Ynglaur

Functionally, it doesn't matter per se if we can call from "outside" the editor or "inside" the editor. If "inside" (the classic ~ prompt), it would be nice to have a lot of robustness, however (e.g. mathematical functions, data structures, etc.). The advantage to externally-facing function calls (dare I call it an "API"?) is that modders could use Python, PERL, C++, or plain-ole' shell scripting to develop algorithms for randomization. I'm sure the in-game map randomizer

Good point re: ore. I wouldn't mind the additional complexity, as the same ore could result in better or worse quality of iron or steel. Which I guess brings up another question: will we start off using bronze or iron?

Between Camp #3 and Camp #4, I think I come down in favor of Camp #3. A few chief reasons: Camp #4 doesn't seem to have any significant trade-offs within the economic system. Sure, I might be deciding between spending gold on Black Knight or spending it on Mine Upgrade III, but Camp #3 seems to have some decision-making within the economy: "do I build a new blacksmith in City A so that I can equip my troops there with something other than sticks, or build a second b

Maybe instead of "tesselation" you'd get "clumps" of cities. Of course, depending on gameplay one strategy might be to scatter your cities far and wide to try to influence as much land as possible. Or, you could try to "hide" some cities (some threads have even recommended/asked for the ability to hide cities, albeit at some great cost).

"Stack of Death" can be worked around with different types of game mechanic. Hard unit limits are one such method, though they can limit the "epic" feel of it, if they're too low. Still, they can make sense: you don't want Joe Shmuck the local Alderman suddenly in charge of 50,000 professional soldiers. The army just wouldn't function well (unless it had a decent, professional staff...). If the games operational and strategic victory conditions--that is, those things

Bear cavalry with virgin amazon warriors riding them? Anyone? Anyone?

Field armies vs. local levies (or "fyrd" if you prefer the Anglo-Saxon term) would make for interesting dynamics. I like the idea...

If we do have weather, I'd love to have "mud" as an effect on certain terrain types. So much for your heavy cavalry... [e digicons]:grin:[/e]

It would b really nice for every command available in the various editors to have a corresponding function call (or calls) available from the command line. Even a primitive CLI would suffice. If modders had such a tool, it would be relatively easy to randomly generate a lot of content in a parameterized fashion. Random maps--using parameters not normally available--would be possible, but wouldn't "break" anything because the command-line functions would really just duplicate

I think the key to get a Dwarf Fortress-like editor might be to just provide a command line function for every function available in the GUI-based editor. If we had that flexibility, it's possible someone it the modding community could come up with a good, parameterized algorithm set to call the Map Editor functions to build a world.

It's perhaps a bit off-color to speculate on their forums, but I half-wonder if Brad just does the games for fun at this point. I'm fairly sure GalCiv et. al are profitable, but the real bread and butter has to come from stuff like licensing ObjectDock to Dell.

Maybe a game setup setting for # of cities would help, similar in function to the star density setting in GalCiv2. If cities are complex to manage, you can always go for fewer cities. The "more is always better" people like myself can take a crack at Immense maps with Cities set to a more common setting. Cities, I think, use Essence, so maybe "cost of cities" is a more accurate term.

Luckmann - I think your trepidation is based on the assumption that Stardock will up and fold like Hellgate's publishers. While always theoretically possible, I don't think it's very likely. Stardock's entire business model is built around providing free content after release; Hellgate had no revenue plan post-release, and thus couldn't support an ever-increasing resource load with an ever-dwindling supply of capital.

Let's genericize "slaves" and "virgins" into "population" as a resource with multiple applications and aspects. It could be nice to have multiple population types: Nobility Merchants Yeomen (free farmers) Slaves (serfs = slave farmers for this purpose) Even just categorizing as "free" or "slaves" could be cool. As posted elsewhere, I'm all for having an "Oppressometer" as well.

Is there any current plan to have seasons and/or weather in the game? I think seasonality in particular could add to the strategic depth of the game. The risk, of course, is that everyone has "boring time" during winter (or months with mud that slow down army movement, etc.), but there are probably ways around that. What is the desired time scale for the game, anyways? An army can travel a long way in a month or three...

I like this idea a lot, but I would make the type of army (standing, vassal-based, levy) an option when your recruit the soldiers. I don't think we'd need a particularly complex system to add a lot of depth. For any unit (or group of units - not sure how unit grouping will work yet) you recruit, you can designate them: 1. Standing (Active) - Costs more upkeep, gotta keep 'em fed, but they drill regularly, can be used to protect caravans, patrol for enemy scouts, oppress th

If anyone still wants Camp #1, maybe Stardock should just get in touch with Oracle or SAP and OEM one of their enterprise-grade ERP systems. :p Camp #3 sounds like a winner. Does this count as crowdsourced development work? One final point: Camp #3 sounds very elegant because it allows the sovereign to set direction, without being a central command-and-control logistics application. It has a more realistic feel to it: any given single thing might not b

[quote who="kerzain" reply="22" id="2216463"] I would prefer to research tech that would allow for better utilization of a resource without having to deal with the specific extraction amounts. Think of it like: If the steel mill 4 heads/workers/whatever I can create enough armor to equip and support 20 soldiers. It wouldn't matter how long I've been mining the resource, once I get the workers in there I only have to wait a designated amount of time before the armor is av

Caveat: I haven't had a chance to read the 218 replies ahead of me yet. I like the third option a lot . As I was reading, I leaned toward Camp #1, but saw the concerns of Camp #2 as very legitamate. In the third option, you basically replace sliders with "build more of stuff where you want it". This does 2 major things: It limits flexibility It means you incur a cost to your resource infrastructure i think this is fair

Part of "how complex should cities be" may come down to "how common are cities"? If the player needs to manage dozens or hundreds of cities (immense maps, perhaps?), they should probably be kept simpler. If "every city counts", then more complex cities are fine. That said, complex cities are fine even in large numbers if the player has ways to intelligently automate certain functions, or can rely on the AI to do a "good enough" job at certain functions. See

So....we can have our cake and eat it too? Cool. I was about to add another "but I liked the bots concept", but what you describe works functionally the way I had hoped. I was really sorry to hear about the Demigod fiasco - hopefully it won't make you reconsider Stardock's stance on DRM. One of the chief reasons I buy from Stardock is that it's easy to play the games: no disc, no corrupting rootkits, no silly install limits after I rebuild Windows for the umpteenth t

I like Darkodinplus' idea of a triangle to meet the needs for "alignment" rather than a binary pole. I like GalCiv2's alignment system a loot: it adds to gameplay without being to complex. I think a triangle might add more depth while keeping the complexity low. It even lends itself well to being displayed/tracked graph

Unvictory is a great idea, especially if the condition isn't automatically available. Perhaps certain spell paths allow one to just hose the entire world, with the "if I can't have it, no one can" attitude. To balance things out, such spells could perhaps have a timed or delayed effect, or a gradual, worsening effect. Alternately, a quest could open up. The other players would essentially be racing to prevent catastrophe. Imagine: 4 players. On turn 1, Pl

When I was serving with the U.S. 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, they had 4 horses charge across a parade field once just for fun. It was amazing how much the ground shook with just four horses: it gave a small glimpse into those battles where hundreds or thousands of cavalrymen charged infantry formations. Good infantry definitely needed some stones. As an aside, it's also part of the shock value of modern armored formations. I generally trained and fought mounted, bu

I'm not really sure why we have squares at all. Why not just have a map, with distances between two points? Squares are useful for abstracting city creation, etc., but do they help with managing tactical combat, much less strategic movement? I can imagine AI creation would be a lot easier with squares: it adds quite a more finite set of states, for starters. But in terms of gameplay, do people on this thread think squares help?