Unicorn McGriddle

Road maintenance as a phenomenon in the world driven by city development, trade, spells, etc. whereby roads appear or disappear, develop or degenerate -- that sounds good. Road maintenance as a per-turn fee draining your budget? Blegh. It would be rather inelegant to slap an inherent counter-charge on the trade income that roads provide when we could instead assume that whatever costs exist to roads are reflected in a notional reduction to trade revenue that doesn't clutter

[quote who="kingtiger_522" reply="183" id="2553228"] Without these buidable structures, road is as adv to me as to my enemy. That's actually how it works in RL. It's the reason that part of the preparation for a defense is to start blowing up roads and bridges leading to the place you're defending. Something you also see a lot is the wholesale destruction of roads behind retreating armies, to deny them to the enemy (that could actually look pretty cool w/ magic) [/quote] Th

pigeonpigeon: You're addressing my response to the idea that the player should have control over roads on principle ("I should control everything") as though it's intended to be a response to the ideas that roads should be tactical choices ("they're tactically important") and that optional manual roads won't have negative effects ("they should definitely go in"). Aractain: You'd have indirect control over roads through city placement and trade. You'd also have other ways to do w

Paying road upkeep? What's my budget report going to look like at the end of the turn? Road upkeep, 50 gold School lunches, 29 gold New shoes for dancing girls, 10 gold Late fee for "Runaway Bride," 47 gold Will there be a system for selecting which roads I want to prioritize for upkeep? Can I pay half upkeep with my roads in low-maintenance mode? Will there be a spell that magically maintains my roads? Hell no. Organic roads.

I remain completely persuaded by the organic road concept. The objections to it are terrible ideas. "I should have control over everything." Have fun micromanaging which foot your armies lead with when they start marching. "Military units can build roads." All the trouble of using a worker, plus you tie up your soldiers doing worker stuff. "Basic roads can be organic, but advanced roads should be built." Reducing organic roads to being primarily a cos

I'd rather not upgrade roads with purchased road types, as Cuddlelump and others have suggested. Elemental is a game about magic, not paving, right? (There's probably room for spells to augment roads, though. Didn't Disciples 2 do things along those lines?) Organic roads sound better and better to me. If the gameworld is intended to evolve into a recognizable heroic fantasy realm with a handful of big cities and a scattering of little hamlets, a simple road netwo

[quote who="joempire" reply="10" id="2548987"]I would like to have kind of a pool of road buildliness that can be spent each turn.[/quote] I'd rather not have to allocate a thimbleful of roadwork every single turn. I want to devote my attention to road-building on a per-project basis, e.g., "all right, I need a road linking my mountain mines with my primary city," and then I lay out that road. The combination of "we want to avoid workers" and "we want more depth tha

Please include my idea for a midgame quick-start option. Category: Gameplay Title: Quick Start (AI control for first X turns) Link: https://forums.elementalgame.com/376557 Brief Description: Let the AI play through the initial phase of the game and take control as things get going.

Customization, which seems to have a strong place in Elemental's overall design so far, is good. Appearance customization, with no mechanical effects, is also good. A gender option is good, but it should belong almost entirely to the latter category.

[quote who="yti.Flash" reply="26" id="2547311"][ ] turn on/off astral plane[/quote] [ ] conserve/squander development time ... doesn't work so well as an option for end users. Maybe an expansion can give this idea the attention it would need, but I don't think it belongs in the core game.

[quote who="DoomBringer90" reply="42" id="2547373"]so you are willing to play out every single battle of your 10,000 Doomy Knights of Doom against the 20 Peasants of Frailty during the 150 turn mop-up phase even though you know you'll win?[/quote] No, as my earlier posts should indicate. I think that autoresolve is great for one-sided battles but should not replace fighting difficult engagements manually. I suggested a "sanity check" autoresolve which can provide an i

[quote who="arstal" reply="36" id="2546966"]If auto-resolve is "too good" Tactical battles will be as useful as they are fun. I don't see a problem with that.[/quote] I do. A game like this is made up of components which interact with each other. Part of the fun of tactical battles is influencing the rest of the game. You get to see how the soldiers you built and the monsters you've summoned hold up, you get to try your battle spells, you get to take ad

[quote who="Demiansky" reply="134" id="2547114"]So let's say you control the Teullon Valley with it's 5,000 available food resources, with each food resource accomodating 1 citizen. There are 4 regions surrounding the Teullon Valley, only 1 of which has a food resources (1000 available). If you wanted to spam all 5 regions wall to wall with cities, you'd need 100,000 food resources.[/quote] Why have giant numbers when little ones will do? In the s

But it's really just a custom game where all the players are AIs until you step in. If "non-standard pre-set anything" makes a scenario, then playing a Huge-map game of Civ4 is a scenario.

I think "scenario" implies special pre-set circumstances -- and doesn't particularly suggest skipping the earliest stages of the game. To me, a scenario includes special rules, scripted events, or victory conditions, like "you must hold these three cities on turn 50," or "the Liir must return the crown jewels to the Hiver homeworld," or "the rain in the mountain pass connecting the two sides of the map is toxic, and units moving through the pass during foul weather will die." I'm

I can see food footprints interacting interestingly with the resource system. Presumably the biggest cities will need access to plains, but certain resources will only be found in the mountains. Perhaps you can get horses in your metropolis, but you'll need a tiny mountain town for your iron.

What about a design philosophy that says you won't be able to use all the resources on the map because of your limited number of cities, and you have to pick a subset of resources to exploit out of the resources you get? In the long term, you might be able to eke out another city, but in the short term, if you want a new resource you have to fight for it. I continue to believe that a low city cap is crucial to making cities interesting without making them a chore (particularly i

Yeah, scenarios are nice for a while, but it's all about random challenges in the long term. Using these as the basis for a CivFanatics Game of the Month is an AWESOME idea.

A lot of the time, I put off playing a strategy game because of the startup -- the early turns where there's less to do and less information to go on. Inspired by times on CivFanatics when members have taken someone else's save and turned it around, I realized that perhaps there could be a game mode in Elemental that starts in the midgame. You've got some resources, some of the map is exposed, and maybe you're even in a brushfire war already. Although I doubt it would be t

[quote quoting="post"]1. Building a city, and suddenly running out of tiles with no way to get more.[/quote] The magic will allow you to raise new land, right? Or make previously unbuildable land habitable? It sounds like there will be ways to get more tiles, whether by terraforming magic (with direct analogues in GC2) or by bringing in a better governor to develop a high-priority settlement/building growth buildings/whatever mechanism exists in the city-building for incre

Maybe autoresolving should include a preliminary "sanity check" which compares the cost (or similar value) of each force and delivers a shutout victory if the disparity is beyond a certain threshold. The "accept surrender" option also seems reasonable.

[quote who="GhostKingGeorge" reply="13" id="2544947"]Dont make the instant resolve too good! Or people wont wana play tactical battless cause it does the job for them. You still hota give actualy playing the battle the edge.[/quote] The key, I think, is an autoresolve that isn't a substitute for fighting serious battles with a chance that either side can win, but IS predictably successful when attacking a weak force with a strong one. A mop-up autoresolve, if you like. If