GI_Joe

Thank you very much for posting this. It was a good and informative read. [quote quoting="post"]Iteration The first test build allows you to try the game out and see if it's working. 2/3 of development should be spent implementing, and 1/3 for iteration. The reason so much time is allocated for iteration is that some ideas just aren't going to work and have to be changed. 2 additional weeks of implementation may allow you to add more stuff, but 2 more week

Signed. Although this thread has been long derailed from its original intention (now full of arguments, and dissenters, and debate) I still think it's a good idea. No one want to micromanage hundreds of units, but Raven is right-- you don't have to. After major issues and bugs have been fixed, I'd like to see larger scale battles (whether that's "epic" or not I'll leave others to decide) and my armies with more units in them.

[quote]I think comparisons to WoW are somewhat accurate in that when I started playing WoW, that games was a DISASTER. The servers crashed all the time the client was ridiculously slow, even on good hardware, there were all kinds of quest bugs and so on. It was not fully polished, it was too early IMO. However it had seeds of greatness, it was fundamentally a good idea, a fun basis for the game. The details could be fixed and were fixed. Now? It is the greatest MMO so far. It is a damn fun ga

[quote] The points are valid and nearly the critiques of the game across the whole spectrum of reviews are consistent, almost uniform.[/quote] Perhaps, but I know I got the LE and right out of the box it worked. There was no crashing to desktop every 5 minutes, and it certainly wasn't unplayable. Whether it was fun in its present state is another matter.

I would suggest Risen as an RPG you should check out. It's a recent game (less than a year old) and yet very old school. It's the sort of game that really, really creates an atmosphere. If you have a decent rig, the graphics are very nice. All dialog is voiced, and the acting is great. It reminded me of the Ultima games in that there is a complete free roaming world, day/night cycle, and NPCs that actually keep to a schedule and don't stand in one place 24/7

[quote who="cfehunter" reply="204" id="2740521"]Nah there's no need to go back, and once you have your second city up you can freely teleport yourself and troops between your first and second city. [/quote] Thanks much, cfehunter! I'm gonna finish my campaign as is then.

For those of you who finished the campaign, can you help me out here? I managed to cross the pass from New Pariden into Gilden, but then the bug happened that reclosed it. I didn't even notice it was closed off until I tried to send a caravan through there many turns later. Now that 1.06 is here, it will break my saved game, and I don't want to start the campaign all over again. Is there going to be a need later to get back through that pass into the s

[quote]+ Campaign: Fixed oddity where reloading a save would reblock the pass between New pariden and Gilden.[/quote] This happened to me. After I patch and reload my game, will the pass be unblocked? Or will I have to start the campaign all over?

[quote]The latter. Also, you can buy those items in the shop and equip them on your sovereign and heroes.[/quote] I think Kryo here was referring to the OP's two choices, and so yes, this means that when the game refers to "retraining" it means you can train NEW units with upgraded equipment, and not that the old ones will be altered from what they were when originally trained.

[quote] Allowing to buy multiple similar items is the easy way to equip other army units (NPCs).[/quote] Except that it doesn't work, at least not for me. If I buy a new weapon in the shop, I can trade it to a non-hero unit but it won't let him equip it. He can only use the weapon he was trained with.

I can trade items to my non-hero units. Click their portrait circle so they are selected, and then click the "Trade Items" action in the tab to the left. The problem I am having is that although my non-hero unit can carry the items I trade to them, they cannot use them. That is, it appears that once I have trained a soldier unit, for example, they are stuck with the equipment they had when trained. I also cannot unequip their items as I can with hero units. I g

[quote]I now notice that I have no choice as to whether a fight in the wilderness with various brigands wolves and such will be automated or played out in the battle screen. Consequently my Raislin-esq wimpy mage is being eaten by wolves even though I have spells that would shake and bake most encounters.[/quote] Go to the options screen, and set the tactical threshold slider all the way to the left. Then it will give you the option of having a tactical battle even with very few

I'm guessing that it's referring to the fact that you can give new equipment to existing soldiers, either by trading it to them or by purchasing some from the merchants in your friendly towns.

I have a UI suggestion. When I go to save my game, if I select the same game name there currently is NO overwrite warning. Definitely a confirmation box that you really do want to overwrite and existing save should be added.

I decided to attack the black widow spider on the campaign map using a tactical battle. My sovereign has the fireball spell available, and when I mouse over the spellbook button, it says that casting a spell will cost 2.0 action points. I have 2.2 action points. So I open up the spellbook and cast fireball at the spider, and it works fine: nice fire graphic shoots across the screen, and it does damage to the spider. Afterwards, it's still my turn, and I notice th

I couldn't find this setting discussed in the manual. What's it for, so I will know what I should set it to?

[quote]... better yet, people, just use some sense. We don't need more forums, just more discretion .[/quote] ROFL. True as this is, I assure you, adding forums will be far easier than getting discretion and sense from posters.

[quote]I remember that arch-designer Frogboy mentioned somewhere, a year or so ago, that he was aiming for truly epic, gigantic maps -- their size only limited by the amount of RAM the gamer had available. Considering that many players' computers now exceed 2GB of RAM, disposing of a 64-bit OS, I wonder why we are currently limited to those so-called "large" maps. [/quote] The stickied FAQ on the main forum home page notes that they are planning a 64-bit version of Elemental, but that

[quote]I think Frogboy said you can randomize the maps if you take the seeds out.[/quote] He also said that to do so would throw balance out the window. I think what we'd all like is for there to be truly random landmasses, so that chokepoints and such change, but also to have a balanced spread of resources across said maps so that the game doesn't start slowly or unnessarily disadvantage one player over the others. If having that is impossible, then I'd rathe

No, in Civ 4 more than the goodies and resources were randomized. You would select a map type, such as "Archipelago" or "Great Plains" or "Inland Sea" and then you would select settings to further define the map, such as the climate and the how much water would be on the map. Then it would generate a landmass that was actually different every time. I don't remember ever getting the same map, even with all the settings the same. I would love to hear that Elemental wil

I have been reading these forums today, both before and after people began to comment on the game, and I haven't read any that I would class as rude or insulting. The guy who posted that he got a duplicate map was raising legitimate disappointment over the fact that he got the exact same geographic map after only four tries. He wasn't rude in his protestations, merely communicating quite clearly how upset he was over at having lost a very fun part of the g

[quote]4) There was a discussion earlier about how bonuses multiply. What I took away from that was that a 10%, 20%, and 50% bonus would be 1.1*1.2*1.5 = 1.98 = 198%. Looking at say food production, those would just be summed to 80% bonus. Are there places where percentage increases compound on each other, contrary to behavior in cities? I haven't noticed any yet.[/quote] 1.98 is 98%, not 198%. You would need 2.98 to get 198%.

[quote]And Civ's way of doing things IS standard across most games. Multiplicative bonuses lead to odd things, how do you apply a -20% modifier? You certainly can't just stick -0.2 in the calculation, because the results will make absolutely no sense. Multiplicative bonuses also lead to some of the problems we saw in beta 4, where at one point early in the game food is scarce and then you start stacking bonuses and the scaling explodes to such a degree that food becomes near infinite.[/quote]

[quote who="searchforwisdom" reply="77" id="2721486"]Well my thread asking for help was just deleted so in my looking around I found this thread to be the most relevant to my issue. Long story short I had heard about this game and wanted to check it out. Didnt have a good idea of the release date, I actually thought it was in September. Today I was in a store, saw this game and bought it. I came home, installed it, and immediately was greeted with a box saying "the gam

Same here. I've purchased stuff from them before and never had problems. The only issue with them is that they usually have very limited quantities, especially when the orders are fulfilled by third-party sellers. If you want this deal, you should jump on it quickly.