Vandenburg

[quote]Yet, for some people, this seems to be interpreted in the same light as "Sure, the thermometer shows the temperature on my floor of the apartment building is 140 degrees and rising, and there may be some smoke. But we know, for a *fact* it is in fact winter outside, which *proves* that the building *can't* be on fire. So, I'm unplugging the fire alarm and going back to bed."[/quote] Hah, good one. I'd a fire alarm yesterday and can tell you that extinguis

[quote who="Spartan" reply="3" id="1979725"]Good stuff to be sure. It is a truly deserved award and the standard by which all future x-packs should be judged by in my not so humble opinion. [/quote] Ouch, that's gotta hurt the budget for future StarDock expansions. [e digicons]^_^'[/e] But yeah, the expansions for GalCivII are very very good and StarDock deserves the free advertisment those lists gives to them.

Online polls are one of the stupidest way to conduct a poll. If they don't check for IPs duplicates on a later date it's absolutely meaningless. (It's meaningless anyway, since it's mostly a popularity contest, or, who has the most minions to horde on a poll, anyway.) (Yeah, I've added a 100 votes for Sins, just for fun. [e digicons]}:)[/e] Do I get a cookie now? Pun intended.... )

[quote who="Nights Edge" reply="2" id="1977774"]So fantasy warfare, with significant scale differences between troops, plus a good physics engine. So, a dragon breathing flame on an army of spearmen, for instance, might look like...? A question that might best be answered with a video.[/quote] Yeah Frogboy, convince the doubters like me with a shiny video of such a happening. [e digicons];)[/e] [quote who="NelsMonsterX" reply="3" id="1977778"]

[quote who="Luckmann" reply="14" id="1977667"]While we're on the subject of variable magics of Good vs. Evil, I'd like to say that while the Death of Life Magic is very interesting, I'd rather like to see some examples of how this will work with the OTHER Elemental magics. How does Good vs. Evil Fire magic work? What I'd prefer is a Positive vs. Negative spectrum instead, with 'positive' obviously being "good" while 'negative' would be "evil" (overall). For example, contrary to wha

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="1" id="1975662"]We like eye candy. [/quote] That's somehow dissappointing. While I also like eye candy, I would prefer a physics system to be integrated in to the combat engine, and not only for graphical effects. (I interprete your answer that it will only have a visual impact.) But we're still waiting for the video. [e digicons]:P[/e] As for Pegasi, since they're magical creatures anyway I can make them fly th

[quote who="Tkins" reply="1" id="1976038"]have you heard of Dragon Age?[/quote] I dunno, but after the dreck that was Neverwinter Nights I never really got into D&D from Bioware (and Obsidian?) again. So I can't really get excited about Dragon Age. It looks like much fluff to me, but not like an engaging party based role playing game... But as for isometric perspective, I'm absolutely giddy for the new Diablo III which will remain the perspective (an

[quote who="EviliroN" reply="17" id="1974981"] If you want a good device to destroy the planet look no further than your Avatar. Whom?[/quote] Kyogre's Death Star, I would guess. [e digicons]:P[/e]

[quote who="Luckmann" reply="2" id="1974333"]I find this flagrant case of speciesism offensive! [/quote] Hah, the frog has heard the call of the pegasi. (Pegasi are members of the horse family.) [e digicons]\o/[/e] ------------------------ As for the topic, it sounds amazing and I can't wait for a video of it. [e digicons]:omg:[/e] What I would like to know though, is, if all those calculat

[quote]This "you can choose to narrow your research but you take a penalty for it" idea sounds like the bad kind of compromise - one of those things that would half-assedly try to please all camps and end up leaving everyone only partially satisifed. This is worsened by the fact that a big part of the anti-specific-research camp, the part that thinks it hurts replayability, shouldn't even exist.[/quote] 100% agree. As for the rest of your post, brilliant. It's exactly how I wo

[quote]Is there any way to add a pay-now option to the pre-order?[/quote] Nope. While your sentiment surely is appreciated, you don't have to worry about the money aspect. StarDock makes enough money with its non gaming branch to finance the developement cost in advance (and I guess some money from Sins of a Solar Empire is still around [e digicons]B)[/e] ). But preordering is still good for the game (you gain access to the beta) and StarDock can plan better for post

Could somebody sue this spammers ass off? [e digicons]:typo:[/e]

[quote]I've read that the eruption of Krakatoa put more polution and CO2 into the atmosphere the the sum total of human civiilization since the industrial revolution. It is egotistical to think that we humans can effect the global climate greater than nature itself. The local environment is another story, and I support lowering polution for better living. But not at the sacrifice of better living.[/quote] Actually volcanic eruptions cool the earth. A simple explanation why your sta

[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="18" id="1970908"]Well, I'm totally behind "easy to learn, hard to master," but I'm a little confused about how you can say things like this while you also appear to want randomness minimized (elminated?) at the strategic level (I'm talking about some things you've said about city founding and research). Is it possible that you have fully compartmentalized your control freak needs and actively embrace randomness on the local battlefield while you want none of it

[quote]Empowering someone to use 100% of thier brain could be considered life magic killing because that the same thing as having a seizure.[/quote] Pet peeve of mine. You always use 100% of your brain. If you would only use 90% you would have 10% dead tissue in your head. But not all neurons fire at the same time (that would be a horrible seizure). [quote]That's the kind of point that I haven't seen much

[quote]than a world that essentially starts dead except for your city.[/quote] Well, that's what has happened according to Elemental lore... [e digicons]:P[/e] But it has been mentioned that there will be preexisting cities on maps (probably like minor civilizations in GalCiv) which you can conquer, so the map shouldn't be that barren.

[quote who="The Wicked Flea" reply="21" id="1970796"]So, how about scriptable AI then? Like lua, ruby, or python for a scriptable AI; this would keep the core private and let the users extend the game as they desired. Want an AI that only rushes bear cavalry armed with scimitars? No problem! [/quote] I don't think a script part would work very well with Brad's work, which is after all not scripted by intention. But on modyfying the AI: Brad Wardell said that

[quote who="delad" reply="12" id="1970609"]Vandenburg, I don't mean to get on your case but if you read the whole page again you'll see that what is potentially on offer is actually a way of increasing the choices that a player has to (or can) make. You've taken GW Swicord's off the cuff description and applied that to how it will work. I'd actually agree with the whole thrust of what he has to say but that still doesn't mean that you can't found a city using a massive amount of essence. You

[quote]Some of the highest-scoring GC2 players can pretty much tell you whether a game is won right around the time the last open worlds are colonized. That doesn't mean you don't still have tons of clicking to do to get to a given win type, but if I ever got that good at reading my GC2 map, I think I'd quit playing.[/quote] Well, GalCivII doesn't have a very good system to prevent or devalue city (resp. colonies) spam (though the extreme planets helped a bit). The essence cost in Ele

[quote who="Nights Edge" reply="23" id="1969579"]So karma does come back to you after all. Better start doing the 'count to 10 slowly before posting in anger' thing.[/quote] Which pretty much means I'm out. Since I only can be bothered to post something when I'm angry. [e digicons]

I consider posters that only create a account to post advertisments for other games to be spammers. And I hate spam (though that doesn't make me a vegetarian [e digicons]:hrmph:[/e] ). So, be reported! (If the report button would work for me...) [e digicons]:hugme:[/e]

[quote]Well, it does retarded mistakes so it isn't that good either.[/quote] Well, I don't know how good the AI in Elemental will be, but your incorrect about the AI in GalCivII. It doesn't do "retarded mistakes". It's actually very efficient and good at the game, providing a challenge for most gamers on Though (the difficulty where it plays its strongest without cheating). It sometimes does things which don't look optimal, but most of the time there is a reason for it (or the

[quote]I disagree. If I march my army into the desert and all of a sudden my units are all at different combat efficiencies, I want to know why. I want to be able to use terrain and modifying factors to my advantage, or at least to avoid being disadvantaged. If time of day, clouds, armor, water, race, etc. all contribute to their combat efficiency then it would take way too long to diagnose why something is happening, and I would never be able to predict the outcome ahead of time.[/quote]

[quote]So a method that might be considered is that once the game begins, each player moves units and creates a 'territory'. The game decides which squares are considered safe and after x amount of turns that the square is considered 'safe' and x amount of squares away from the starting city, a village may appear.[/quote] Which sounds like a mechanism that would be very annoying in a computer game. While randomness isn't a bad thing per se, too much randomness on the wrong par

[quote who="Ellestar" reply="10" id="1968740"]But more importantly, AI in most other games sucks not because others can't do a better AI but because there is no point to do a better AI. You can just add a new difficulty level where AI cheats a little more instead of improving AI and you get almost the same effect for zero development cost (Stardock did that exact thing with GC1 in one patch, for example). What's the point to waste money and development time if you can live without it?[/quote]