Vordrak

I am very much in the camp that says, 'add lots and lots of custom art assets to allow varying custom player made races'. If we only get a humanoid skeleton, with two genders, we would like to - be able to scale it (we could make tiny fairies, for example - and scaled armour and weapons would still fit) be able to scale height only (dwarves) we would also like to be able to have sufficient custom heads to have a bestial orcish head wings (f

So when he says enough customisation assets, then does he mean there would be the opportunity to - (1) Choose skin colour (2) Choose head shapes / body builds (e.g. bestial head, red eyes, muscular body, green skin = orc) (3) Choose ear shapes (slender body, pointy ears = elf) (4) Scale the models (small = halflings) (5) Partially scale the models (short but wide = dwarfs) 'Cos that would be cool :)

How about modding (7) spells? and (8) races? Will this be possible too?

I totally and utterly agree with Brad. This game could be a Master of Magic beater. But what often kills the hopes of sequels, remakes and successors is rush. Master of Magic was a very fully featured game, so was Age of Wonders - Shadow Magic. Nothing rushed will beat those games or even produce a worthy rival.

[quote who="Vandenburg" reply="3" id="2551635"]Add an essence cost to it. (Which could make it useless though, depending how hard essence is to come by...). Make it a multi turn spell which locks your channeler down during the spellcast. Changing land has a high risk of angering the elementals of that land (mountain - earth elementals / water - water elementals etc.) which will attack whoever cast the spell. Or my favourite solution, make it cost essence tempo

My view is that this should be mixed. Historically road building was a mixture of state action (for example, the Roman Empire built roads like no tomorrow) a very small amount of private action and the organic development of 'tracks' between trade settlements. So my view is that an empire should allocate some money to 'public works' and then use that to build stuff outside cities. Not just roads, but other stuff like wells, bridges, aquaducts, viaducts etc.

[quote who="BreadMan017" reply="32" id="2546026"]My initial reaction is a big negative for the governors idea, at least as described. No offense meant, Boogie, but I think you totally missed Sid's point. It sounds complex and non-intuitive and would be very hard to describe to new players, as I think is evidenced by the amount of confusion in the replies already in this thread. [/quote] I have some sympathy with this view. I kinda a feel I am uncomfortable with s

Brad, I have some questions... (1) Do the Magnar and Tarthans have pointy ears? <span style="font-s

I actually liked 'Bog Wolf' as a name. In general I like that 'descriptive' type as a direction for names. 'Edar' doesn't say anything to me. Neither does 'Sion'. Bog Wolf or Fen Feeder straight away give an idea of what it is. Like Dread Spider.

I don't understand why animation is being criticised before the graphics engine is released. I agree with BoogieBac. Gameplay will be key.

From a mechanics and story perspective a few points - (1) It should be possible to cast many spells at the lower levels with no shards. Otherwise channelers wouldn't be nearly as powerful. (2) Instead of needing N shards to cast spells, the player should get a hefty mana discount and bonus to spell power for each shard held of the appropriate type.

I agree with PigeonPigeon. Customisation traits should include some extreme, game changing traits as well as bland ones. So you can go for a balanced or specialist sovereign. You should also be able to go for a 'vanilla' sovereign, with no special disadvantages or perks. Also, custom traits should be UNIQUE. Why start with an 'extra' spell that everyone else will have in a few moment. A UNIQUE spell or technology that cannot be found any other way, that is worthwhile.

I like the Age of Wonders system, where damage types were different. This allows - (i) Special damage types had a chance of an additional effect depending on the type. For example, Life damage might cause Vertigo (a serious stat penalty to the defender) whereas Fire damage might cause additional damage over time due to the target being set on fire. (ii) Special damage type resistance. For example a fire elemental might be immune to Fire damage whereas a knigh

I have some questions about this proposed feature. Basically, part of the fun of this game as (say) playing bad will be building a massive, world-conquering empire that corrupts the landscape and twists the creatures. Obviously the vassal system could cause a problem here if you are compelled to well ... not have a massive empire. Likewise playing good you may still wish to have a bright and beautiful empire ... that spans the world. If you want the empire to have a sp

The middle one is blurry. I prefer the first one.

I prefer the darker one. But there is a lot to be said for sliders and Black and White 2 style lighting changes with alignment.

How many players should/can we allow in a game? 8? 12? 32? As many as possible. Players can always choose smaller numbers for games, but choosing higher numbers we will be limited by the engine. So 32. Or more even for 64 bit machines ... How sophisticated can we make dungeons in the game? Keep them to a single level, except maybe for the quest that wins the game, if that is in a dungeon, but have the engine able to handle multi-level dungeo

As long as you are comfortable with it financially. But bear in mind, there will be a lot of call for expansion packs ... we don't mind paying for some extra content. I just wanna play the beta! :)

I imagine that there will be benefits to all strategies. The trade off here is short / long term. In the short term if you imbue a hero with essence the sovereign is weaker, and has a weak hero who needs protection because they hold an incredibly valuable resource. In the long term you get the benefit of a higher essence income, and a strong hero with magical power. However you still have the slight weakness of having a sovereign who is a little less power than they could have

You make a good point Landi. Let me explain. MoM and AoW were successful because they had a huge diversity of races, spells and creatures. The developer posts here suggest that there will be a great engine, a great game, but a comparitively smaller number of spells, races and creatures. What made MoM and AoW great was the sheer variety. So, when EWOM is released I have no doubt we will all go ... 'cool' followed by ... 'and we are willing to pay teh $$$/£££ f

It's a good point you make Luckmann. Let me be a little bit clearer. Stardock have a limited amount of resources available for development of any release. The comments made on here by the developers suggest a good game has been developed, with a powerful engine. However, they also suggest a lack of the diversity that made MoM and the AoW series successful. So what I am really saying is that when EWOM is released we will say 'great engine' now add more 'stuff'. I want more

This game looks like it will be really good. But remember, Master of Magic (and for that matter all the variants of Age of Wonders) succeeded on the diversity front. In the expansions, we will all be asking for more canon graphics assets. (i) More races (ii) More spells (iii) More magic creatures (i.e. unicorns) (iv) More scenery / dungeons

This is beautiful. I can tell you now what people will ask for in an expansion though. (i) More spells (ii) More creatures (iii) More races + equipment / armour (iv) More content Basically ... they'll be after more canon content.

I agree totally with you guys. There should be many *different and diverse* overpowered snowball strategies. In MoM I can add another - an army of Paladins. For some reason Paladins in that game were way, way overpowered. If you built them in a city with adamantium and levelled them it was game over. They were immune to almost everything. Another, not quite game winning power but cool nonetheless was Chaos Channels. I would use it on a boat and get a living, flying boat with w

I know some people feel the Snowball Effect is a bad thing. This is when the player can gain a significant advantage they can leverage to give them a good chance of winning. However, many games in this genre have a snowball effect and it is fun, so this thread is to create space for discussion of the benefits of the Snowball Effect. One of the things I liked about MoM is the er.. snowvball effects. Simply put I am not against the snowball effect as long as it does not happen too early