Burress

I played on normal and I thought the world was too aggressive. It is quite frustrating losing cities to crag armies and umber-beasts. It takes so long to research decent troops upgrades and to actually build the decent troops to protect cities that for most of the first hundreds of turns it is all sovereign and heroes who can't cover the distance between cities nearly fast enough. This period takes too long and is frustrating. Slow leveling (why? this is the most fun), slow tech,

[quote who="zigzag" reply="68" id="3089055"] Quoting Burress, reply 62There will be cases were copyright infringement was a good thing. I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone -- outside of industry trade groups -- who believes that copyright laws always result in desirable outcomes. [/quote] Not too hard pressed, because that was what was argued by several in this very thread. Black and white, no gray. I just wanted an acknowledgement of some gray. Th

[quote who="Kantok" reply="52" id="3088664"] Prove it that it's a net gain. That's a GIANT assumption to make, and then base an argument on, with no proof. [/quote] The transfer of wealth is not the only metric of good in the world. Do you think there is a good effect on society by creative digital media (movies, books, games, music) and it disappears as soon as wealth is not transferred? Or do you think the people who

[quote who="Kantok" reply="29" id="3088290"] So you're saying people are justified stealing because it enhances their... what? Cultural level? Intelligence? The only thing you listed that can legitimately be counted as a primary source of stimulation or education is books. If the others are your primary source of either simulation or education you are neither stimulated nor educated. Regardless, it doesn't muddy the waters one bit.

[quote who="Kantok" reply="21" id="3088231"] If you steal it, you're saying you're enjoyment is more important than the creators' livelihood. That the people who produce it should do so for free because your desire to enjoy something trumps their right to earn value for their work. [/quote] It's not just enjoyment though. Culture media items (books, music, movies, games) are good for people, they are a primary source of intelle

[quote who="TorinReborn" reply="16" id="3088210"] In my country games are more expensive then in USA and our life standard is 2-3x less then US. So why is that fair? Do USA companies really think this is fair and not highway robbery?[/quote] This is a good reason why software piracy is a complicated issue. It is very difficult to make the case that people should forego culture (movies, music, books, games) because they are too poor to afford it. They can be threatened with

I think this thread is good evidence as to how easily people can fall in to hyperbolic name-calling on the internet. There is no visible evidence of the effect of our words on the people reading them, so there is a tendency to increase the intensity of the rhetoric to make a point one feels passionate about. For instance, you can't have a civilized conversation throwing around phrases like "vicious, amoral retards" to refer to apparently all gamers or "bullshit scum thieves" to refer to p

I disagree with the above. Since geeks are outliers, most geek communication must be geek to human simply by regression to the mean.

I think the numbers are just indications of how close they think the game is to release. I highly doubt that .77 was exactly the 77th build of the game and they planned exactly 23 more to release.

I wouldn't like it if the AI did the things I do to it to me. AOE spells are brutal. It is very difficult for troops to survive even weak ones. I don't defend any of my cities really, I rely on Firestorm and Cloud Walk for protection when necessary. If I got hit with a strong Firestorm (or multiple Firestorms!) the moment I stepped in to my opponents territory that killed a stack, or Cloud Walked a hero stack of doom next to me, I may feel it is unfair. Yet that is what I try to

I noticed that, but it seems like even if it did work, the scout would just be killed within a few turns anyway. The scouts need to have some kind of sneakiness trait that keeps them out of encounters.

If a corruption spell is cast on a node that is being built on in a city sphere, the node will visually change to death but it will still count as whatever node it was before. Sometimes I have even had a node just die and it is not built and it can no longer be built on. Often times the build button will look like it can be activated, but it doesn't do anything. Corruption can mess up a node if it is being built on and if it is already built. In general, this is a buggy spell.

1. Quest variety. I would like to see a large variety of quests, at least not be asked to escort the nobleman's daughter several times a game. Since these are largely text-based, I don't see why they can't be produced en masse. Even if they are the same quest mechanics with a different story, it adds to the sense of novelty. 2. Diplomacy. It seems like this is barely implemented at the moment. The only thing that can be traded is diplomatic capital, and I am not sure what

[quote who="Lord Reliant" reply="3" id="3063099"]Is there anyway to reverse it? Seems like there should be a countermeasure.[/quote] It would have to be poison immunity, but I am not sure how to get that for living troops. I think the hardy trait only confers half- resistance to poison damage, so it would still kill someone, it would just take maybe a turn or two longer. Dirge of Ceresa I believe is a Resolyn faction spell, so maybe I should explain what it does. It does 6 poi

[quote who="sweatyboatman" reply="1" id="3063056"] Frankly, that sounds absolutely awesome! Corrupting nodes should be a global event and should really really piss off the AI.[/quote] That's a good idea. Corrupting nodes had no impact whatsoever on diplomatic relations. I tried to just keep peace in this game because no amount of troops my opponents could make could live through a casting of Dirge of Ceresa (if a single troop unit takes 80 damage, a 3 troop unit ta

I would hate to see this spell removed. Its fun to use and it is very convenient, which trumps balance for me. I think there are balance issues, but it would be possible to nerf the fun right out of the game if they attacked these problems by lopping them off.

I found that the death line, specifically the spells Soulburn (requires fire 2) and Dirge of Cicera, to be incredibly powerul. The strategy is to corrupt all nodes in to death nodes, which provides a huge buff on these spells in combination with evoker and the starting soul staff. Dirge of Ceresa and about 7 death nodes with the impulsive trait does 70-80 damage to every unit on the first turn, and about half that each successive turn for 10 turns. This even works on the dragons in the final

[quote who="db0" reply="3" id="3059737"]There is actually a reason not to build in a city. Almost everything you build has maintenance. If you build too much, you will run out of money.[/quote] I found this out eventually. It was mostly the early game where this bothered me. I think an optional pop-up would be optimal. I would want it for the early game, but it would probably be more of a nuisance late-game on a large map.

Since there doesn't appear to be a reason to not always be building/training something in a city, there should be a end of production notification when the queue is empty. When I come back over to my city from exploring and find that it hasn't been doing anything for I don't know how long, I feel like missed out which is no fun. This would be a great way to conserve the player's mental resources for actual strategic decisions.

I counted 89 spells in the pdf. MoM had at least 210 (based on 35 pages of spell descriptions with at least 6 spells per page) and probably as many 250-260 (higher average per page). I didn't find the number anywhere and I didn't want to count by hand. There were some interestings spells though, and maybe you are going for good game balance. I could live with this if the game is interesting and tight in other dimensions of gameplay. I found quests a disaster in WoM,

I think there is a lot going on here with this phenomenon. A lot of different needs are being met by a lot of people. We are learning what bothers us and what doesn't, what hurts others feelings, what this kind of hurt feels like, how to defend others, how to rise above and sink with bitterness. Nerdraging is behovely, and everybody involved is getting something useful out of it.

[quote]I understand if a company releases a game that's not ready, takes your money, and walks away...that REALLY sucks, and no one wants to support the trend of companies doing that. But no one, even those who hate the game in it's current form, appears to think Stardock is going to do that.[/quote] I don't trust them to fix the game later anymore than they would have trusted me to pay them later for it. They released patches for GalCiv 2 for years but it seemed like each one broke a

Only thing I would add, though it is probably covered under 1, is there should be the greatest possible amount of variety in the randomly generated content. This was a huge plus in Gal Civ 2, you never knew what was going happen next with random events. There seems to be so much more room for different kinds of elements like this in Elemental ((such as quests, lairs, wandering monster armies, dungeons ect.). Seeing new things as much as is reaso

I definitely think rewards are important. Maybe some rinky-dink quests have mundane rewards, but I think rewards should stretch across all the game mechanics. Rewards should also be signficant for signficant quests, balance is not as important as the coolness factor of rewards (difficulty level can be the balancing force, not altering the rewards, but just in giving the ai so many advantages anyway). There is nothing lamer than doing something significant in a

It was a real gem of a game. It had its gameplay quirks though, one you probably just ran in to. For some reason there was an advantage to being attacked during tactical combat as opposed to initiating attack. I remember playing in the mid 90's and there were these cheap spirit warriors you could summon, and as long as they were being attacked and not doing the attacking, they could even take out dragons. I had even lost my super Torin hero, suped up to a high level wi