[quote who="landisaurus" reply="22" id="2037584"]OH MAN! somebody said it! SCRUM! I never actually thought I would hear it outside EA or some other big company like that where they have consultants tell project leads how to manage their development processes[/quote] The place I work has 30 people, development team of 10 (total - includes testers, BA and a team lead) and they use Agile. cheers, Kul
Absolutely go for it... I'm a big fan of the smallest possible set of functionality being released for end-users to mess around with as soon as is humanly possible. If it's a cloth map and stick figures, fine! Particularly considering most of Elemental's value will be in the gameplay mechanics which we could be testing from the get-go. You could even release without a tactical battle system (altho from screenies I think you already have something there?) and just have beta 0 o
Easily the greatest turn based strategy game of all time. To date. cheers, Kul
One other thing I thought of would be a -1 strategically going into a battle for any unit that has 0 experience. This has several good effects: Totally green troops are much more likely to break and run at the first sign of trouble - realistic and a good tactical mechanic There is a realistic natural bonus to "blood" your troops with some little border skirming or anti-raider action before embarking on the big war to take cities and steam roller the enemy. Even if all
Couldn't agree more Tamren, elevation and flight have to go in. Karma bump for you!
Introduction Morale is a heavily under-utilised facet of warfare in strategy and tactical games. Even for those games which attempt to factor it in (e.g. total war series) it's poorly implemented. In the pre-industrial age it was Morale more often than not that was the deciding factor once battle was joined. This is a broad generalisation of course but generally speaking armies did not fight to the death - one side broke
[quote who="Raledon" reply="20" id="2000270"]I, personally, think you forgot "number 11". 11. Better AI for both the computer (I heard they are working on it for the computer controller) and the units. In MoM the auto system blew sometimes when having a caster hero with no mana run ahead and suicide on the enemy units instead of letting your heavy foot units go ahead. In total war (atleast while I played it) you had massive problems using complex strategies (like flanking) because
Looks good, and better than anything that's gone before but naturally and as usual I'd like more detail! MOAR! :) e.g. different training for different effects, special abilities etc, see ideas post https://forums.elementalgame.com/332690 cheers, kul
[quote who="NorsemanViking" reply="4" id="1986730"]There's also another method, much better then these 2 mentioned; the Europa Universalis/Hearts of Iron method (Paradox entertainment). It has sliders for upkeep and reinforcements. It costs you gold and draws recruits from your manpower pool. It also takes time and depends on the territory; hostile or friendly, and supplylines. (Why have I not been rewarded with any karma yet? )[/quote] Oh yeah, how could
[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="15" id="1987172"] I disagree I think that playing with few or even no heroes should be a valid strategy. I like the way it's been presented so far by the devs: that using heroes is a trade-off. To create or recruit heroes you imbue them with some of your channeler's own power. I like the idea that any strategy from spreading out the vast majority of your channeler's essence into heroes and settlements and other enchantments to spending only a minimal amo
For units which are more than one figure in size (say a squad of swordsmen) there are two main models for unit depletion and recovery (which is to say loss of figures but not the whole unit, and replenishing the lost figures). The MoM model . Figures just grow back over time, the way health on an individual figure would. This is simplest to manage and does carry some realism - a military unit will recruit and train replacements if it has access to the right supp
[quote who="Denryu" reply="12" id="1982533"] I disagree, if anything blur the lines between lesser and greater, but I like having a wide variety of heroes both in strength as well as specific abilities. All heroes should not be created equal! I mostly agree with everything else in the OP[/quote] Hmm. I think maybe we have to reduce some of the other limitations on heroes (MoM let you have 6, there were very few truly "great" heroes, and when those tiny few died that wa
[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="9" id="1983454"] Yeah, but what about calculating what long-term magic might have caused to happen? What about the different POIs on the map - would the civilizations explored some already and had a chance to get whatever rewards might be found in them? Just generating a bunch of cookie cutter cities would make for a pretty stale experience. I'm hoping that the AI is smart enough to build different things based on its needs, not just run down a set priori
I'm sure you could code some random city and resource generation fairly quickly, a big short-cut on playing it out turn by turn. Even if this generated content wasn't spot on, surely it would only take an AI player a few turns to take the raw, generated empire and turn it into something formiddable. Seriously though, when le frog codes his AI he's going to have tables of what buildings and units they prefer and in what order - just run those tables on a dozen cities and you're
Nice :) It's good to see the engine is being worked from the ground up to support more open and strategic gameplay.
"Separation of training and experience. This is realistic and would add motivation to engage in smaller-scale conflicts over smaller goals (kill off some barbarians, pirates/bandits, trade, a node or minor resource etc) that don't necessarily lead to city-scale conquest. There should be a jump in effectiveness and morale for units as they get their first few experience points that tapers off into diminishing returns. " Just wanted to expand on
[quote who="landisaurus" reply="3" id="1974452"] The concept of lesser and greater heroes needed to be abolished. It meant the player was completely discouraged from hiring lesser heroes and heroes became too much a late-game i-win button not a full game length strategic element. All heroes should be essentially created equal and progress through levels or some other fair system of progression. If you must have greater and lessor hero summoning spells or something, have the lesser one su
I found Sins to be far less reaction-based than previous RTS titles - a very nice meld of the two genres. Then again I have yet to play it multiplayer and would imagine at the super-competitive level where everyone knows every unit and every trick in the book backwards it comes down to reaction time. Which would be dull.
[quote who="Mistralok" reply="6" id="1974065"] The translation is a bit quirky at times but I actually found that to be part of the charm. All your base are belong to us.[/quote] Never that bad but yes, same kinda idea. The text adventures are all very playable even with quirky translation, so yeah not bad at all. VERY enjoyable game, anyone who's bored this weekend and *doesn't* pick it up for the low low price is completely and utterly mad :)
[quote who="Wintersong" reply="2" id="1974157"]I don't like the original idea but i could accept it. This last one... no. If you have been defeated, you have been defeated. If it's an option for only the player, it's unfair because it means that you cannot actually lose (in theory) while the AI can be defeated. If it applies also to the AI, then... well, endless game? Also, if you only start with a city and some troops, how do you expect to defeat that whole alliance that destroyed
Was aware of all of those factors, but thanks :)
An interesting article, well written and reasonably well researched. He did kinda leave out the rather obvious fact that not every person who pirates a game would have bought it... as a kid I pirated games left right and centre... and with no income whatsoever I would never have bought any of them. My parents paid for a few here and there (one or two a year) but _never_ would have paid for anything like the numbers I played (spoiling kids wasn't in fashion yet). Modern game companies
Research different kinds of training - expanding on this idea Thinking this through - how about making all the special bonuses and abilities a unit might have the result of specific training requiring research and infrastructure to support them. Examples: Anti-cavalry training - needs long spears to use and a hippodrome or something for troops to
Ohhh I just had a good idea for this: LOSE the game? Option to extend the map and continue! Think about it for a second. I, the great Evil One am vanquished by an allaince of tree-hugging, kitten-cuddling goody-goody two shoes fluffy-bunny twits. I want revenge! So why not extend the world, and get revenge. What could be MORE satisfying to the freshly-vanquished player than an entire game of vengeance against t
I won't list things which Stardock is already obviously going to do for Elemental, for example multiplayer, more complex economics, different map sizes or better diplomacy (OMG MoM diplo blew), but things which might actually be not thought of yet. The concept of lesser and greater heroes needed to be abolished. It meant the player was completely discouraged from hiring lesser heroes and heroes became too much a late-game i-win button not a full game length str