[quote who="Wizaerd" reply="54" id="2866029"]Or will the Expansion feature all the same things from Vanilla, so in a sense makes it obsolete?[/quote] Yes.
[quote who="xStarfirex" reply="50" id="2865996"]"Elemental: Fallen Enchantress will be released as a stand-alone game" As in you don't need Elemental to play it? Seems like a smart move if this means you can get the game to be reviewed all over again. That is a smart move aslong as the game continues improveing at a rapid pace [/quote] That's one possibility, although expansion packs traditionally get their own review in the gaming press. I think it's more a matter
[quote who="Alstein" reply="1" id="2863669"]If Stardock was a branch of say 2k, we wouldn't be getting much of this Elemental support.[/quote] We would have seen maybe one patch -- two if we were lucky -- and then it'd be on to their next project.
[quote who="romantiq77" reply="14" id="2861950"]Unfortunately I fall in the category of 1.9 gig download for the minor patch :/[/quote] It's not actually going to download 1.9 GB. Instead it'll analyzed the files on your hard drive comparing them to the files on the server, and then download only those files that are missing/different. Of course this "Preparing to download..." process can be quite lengthy, but the actual download time is usually very short. I don't k
[quote who="Pantasd" reply="170" id="2861113"]civ 5 > civ 4 3 2 1[/quote] Chronologically speaking, that is perfectly true. In terms of quality and entertainment value, well...
[b]Edit:[/b] Ah, never mind... it'd probably just start a boring flame war anyway (boring because I would easily win).
[quote who="eobet" reply="68" id="2860565"]With that said, I don't believe a word of what you are saying, since you speak like a politician. The most striking example that comes to mind right now is that you said that you would continue to work on Civilization 5 for as long as you could, but this right here is proof that you bailed anyway... or you got forced out, which probably means that you really DID mess up with Civilization 5 and either way this makes me really worried about Elemental.
[quote who="MattSan" reply="112" id="2860533"]What would be even more telling would be to look up their age. I think there would be a trend there. Like younger members of the audience who haven't lived through three decades of game development from the Atari 2600, to the C64, all the way to present consoles.[/quote] You didn't go back far enough. My love for video games started when they could only be found in arcades.
All I can say is I'm glad Jon has a better sense of humor than some of the people who play his games.
[quote who="charon2112" reply="105" id="2860499"]If that's the real Jon, then I'm a bit disappointed at his button post. It's pretty unprofessional. [/quote] Depends on what you mean by "unprofessional". When we're talking about people who's job is basically making toys for adults, I would rather see someone exhibiting a sense of humor and fun than someone straight-laced and uptight. I personally thought Jon's "big button" post was hilarious, and I'd
[quote who="InternetNerd" reply="38" id="2860370"]Jon, if it really is you, then I honestly don't think mocking Civilization 5 is appropriate.[/quote] He's not mocking Civ 5, he's mocking the people who are claiming that all of Civ 5's perceived failings are his fault alone.
[quote who="illmunkeys" reply="43" id="2860150"]Neverwinter Nights would have failed, had it stood on its campaign alone. What made it a success was that it was highly extensible and modifiable.[/quote] Ironically, Neverwinter Nights was originally going to be released as a set of mod tools only, but Bioware reasonably feared that it wouldn't sell without some sort of campaign, so the single player game was basically thrown together at the last minute using the mod tools they ha
[quote who="Gauntlet03" reply="38" id="2860126"]Brad doesn't need to call fans insane, frankly thats unwise and I'm surprised he did as much.[/quote] Brad didn't call fans insane. He justifiably called one person insane for ignorantly spouting off.
[quote who="tetleytea" reply="23" id="2860032"]Is the AI in Civ V braindead? Yes, absolutely. Do you think that's Jon Shafer's fault? Do you think they asked him "Do you want a good AI or a bad AI?" and he jumped up and down and said "Oh! Bad please!"?[/quote] I'm pretty sure that's exactly what happened. I'm also pretty sure I'm being sarcastic.
I was playing a 1.1 game the other night, and the biggest thing I noticed was lack of AI aggression and poor utilization of troops. I had one lightly defended city in the middle of my territory that could have caused me problems if it fell, but instead of attacking it with a combined force of six units, the AI would instead send six single units in succession making them easy pickings for my archer. It did this several times throughout the game.
[quote who="Sythion" reply="9" id="2854157"]1.1 is stable. It's not strategically playable yet.[/quote] The first sentence is correct. The second is not.
[quote who="luketan" reply="70" id="2854155"]actually i meant the random map generator[/quote] No, there is not random map generator per se. Instead we have a few dozen set land masses with randomized resources and start locations. Take a look at ../Program Files/Stardock Games/Elemental/data/Maps
[quote who="Dsraider" reply="3" id="2854038"]But I didn't get you anything....[/quote] We all sent him $50, so don't feel bad. Hmmm... a private build straight from the man himself... very tempting, but I'm worried about compatibility with future updates.
So the expansion will basically overhaul a number of Elemental's core components, practically making it a whole new game. That should be interesting to see.
I assume it's the speed at which things are constructed. Increased production equals reduced build time.
[quote who="Heavenfall" reply="29" id="2853172"]I always found it rather odd that producers rarely disclose ETAs. At first I thought it was because of the customer base - the company thinks it loses a lot of goodwill if it can't live up to its "promised release date". But I guess it's more likely that schedules change so frequently that there's little point in releasing a date until it's near-certain.[/quote] It's really only game developers that experience this
O.K., I'll comment... [quote who="mastroego" reply="57" id="2853097"]Also, the thing that nobody mentions is that, even if future expansions will manage to turn Elemental into a barely playable and interesting game, what we will still be missing, forever and ever, is real expansion-level content. I mean months ago from "expansions" we would have expected things like crafting, tons of new *races*, *flying* units and who knows what else. Now we need *expansions* in order to get *basic*
[quote who="Emperor_Nero" reply="2" id="2853969"]Like I can play for more than five turns without getting frustrated at the lag and quit?[/quote] Turn down some of the graphics settings. A patch won't magically make an underpowered computer perform like a powerhouse.
[quote who="Derek Paxton" reply="1" id="2851805"] Soon.[/quote] "Soon" as in soon, or "soon" as in 3-months?
[quote who="Carewolf" reply="40" id="2852547"] Quoting Mtn_Man, reply 32 I disagree. Vanilla Civ 4 is one of the best strategy games ever made. The expansion packs simply take a great game and make it better. You seem to have the shades of history on. It took moret han 6 months before Civ 4 was even playable more than 2 hours at a time. Yes, I enjoyed it, but I had to quit the game every two hours and reload, because it was so packed full of memory leaks and r