Austinvn

Just to repeat what I said in the old thread, I agree with the OP's idea. It gives you more to fight over than just cities, makes warfare more interesting - imagine needing a fire shard to cast your uber spell of doom on your enemies, and luckily enough, there's one right next to your opponent's city. Sure it'd be better if you had the shard in your own territory, in order to rain doom upon your enemies from afar - but lacking your own shard, instead you can march into enemy territory and ris

Yeah, it's a subset of the larger issue of representing any distance or time in a strategy game - there's just no way to reconcile it all in a way that's still fun for gameplay. So it's best to leave actual units out of it, use abstractions like "turns" and "tiles" and hope players don't think too hard about Procipinee watching 4 consecutive generations grow up and still having kids. Actually showing numerical ages is just going to make the discrepancy painfully obvious.

[quote who="RicoHavoc" reply="10" id="2703996"] Quoting Tasunke, reply 9Three 5/2 soldiers should always be three 5/2 soldiers. Not some giant 15/6 soldier. Three units operating in a coordinated manner would be more effective than three units operating independently.[/quote] This is true, and giving merged soldiers some small bonus due to the "coordination" of working together as a unit would be good. But turning three 5/2s with 10 hp each into a single va

[quote who="Luckmann" reply="22" id="2703785"]It's one thing having a firm framework to work from, allotted points, etc, and *then* start smacking the .xml to do exactly what you want; maybe you want to break the attribute allottment, maybe you want to remove some restriction or stack faction characteristics "illegally". I regularly do in GalCiv2. It's another thing entirely to build something completely free-form from scratch. I suck at sandcastles.[/quote] Agree wholehear

[quote who="Twohawks" reply="2" id="2697204"] It has nothing to do with your level Hmmm I though it had to do with level and turns... i.e. even if you don't level it will go up.. it just goes up faster if i am leveling a lot. at least that's how i thought it seemed to work.. but as I have said I have been wrong before [/quote] It is definitely directly connected to adventuring research - research adventure and you'll see a dramatic increase in the difficulty of monste

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="4" id="2696362"] their recent real-name-on-the-forums bullsh*t means that they're off my list as a legit developer. Which they've quickly reversed, by the way. Curious about the online registration rant. Stardock requires it to get updates (including the day0 update). Are they off your list as a legit developer as well?[/quote] There's an important distinction, however - if I understand Stardock's policy (correct me if I'm wrong), the

[quote quoting="post"]Magic - Your sov may channel directly from a shard when casting a powerfull spell. If you need more than one shard, a npc could help channeling the other one I think that a dinamic use of the enviroment (lost library, hidden temple) could make the game more fun. Will give lots of new ways of achieving same objectives. You could regen mana faster when inside a hidden temple, gain research points when in a library... or do i need to build a city so i can enter t

[quote who="doogles" reply="37" id="2695964"]Also, fully agree with monsters not completely sacking a town. In later Civ games, I think I recall that barbarians only hurt a city, not completely level it. I think neutrals should never completely destroy a city, just do damage - drop it a level, pillage gold, destroy buildings, whatever.[/quote] I like what they did in the old Civ games - a barbarian entering a city would pillage a certain amount of gold from your t

[quote who="Tridus" reply="84" id="2695365"]He could do both. People want sequels, so they deliver sequels. But Activision is making quite a lot of money, they could invest some of that in new IP. Sometimes that doesn't work out so well, but the return on investment is pretty good if you wind up with a new hit (then you have something new to make sequels for).[/quote] Yeah, more or less what I meant - the success of all those sequels is our fault for buying them, but it's still his ch

[quote who="coreimpulse" reply="82" id="2695111"]Another topic, but kotick is successful at doing just that because THE MARKET DEMANDS EXACTLY THAT. Everyone plays "games" now. They love their music and movie tie-in titles. [/quote] Interesting point, I think you're right, in a philosophical way - the times make the man, not the other way around. He wouldn't be head of Activision/Blizzard if the greater public didn't respond favorably to - no, demand - sequel after seque

Diplomatic Capital as a currency to be traded is great and a step in the right direction, but I agree with all the other posters saying that it needs 'concrete' i.e. practical value. The system described in the OP is more of a gimmick - it only has value because the AI is programmed to think it has value - it's a pretty bead you can trade to the native americans for new york just because they don't grasp the actual value of what they're trading (yeah I know that legend is untrue, it's just an

[quote quoting="post"]4) Sovereign only useful as fighter/explorer/spellcasterer. My sovereign is the leader, yet gets no bonuses to leading. If I wanted to leave him/her in a city, whether for safety because s/he is out of essence, or because s/he wishes to operate through champions, there's no bonus to the city. The grand leader of the empire is staying and the city carries on as usual. Especially mid-late game this feels silly, thousands of subjects and all. 5) Some bonuses to w

And shooting a bow takes neither mana or moving into melee! This is why you never hear about channelers and burn spells in world history, archers were clearly superior anyway. Historically the only competitive alternative was the cavalry who can swing his sword 3x as quickly as an infantry, if he can only get into range before armor-negating bows turn him into a pincushion. Of course, then there are horse archers .. no wonder the Mongols did so well, all they had to do was move back

I don't mind stats like 10.7 so much, I'm not missing anything major if it's unclear whether my unit has 10 attack or 11 - but the difference between 0, 0.6, and 1 is a pretty big deal. This 10x multiplication should definitely happen for stats that are frequently in the <1 range, i.e. gildar, it would just make the interface cleaner and easier to read. 5x would work too, as long as we turn that all-too-common 0.2 and its multiples into whole numbers. It wouldn't hurt for stats that are fr

[quote who="shadowtongue" reply="19" id="2691581"]I would be incredibly disappointed and thoroughly upset if EWoM is anything remotely like the tedium fest GC2 is. Indeed I'd feel better if no one ever talked about any similarities between the two, other than that they are both SD games, because really, that's how much I've come to dislike GC2, and I know I'm not alone. Well maybe on these forums I am [/quote] Don't want to start a GC2 debate, but just so you know where I'

[quote who="Sarudak" reply="74" id="2691354"]Diplomatic Capital = The respect of the people This implies that your words (or that of those who speak for you less so) has added weight. This could allow you to do things like give an inspirational speech in one of your cities at the cost of diplomatic capital that would boost production dramatically for a period. Alternatively you could denounce the rulership of another sovereign in an enemy city slowing production or even throwing th

[quote who="Ziktur" reply="2" id="2690370"]oh man! that sucks. not to long ago i was debating to flood the last city of altar or to destroy it with a volcano. glad i went with the volcano! though as you noted this, to my disappointment, did not obliterate the whole city. nor did it kill the units stationed inside. luckily i was still able to take the city. [/quote] Yeah.. volcanoes and floods both need some more destructive potential. I can see a city surviving a volc

[quote who="edpfister" reply="5" id="2689371"] Shards: I'm unclear of their current function. Increasing Sovereign essence (as proposed earlier) would be awesome, and make them valuable. Making them required for HIGH level spells of certain 'colors' would be nice (a guy with a fire book can always cast firebolt and fireball. But if he wants to call flaming meteors of uber pwnage, he needs a fire shard). Why it would be fun: right now, shards dont seem valuable ( i

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="218" id="2689558"]Actually, the one on page 1 does provide variable costs, since weapon stats tend to include combat speed (and armor has a penalty). If someone wants variable speeds per weapon type, they can just give piercing weapons a +1 combat speed bonus, and clubs -1, whatever they feel like.[/quote] True, the original solution (action points/combat speed = cost to attack) is a variable cost system - i.e. you wouldn't be able to swing a cla

[quote who="Thrawn2787" reply="7" id="2689484"] Quoting kyogre12, reply 6 Agreed completely. Something needs to be done about the pathetically low HP. It's ok in the early game, but late game it makes things much more difficult (and not in a good way). I got a Dragon once. I seem to remember it had 100 HP. Point being there are high hp units that you can get[/quote] Yeah, but as cool as special units (Dragons, levelled up sovereigns/champions, et

[quote who="LeBlaque" reply="22" id="2689402"]For sake of example only, in the LOTR movies I only saw two instances where Gandalf would have "used Essence" 1) During his re-birth as Gandalf the White and 2) Defeating the Balrog (after he fell with him) by super-boosting his combat stats to defeat the demon. In sum, we need to find some real good uses for Essence that you'd only use approximately 10 times an entire game. There have been some good ideas in this and other threads

[quote who="Raven X" reply="211" id="2689349"]Wall of text of doom .[/quote] Aha, you caught me - didn't read the entire thread. Still it all bears repeating, good points - especially 4 and 6, variable costs for everything! Anyway, I should be clearer: cavalry-swing-their-swords-faster-than-infantry is a big problem, one that needs to be fixed more than anything, by somehow separating combat movement and attack speed stats. Just saying that we shouldn'

When we were all worried that the game wouldn't be ready in time, Frogboy kept bringing up all the changes in the Sins and GalCiv2 betas and releases (there weren't even starbases in the GC2 beta!) to reassure us. I believed him, but I have to say this beta has far surpassed my expectations - whatever amazing last minute changes went into GC2 after the beta, I think you've outdone them with the Elemental beta, and it's still going. However y'all do it - long hours, dedication, whatever else i

[quote who="Malloreon" reply="200" id="2688981"]In ranged combat, the person to start the fight wins: My current troop is a caster Sov (4.5 speed, 20 essence, 17 int) and an Archer Champion (3.5 speed, 67 attack, shortbow). If I happen to attack a large host of small units my Sovereign will simply unload Chain Lightning until they are dead - never had to cast it more than twice so far, but under the current system I could cast it FIVE times ... well, four, then my mana is empty. If I'm

[quote who="novagenesis" reply="8" id="2689252"] You can't get more than 2-3gold per town without resources. Maybe 6 materials or so? It really diminishes returns when resources are all taken and you try to add cities.[/quote] This part doesn't bother me and it is I think deliberate - they want the focus to be on the resources, and not just planting cities anywhere there's an open spot with some grasslands like in Civ4, and the current system seems to achieve this.</p