoever sets the standard game options will chose which mods will be in. Players who are happy with the choice will play, those who are not will complain and be kicked (I always like to have a good moan before leaving instant-respawn servers in Team Fortress 2), negotiate, or find another game. So democracy, or possibly capitalism, evolution, or chaos and anarchy?

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="6" id="1962976"] I sincerely doubt geographic location will have anything to do with it. Traditionally, Stardock has never discriminated based on location [/quote] Yeah, I know, I was just being paranoid, they've been good to us. Actually I assumed for quite a while that Stardock were German - doesn't make sense thinking about it now, but Galciv just seemed...German. Like Gothic or X, except easier to play.

WoW? I said I wanted to be shown something you wouldn't see in reality, but fantasy disco wasn't quite what I had in mind. I suppose the trouble with WoW was that they gave everyone shiny glowy things by level 50, and then they decided to add 10 more levels, and then another 10, and then another. And for each of those 10 levels the items had to be more 'epic', which of course means it has to glow harder. If they can squeeze in another expansion or two before WoW2 then they'll probably have to

Haha, never you mind. I mostly just lurk on the Bioware forums actually. The devs there dribble out little bits of information so slowly it drives me mad. Have a fishy stick.

I've never bought a proper console, but I do love my DS. There are things in PC games that simply don't exist on consoles: the strange dark magic hidden in sub-menus and lengthy text descriptions, the obsessive geeky masterpiece. But it goes the other way too, some games are meant to be played split-screen on the sofa.

Zombie Kittens? Zots? What is it with weird forum in-jokes anyway? Although zots is definitely the most excellent description possible of man-hours / feature implementation possibilities.

By 'special forum section' he meants the Drengin porn.

[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] A lot of developers restrict their betas to North America only. That sort of thing always upsets the rest of us. I don't know if you were thinking of it, but please don't.

I admit it, I am a bot. My primary function is to farm karma: once enough is accumulated, I will proceed to auction this account on Ebay, and forward the proceeds to my creator. I approve of the work Stardock is doing for bot-kind.

Hello Planet, are you there? It's me!

Cost-free? In the books waygates certainly weren't a cost-free way to move armies. I think having a network of teleports would be a mistake. They need to be very rare, long distance, and have fixed destinations. In this way they become something valuable to fight over, and at the same time do not completely obsolete the traditional way of moving armies around.

'Gritty realism', by which I mean tough guy in a crisis power fantasy and over the top violence, is enjoyable in some games: Dawn of War comes to mind, Fallout too. Those games, however, have a sense of humour. I don't particularly like games that take realism too seriously, and I tend to switch off with those that want to render every grain of sand on Omaha beach. But please don't leave, sorry it's been a bit hostile in here (and if I've been part of that). Dissent is good.

I think that's a nice take on minor factions: they live in places you can't. Maybe Galciv 2 needs some minor races on extreme environment planets... But I think some players might want to try living in those places and playing those factions too, so I don't think there should be a hard ban. Maybe a faction could choose habitable zones? Or maybe there could just be magic that made inhospitable places colonizable, but divided up a bit so you don't have someone whose empire can be everyw

I don't know if it's exactly what you meant by 'ever expanding', but I don't like limitlessness in tech trees (a la 'future tech 1, 2, 3, n'). Unless you have some really clever procedural generation stuff going on, which is unlikely because that stuff is hard and often flops, it's going to be dull. I expect (hope, assume?) the tech tree is going to be one of those community moddable bits, so expect some to be neat, clever, well-balanced distillations of strategic choice and some to b

I would suspect fantastic mounts only for your heroes, and not common there either with the stock game content. Think big cats would probably make for pretty bad mounts with their twisty flexible spines.

Well, the suggestion does have one advantage: if you generally outperform, outgrow and out-tech all your opponents, then you can have a new lot who you don't dwarf. Although you should probably be playing on a higher difficulty setting anyway.

Do you have a way to handle ownership and adapting other people's work? For example, someone might make good art and attach it to bad game mechanics, or vice versa. Or the things they have made not quite balance against the other races in your game, and so need a little adjustment. Often successful mods are based upon an aggregation and then distillation of various people building on each other's stuff, starting of course with the original game developer. Would there be a way to ensur

Serious fantasy wargame? I find this concept a bit strange. I am reminded of a friend of mine, who did not want to watch cartoons as they were too childish. "But you watch Japanese cartoons all the time!" I responded, shocked. He went on to insist that they were anime and manga, and somehow escape the classification of cartoons. I, obviously, remain unconvinced. So why is this an appropriate comparison? Because a 'serious fantasy wargame' is childish (well, adolescent) escapis

How about some sort of magical catastrophe as the channeler dies, and their remaining magic ripples wild through the lands? Some bad effects and some good, so you're not being punished by having your army nuked when you kill them. Or perhaps gradual, so you can get out of the way as the land is slowly rendered inhabitable. I guess the idea is that a player should have some reward for killing another channeler, but not easy free access to doubling the size of their empire.

I disagree, I think KoToR is the best thing that happened to Star Wars in recent years. An actual adventure story with all the classic elements done properly and charm and a twist to rival 'Luke, I am you father'. I'm no fan of MMORPGs, but I have faith in the Bioware writing team.

I'll tell you a story about turtling. I understand the attaction of it, sort of a perfectionist thing I think. You tech all the way to the top and then get to build the most exciting weapons. In the meantime you're probably very effective against most AIs, since it's quite difficult for them to understand how best to vary their strategy to crack your shell. Plus there's also the attaction of designing your base. So one time I was playing a team game Supreme Commander multiplayer at a

I think 'make your own spells' is going too far, but there can be some value in allowing the player to scale the power, duration or area of effect of some spells. This is so that they remain useful for most of the game, rather than cluttering up your spellbook because you've learnt something better.

I think part of the thing with having the shards immovable is as an anti-turtling measure. You force players to come out of their shell and compete for limited resources.