mrakomo

At this time we speak about the humanoid cities. How about the crystalline ones? (Of The Cataclysm). They shall be quite different.

AFAIK a keep or a fortress was in any larger settlement in medieval times. So I guess every city can have it. However I very like the idea of the limit of the town structures per the map tile. It really makes a sense. However it can happen, that te population decreases in the city. What do you suggest for this case - shall the already built improvement be destroyed?

I guess there will be much more buildings. E.g. bank - it represents the category economy buildings. I am nearly sure a marketplace will be present. It was in every medieval city and even in bigger some villages. And there will be probably much more such buildings. Casino, pawnshop, mint, various guild houses They may be also "resource-related" - horse market, food market... The same for the storage facilities - grannary, various ranches (where steeds may be held) etc. We will see

Displaying the leaves on trees - it was one interesting project on my university. I don't think we should insist on it. However zoom layers are a very good tool. Perhaps it would be nice if it would be possible to store the zoomlevel and use a shortcut to switch to it. As for me if I play GC2, I use mostly 2 zoomlevels and adjust them by the mouse wheel. The shortcut would reduce the time to adjust the view.

It was said the caravans can be ambushed. This is good. It would be nice to be able to add a protecting army to the caravan. The army would follow the caravan and in the case of ambush it would protect the merchants. I miss this feature in GC2.

[quote]Why is it when something new comes along there are individuals who just have to say that[/quote] The answer to this question is quite simple. We all want new features too, however we want the old ones to be supported too. If no one does say it, the project managers may decide there is no need for funding the backward compatibility. And as for me I do not want to spend thousands of bucks to get the computer to the working state where it already was. The other reason may

[quote]the one problem I can see is making the AI deal with them effectively - both the first time and subsequent times.[/quote] This is exactly my point. If you attack two or three cities with the invisible wall, you will not be surprised if the third, fourth etc. city has the invisible wall too. So if AI wants to handle properly, the invisible wall will have no desired effect. However the invisibility is fine. Used on units: in the tactical combat it shall greatly increase t

I agree that auctions are a good idea. If implemented, it may even be possible for neutral merchants to sell the artifact (like megaevents in GC2) or the mercenary units to offer their services. The checkbox idea when creating an auction is also good idea. I suggest to add buttons select all, select none, select allies, invert. The default setting should be all except the nations i am at war with. For multiplayer purposes there shall be a possibility to add a message. Tr

[quote]And to deal with the problem of the attackers being able to see the defenders through the wall, the illusion could be made more complex and could 'lie' about what's behind it from the outside.[/quote] This may work, however it is a projection, not the invisibility. However how do you think such thing could be implemented? What shall AI do? What would probably real players do?

The problem of the hidden city in the game is the cities in the game are not Gondolin like. Gondolin could remain hidden, because it was completely isolated from the world. However cities in this game are considered not to be isolated. If that happen, merchants can not access the city, nor the peasants.The city would starve and you would get fine ruins. If on the other hand merchants can enter the city, spies can do it too. Invisible city walls is a bad thing. The enemy units will see

The invisible wall is a bad idea i think. A hidden city is also nonsense - even a blind spy can reveal it. It is difficult to hide something, where there are lots of people. However invisible units or fake ones are usefull. Such things are quite common praxis of the warfare (even if not achieved by spells). Bridges (un)destroeyd also make sense. Fooling the enemy is often more usefull than the direct combat.

I think the masking spell was in Heroes of the might and magic. It allowed to mask units in the army - you could see all unit piles to be the strongest beast of the army. It was however not quite usefull - such thing may be used to protect weaker armies, however the higher level of this spell caused the number of the beasts of the pile to be zero. So AI wanted to attack you more likely, which was exactly the thing one wanted to prevent. I think something like this could be definitely us

Of course they do that. There is a possibility to show the content of the texture from the single side or from both sides. If single-side, it is invisible, if you are on the bad side. The think is the calculation is not for free. GPU or CPU must calculate the angles of all (invisible inclusive triangles). I know, GPUs and CPUs are fast, however on large maps low-end machines and laptops may have problems with it. It would be bad if you would have to rotate the map to reveal obje

No, I disagree. Unlocking the camera is simple. I modeled a 3D landscape in my thesis and moving camera was feature you really needed for such project. In OpenGL it was pretty easy and it is similar in DirectX. However it is something different. If you use a 3D engine and lock the camera angle, you must draw the objects only from one single side. The other side remains hidden forever and so you don't need to bother with it. It also means much less triangles to paint.

I do hope it will NOT be able to change the angle of the view. With a good design it is not necessary. If one can rotate the screen, it makes only problems with orientation. And if you allow this, you must handle the extensive 3D graphic problems too and it does not have a any influence on a gameplay. Heroes V has this feature and I think it is useless there. It is better (and easier) to have a nice graphics from one side rather than from all sides.

I think it is an excellent idea. Hiring heroes in the pubs is usual way how to get them. However to be able to "raise own hero" would be a great addition. It may be nice if the name generator adds some addition of the name ("Hrax the dragonslayer" (hero was created after killing a dragon), "Grun from Arwana" (hero was created after capturing the city of Arwana) and such. The hero should carry the weapon and armor of the unit he was created from and of course he shall have the same race.

[quote]my experiences with GalCiv II have been very positive in the aspect of regaining focus[/quote] It is it lost focus = restart in my Lenovo R61. The game does not crash, the graphics nevers returns back. I don't blame the developers of GC2 however. I guess the problem is in the video driver. Playing in the Window mode may solve the problem with the lost focus however. I think the autosave after every battle may is an overreaction. IMHO the worst case of the crash is after

[quote]In Gal civ 2 you can set the number of turns it takes before it autosaves already.[/quote] I did not know that. I immediatelly set this option in my GC2. The problem is not in Alt-Tab. If you know the application crashes, you would not do this or at least you would save the game before the attempt manually. However loosing focus is unpredictalbe. An antivirus program reports it is being updated, a battery is low, an e-mail is recieved..... After losi

I have a practical suggestion for the developers. It would be nice if the game triggers an autosave if the game loses the focus (on Alt-Tab or if some other background application steals it). After losing the focus most games crash or at least can not get the focus back. E.g. Galactic Civilisation II has this problem. It would be nice if one could reload the game to the status before the crash. Or the other solution to this problem - autosave every turn and if the player s

Not to be able to save game is bad. I lost several games, because after several victories the game crashed. And after that I lost every battle since the last save. Sometimes even the save got corrupted. I like to play big worlds. If I spend several hours by playing and such crash happens to me, I would think twice before start the game again. And the reason of the crash need not to be the fault of the developer of the game. A lot of things can go wrong in your computer.

I would be very happy if I could try the game mechanics. It is exactly what does the great game. We are trying to develop a RPG board game with a friend. We use similar approach for our betatests. Nice pictures are nice pictures, however if the gameplay is bad, no graphics can save that. If someone does not like it, no problem, there is no need to install the game unless it is complete with all features. I suggest however to add some warning dialog to the beta, because I have no doubts someon

If you have Windows mobile, I suggest you to download the russian remake of this game. It is free and it is the first XCOM, Enemy Unknown. You cannot set the difficulty level (it is something between normal and hard), but it has the same look and feel and gameplay as the original game. Here are the details

I had a problem with searching stargates too. I was very happy they make it so. X2 had all sectors the same. You new exactly where to find them even in the uncharted systems. Since X3 the solar systems become unique and there was a possibility to get lost. There are two solutions for your problem. 1) you can buy detailed the maps of sectors from local dealers, 2) you may buy better sensors (there is a variant with double or triple range). You may also buy the scout software and send som

Well, there is one more advantage of X3: Reunion - after aplying the last official patch it does not require a DVD in the drive (X3: terran conflict does at the moment). Both are excellent games. I bought both, but now I am playing Reunion. For trading it is not necessary to use a mouse or a joystick, but for combat the good joystick is an advantage.

I think, that mixing the names of Galactic civilisation and this game is not a good idea. Well, at least unless there is a connection between those games. And I don't see any reason why there should be one.