Pherdnut

I can speak from some experience on that. It takes a lot of time to review most games properly, especially strategy games. Unfortunately, that's time that your average gaming journalist doesn't have given the sheer quantity of garbage games you have to give fair play to before trying to find new and interesting ways of describing them as 'derivative crap' while trying to avoid working 50-80+ hours a week. This game complicates matters due to Stardock rewriting core mechanics a

Does the Wal Mart edition feature the ability to shut down all local merchant operations when you build the MegaStore structure in your towns?

You know, it's not so much the bugs that make me a little timid about making a purchase. It's the idea of really enjoying a core mechanic or really loving a certain unit or spell and then seeing that get changed or nerfed in favor of something I don't like as much. Part of me would rather just not know and come to enjoy the game once it's stabilized a bit more. It makes me wonder if it would be feasible to loosely couple game rules/balancing/mechanics concerns from the lower level stu

Upgrades that improve turnaround time on unit and city/planet/nation enhancement building are typically the most important thing to focus on in 4X games. That way when the idiot AI throws 800,000 complete rookie canon fodder units at you, you can start cranking out the ultra elite adamantium halfling slingers just fast enough to eradicate them without a scratch and then wipe out their now-completely undefended towns. My impression of Stardock is that they do a better job of making you balance

I'm not normally a grammar Nazi but this is one internet phenomenon I'd really like to stamp out. It's lose, losing, or loser. Not "loose." Anyway, I'm delighted to hear this game is as buggy as MOM was when it first came out.

That would be a pretty funny coincidence. IIRC, one of MOM's terrain altering spells caused a similar problem.