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The OP's entire premise is flawed in any case. It is by no means necessary to spam level 1 cities to crush the AI. People are doing this because there's no downside if they have the resources to spare, but it's not necessary. A stack of summoned creatures, e.g. fire giants, spy minions, anything with a good ranged attack ability, is usually enough to steam roll the AI decisively I find. Keep in mind that while it may send stacks to harass you, it's leaving it's cit

Patience, grasshopper. It'll be ready when it's ready. [e digicons]:P[/e]

Regarding increasing influence / zone of control, I don't pretend this will solve the issue of too many cities. People who still want to spam them for economic reasons still can and will. It may solve one subset of city spam though, i.e. little outposts purely to make one's border's coherent, to fill in the gaps in the wilderness. It's occured to me that it's also a scaling issue. I typically play large maps and on those you can often have large wilderness areas between resource

I'd like to see more diverse spell books that play significantly differently. Currently the 4 elemental books at least feel pretty much identical. Which is shame for a game called Elemental!

The only spell I find truly useful is teleport. Some of the summoning spells are nice. Direct damage or AOE damage once in a while, but it's usually not needed (or the spell will just do zero damage which is super annoying considering how long it takes mana to regen). The spy minion and giant special abilities are all far better damage "spells" than most of the damage spells my casters have and I use those abilities regularly.

[quote who="malekith" reply="89" id="2770678"] I think our opinions are pretty much in line. I'm not saying spamming is super overpowered. I am saying that if I have an idle unit queue I'm better off building a pioneer to plop down in some available space so that I have options down the road. There is no downside, no choice, and that's a problem. What you decide to build in that spammed city is interesting, to a point, and has the potential for mistakes.<br

[quote who="malekith" reply="87" id="2770662"] If you're building thing in the spam cities that you dont need, you're doing it wrong. They exist to turn resources you have a surplus (let's say gildar) into resources you lack (tech research). If I'm swimming in materials, I'm not going to build labor pits. If your economy is perfectly balanced then they are of no effect. If your economy contains imbalances and shortages, they are of great effect.<b

[quote who="malekith" reply="81" id="2770608"] But it isn't a choice. Spamming is strictly better for your economy right now. Increased influence isn't going to change that. [/quote] No, it's really not better for your economy, or only better over the extremely long term. How much gold and other resources does it take to build all those one-resource-per-turn buildings? And then some people are building the really expensive multiplier buildings

[quote who="Kalin" reply="76" id="2770556"] I'll also add that increasing the ZOC doesn't do much to help, all it does is allow some players who don't like to spam cities to play that way. It doesn't change the fact that you can still build little cities inside your ZOC to make 1 gildar, tech, arcane, mat, and a couple of food per turn. In fact, it makes it even easier as you won't have to protect those resource outpost since it'll most likely be covered by a large city's ZOC

How many turns in is this? I think you got a bit unlucky, the random mobs usually leave my cities alone and maybe pillage a resource node once in a while. In any case, build more peasants for your early defense and scouting needs. You can pump them out quite quickly and they are cheap. If you are under pressure, get the tech that lets you build squads and then build some squads of peasants. That should be more than enough for your early game defense needs against random monster attacks.

[quote who="Raven X" reply="50" id="2770413"] Yes but the larger ZOC is needed so the towns are Spread Out more. That's the issue with spam. Having upkeep costs would help greatly too though. Mostly though it's an aesthetic issue. It just doesn't look good with tons of cities so close together. [/quote] Personally it's not the aesthetics that bother me about city spam, it's all the tedious micro-management. It's very noticeable on a large map, where you end up with a L

I'd say wait until at least version 1.1, which should be out by the end of September. Then check back here and get some feedback on how 1.1 is to play before you decide.

Also there aren't actually any capital cities currently. You as the player may perceive one to be your capital, but in terms of actual gameplay mechanics there is nothing making it distinctively different from any other cities.

[quote who="Admiral Rom" reply="64" id="2770264"]Can anyone let me know where I can find out more about: 1) Setting up dosbox to work properly with MoM? (I can only get it playing in a small window with no sounds atm). 2) Any detailed info on tips for how to play MoM? Thanks in advance. [/quote] Re: 1) Hit alt-enter to force dosbox to use your whole screen. Can't help you with the sound, t

Pikemen only defeated cavalry when the cavalry commander was foolish enough to charge right onto the waiting pikes. More likely to happen in close quarters with limited room to maneuver. Where there was room to maneuver, the cavalry would be used to flank the pikemen and go charge the annoying archers in the rear, or any other softer and strategically important targets.

I'd also like to see the influence zones of cities increased substantially. Spamming level 1 cities in wilderness areas for the sole reason of linking up the influence zones between my main resource node extraction cities is not fun. I'm not spamming these cities for the economic benefits, but purely to spread my influence, and I don't buy the argument that multiplying 1resource/turn buildings in these spam cities is worth it. All these multiplier buildings ar

I disagree with the OP completely. Good game design easily makes up for outdated graphics and UI. Why? Because the games are still loads of fun. Played MoM last week: Great game, still loads of fun! I'm sorry to say that I think that all 18 MBs of 1994 goodness are still better than Elemental 1.06 in terms of gameplay and fun. Played X-com last month: Amazing game, tons of fun, graphics not so important. Played MOO2 last year: had a blast. If I could

Uhh, that is a flaw, Step 3 and 4 in his list should never happen. And no they don't happen all the time in the real world. In the real world people remeber what happened yesterday or last year (i.e. what happned in the previous turns in game terms). Example: USA to Britain: Saddam Hussein is evil, I'll give you $1 Billion dollars to bomb him back into the stone age. Britain to USA: Sounds good, time for war! Britain to USA: Hmmm,

It's not bad, it's actually a logical thing to do given the current mechanics, assuming you can spare the resources. The reason it needs to be changed is because it's boring and not fun.

They should just combine it into one resource node, e.g. pastures, which automatically give the faction appropriate mount, i.e. horses or wargs, if you get it into a city influence zone and develop it.

Don't feed the troll.

[quote who="solidsmooky" reply="51" id="2766668"] All Paradox games are buggy piles of messes though, so there's that. [/quote] So you agree then that Paradox is another small developer/publisher with lots in common with Stardock? [e digicons]:grin:[/e] I sort of think of Paradox as Stardock's european counterpart. Both are indie developers/publishers who make and love strategy games and I love them for being there to take a risk

/Signed [e digicons]k1[/e]

To paraphrase another one of my favourite game designers, Johan Andersson over at Paradox: A patch is never late nor early, it comes out exactly when Brad means it to!

[quote who="thisisretarded" reply="7" id="2765936"] taxes: you only hate them until you cannot force your imaginary citizens to pay them. [/quote] Classic. [e digicons]:thumbsup:[/e] Personally I don't think the economy is broken, just go find the resources you need on the map and multiply the hell out of them. I wouldn't mind some more (well actually a lot more) economic complexity and depth, but I guess their design vision is to try to keep it simple and not a mic