Go with the Galactic Civ 2 route of Good and Evil plus a racial modifier. *Good* Human kingdoms would convince other human tribes to join, nonviolently. *Evil* fallen races would just enslave or consume them for food, by force of course.
[quote who="Frogboy" reply="3" id="2524892"]Federated IDs wouldn't be mandatory. No service is going to require you use someone else's ID. [/quote] Wrong! Frogboy, read Craig Mundie's (Microsoft executive) proposed changes/treaties being hammered out at the UN. http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2010/01/30/drivers-licenses-for-the-internet/ Internet ' Drivers Licenses ' have near zero pub
Here is the other problem that has not been discussed in-depth enough: specialization population centers vrs non-specialized population centers leading to how that ties with resource acquisition, management, disbursement and trade. The Devs have talked about the dilemma of a game's victor being decided long in advance before it is over. If a kingdom has lost a few cities then it's no big deal but if even one specialized super city is gone, well for your average AI it mi
If an enemy army occupies a road/trade route within your borders then any leader worth his weight will take notice when all the traffic suddenly stops or slows to a trickle without explanation. Theoretically it's balanced because while you know something must be out there, you don't know any details of what or exactly where. Last time I checked roads are automatic and not manually built like in civilization, preventing abuse. Your opponent can use th
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America already has a slew of dysfunctional social programs. Our track record speaks for itself. The problem lies where maintaining the institution and any votes it generates trumps practicality and producing results. Sometimes I wonder if one more program is really what we need.
NASA under Obama is slowly moving away from space exploration and reprioritizing according to demand. One of those priorities is global warming. Monitoring Earth temperature, CO2 levels and atmospheric disturbances is now deemed more important than space exploration. All this was brought to light during the recent global warming scandal being investigated. If anyone here disagrees with the president's decisions then write to your elected official. After the las
They chose this format to supposedly improve gameplay on console. Think HaloWars and the confined bases. Sad I know but what did you expect. Due keep in mind that one of the biggest complaints of its predecessor was the difficulty over previous titles. I fully agree C&C Generals was a good game after ZH. I just wish the modding options were more flexible to make it a great game.
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Go study Chile, there is such a thing as privatized social security. Chile was one of the early modern nations to implement modern socialist social security and one of the first to go broke as a result. The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of OTHER peoples money. Let's sum up how socialism works. You take from party A , give to party ME , and tell everyone it is going to party yoU.
Wow what a good idea! Reward the player for generations of expertise over that player who just stole and implemented it 5 minutes ago. Maybe this should be handled through additional extra techs to research that are very difficult to acquire or untradable. Kinda like horseback riding 1, horseback riding 2, horseback riding 3, ect. You can get horseback riding 1 but not 12. I'm a thinkin tech assimilation mechanic.
Pollution: 16 naval ships = all the cars in the world! [e digicons]o_O[/e] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-16-ships-create-pollution-cars-world.html This is why I am skeptical of green activists. It seems when it comes to saving the earth they completely missed the boat. If I ran the movement I would stick to realistic goals and concentrating on battles easily won with maximum benefit than radical totaltarian ideals like changing world e
China is a far bigger long term threat as a peaceful nation than a active war monger. Do the math, economically they win and we lose, a war would distrupt that. As for occupation, America using WMDs to win are completely out of the question. China's human resources are almost unlimited by comparison. A possibly far greater threat than China is America losing much of its sovereignty to global government, the new world order, globaliztion or in other words change. 
Guys look, stem cell therapy is already available for pets. Some live, some don't survive the process. It hasn't made breaking news because it involves a different type of stem cell other than fetal and the public is conviced it absolutely has to be fetal or it's bad. The less obvious problem is that no insurance company will ever cover stem cell therapy in any form, far too dange
Considering SW is driven by The Force, a supernatural something that can define any outcome, victory should still be possible under any condition. Anyone who has played SW:KotoR 1&2 knows it can manifest abilites far more powerful than seen in the movies.
Woah! Armed UN Security Silences Journalists ClimateGate Questions At Copenhagen on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlwVviE7o74 So it appears when questioned about the matter they decided to sick UN thugs on the reporter. The UN obviously needs to be humbly reformed or worst case dismantled. Strong emphasis on worst case.
Quests with multiple outcomes are a plus. *Booming Voice* Quest: Find the Dragon Egg Variables: Found within X turns starting from quest initiation till game over 1) D.Egg is recovered very early from player focusing much time and enormous resource expenditure to complete it. Result: Player can hatch it, allow it time to mature in growth, and train it into godzilla with wings. 2) D.Egg is recovered late game, lazily. Result: Throug
Should surrender always be a Winner Takes All? Say the 'heir' is contested by another 'heir' planted by my enemy of equal to near equal standing. Does that mean the nation will partially become a new indepandant, fracture into city states, usher in a civil war or get divided up between nations unevenly? Here is the catch, how high standing my female asset is on the pecking order could determine how much of the empire is 100% guaranteed to be mine IF I don't get the w
China and India represent a modern shift in what defines a (future) superpower over previous ones. Initially Europe, the UK in paticular, had operated in a very overt method of direct control by colonization. The US and Soviet Union followed a somewhat more covert method during the cold war. China's behavior is realitively benign by comparison. It is not actually conquering nations but focuses on expanding itself in any way possible. That includes consuming any f
Bing reminds me more of an extended msn or yahoo page than a google search engine.
Age of Wonders had simultaneous turns rather than uh, politely take your turn turns. Far superior.
Negotiations generally should be quick, short, simple and straight to the point. No time for small chatter and idle banter. Unless a very good reason to justify advanced negotiations exist, players might favor the fast route when dealing with many civs. Now if the game could make negotiations entertaining well that might be a very good reason indeed. Like if the emmissary I am speaking to is laying out his war plans in a video feed of the cloth map plus moving chess
Long story short Starcraft 2 has become so automated versus its prequel that macro efforts do not have the game winning benefits like before. That's fine because it makes the game in some ways easier plus less tedious especially to new players and I like it however Blizzard's game mechanic attempts to restore macro have been silly. One difference between Elemental and most other E4 games (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) is that the military will be population driven. 
Strangely reminds me of ye old Starcraft methodology. You could choose between out macromanaging your opponent or out micromanaging him instead. This would be determined on all players skill balance and the situation. Unfortunately Starcraft 2 appears to have introduced some very halfhazard mechanics that fall far short of the original and have little appeal in general.
But any 'Elite' is best only in its own enviornment. Elites are easily defeated through technological innovation, flexability, adaptability, do I need to name more? These rules also follow in patterns of nature. Sun Tzu illistrates all this repeatedly throughout The Art of War. So go read it. The 300 were only effective because they had a fortified position that rendered the opponent's superior numbers useless in a frontal assault. A simple flanking laughab
Well I've roleplayed pnp like this on smaller scales in the past like being the town mayor a very long time ago. Here is the feedback I can offer: The unknown is one of your best weapons as a GameMaster when doing a game like this. Sending out army units to carry out specific orders past the players vision and communication boundary can be powerful when done right. Sometimes scouts report back, sometimes they don't and sometimes your whole macho a
One request: please please please don't make The Fallen another generic stock fantasy species with generic fantasy modifiers like +1 fire resistance ect. Please No! Let's see more imagination. An army of human cannibals that covert a conquored populace into ready food supply or slavers that retain a percentage of the conquored as slave labor population pool is just better than the D&D purple planar brimstone lo