Mtn_Man

As long as the interface is intuitive and there's prodigious in-game help-text then a manual may not be necessary.

I've always valued gameplay over graphics anyway, so a stylized approach and a rendering engine that doesn't use every shader trick in the book is fine by me so long as the game itself is solid.

August fools?

[quote who="Larac" reply="3" id="2718011"]If you have BETA 4 Archive it as the Update Earses it THEN tells you it can not UPDATE.[/quote] Ooh, that's mean.

I think building at least one city will probably be essential, but the good news is that you won't have to spam cities across the map in order to build up a powerful civilization. One well-maintained city will be better than 5 poorly maintained ones (at least as I understand it).

[quote who="Larac" reply="42" id="2717725"]But the game seems to require less of a system than many released these days.[/quote] No kidding. Check out Civ 5's requirements. They're insane for a turn-based game. [quote who="Larac"]One reason I dislike Netbooks is they look like a small laptop, but really are much less. I think they were a bad thing for the public. They are great for light work and writing papers, email and the such, but much else they

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="24" id="2717850"]I'm not happy with the AI at this point for the following reasons: 1. He is not defending his towns as effectively as he should. 2. He is not good enough at choosing what types of units to build and choosing the right quantity These two things make the AI very problematic. It's something I am going to be addressing more this weekend. In the long run, it'll probably take about a year or two for me to

[quote who="maxlongstreet" reply="26" id="2717424"]This post uses some bad logic which kind of epitomizes the problem here.[/quote] No, the logic is fine and my point sound. You just happen to disagree with it, and that's O.K. All I was doing was looking at things from Stardock's perspective. They've done the testing and decided that the best multiplayer experience could be had with special rules designed to make it more streamlined and balanced. [quote who="

[quote who="Twohawks" reply="15" id="2717356"]We need to keep in mind that the game was not intended at first to have MP..[/quote] Which, I think, is the right decision because the majority of people who play turn-based 4x strategy games play single player. You can't just take the single player experience and add multiplayer because that doesn't produce optimal gameplay (even though some people think this is what they want), and the last thing Stardock wants to hear is how dull,

It depends on how much customization they're doing for the multiplayer game. If it's a simple matter of making certain techs unavailable then it seems they could easily include a check box that says, "Allow all techs in multiplayer" or "Disable simultaneous turns". If they're making hard coded changes explicitly for multiplayer then it will be significantly more difficult to make those optional.

JoeUser worked for me. What the heck is "JoeUser" anyway? I've never heard of it before this.

I understand his point about streamlining the multiplayer experience to make it more enjoyable, but I also see the other side of the issue where people are saying make that optional so that they can get the full experience if they wish.

[quote who="Twohawks" reply="6" id="2716985"]some times a publisher does ship a game a few days early so we can sell it on release day but this is hard to predict.. only a street date is easy to predict because only publisher delay / shipment mess up will screw up a street date..[/quote] I've found that games from smaller companies and publishers tend to have a lag time of 1 to 2 days (or sometimes more) after the release date before they show up on store shelves while the biggies lik

[quote who="Dave_Genesi" reply="24" id="2716724"]I watched a video with Brad on G4 earlier today. In the video, Brad stated that Stardock will NOT be releasing a new game next year. They will be spending all of their time on Elemental. Even though I had already ordered the limited edition (And the novel by Brad), I would have bought the game right there. You can find the video here... http://g4tv.com/videos/48042/Elemental-War-of-Magic-Interview/?quality=hd The part

I was getting ready to say that anybody who buys the game now will be disappointed when they get it home and try and activate it... and then I remembered that Stardock doesn't do that crap. But if stores have broken the street date, does that mean Stardock can go ahead and release the game for the rest of us? [e classic]:congrat:[/e]

[quote who="awuffleablehedgie" reply="8" id="2716687"]it's probably the "same" as Gal Civ given the rate that techonology has advanced. That is, if you had a computer of X caliber and it ran Gal Civ fine back then, then if you have the same quality of computer now, you should run Elemental just fine.[/quote] If that's the case then it's a very misleading thing to say to the point of being outright deceptive. However, I wonder if the stated minimum is for playable performance o

I'm not talking about the limited edition. I'm talking about basically just the CD and a manual, and there's no way that should cost $10 to ship. I almost wonder if this a case of a company over-charging for shipping and then pocketing the difference. But it's a moot point since the manual is pretty much worthless, so I'm perfectly satisfied with digital only.

[quote who="NeoWolf73" reply="1" id="2716698"]Not everyone likes to go full combat approach and Im hoping diplomacy and the enemy AI's in this game will also provide for that style of approach as GalCiv2 did.[/quote] I agree. I get a little tired of strategy games where rolling over your opponents with an army is the easiest and most effective way to win. I'd love to see diplomacy be just as devastating if played right.

United States Post can ship a 5-pound box cross country for $3.94 if shipped as media (and computer software on a DVD counts as "media") or $4.95 using a Priority Flat Rate mailer.

[quote who="Wintersong" reply="22" id="2716650"]Already saving for the two expansion packs![/quote] I think we're all in this for the long-haul.

I believe this is what's known as serendipity. :)

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="9" id="2716608"]First class only goes up to 13 ounces, anything over has to be shipped Priority.[/quote] Even then you should be able to ship it for no more than $5. Only reason I wanted a boxed copy was for a physical manual, but that's honestly not worth an extra $10-$20 to me. Of course I could have always bought it retail, but then I wouldn't have it on release day (and probably not the day after, either), which was the whole reason I was

Brad said this in a recent interview : "[T]his game actually has the same hardware requirements as GalCiv II because we avoided doing any bump-mapping. All games have bump-mapping these days but it’s really expensive from a hardware, CPU, and video card standpoint. But because of the game's art style we didn't have to do bump mapping so our game will actually run on a

One thing I don't get is that he keeps saying that the system requirements are the same as GalCiv II, but according to Impulse, the requirements for Elemental are considerably higher: GalCiv II 800 MHz Processor 256 MB Available System Memory 32 MB DirectX 9.0c Compatible 3D Video Card (32-Bit Color) Elemental 2.4 GHz Proce

More options is (almost) always a good thing, and Stardock is all about letting the player customize his experience, so I think there's a good chance that this feature will make it in a future patch.