Ephafn

[quote]What the game currently does is this... - calc the difference between the two units levels (TARGET LVL - PARENT LVL: a negative value meaning the target is weaker) - subtract the above difference from the STRENGTH (a weaker target will result in a stronger strength) - use the new STRENGTH value as a % chance the charm will work. [/quote] The problem with such a formula is that it makes differences in level almost inconsequential, except for huge differences

You are right when you say that military conquest is expansive. But any military expanses or economic penalties are short or medium terms problems. The research bonus however, is extremely powerful in the long term, long after your armies and economy have recovered. Furthermore, these penalties do not depend much on wheter your military conquest was successful or not, so it reinforce further the "winner advantage". 1) Military conquest already give you increased production base (for m

[quote who="Ellestar" reply="24" id="2506791"] Quoting Ephafn, reply 23 How is building libraries more micromanagement than building houses, farms, barracks or any other building for that matter? But yes building research infrastructure in other games result in faster research. The problem is that simple growth (let's say increasing your number of cities) also speed up your research. It isn't any different but that's not a good reason to add extra micromanagement either. [

[quote]Ok, so let's say that new cities without a research infrastructure generate a very small amount of research. Isn't it the same in most other games? Also, that makes it almost mandatory to build that research infrastructure in all your developed cities. That's a lot of micromanagement and it isn't that fun.[/quote] How is building libraries more micromanagement than building houses, farms, barracks or any other building for that matter? But yes building research infrastructure i

I much prefer having special abilities than raw numerical bonuses, but we mustn't forget than coding abilities is a lot more work (and prone to spaghetti code) than purely numerical effects. And I'm not only talking about the AI, but plugging the abilities into the diverse areas they can affect is hard work. So I would suggest going for few, but well defined, abilities, and leaves the rest to numerical attributes. Those abilities should have effects that cannot be easily replaced by n

[quote who="Finneglot" reply="19" id="2500952"]I believe fist and foremost the meaning of "big", "large" and "humongous" nations needs to be clarified. What each one of you mean by large Empires? Large in terms of absolute population? "Large" in terms of population density? Large in territory?[/quote] Of course it needs to be clarified. But making the definition of a "large" empire vague was a conscious decision of my part : I wanted to have a discussion about the general concept of r

I don't know what I was missing the most : beta updates or just random dev posts about the game...

I pretty much agree wholesale with the original post. Tech trading as it stands in many games (GalCiv2 being very guilty there) is a game where the only way not to win is not to play. The only game where I liked the "tech" trading system was AOW2, where it costed the giver as many mana point to give a spell than it would have costed to research it. So no free lunch there. But it was still usefull to trade since different players had different spells to research. The main example would

[quote who="Wintersong" reply="9" id="2492490"]A bigger nation should have a same research output as a smaller one by default, and the infrastructure and conditions of both should determine their efficency. A smaller nation would need less infrastructure to maximize their research efforts but a bigger one would get a bigger boost to it from a good infraestructure. And the same for communications (no nice to have in city 1 your researchers to discover Longswords just to have your researchers i

[quote who="red1939" reply="1" id="2483828"]There is one crucial problem with your suggestion: what would be the advantage of a bigger faction? Army, money, magic... but not research? Why is research so special, and not, for example, trade? If you really want to make a bigger faction more 'expensive' (i.e., restricted in growing exponentially in power), than you have to introduce a reasonable mechanic to support these restrictions. Think about upkeep. You can produce units as fast as you can

In most TBS strategy games I have played, the amount of research points created by an empire increases with its size, while the points cost of the technologies remains constant (at least with respect to the size of the empire). This gives empires who grow quickly in size early in the game, either by building or by conquering a lot of cities, a non-negligible technological advantage compared to smaller nations. To counter this, I am proposing to make research costs incre

I have to concur about having a IOY system for the diplomacy. An allied AI should be really angry if you don't help it when it is attacked after it gave you a bunch of free troops, but should only be mildly annoyed if you have been helping in its last 10 big wars and you simply cannot do it this time.

Wintersong, thanks for the annotated screenshot. This means that using solid colors didn't help me...

They changed the research interface in beta 1D, so I'm wondering : did they switch to only two (green and red) colouring for the technologies, or is it only me that is unable to make the difference? If it is the latter, it would invalidate my third suggestion, as now the text is not colored, but its background is. (Although the background colors are quite faint, which is not helping.)

Let's start with a small story : One day, I run Elemental to check on the Beta 1C. As I remember discussion about a new research system, I pick the Kingdom with the research boost, and I go on my merry way researching a bunch of technologies. But how was I to know which technologies were going to be available at the next breakthrough? Simple : some were colored red , some yellow and some <span style="color: #00ff

Wait a minute, is the player going to do the quests, or is he going to be the quest-giver? The second possibility could be interesting, if coupled with random events. Example : Event : You got rats in your basement -> -10 prestige every turn while they are there Solution 1 : Send your army to clean up -> lower army morale Solution 2 : Create a "kill rats in the channeler basement" quest, which any hero could decide on taking up or not. &nb

Neat, that feature was more or less necessary for mods. By the way, is all of your XML editted by hand, or is there editors which make allow you to not see the eyesore that is the raw XML?

I am also in favor of having a bunch of perks instead of just a bunch of +/- modifiers as in GalCiv2. But nothing prevent you from having more or less "mundane" perks, examples : Fast walker : +1 move on the strategic map Strong : +2 strength. Large build : +1 strength, +10 health, -1 speed. And some more fancy suggestions : Frugal : Only cost 3 essence to create a new city, but the city doesn't start with any populatio

I see that many players are wishing for magical damage types to be strongly aligned with the four mana types. Suggesting renaming Lightning to Air damage is part of that. I would strongly disagree any such choice, as it would push the magical system in the trap where the only differences between the mana types are which damage types they deal. So, I hope that the magical damage types are available from different mana types. For example, cold damage makes as much sense coming f

[quote]In other words, names define mechanics. A rose by any other name is still a rose. Names don't define mechanics. A mechanic exists outside of whatever name is chosen. Once chosen, a name provides flavor and something for the user to latch onto as a way to get some instinctive understanding. One of the common things I run into in software engineering is once someone "names" an approach, thinking becomes limited and funneled by the context of the name.[/quote]

I see your preview video have the FPS and the memory consumption on screen. Is it possible to get it as a player too?

Is it me or many people understood that "monolitic armies" = "armies with a maximum number of troop"? (When reading the title, I though that "monolitic armies" = "stacks of doom".) If I understand the original post correctly, you are asking for reasons to mix strong and weak troups in the same armies. Historically, I guess that the reason such armies (knights and peasants) existed was that it was the best armies their societies could provid : as much manpower (peasants)

[quote who="Raven X" reply="21" id="2416968"] Honestly, I am biased in thinking that we Need Magical Damage types like Boogiebac talks about further up in the thread. The game will have a robust magic system and a very diverse range of magical monsters to fight. Besides, 45 to 4 is a pretty big number. I'm just guessing but I'm pretty sure more then 49 of us have pre-ordered Elemental. If they take that ratio and apply it by how many people it actually represents in the "customer ba

I voted no, but this is partly because I believe the poll to be biased by the way it presents the possibility. I'd much prefer a system, a little like in HoMM4/HoMM5, where damage type resistances only mattered in rare cases. Like fire elemental resisting fire, thunderbird resisting lightning or undead being immune to poison. What shouldn't be forgotten is that these can be defined either on the unit (ent : 2x damage from fire) or on the spell itself (fireball : 2x dama

[quote] For example, if I research metal weapons then I should be able to build metal weapons. metal deposits will be displayed on the map which can be controlled but those should act as a very large bonus. I.e. every city produces say 0.1 metal per turn no matter what. If you control a metal resource then that amount goes to 1. If you control 2 then it goes up to 2. And the city that actually has the resource gets anoth