Ratya48

Even when victory is not assured, victory is not usually achieved by micro. At least, not the sort of micro that could be eliminated by a powerful UI toolkit. Most micro is simple maximization, and maximization is something that computers are very good at. Let the computer maximize the relative strength and weaknesses of your army, and you can focus on what to do with that army. Unless, of course, you enjoy doing the maximization yourself.

I'm not really talking about automation. What I am talking about is a set of powerful tools that allows you to manage your empire on a much larger scale. I don't want to use somebody else's general AI, I want to be able to create my own. Without modding. I want an in-game tool that allows you to define a set of rules that your general will follow. Instead of having to manually tell my stack to conquer city after city, which gets incredibly tedious (albeit still somewhat satisfying), I want to

I really like the idea of having a queue of mega-events generated at the beginning of the game and having the player be able to cast a spell to "divine" what the mega-event will be, with varying degrees of accuracy depending on their skill level. Natural events could be divined with little implementational difficulty. However, events that involve player or AI would be more difficult. You could randomly generate these types of events at the beginning of the game, but that would severely limit

Just out of curiosity, when does the next round of betas start? If we preorder now, when will we be able to play the beta?

Direct control is certainly preferable, until it isn't. At some point, given the massive maps that Stardock plans on having, turns will take hours. Unless there are suitable systems in place that allow you to automate movement and production, allowing you to focus on your grand strategy instead of whether your 57 scouts move N, W, E or S. Think about the civilization manager in GCII. How cool was it that in 5 seconds, you could change the production of each planet in your empire. I would cert

From my experience with Gal Civ II, Stardock is great at providing appropriate tools to prevent annoying micromanagement. I'm sure that you will be able to automate army and city building when it gets too tedious to be fun.

I really like all these ideas. It seems like this method of research will allow each empire to have a really unique feel, something that 4X games have usually missed the mark on.

We're not knocking you for bringing it up. We're just debating whether or not it would be fun to add it. More power to you for thinking of something like this. (However, I stand by my original point.)

I agree that it would be very interesting to have to deal with the gender proportions of your city. However, when you have a kingdom with dozens of cities, wars on multiple fronts, and several bands of heroes pursuing quests, do you really want to have to worry about having the right balance of men and women in your cities? It seems to me that it would get tiresome very quickly. I would be satisfied with simply having a percentage of my population be recruitable. And maybe if I recruit too ma

Addressing the problem of not having access to resources, the game could have a black market, where a small percentage of all the resources mined wind up in a public auction. Procuring whatever resource you need this way would be more expensive than getting it by collecting it yourself or trading it fairly, but you could still use it if you really wanted to and had the cash.

I really like the idea of being able to capture military equipment from your enemies. It could lead to some really interesting strategies, and puts more importance on defending your trade routes. Instead of just losing income, now you lose income and the enemy takes your weapons. Not good.

I don't think it's pegasi, because i'm pretty sure that pegasus is a greek word, and -us becomes -i in the plural in latin. I'm not sure how I feel about Archons. To be cool, I feel like they would have to be sentient, and the devs have said that the only sentient creatures would be humans, fallen, and dragons. Were-creatures should definitely be in. Genies would also be really cool. The combination thing would be cool, but it would be tricky to balance.

I think that being able to claim territory without necessarily having a city would be great. However, we also have to remember that the huge empty spaces would be wasteland, due to the lore of the game. Maintaining an outpost there would therefore be difficult.

Well, I would imagine that your children would default to hero-type characters, and then you could choose to imbue them with your essence.

In general, there are a lot of really cool ideas for the economy floating out there on the forum. However, I don't think that economy/politics should be the focus of a magic based game. It would just end up being a distraction if it got too complicated.

And then you lose the game because you can't do it. :(

Due to the recent spat of espionage discussion, I have been thinking about the alternative victory conditions. Completing the "Master Quest," as I believe one of them is currently called, is the one that intrigues me the most. I was just wondering what people thought this should be like. As for me, I would like the master quest to possibly a sort of template quest/story arc, except with sweeping goals that would need a civilization to complete them. So instead of kill this monster, it would b

Civ 4. Still the most addicting game I have ever played, even after 5 years. Played an entire game in a day.

I'm all for espionage being abstracted away. However, that might feel somewhat out of place. While I obviously haven't played the game yet, it seems like a more hands-on, you see everything kind of a game, as opposed to a Europe Universalis type, ie very abstracted. I think it would also be appropriate to allow heroes to spy. That would be a fun system that wouldn't get out of hand. Since heroes would be relatively rare, you wouldn't have to worry about constantly fixing your kingdom after sp

Since an important goal for this game seems to be community added content, I think the game will grow at a much faster pace after release then before. Take the time you need to get the core features working well, and the let the players fill in what content they want. I'm also worried about burnout.

So the tactical battles will also be turn based. That clears things up.

So if there's no RTS, what will the tactical battles be like then? Will they be only observation, or will we be able to select a strategy, like aggressive or defensive?

Well, I guess what I actually want to know is how good they are going to be. This whole project is so ambitious, even without tactical battles. It seems to me that if anything is not given as much focus, it will be the RTS stuff. I wonder if they're going to consult or hire anyone with RTS experience, maybe someone from the Total War games.

I've been really curious about tactical battles. Stardock has a great track record with 4x type stuff, but as far as I know they haven't done any RTS. I want to know how big a part of the game they are going to be.