Kantok

[quote who="Recnelis2" reply="7" id="2653281"]I'm not sure how to even use them to build roads at the moment. Last time i used a caravan it caused my game to crash. [/quote] You build your caravan in city A. Send it to city B. Provided it makes it there safely the merchant begins to travel between city A and city B doing his trading automatically. Provided you keep the route safe and keep him from getting eaten, his trade eventually causes a

This is my first Stadock beta and though I don't post much I've been hanging around since mid-Beta1. The level of interaction and the time you guys spend talking to your players is amazing (even for a beta). I don't think I've seen another company this responsive (and eager) for player feedback during the development process. I've always been a fan of SD games, but after this experience I'm pretty well sold on anything you guys release. Just wanted to say th

[quote who="Beric01" reply="93" id="2649852"]Combat does seem overly simplistic. I was hoping for something at least on Age of Empire 3's level, with ranged/melee damage, different types of armor, etc. While it IS a strategy game, and too much complexity in this area would take the focus off the overall strategic elements of the game, a little more complexity would seem only logical. [/quote] I'm curious how people find combat overly simplistic when we

City building needs two things: 1) Some randomization among the graphics to make cities look like cities (and distinct cities at that) and not sprawling masses of tiles. Each tile is beautiful individually, but they don't mesh well. As the city grows, little roads should develop, people should be walking about, the tiles shouldn't all be facing the same way. That sort of thing would go a long way to making the cities look better without adding anything to the c

[quote who="Sareln" reply="7" id="2650289"]Alright, I've finished running around the park at night with a light up frisbee, time for me to take a crack at this. Beric01, it seemed like a good idea at the time to split the threads between name brainstorming and actual functionality. Maybe that's a bit overkill, but oh well . Unlocking categories with technology sounds interesting, but then we run into our tree problems again...[/quote]</

[quote who="Thiryn" reply="17" id="2650543"] LOL. So Beta 2 = Elemental: Of[/quote] Awesome.

[quote who="Beric01" reply="49" id="2649856"] Kantok, want to start a thread on it, and we can start working on some ideas for refinements?[/quote] Sareln did that for us. Here

[quote who="Sareln" reply="3" id="2649909"] Yeah, I wanted to break it out of the thread and flesh it out some more. This is for names and flavor, the other thread I just started (with a huge block quote of you) is for the idea itself. Have to run![/quote] Hell, I wasn't looking for credit. Just wanted to make sure you'd seen the other discussion.

Research in 4x games has always bothered me. In most games, the 'strategy' part of research is simply deciding which uber tech you want and planning how to get there most efficiently while not gimping your empire with nothing but research buildings. The concept of a tech tree always bothered me because you knew what you were getting. In almost every game you knew exactly what was coming up and you knew exactly WHEN it was coming up. To use the sam

This is similar to what we are talking about in a beta thread on the tech trees. Here I'll be back to post more in a bit. This is an interesting topic and idea.

[quote who="Nick-Danger" reply="43" id="2649774"] I'll take the contrary point-of-view... Since we'll understand what's going on after playing through a few times, that means that from then on we'll have it sufficiently figured out. For the first few games, instead of considering it a negative, consider it a bit of a mystery. Why not enjoy the 'mystery' for that few games, while it lasts? Consider it a voyage of discovery, that will soon end and not ret

[quote who="Beric01" reply="8" id="2649732"]My main complaint is that the game is too linear. There are few choices. I know exactly what my first town's first 6 buildings will be. And while you can specialize towns somewhat, it seems like it takes an hour or to just to have the economy to make a small army. Maybe something's up with the pacing? Because right now this game makes Sins of a Solar Empire look short. Food is very hard to obtain, because I feel like gar

[quote who="Nick-Danger" reply="38" id="2649713"] ... -Some mention a more specific but still general path laid out, like 'food' under Civics. Well, is it really necessary? You see a food tech and grab it, knowing that it'll help find more food techs. -Remember we're just playing the game for the first few times. Elemental will have legs, and after a week or so we'll all have learned the tech trees pretty well. In Civ, how many

[quote who="larrypeters" reply="34" id="2649654"]I think the problem we're seeing is that technology works for immersion but fails as a gameplay mechanic. We've already seen plenty of people say that they're keeping track of what technology leads to what outside of the game. That, to me, says that there's a need the game isn't providing. Like how MMOs without an economy have a barter economy that eventually show up, I get the feeling if the game leaves t

[quote quoting="post"] SO played 2 tiny maps for about 6 hours. Man those tiny maps are HUGE. Might not be fun at all to play HUGE maps. Anyways, i didnt experience too much strategy in this game. 1. Terrain on a tile doesn't have any effect on movement across it or defense bonus. 2. If you have units in a town Anything to increase the defense of the soldier or have artillery support for attacking. Any benefits for defending a town?<br

Hmm... I've been thinking about this the last few minutes since I posted and I'm liking it more and more. Weather should have other effects as well, to make you decision to use those spells a bigger deal. You call up a hurricane to negate your enemies archery advantage, but hurricanes (being massive wind and rain storms) have a chance to damage buildings and terrain improvements. If you throw up a hurricane to help yourself in battle, you may end up destroying some o

I don't know if it's planned or not and if not it may be one of those things that's too big to add this late, but weather on the strategic map that shows up in tactical battles would be genius. It wouldn't be something unpredictable at all, it would just be another layer of strategic and tactical thinking. Recent rain storm? Well, your cavalry may not be as overwhelming as you expected. Look like a storm is moving in? Maybe you and your 100 armore

[quote who="Zubaz" reply="18" id="2649325"]For me, an in-game research tree cheats the civ building lie we are willingly telling ourselves. But I like the sim/world building part of games like this. I shouldn't be able to know that atomic weapons are in the future somewhere and if I follow X path I get them. It's more real to me to research "warfare" and see a progressive evolution of weaponry. In fact, I'd dig it if, while researching magic (or some such thing),

What the hell is a "terribly creative" map? Everyone seems to dump on the map for being "uninspired"... It's an extremely large scale map of two continents (or one maybe). Was it supposed to look like hedge rows or be shaped like some sort of mystical symbol? It's a landmass. A mass of land. With features, some of which we are to far removed to even see. As far as the rivers flowing through the mountains or any of the other geographic features peo

I think the key to that screen shot ends up being whether or not those "pewter figures" have ambient motion or not. If, now or somewhere father down the beta road, those characters do more than stand perfectly still I think that screen shot is awesome. The dragon should be letting faint tendrils of smoke out of its nostrils or occasionally scratching it's neck or wagging it's tail. The more general troops should be checking each other's armor every so often or

[quote who="John_Hughes" reply="127" id="2627398"] And that is all well and good, until its your Towns and folk that are getting desimated and you are currently engaged with another Faction and don't have resources to devout to this new, totally unexpected disaster. A "Living World" would be brilliant. Having uncontrollable stuff happen, that create unforseeable disasters, within your possibly still fragile Kingdom, wears thin very very qu

[quote who="HuaynaCapac" reply="51" id="2625090"]I love the idea but I can see it taking up a lot of programming time - and processing if they each have their own AI. I'm trying to think of a simple way to code it in without using much of either. ... [/quote] I don't think that, for most monsters, it needs to be overly complex. Just simple, obvious behavior beyond "I show up. I kill your stuff until you kill me." It was

[quote who="Demiansky" reply="46" id="2625052"] The thing is, does the player has any way to differentiate both cases? If she sees a pair of wandering trolls, is she able to know that they are raiding because there's a shortage of food or whatever "reason"? Yeah, I understand what you are saying and it's a good point. But the purpose for giving monsters these kinds of motives isn't to simply make them more convincing as characters. The point it is to make them dynamic.&n