Ephafn

[quote]Heroes will have a skill called Evade. The evade skill determines the odds of them escaping a disaster (lost battle, taking of a city, etc.). When they escape, they are transported to the nearest friendly city. Players will be able to put points into evade when they design their character. There will be major evade modifiers. For example, if your sovereign is in a city when it's attacked, odds are, he'll escape. If he's in a large army, he'll probably escape too

[quote who="TatertotEatalot" reply="6" id="2392304"]I hate teleporters. I just can't see an AI using it effectively. [/quote] For some reasons I get the feeling that an AI would get a bigger benefit from teleporters than human players. Human players are better at evaluating where the enemy is going to come from, a skill that is not needed when you can see any army coming from more than 1 turn away and can teleport defenders as needed. (Of course

I actually got too many soldiers, which also results in negative money (without any impact at all). It seems like the money amount doesn't influence anything in the game in its present state.

I haven't listen to your whole videos, but I should mention that you can actually select the number of opponents : just click (or double-click) on unselected nations will add them to the game.

I don't think I have seen anyone else mention this bug, but I often got the camera to slide, only stopping doing so a while later. What I mean by slidding is slowly moving in one particular direction, even if I am not touching anything. Note that this was on a laptop, where touchpads can be screwy on their own, but I don't think this was the case as the mouse cursor was not on any edge.

Beside what attitude players have toward MP, I would really appreciate it if you could filter based on which language a particular player knows (and how well). I haven't played a lot of MP with strangers, but I remember some bad experience due to total lack of communication where the other players just don't know any English (or just knows it really poorly). Creating a formal system to deal with different language players is of particular interest to those who know more than one langu

I have a question steming from the mention by one of the devs (don't remember which) that fertile areas will grow with time, without any essence cost beside the initial one : Do you have any mechanics in mind to discourage, or prevent, the "smallpox" strategy? (Note : for those who don't already know, "smallpox" in Civ 1-3 consist of covering the map with tiny cities, as close to each other as possible.) Of course if you need to pay essence for every new city this strategy is ridiculo

The "few technologies, but with infinite levels" looks nice in my view. It makes me wonder how trading technologies would work though. Will we be able to trade directly the upper tech level we know, or will we simply give them a boost. Ex : I have Housing level 4, and I want to give it to someone with only Housing level 1. Will he goes straight to level 4, or will he either get a big research bonus until he reaches level 4, or either get midway between both, getting to level 2?

I don't think that any kind of upkeep system will discourage killer stacks. The main problem with killer stacks is that it is almost always a bad idea to split your army into two strong stacks (instead of a single very strong one). Limiting stacks size could work, but this solution add its part of unpleasantness. Reducing big armies speed sounds better, as it still allows for epic battles between huge stacks, and force the player to focus on smaller raiding groups for most of his fighting.</p

I hesitate between choices 2 and 3, but I greatly fear the micromanagement of choice 1. I played a lot of Colonization, and the beginning was always a lot more interesting than the end due to having to micromanage many more cities (the number of ressources was at most doubling from the beginning to the end). If Elemental is due to have more and more ressources as the technology improves, this could make for a micromanagement hell. AI governors are not a solution, as having them make a few num

[quote]well the problem with stopping the TBS of "the more you win, the more chances you have to win" is by doing something that would be... unfair. A good example would be to have luck be a factor. Or have mechanics that are designed to make the people in the lead be pulled back, or the people in back have a better chance... all these are 'unfair'. [/quote] The main problem with the "win-to-win" situation in TBS is in the technological progress. The more cities/planets/buildings you

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="12" id="2129180"] Quoting Ephafn, reply 10When reselling a game, how do you make sure that I can't play my sold game anymore? As GOO doesn't seem to require Internet access past the initial activation, I could have installed the game on my laptop, while only deactivating my main desktop copy. Just curious... (I never sold my old games, and I don't plan on doing so anyway.) It was explained in another thread that you have to log on and e

When reselling a game, how do you make sure that I can't play my sold game anymore? As GOO doesn't seem to require Internet access past the initial activation, I could have installed the game on my laptop, while only deactivating my main desktop copy. Just curious... (I never sold my old games, and I don't plan on doing so anyway.)

[quote]Why does Elemental need a cool looking world?[/quote] To give artists something to do while you program the AI, of course!

Looks like there is a first game using the Impulse Reactor in the store. It's a FPS, so I'm not personnaly interested, but I guess that we will now see how it fares against its competitors (SecuRom et al).

[quote]I’d like to see the Elemental engine be able to be used in lots of interesting ways.[/quote] What is the scope of this? Are you aiming to have the game be so moddable that one could recreate, for example, a Civilization clone with it? If yes, that would be awesome. (Although I know I shouldn't expect so much from any game.)

What's funny about this thread is that there may not even be a grid in tactical combat. With all the reference to Total War Brad did, it wouldn't surprise me if combat was simply done a gridless mesh, with no restriction whatsoever. (Note : The screenshot with the dragon getting hit by lightning, which show the combat being done on a grid, shouldn't have been released according to Brad, so it's not much of an argument in favor of the grid.)

[quote]The three stat system is an abstraction, not an absolute mapping, of the effects of various items. Training increasing HP means you can last longer in a fight (if you consider HP to be the stamina needed to move around and avoid being hit) will increase not only how much 'damage' you take, but also (by living longer) how much you deal. So while it is indirect, yes it does increase your attack ability.[/quote] This may be the case for melee units, but ranged units fighting mel

Is training going to only affect HP? I hope not, and that training could be used to improve attack and defense (maybe in a weapon dependant way). An example would be long bows, which wouldn't be very useful in the hands of untrained peasants, versus crossbows, where training doesn't help as much.

Do I understand that the farms will be inside city walls? That would be strange...

I've played though on medium, and I'm currently trying a mixture of medium and hard. I'm mostly trying to cope having put the Dominators on hard, since they get one system after another and the Coalition is unable to free any system. And since my starting (or slightly upgraded) ship cannot defeat a single tiny Dominator ship, I cannot contribute to the effort. Does anyone has suggestion on how to stem the Dominator tide long enough for me to play merchant/pirate/quest monger?<

[quote who="Draginol" reply="6" id="2042183"]With regards to the spells, the fun factor will determine the final number, not meeting some arbitrary comparison with Master of Magic.[/quote] Another arbitrary comparison with MoM that I haven't seen anyone do : In MoM you normally had access to ~50 spells (44 from schools + neutrals), less if you took traits. In comparison, being able to research up to ~100 spells looks like quite a bit of spells. I hope this won't degenerate into the "5

[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="12" id="2004143"]The problem with the steamroller effect is when it kicks in too early.[/quote] I would say it is the complement : the steamroller effect is problematic when it kicked too far from the end. As Cuddlelump said, the steamroller effect is necessary to make the game end. So the issue is when victory is assured, but you still need to play half of the game to get the "Victory is your" screen.

[quote]At the low end, we want most Pixel Shader 2 cards (ATI 9800 or Geforce 6800 or better or most remotely recent laptops) to run the game fine. But by fine, we don't mean ugly but rather stylized. With stylized graphics, we can do some interesting things to make the game attractive on lower end cards rather than just turning off shadows and lighting and making the game look ugly. [/quote] That's a very good decision [e classic]:congrat:[/e] . Stylized graphics doesn't ag

[quote who="Wintersong" reply="19" id="1963583"]And maybe not as a mount but as a weapon, but we should not forget about dogs: [/quote] That made me think : will there be non-mount animals? If I remember correctly, Frogboy has written than non-sentient creatures couldn't be part of your troops by themselves. But will it be possible to have animals with handlers? And if yes, will the handlers be able to release the animals during the battle?