Werewindlefr

Are there going to be changes to the current equipment stats, though, or is this going to stay the same 'til FE ?

[quote]it needs a serious re-thinking. [/quote] [e digicons]k1[/e] I have been a vocal supporter of that point of view these past few months: if this game is to be good someday, the basics need to change because they will damage anything that will be built upon these. No matter how many great ideas are implemented into the game later on, if the core mechanics don't work, nothing will. I'm glad to see other people feel the same.

Grouped units can work if they have clear disadvantages in some areas. So their tactical inflexibility needs to be exacerbated. It should be a tradeoff: in many situations, squads should be the better options, but in some they shouldn't. Either make them more vulnerable to area damage, or reduce terrain-based bonuses for them as the squad size increase (but reduce gradually with increasing squad size : a binary solution would create other problems). It's difficult to creat

Worse yet: resource-spawning techs can still spawn resources in your opponent's territory. Happens a lot with recruitable monster resources, actually. That's right, you can shoot yourself in the foot by discovering a tech. I wonder if a change to this system is in the work. For the reasons you mentioned, this system simply doesn't work as it is and needs to be changed before new content/gameplay concepts are added into the game. A small comment though: the fact

A system where a flat 1 damage is dealt by overclassed weapons doesn't work. This would make clubs much better than any other low-tier weapon. The idea behind it isn't wrong, but it needs more refinement to still give a distinction between different levels of "outclassed" weapons. So in this picture, shortswords and maces should have a reasonably change of doing 2-3 damage, broadsword an even higher chance to deal 2-3 and a small chance to deal 4, etc. Give me a reason to keep using these int

[quote]Elemental currently lacks a kind of rock, paper, scissor quality.[/quote] Good. I don't like my games to be User Interfaces for Rock Paper Scissors. It's better to go for a system in which situation dictates what a unit will be good for, and make it more complex and less obvious than a "tanks are good against infantry, infantry are good against choppers, choppers are good against tanks" sort of system. Combined arms, synergy, several uses for each units, uses that vary

[quote]1.2 is about UI, AI and bug fixes. It is not a feature patch (at least not on the big level for things like Global Mana and changing to a Population economy).[/quote] Balancing, too ? [quote]15. Pioneers/sovs cannot build/found cities in other people's territory[/quote] That's very, very good. Can we have another exception to your "no new feature" rule for this patch ? Give us the ability to break alliances. It's a highly annoying issue. Les

[quote]Armor is a known issue and will be changing in the future.[/quote] Wait, what ? The gross overpowerness of later armor (even with 1.09p) has been a common complaint, but I had the feeling that this part was "working as intended". Did we convince Toby and you in the end ? If we did, please consider a rebalancing of weapons as well: some 2-handed weapons could create some issues because the basic number of attacks is 3/turn (meaning the opponent will never get the c

Hmm, I don't see dodge as being too high. Quite the contrary: it's so low that it's almost useless compared to armor. I get way, way, way more "blocked" than "dodge"

[quote who="Heavenfall" reply="3" id="2866109"]The problem is armor. It's such a wall of imbalance there's no way around it. For balance, champions need more health and dodge, not more armor.[/quote]Wait, what ? I mean, I do agree. I really do. Hell, I wouldn't have made a whole mod if I didn't. But I recall reading you saying (on IRC) that it was okay as it was ...

Company of Heroes and Dawn of War alike, actually, with Dark Crusade. Relic Entertainment, then (who are also excellent game creators, and the loss of Brian Wood is a huge one indeed). Also, Guild Wars Factions/Nightfall ?

[quote who="Thiryn" reply="53" id="2862807"] Yes, because having a large and active fanbase (albeit, with a combined IQ of 10) is the main prerequisite for being a good game...[/quote]This type of comment (about the IQ part) makes me think that all fanbases are alike, in the end...

Trojasmic, if popularity was equal to quality, American Idol would be better than No Exit (by Sartre) and the New Wave of the 60's cinema. You know what they say about billions of flies that can't possibly be wrong... (okay, I do think World of Warcraft is actually a very well made game, but because of its inherent qualities, not its popularity) Edit: Funny, I'd give roughly 1 fewer point for every of those items, almost exactly. Exception: <

[quote who="impinc" reply="44" id="2862736"]That last statement is a pretty powerful one. Especially if you are speaking to people who have experienced SD expansions in the past. The difference Twilight made to GalCiv...are you talking even more radical than that? If so, whoo hoo! [/quote]However, Twilight was improving an already great, well-designed game to masterpiece levels. In the end, While Twilight does add a lot, most of the previous systems stayed untouched. I think

Unfortunately, it snows in Plymouth as well. I wonder if some people at SD will also have sudden illness XD.

Trojasmic, if they do all of that, I'll give the game a 9, or even a 10. I think GalCiv 2 Twilight is a 9, actually. But yeah, I'd give Elemental 1.1 a 5/10. After all, Sword of the Stars vanilla was just a 7 on metacritics.

If you don't have any losses, then squads are unnecessary (and they are). [quote](Not that I can do any better myself).[/quote]Ha ! I wouldn't be able to either, but that's not what I'm paid for anyway :p. (Although I can do light tweaking to P&P RPG rules, that's the best I can do).

[quote who="RFHolloway" reply="35" id="2862385"] But the whole point of magic was to bend the rules a bit - its difficult to know how far you can bend the rules without breaking them (MTG veteran - STOPPED playing around weatherlight and still remembers timetwister and plague rats with affection)[/quote] That's entirely true, and that's what magic does. So with experience, the R&D team learned what could and couldn't be done. But they found out that a card that allows yo

[quote who="Cruxador" reply="28" id="2861796"] Nope. It's due to numbers not being what they should be. But here's the thing - the balance isn't really that bad at this point, at least with regards to equipment and units. So this point is kind of poorly chosen.[/quote] The numbers are not what they should be because you need to give +1 to each armor part at every tech change. When armor quickly becomes bigger than hit points, you have a real problem.

[quote who="KillzEmAllGod" reply="1" id="2859148"]galciv2 is really the only great 4x space game out there!.[/quote]It's a great space 4X, but I wouldn't say the *only* great space 4X. And polluting polls on other forums is bad.

[quote who="rivers_richard" reply="29" id="2862225"] Clearly you've never played Chrono Trigger.[/quote] Eh. I'd have said Fallout 1/2. Or Alpha Centauri.

I agree with Satrhan and LightofAbraxas on this one. There are quite a few things requiring improvement (magic. 1 volcano per turn, seriously ? ) or redesign (tactical battles, for instance) before I would give this one a "7/10" mark. But then again, I'm a harsh grader. But yeah, 7/10 would mean it's on par with the competition, and for now I still see it as quite behind.</a

[quote who="Cruxador" reply="24" id="2861318"] [quote] AoW2 was pretty bad.[/quote]AoW2 was better in almost every respect than 1.1; there's a level of bias here, of course, but while the units were unbalanced, it wasn't totally out of control, the magic system worked, the city building worked, and in general, the mechanics worked together. [quote]Eh, a lot of people don't care for that stuff, but I'm personally quite pleased to have an element of randomness involved.

How much better than 1.1d will it be, AI-wise ? What can we expect ?

[quote]Stardock promised a lot with their patches, and as far as I'm concerned, 1.1 delivered on those promises - I'm not saying 1.1 Elemental is great, or that it's even good, but it is a vast improvement over 1.0 (for what it's worth), it proves their willingness to rework fundamental systems from the ground up and simply put a lot of effort into improving the game post launch. If 1.1 is any indication, we have a lot to look forward to in 1.2, the two expansions, and so o