Austinvn

[quote who="alway" reply="5" id="2591215"]In general, just the scaling up of maps which will occur in solo and multiplayer will remove this problem. In tiny maps it may still be a problem, but it isn't like there is anything stopping everyone from using said method. And even still, 28 turns is enough to build a small force of redshirts to defend against such a strategy. Just because you have a high battle score doesn't mean you will be able to cut through 100 hp of redshirt before being taken

[quote who="Raven X" reply="8" id="2590274"]Honestly right now I'm more worried about the costs of armies and upkeep. It's fine for the beginning of the game when you have small armies of 4 or 5 units. But imagine if you're fielding a army of 10,000 with the current units costs in materials, time, and upkeep. You will need a Massive Economy to even support 1,000 troops at current costs. So either troop costs need to be Drastically reduced, the economy needs a drastic boost, or they need to in

[quote who="TheProgress" reply="40" id="2590494"] You can instantly build a massive level 1 city. There happy now? I'm not trying to argue that queuing up building construction is somehow different than other TBS games; I'm simply saying that instead of having to wait for food and building materials to accumulate in the new city you can instantly begin construction on anything you want.[/quote] Actually no, you can't instantly build a massive level 1 city, either. You can queue u

Just want to say that the gameplay is great, fun and addictive, it's come a long way since the start of beta 1. In particular, making the resources global was a brilliant move, they give the economy just enough depth without too much micromanagement. All of which makes it all the more heartbreaking when the game crashes every 20 turns or so =/ But I definitely think the game itself (when it works) is ready for beta 2, as soon as the stability problems are worked out I look forward to

Whichever system(s) you choose to use, sequential or simultaneous or whatever, there are some things the game really needs to smooth the MP process out (I realize most of this has been mentioned already, just emphasizing my support for these options): Allow players to do as much as possible while waiting for others to finish turns - design units, queue build orders in cities, purchase spells, change research path, etc - if it's a sequential game, you should even allow them to q

A lot of Elemental's features (magic, quests, champions, dragons etc) will be modded into Civ5 eventually, just as those things have already been modded into Civ4, but I'm not afraid it'll compete directly with Elemental. For one, it won't have tactical battles, it wouldn't be Civ5 if it had tactical battles - just like every previous civ game, it's going to revolve around city/economy micromanagement with very streamlined combat. Even if they mod in earth-shattering spells and drago

[quote quoting="post"]In battle, players can cast devastating spells, flank enemy positions, go for the high ground and much more. [/quote] Really looking forward to this - if you can make tactical battles actually involves tactics , where terrain and flanking actually matters, I'll be impressed. Most strategy games, both turn-based and realtime, skip the "tactics" part in favor of "the guy with more/better units always wins," or at best "the guy who picked the right

I'd like to see something that boils down to rock-paper-scissors, but not quite so simple as the Civ4 system of "unit x is +50% stronger against unit y." This really removes gameplay choices rather than adding them, when you see unit y coming, you build unit x, end of story. What I'd like to see are units that are stronger in certain aspects/situations, which naturally leads them to be especially effective against certain other units that are weak in those same situations, without specificall

Although I wholly support the "perform minor task X, receive minor bonus Y" quests, and the more of those the better, the thing I'd really like to see are options for epic quests that drastically alter or even end the game. For the kinds of quests I'm envisioning creating, we'll need some interesting options that go way beyond collecting items/killing monsters/etc: -Quests should be able to affect diplomatic relations, which should include instantly going to war with or forming an all

[quote who="Seedy" reply="13" id="2467558"] Quoting DivineWrath, reply 6I would rather be able to select an heir than to follow any rites of succesion involving blood relation. Perhaps after a few betrayals by "former allies", I might look at an enemy and consider them honourable in comparison. My thoughts might be "Atleast he had the decency to face me on the battle field." and "Despite our grudges, he seems to treat his people right.". I don't really understand how one could

[quote who="DivineWrath" reply="6" id="2467481"]I would rather be able to select an heir than to follow any rites of succesion involving blood relation. Perhaps after a few betrayals by "former allies", I might look at an enemy and consider them honourable in comparison. My thoughts might be "Atleast he had the decency to face me on the battle field." and "Despite our grudges, he seems to treat his people right.". Plus I would like to be able to select a champion of mine to be the

Yeah the current game is definitely promising, and it's interesting to get a look under the hood (so to speak) at a game in the process of being developed - but it's very incomplete. Don't preorder expecting that you can uninstall your other strategy games and move on to Elemental, preorder if you want to get an early look at (and input into the creation of) an amazing strategy game that won't be complete for months yet. To answer your second question, yes you can definitely think of

Well the original was far ahead of its time graphics-wise (one might say too far ahead, it took a truly badass pc to run it smoothly a few years ago, I have friends that still can't play it), so it makes sense that they wouldn't have to reinvent the game engine, SupCom still looks good by today's standards. I also get the feeling that they're going to try and appeal to a wider audience, but I'm not too worried.. I trust they won't change the original too drastically, even if

Interesting idea! I'll pass since real life makes it difficult to make a month-long commitment to participate regularly (and it looks like you have plenty of volunteers anyway), but definitely looking forward to seeing the series of posts and how the game turns out.

You could actually translate that into "practical" terms. Consider it takes population to train soldiers.. so if 50 soldiers are defeated in battle, instead of simply having all 50 die and disappear, you could have 25 be dead and gone, and 25 merely "disabled" - i.e. able to return to the civilian population of their home city as a farmer or whatever, but unable to continue fighting due to a lost arm or leg. So it's only a partial loss, you lose the resources and training time invested into t

[quote]In any event, I do not mind the idea, although (I think) it should be imperative that fatigue lost through battle still be recovered, while fatigue lost from forced march requires a full turn of non-movement to re-generate. I actually think it should require a full move of non-movement AND non-battle , so that its particularly dangerous force-marching in enemy territory, because you could be stuck with a -25% endurance for many, many turns.[/quote] I really like

Amidst all the "that research system is awesome!" comments (which I certainly agree with), let me interject that I really like the idea of fixed wealth/research/etc generation per citizen. I am more of a hardcore gamer and I usually don't mind micromanaging, but adjusting GC2's tax rate or Civ4's research slider turn-by-turn was something I never cared for. I also like that (so far, anyway) there doesn't seem to be a citizen "happiness" mechanic, which really just provides a

Most of the hidden costs are buildings I think.. the palace is some 200g and each hut/inn is 50g, pretty sure the other buildings have a gold cost as well. When you mouseover a building icon and the "card" shows up above it, look for the number next to the gold coin symbol, this is the gold you'll instantly lose when you place the building. I think part of the problem is that the gold costs should not be incurred until the building is actually built - or at least until construction st

[quote] This is always a delicate balance. Make the auto-resolve player friendly and the player is tempted to overuse it and get bored. If you make it too unfavorable or risky then the player can't afford to miss any battles and then gets bored with repetitive battles.[/quote] I have to disagree, I don't see any downside to making auto-resolve as player friendly and intelligent as possible. No one should need to micromanage their battles if they don't want to; there are

[quote who="stupored" reply="12" id="2422802"] The Greatest Middle Age battles were interesting and involved great tactical depth specifically because the range of soldiers taking part in the battle were varied. Spear armed peasants marched alongside heavily armored Knights. In the Middle Ages (and pretty much the rest of history I think) class was a major factor in what equipment people brought to battle and what role they played. Heavy cavalry was limite

I myself like the Sins of a Solar Empire system, it's essentially realtime but slow paced enough that one can still use some planning and strategy; the only reason they don't call it an "RTS" is, I suspect, to avoid the "fast-paced zero-strategy clickfest" stigma that most RTS games have created, which certainly does not apply to SoaSE (disclaimer, I'm not a big fan of SoaSE, the economy, diplomacy, ship design, etc is too shallow for my taste, but the combat is great imo).

[quote who="Tridus" reply="23" id="2408787"] The normal Civ4 model had some problems. If you just happened to have Iron and Oil next to your starting city, you had a huge advantage over someone who didn't by simple RNG. In the Elemental model, you're looking at more then double the normal production time if you don't have the resource. That's significant. But it's also not "ha, you simply can't make half the units!"[/quote] I agree, as I said in another post, ~double p

It's quite a compliment. You have very .. dedicated .. fans, when they feel the need to defend your own work against you.

[quote quoting="post"] Now, the question rises, what should be in the game by default in terms of “stuff”? It’s always a challenging question to answer. For instance, having spent years playing games from Dominions to MOM to Civilization and HOMM and so on, each game has its own take on how much “stuff” the user needs to deal with. I’m of the opinion that I’d like to see quite a bit of different stuff on the game map that does

I'm going to chip in my two cents and say that I really like the essence loss on sovereign "death" idea.. It naturally fits into the essence system as is, which seems to be a matter of making difficult choices as to how to spend this limited resource. Think about it - if you want to send your sovereign into combat, personally slaying enemy armies Sauron-style, but there's a risk he'll die and lose x essence, then you need to keep x essence unspent if you want him to do battle. -That's