I'll be really bummed if Karma has much impact on beta choices :(. I lurk much, post a little, but I'm not out looking to karma whore. But, hey, if it'll help, I'm a Stardock customer from way back. I bought the original OS/2 Warp version of Galactic Civilizations...
Heh, I don't think it was the lack of settlers that killed Kohan 2 :). They changed a lot of things. As for Elemental lore, well, not much is exactly set in stone yet. Ignoring an idea because "that's what Elemental lore says" is pretty silly at this point. Having pockets of people eeking out a living hardly goes against the theme of a devestated planet. The neutral cities sound good. My real point is a drive to make cities unique or locations unique. GalCivII went this way a
It's not nearly as limiting as you might think. Have any of you played Warlords? Or, perhaps, neutral cities that start the game (pockets of surviving civilization) in particularly good spots. I love Civ, but one thing I don't like is it gives the perception that you've got, in say a 3 player game, 3 spots of people in the entire world and they spread. It's not like that. You've got people everywhere in pockets and they coalesce into an region/country/state. You conquer them, absorb t
Well, I guess what I liked about it was that cities weren't generic things you could plop down anywhere. They each had a personality in terms of the race and types of units you could build there. Cities in one area tended to be of the same race which gave regions of the board some flavor, some concept of absorbing another culture into your empire. Creating Civ cities was like stamping out cookie cutter cities where you frequently do the first X builds always the same. MoM did have som
Here's a thought for a feature or, more likely, and option. Getting in the way-back machine, there was a game called Warlords, which spawned a Warlords II and III. These had predetermined population centers on the board. You didn't just build settlers and go found a city. The world and it's people existed before you come onto the board and so you have to use the cities that exist This made for some really interesting features in map design. Cities in a choke point or critical cities f
[quote who="Luckmann" reply="19" id="1961891"] Quoting Lost_WLd, reply 17 So how long until this cloud of AI's become self aware, take over the internet and then try to eliminate the human race? It's inevitable. I think it's someone's law of robits or artificial intelligence or something. [/quote] Just don't log on as Sarah Conner and you'll be fine...
One thought: many games (though not often strategy games) have a difficulty level you can bump midgame. It seems like a significant amount of effort for a feature that's likely to be problematic. How often will it switch difficulties? If it goes up and recalculates AI goals when would it potentially shift again? When it switches, does it either trash the progress toward those goals with new ones or get stuck with goals generated by a weaker/stronger AI X turns ago? There'
The media blitz seems full on with interviews everywhere :), but I'm curious, why announce the game 1.5 years before release?
I played Alamaze for a lot of years, which was created by the same guy (McDowell). I think his brother Phil still runs Pegasus Productions, which owns Alamaze, unless Phil's health finally gave out. Fall of Rome looks very, very like Alamaze, but without Magic. Kingdoms of Arcania looks to bring magic back in. McDowell has done a great job in his other games of creating balanced games with completely different starting positions, so I'd expect a pretty good game again from him.
To be honest, if you're looking for a strategy fix, go with Age of Wonders 2 or if you want more puzzle-ish strategy, maybe King's Bounty. The problem I had with HoMM 5 was it's very much a puzzle game with tactical combat. You MUST do things in a fairly linear order because you won't be powerful enough to tackle certain areas initially. There's really no Explore, Expand phases in HoMM. You're very restricted on where you can choose to go initially or what you can eXterminate. <p
[quote who="landisaurus" reply="8" id="1934776"] I think this is the best way to do it. Because then you have the people who like having a bit of randomness happy, but the cry-babies that-would-quit-the-game-when-they-discovered-they-didn't-randomly-get-their-favorite-spells will be happy as well.[/quote] If you've got somebody that whiny, then they'd find some other reason to give up anyway (my map area sucked, my heroes didn't come at the right time, blah, blah, blah).</p
What I'd like to see, that's missing from most every PC based game, is the hidden economy that's part of a lot of board games, which is "actions points" or "command/ruler points" or some such. Many board games give the players X actions per turn and it's those actions that are your most precious resource. In PC games, you can pretty much give an order to every single unit and city every turn, which means the player can feel obligated to micro manage to squeeze out every inch of effici
[quote who="Tiavals" reply="4" id="1930827"]This kind of idea doesn't really work against the AI, I'd imagine. The idea of secrecy is after all a thing that mostly relates to human players. But it would certainly be a nice touch in a multiplayer game. [/quote] Yea, there's have to be a relatively small set of hidden conditions if the AI is going to understand it. Or, emphasis of core elements (X types of certain cities/buildings/heroes/artifacts) such that you can program the AI
[quote who="xthetenth" reply="2" id="1930788"]One idea would be giving a player a much harder secret goal than their public goal(s). That'd give the player a choice between going for the easier and faster goal knowing that they'll face increasing opposition with every step or going for a tricky goal but not having to face the diplomatic problems. That would be an interesting choice. [/quote] Yea. Or a hybrid, such as a military victory requires X accomplished, which is a publicly
Heh, just earlier I was thinking "Sheesh people, the game isn't even beta for 6-8 months. Give them a shot at what they want to create first before spewing ideas." And yet, here I am spewing. One of my favorite PBM games, Alamaze, had secret victory conditions. Every kingdom in the game has a random (though tailored to the kingdom somewhat) secret victory condition in addition to the normal ones, though secret was the typical way to win and a "normal" win was considered a tota
This is completely the wrong area to ask this, but I don't see a right area. Does this forum software have options like viewing threaded, newest first, etc? I can't find anything that would allow me to set that up.
Yea, I've done something I've never done before, I preordered (well, barring a couple of games that preordered a few days before relase). I definitely intend to be a diligent beta tester, something else I've never done.