Austinvn

[quote who="gmot" reply="59" id="2862881"]What I look for is the words in the review. It's pretty obvious whether the reviewer has actually dedicated substantial time to the game or just played a quick game on small and declared it ready to review. Astonishing how many reviews I've read where the reviewer admits he/she is a FPS fanboy and doesn't really understand key fantasy TBS or 4X concepts and gives something an 8/10 by default. I remember reading some EU3 reviews like that.[/quote]

[quote who="InternetNerd" reply="4" id="2862341"]I like games from Matrix Games and Paradox (EU2 & HOI 3), and Civ5 just felt...... empty. It just didn't seem very deep. Elemental seemed deeper when I played it, but due to bugs I couldn't finish a game due to crashes. Are these crashes fixed now?[/quote] In my opinion/experience: crashes are fixed, the game seems technically sound. Not to say it's perfect, but I don't crash any more than I do with.. say, Civ4:BTS

[quote who="Trojasmic" reply="30" id="2862457"]Ah shucks... I'm going to have to say something just to get it off my chest. EWoM is not a 7 nor will it be an 8 when 1.2 comes out. Gal Civ 2 in it's final state is an 8 out of 10 and you're saying that EWoM 1.2 is going to be as good as Gal Civ 2? No freakin way! As a point of reference, I'm suggesting Gal Civ 2 is an 8 based on games like Diablo 2, Civ IV, Starcraft, World of Warcraft, and others being better than Gal C

I'll be pleasantly surprised when the AI can manage to think two steps ahead: lower mountain -> THEN I can send troops in! It doesn't sound that complicated, but it'd be the first TBS AI I've ever seen that could come up with an intelligent two-part strategy. In the meantime I'm happy they're at least using spells at all now; if you're only thinking one move ahead, then volcanoes are the best single action they can take.

[quote who="rivers_richard" reply="30" id="2862254"]As much as I like the even-numbered Civ games, I can't stand their forums, which are usually full of people who think that having played Civilization has made them history professors.[/quote] It doesn't take an expert to know that longbowmen couldn't fire over the English Channel! Everyone knows that the English longbow had, at best, 400y range for volley fire- Hah, sorry, I couldn't resist. I hate those arguments - gameplay

[quote who="AlLanMandragoran" reply="23" id="2862201"]And then it dawned on me, sweet gildar, the AI cast Earthquake on my city not once, but twice! Kudos to the AI but then I realized I had no idea which AI did it and wished the UI had told me 1. my city was hit with earthquake and 2. who dun it? ... 2. Telling me who did it would be cool too - cuz I just had to open up a can of whoop ass on 'em all[/quote] You know, I think it's debatable whether that would be a good

Well, while there's nothing essentially wrong with turning gold into some other benefit, be able to do so with no limit is probably bad in any case. Turning gold into defense by buying a shield is no problem, but there's a reason you can't put five on the same hero. Likewise, you probably shouldn't be able to eat limitless pork in the middle of combat without even using action points. Trading some gold for health seems fine, trading as much gold as you have for as much health as you

Agreed, this has been discussed before, just to throw out a few ideas I've liked (with no claim to originality): -Make leather and/or chain mail separate tech lines, not strictly inferior to plate, but a viable alternative with different strengths/weaknesses. This would be good not just for champions but for units in general, there's currently not enough to discourage you from decking everyone out in plate, even the archers/casters/etc. -Similarly to above, have a sep

Seriously, that article is an entire day old. We heard the news two whole days ago - we've had plenty of time to beat the horse to death, continue beating it, and finally get the thread locked. Catch up with the 21st century, man!

If you played Elemental circa 1.05, then picture a more polished and playable version of that. There are a few significant gameplay changes (specifically: the magic system and city-building/economy are both quite different and imo much better) but for the most part it's the same game with more polish: bug fixing, balance tweaks, improved AI, etc. If you thought 1.05 had potential but wasn't there yet, you'll certainly like 1.1 better. Whether it's "good enough" by your standards yet obviously

[quote who="TheRealWarpstorm" reply="23" id="2861618"] Quoting tetleytea, reply 18 Sorry, but I'm calling BS on that one. You may be able to represent a hex grid in a 2-D array--just not a 2-D array of squares. Sure you can. You stagger every other row (or column if you want the other grain as shown in this image) by half a square. War games have been doing this on the computer for decades. [/quote] I

If I recall correctly (could be wrong), Jon Shafer was responsible for BTS's modding capabilities? If so bravo on that, well on anything you were involved with as far as Civ4:BTS, which was still is an amazing game, but especially its moddability. As for Civ5, I did love the combat improvements, 1UPT, ranged units, etc. - well done there, I still do appreciate the good things you did for Civilization and hope we see some of that com

Even if I thought any of Elemental's systems were too fundamentally flawed to be fixed through patches (debatable, I honestly think balancing the numbers, making more use of existing mechanics, adding content, etc. is enough for most of the game's problems), I'd hesitate to say so - I mean, look what they did with the magic system. It got changed in a very fundamental way, something you don't expect to see in any kind of patch. That should give anyone pause before claiming "this system is jus

[quote who="Nenjin" reply="14" id="2860194"]Reduced 76%Original 720 x 576 I heard it was this guy.[/quote] I hear he only helps those who helps themselves (while scuttling out of the room).

[quote who="Lord Xia" reply="65" id="2859820"]No thanks, studying sucks, I will just continue to make broad generalizations based on my narrow anecdotal evidence.[/quote] It's alright, everyone generalizes from a single example. At least, I do.

Sovereign: You there! My loyal soldiers! I command thee to "guard." Newly Promoted Lieutenant: Hold on, what do you suppose he meant by that - just stand around here? Raw Recruit: We could fortify this spot! Look, I brought my shovel, give it a few days and we could have some lov

[quote who="Diardiamond" reply="34" id="2859652"] I think hexes are better also, but Brad doesn't, and that's what counts. Squares take a round world and make it a box, ^^, while Hex's are for satan's children (no insult to any of you who are one..^^; & couldn't think of a better blurb) What game developers should be using for strategy games is a duel-layered octagon grid. that plays on a world map without grid lines... direction movement is based from the unit

[quote who="Tiberonmagnus" reply="33" id="2857421"] Quoting Lord Xia, reply 20Thats a good point about the Resources, but I disagree with the armor, I think unique armor looks would make a very dramatic difference in the feel of the factions and would be well worth the effort. Its that kind of details and polish that the game is really ion need of to make it feel like a dynamic, exciting, and living fantasy world. Since we're usually looking at the characters from the top down

Simply put, accuracy/dodge determines how likely you are to hit, and if you do hit then attack/defense determine how much damage you do. If you have 10 attack against a guy with 10 defense, you can think of it as two rolls of 1-10, and the damage you do is your attack roll minus his defense roll. It's a little more complicated than that though, they have a way of weighting the rolls towards higher numbers, so you'll see 10 more often than 1 (last I heard I think they were using a sqrt(roll*10

[quote who="Sir_Linque" reply="43" id="2852654"]"That being said, all expectations and sequels and such aside, Elemental has come a long way since 1.0 and as of 1.1 I'd put it in the same ballpark as Civ5." With all credit to Stardock and Elemental with the speed at which this ship is turning, to me stating that Elemental and CivV are in the same ballpark quality-wise seems like a pretty damn big insult to the guys at Firaxis. I won't write more because statements like that make

[quote who="LucidCon" reply="31" id="2853215"]Hope one of the features is fixing the crashes. Still can't play more than an hour before crashes.[/quote] Kids these days. Back in my day (in the beta), I was lucky to finish more than one turn without crashing. Also, there was walking through the snow uphill both ways.

[quote who="Heavenfall" reply="14" id="2852122"]I'm not sure I like this. This makes it so that you can get an abundance of resources from every part of the map, instead of having to focus cities on the few resources that exist. What is there to stop this deteriorating into another case of "spawn a city every 5 tiles apart" aka city-spam?[/quote] I think it's workable if we introduce city-level limits on the buildings needed to harvest normal landscape tiles (i.e. not resou

[quote who="Sythion" reply="35" id="2852102"]Wow. I mean... just... wow. I'm glad GameSpot will be making the decisions on most disappointing game, instead of some of the fanboys here (who are trying to appear to have a non-biased point of view by saying Elemental was a little disappointing but every other game released this year is horrible). Civ 5? SC2? Perhaps not classics, but... Just wow people.[/quote] The problem with Civ5 and SC2 are their preq

[quote who="LightofAbraxas" reply="31" id="2849399"]Listen. Guys. Making this trait cost 0 points is so easy, it's not even funny. Yes, it would be nice if it had a bigger in-game effect, but you could say the same about almost all of the traits.[/quote] Amen. Sure, they could spend a lot of time and effort creating a realistic and complicated set of tradeoffs for Egalitarian societies, but do we really want them to? Consider that people complained about being able to s

[quote quoting="post"]Blood Curse by NuclearNeumann The Wizard King Xarn stands alone on a battlefield, surrounded by the corpses of a dozen slain enemies, with many more charging at him from all directions. As he strikes down a soldier with his blade, one of his assailants impales him on a heavy pike. As the razor sharp tip of the weapon connects with the wizards skin, a fountain of blood erupts. In that very moment, a young lad in the city of Oakford collapses in a crowded street, dead