lwarmonger

One thing I would put out there is that since essence acquisition is so central to the sovereign, essence should only be gained from his physical location (ie a direct transfer). So while those buildings and artifacts produce essence, they would only produce essence when a channeler was physically present to absorb it (while they would be producing essence the rest of the time, it would be going to waste as no-one who could channel it would be present). This would both re

Exactly right. Applied vs theoretical magic. My egghead will beat your jock to building a magic version of the A-Bomb... but one on one my egghead doesn't stand a chance. Now, as for governance buffing items and improving tiles, I definetely think that is a good way to make a stay at home sovereign viable. The problem is that doesn't necessarily compensate for the essence gap between an adventuring sovereign and a stay at home one. Personally, I think an impo

Great idea. This enables you to focus production (ie have a Pittsburgh or Detroit type industrial center... perhaps Harbin is a better example for the pre-industrial world), while still maintaining realistic growth rates. So now that city is known for metalworking, and the theme of the city grows around that. A smaller town can be known for the fertility of its farms or cattle ranches with just the same type of specialization, ect and so forth. This enables you to actu

I would agree with buildings giving essence with a single caviat... they should only give essence to a channeler, when he is present. Essence should only be acquired by one person per kingdom, and then issued out. That is, after all, what makes you unique in your kingdom. Everyone can have essence, but only one person can Channel it. And that also makes a stay at home sovereign a little more viable. He has the advantage of building gained essence, whereas combata

Hmm... I think that essence generation could be viable with what you describe, although personally I would prefer it to be equal across the board. An argument could be made for either, but I want to see essence made more powerful, which would mean it would be inherently unbalancing if a combat channeller could acquire larger quantities of it. Also, two other considerations are this. In multi-player, every person would be driven to go all out to make their channeler th

But then what is the point of having city enhancing attributes? Why even bother having different types of sovereigns when they are all going to be fighting/adventuring sovereigns? And while I agree that a sovereign that is out fighting will be much better at fighting and combat magic, a sovereign that is studying magic is much better at less applied magic. I guess a good analogy is Einstein and Patton... both exceptional men, in very different ways. You give Einstein

By giving essence for combat and combat related things though, you are once again forcing the player into the realm of using his channeller only as a combatant and adventurer. Combat and adventuring should give experience, which increases levels which improves combat ability, not magical ability (at least insofar as magical ability is separated from physical abilities... combat magic vs global magic may be learned, I don't know). Essence should remain the same, as that is how much

I would disagree. Splitting experience seems not only fairly contrived, but also inefficient. Why would my channeller gain experience from his heroes? Why would he be a better fighter without ever having fought? Separating essence from experience (given the backstory that seems perfectly reasonable) is both an easy option to keep both strategies competitive, and enables both dramatically different sovereign use and essence use. Not to mention i

Sooooo... beta 2 is scheduled to come out when? Does this push it back any from whenever it was scheduled to be released?

Personally, I just don't want to have to have a combat channeller. I want it to be a viable option for me to leave my channeller in a city, have him be a weak combatant, but have him buff that city while he accumulates essence for the world destroying spell he is researching. Or, I want to have my channeller imbue a large number of heroes with his essence, making them stronger, and then sending them out to do his bidding, while he stays behind, nice and safe to act as a governor

In another thread it was recommended that a channeller should get a certain amount of experience based off of what their heroes are doing on their behalf, so as to not gimp the channeller by keeping him in the city and using him for peaceful development. Part of the problem is that right now you gain essence by leveling up. You level up by fighting. Therefore, if you want to have essence, you need to have your channeller out there gaining experience fighting. Every c

Not to mention the fact that fielding a thousand man legion of heavily armored, well trained troops should be a pretty significant undertaking... not just something you stamp out of the earth the way you would with a few thousand militia. But I agree. Massive industrial focus, or economic focus (think mercenaries, with a focus on money instead of iron), or other focus I'm not thinking of, should be viable should you choose to go the economic route of the magic, hero, channeller,

Here, "tech" trading should be non-existent, as "techs" actually more represent techniques and abilities as they are phased into society (hence each "discovery" uncovering a variety of things), not a widget that revolutionizes something, or a sword mkIII. That being said, some sort of spell trading does sound feasable in some form.

I think this could also be used on a smaller level too. A successful adventuring band, very high level, wants to retire. They sieze a keep from the monsters that have been terrorizing the countryside, and now possess a keep, where they live with their retainers. They should also have a diplomatic standing and relations, as they don't answer to anyone, and could be provoked into taking sides, either with you or against you or in a different manner altogether based on their ow

Where this becomes a problem for EA, is all the people out there who are like me. We purchase games, but don't accept restrictions on their use. I have a desktop and a laptop, but if I can only install the game on three machines, what then? Therefore I absolutely refuse to purchase anymore games from EA, or any other company which restricts the number of times I can install the game or requires an internet connection for its use. Piracy isn't going to kill EA's PC di

Total War system was only modestly complex, and very intuitive. Especially when you got the "feel" for how much punishment certain units could take. If the combat system gets significantly dumbed down you run into the problem of it being pointless to include it in the game. Personally, if I can get the "feel" for the combat system the way I did with total war, I will be a happy guy. There is nothing like just sitting there and praying that your outnumbered spear

Actually, to follow up on this, certain state run companies or monopolies should be permitted. But for the most part, the government should be parasitic. Setting the conditions for successful (or unsuccessful) economics in order to to secure a larger tax base. If there is an area where direct state control is desired (for example, more tenements for the poor, or chrystal mines that, due to your recent successful wars, you now have an abundance of "low cost labor" for) or nee

I have to concur 100% with the points being brought up here. At the most I should create housing and market "districts" to marginally influence that. But the majority of the buildings that I personally place should be state infrastructure that as a King I would actually build. I mean really, why would I care where "Joe's Inn and Horse Station" ends up? Where "Joe" chooses to place that is his business, as long as he pays his taxes, fees, and informs on his guests.

Concur. This could work for more than just products too. Housing could have similar amenities that multiply capabilities and reward city planning. This needs to be a feature, or at least something to alter the non-sensical development plans that current cities encourage. If we are going to have adventures going on in our own cities we're going to need to have layouts that actually look like cities.

I think that the dynamic, living world is going to play a very important part in determining what kind of longevity and success this game has. I hope Stardock follows through with their living world idea, in much the way you describe. Personally I wouldn't read too much into how the game is set now though. Almost everything in it is currently a placeholder to one degree or another, and in many cases no way representative of how the game will execute things.

ALL HAIL HYPNOTOAD!!!!!! But seriously. I just laughed my ass off. Awesome.

[quote who="StillSingle" reply="7" id="2604502"] I don't want this to happen period. My greatest Peeve in the Civ series is that you never have wars, skirmishes, dissagreements and the like in different eras. Research was waaaaay to fast, and that was without the uber random monster event we're talking about allowing here. In civ, you'd go from having barbarians to riflement before you even have a war. I WANT my wars with clubs and pointy sticks, not j

Presumably there are other ways around that though. If I had to guess, I would think that a large army would probably not be tremendously effective against a roaming dragon since 1) that dragon can fly around and hit whatever part of the army it wants to, 2) there are only so many soldiers that can get within weapons range and effectively attempt to hit the dragon without also hitting their fellow soldiers and 3) that dragon would be so intimidating, probably only a few select elite uni

I think the reason why simply having larger buildings may not be the (whole) answer is the reason why I think this is a good idea to begin with. Namely that potential for including player (and computer) built cities and structures in the quest system. Right now all quest based structures are generated. I would like to see the "inn" that the player recieves missions at be built as a part of the kingdom. The underworld crime boss that you send some of your heroes to figh

Why not reward specialization? And I don't just mean of the city, but of the tile. Four sets of grouped together low end housing in a tile should give a small bonus to population added by each, just like four markets grouped together should give a small bonus to the money earned by each and four sets of grouped together high end housing should give a prestige bonus. It shouldn't be a particularly large bonus, but big enough to encourage the player, instea