Demiansky

[quote]Can't say I'm a fan of this idea. Adding a random factor to the battle that can cost you a win by taking away your control sounds more like a recipe for frustration than fun.[/quote] There's that boogie man word again. "Random." It's not random at all, not in the least. If you tell your soldier to attack a site and you know that he will be fighting at the site and attacking the nearest enemy, you can easily plan around it. It you fail to get good results

What I would like to see is a "discipline" rating for your soldiers. Discipline wouldn't necessarily have anything to do with their actual strength or defense. Instead, it would determine how well you could give units orders. Units with very low discipline would never accept orders as soon as they enter melee combat. In other words, you would point low discipline units in a given direction then cut them loose, at which point they would fight the enemy of their choice (

[quote who="Cerevox" reply="18" id="2533790"]Actually, now that i think about this a little more, it could cause some serious problems, if you really need a city somewhere or you need a city to increase its pop fast or build in a certain way, you might not be able to influence it fast enough. If there is an organic system we would need the ability to have incentives that give a pretty much 100% success rate. They could be expensive to balance it out, but i would hate to lose the game because

[quote]I would prefer the latter, to have city building be put in charge of the people. You can tell them you want another city, but if they are happy they'll just stay put. Population and convenience would be major factors in determining happiness. If there's a small population there is no need to go live somewhere else. Maybe by offering incentives (land, gold) you could get them to build another city at a designated spot, or maybe they'd just choose their own location (If the AI was good e

[quote who="RisingLegend" reply="10" id="2532583"] So now, it is officially early midgame, and most of the leftover, unclaimed people of the world have either settled down into their own makeshift cities or are a stable, "wandering tribe" population. You might be acquainted with 1 or 2 of these independant cities and you might be keeping a careful eye on 1 or 2 wandering tribes. This is the kind of scale I imagine, and it would definately be manageabl

[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="6" id="2532291"] It would be a lot like how you manage all those dialogue moments in Galactic Civs: as a steady and manageable flow throughout the game. If you're talking about the occasional colonization ethics events, one of the main reasons I go for Xeno Ethics early is to remove that repetitive (boring) click task. (I also do it to avoid the ethics event part of the GC2 Loves Evil problem). Huge, Gigantic, and Immense maps are my favori

[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="3" id="2532217"]Having recently remembered how intense my brief love affair with King of Dragon Pass was, the sketch in the OP is very engaging to me. But when I think about very long games on very large maps, I worry about repetitive click overhead and boilerplate text that becomes annoying through excessive familiarity. Do you have any ideas on how an approach like this might 'scale' across the boundary from RPG to TBS? [/quote]

[quote who="RisingLegend" reply="1" id="2532139"]Great idea! Wow, I love this. It portrays the fact that we are building up a world that is destroyed. Groups and bands of people would be the norm, as they would be looking for protection from the wasteland. And you have a point that some of these groups would be violent, as some of them might have power hungry leaders who don't want to give into this "freak" that calls himself a channeler of magic. Yet others would be more than willing a

So as of now, your population growth at the beginning is basically like every other strategy game that has ever existed in the history of strategy games. You build a city and based on a number, your population increases steadily. Personally, I think Elemental can do more than that... So I have proposed a different method by which population grows at the beginning. One which is heavily based on the sovereign's actions. Instead of survivors of the Acopalypse coming

So as of now, your population growth at the beginning is basically like every other strategy game that has ever existed in the history of strategy games. You build a city and based on a number, your population increases steadily. Personally, I think Elemental can do more than that... So I have proposed a different method by which population grows at the beginning. One which is heavily based on the sovereign's actions. Instead of survivors of the Acopalypse coming

So as of now, your population growth at the beginning is basically like every other strategy game that has ever existed in the history of strategy games. You build a city and based on a number, your population increases steadily. Personally, I think Elemental can do more than that... So I have proposed a different method by which population grows at the beginning. One which is heavily based on the sovereign's actions. Instead of survivors of the Acopalypse coming

[quote who="MichaelCook" reply="17" id="2531541"] Quoting Cerevox, reply 16 The only way to have a small magic kingdom approach be viable is to hardcap the number of mundane resources that can be put to magic at a low number. And i always just assumed the fallen made the folks on the bottom of the totem poll do all the boring stuff like farming while the top guys got to go out and kill things. Maybe slaves too? Zombie farmers? Or maybe they feed on the p

[quote who="tenchifew" reply="23" id="2531165"]Back to astral plane: i actually really like the idea. It allows plausible small magical kingdoms and offers unique strategies to play the game. Would love to see it implemented. [/quote] Good idea on getting back on topic :-) Thanks for the vote of confidence.

[quote]Really, most of the restrictions of a Wizard were nothing but time sinks that focused the game too much on the wizard. Not strange that players can get annoyed about it. It's not about "Wizards are supposed to be more powerfull" but about "It's ridiculous" or "I didn't come to watch".[/quote] I agree that wizards can take up a lot of session time by reading the text of a thousand spells or flipping through a monster manual to find the next creature they want to shape change int

[quote who="Cerevox" reply="18" id="2530586"]If your NPC wizards were going down faster than other villans then your DM was running them wrong. Unless we are talking low level, then of course wizards die easy. But toss a premoniton and spell mantle on him and you are hosed. Time stop, wail of the banshee, watch the party keel over dead. Or time-stop, then stick the fighter in the eye with a dagger, your AC and doge do nothing if i can take my time to shove it through your eye into your brain.

[quote who="Cerevox" reply="14" id="2530212"]The astral plane should be stronger then material if only channelers can get there. Its like the DnD 3.5 argument about wizards. Everyone claimed that mages were overpowered compared to fighters in 3.5 dnd, and they were. However, who do you think should be stronger, the guy who is really really good at waving a sword around, or the guy who can alter reality itself with a word? [/quote] Wizards are never played properly in D&D, and

[quote]I dunno, the idea is sort of growing on me... my main concerns is that the astral plane has a lot more influence over the material plane than the material has over the astral plane... it seems to me there's a lot of incentive to commit your sovereign full-time to the Astral realm. Maybe the astral plane somehow reflects the mental state of the world... a world filled with war and disease is going to reflect that in the astral realm making the realm more hostile... a civilize

[quote]If the tanks just blow stuff up from long range, are careful where they go and return when out of ammo then they won't lose. Maybe a few tanks would be destroyed because of traps but not all. But if the bowmen got other weapons beside bor and arrow then they might halt their advance.[/quote] Personally, I thought Avatar's Ewok reinactment was retarded, so I think you are missing my point. Once again, you are assuming the empty field :-) If a bunch of bowmen are hidi

[quote who="MagicwillNZ" reply="10" id="2529597"]I sort of agree with Luckmann. Whenever I've played a tbs game with multiple planes it just gets way too big. I mean, it's a really fun idea at first, but you essentially allow one of the players a *lot* more room to expand in with a lot less competition. Yes, I understand that isn't exactly what you are proposing. The astral idea, while entertaining, seems a lot of work and a constant distraction from the normal game. I'd prefer a s

[quote]it just shouldn't be possible for the latter to survive except by running away.[/quote] Yep, you are assuming tanks are just one massive hunk of steel that floats magically above the surface. If battles took place on a completely flat, indestructable surface with no where to run and hide then, yes, a bowman would never be able to beat a tank. But that's not the case. We can assume that in Civ, whoever is piloting the tanks at least have to eat and, presumably,

[quote who="Cerevox" reply="17" id="2529463"]elite swordman killing modern armor? How is that a joke? Happens all the time in real life. Iraq invasion, quite a few tanks got killed with moltov cocktails. Set thier air intake on fire, engine gets no oxygen, it dies and rips itself up. Dead tank. For all that we talk about how high tech and powerful our army, all the gps and coordination gear and predator drone uplink won't save you from getting your face smashed in by a rock. [/quote]

[quote who="Cerevox" reply="8" id="2529444"]So more like the astral plane from DnD than the myrran plane from MoM. TBH, i would also love that version. Maybe we could get both kinds? full other planes and then a magical sublayer with noting but raw magic in it, different rules governing them. That would be sweet. [/quote] Yep, more or less. :-)

[quote who="Luckmann" reply="5" id="2529281"]Still not a fan of multiple planes. Not a fan at all. [/quote] Well, what I'm proposing isn't really a "second plane" in the way that Master of Magic had a second plane. The plane I'm proposing is an extra "texture" that lies beneath reality that effects magical manefistations in the real plane. The laws of physics in this 2nd plane would be completely different. There wouldn't be mortals or cities or trolls. My

Stardock deleted my first lengthy post by lagging me out, so I decided to post a short one then edit it and add on--- but you responded about 1 1/2 minutes after I had actually written the first part. You are comparing games that are on opposite sides of the turn based genre. I don't think Civ would have operated properly without an abbreviated combat system. It's silly to call a game "ruined" just because it isn't the genre that you like the most. And besides,

Apples and oranges my friend. Apples and oranges. How narcisistic do you have to be to fault a game by not transforming itself into what you want it to be? Civilization wasn't supposed to have tactical combat. You were supposed to use a chain of probability to your strategic advantage. What you might consider "game ruining" is game making for others.