Demiansky

Alright, this idea might appear strange at first, but bear with me. In Master of Magic, you had two planes, both of which were more of less the same as far as physical properties are concerned. I propose that Elemental have two planes as well: the physical plane and the astal plane. Both planes overlap, and there is a corresponding site in the astral plane for every site in the physical plane (there is a toggle button to switch to the astral plane, whic

[quote who="Wintersong" reply="8" id="2524217"]TL;DR: Magic and mundane economy are (or should be) different and not depend on the other for development. Mixing them should boost both though. [/quote] Sounds like we're on the same page, Winter. Ideally, you would have certain situations where one economy spills into the other. The only think I would like to see avoided is magic strung to money, with money towing one's magical power around wherever it goes.

[quote]Sovereigns should be immortal.[/quote] If you accept every bit of cannon in the current story, then yes. But the devs should not be slaves to their own story if it means they could make a better game by changing it. If there were no dynasty system, sovereign immortality would be fine by me. Putting the two together is counter productive, though.

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="17" id="2526398"]I looove the xenolphobia/philia idea! Attractiveness modeling can be actually made fairly complex with a few simple equations and many independant variables, like this: Traits come in two types: sliding and swapping: "Sliding" traits are things like skin tint, nose length, leg thickness, et cetera that can be shown on a continuum broken up into discrete integers. Swapping traits are things like skin texture, wart

Changing interesting game mechanics because some people may behave in an inefficient and facile manner is silly. And besides, if some people want to role play a biggoted sovereign who only breeds with his own kind, then all the power to 'em. Actually, I think you could come up with some pretty good game mechanics based on this principle. What if, for instance, you had other xenophobic sovereigns whom frown upon you if you marry your children off to partners whom are

First off, Solam, your assessment of the origin of magic in this setting is dead wrong. Magic passes through channelers. Either way, your platitudes about "money makes the world go round" are completely irrelevant in regard to what we're talking about. Second, I think we have people missing the point, here. People seem to be suggesting that, by the current model of the economy, magic is mired with the mundane economy, which it is. Which is why...

What I was really hoping to see in Elemental was the separation of magic from the rest of in game economy. In other words, a player should be able to build an immensely powerful magic based empire without being forced to pursue a robust economy first. In Master of Magic, you could focus heavily on magic to the neglect of your economy, but it was always an inferior strategy. If you wanted to build your way up to a Pantheon or Cathederal, you'd get there quicker by buil

[quote who="Eidolon94" reply="43" id="2520570"]This system is nice, but it shouldn't allow the player to accumulate hundreds of spell points and then all spend them at once, like other people mentioned. Maybe you should only be able to spend one point every few turns. (learning a spell that makes it rain fire from the sky surely takes some time?) [/quote] Master of magic handled this well. You could accumulate mana for casting

Wanna make shards really interesting? Let the player actually refine them for different purposes other than just mana source. For instance, let's say it's an air shard. If you have the right magical knowledge, you could refine the shard into an air metamagic nexus. What does an air metamagic nexus do? It gives all of your spells a minor, added air component of your choice that you tack on to a spell when you cast it. For instance, you could equip your

[quote who="Wintersong" reply="16" id="2519272"]We shouldn't take Sovereign = King/Emperor and the Dinasty system as the princes and princesses waiting for the lord to die and inherit. Because it's not like that and we shouldn't think about them in that way. The Sovereign is the King. Scions are just nobles who rule a land given to them by the King. Conditions? Scions can rule that piece of land but they serve the King, pay him taxes and their manpower is available to him in times

Some people seem to be suggesting that if you accept one thing that lacks believability, you should just open your mouth wide and swallow whatever garbage comes your way. How disastrous would that be if movie makers had that kind of mentality? "Well, it's all just pixels on a screen, so we might as well not worry about plot or setting consistencies and just do whatever we want to make the movie exciting!!" Every movie would flow like a really bad Stephen King novel.

[quote]With such a system you need to plan in advance. You could choose between several strategies; putting all you got on your Founder Sovereign and hope he can achieve immortality before it's too late. Or build up a sustainable Dynasty, imbuing your future heirs with some essence and preparing them for the time one will need to take over the Kingdom.[/quote] Yes, very well spoken.

[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="10" id="2518404"]Back in December of '08, TexasTim65 started a thread that has a bunch of different takes on the turn=day thing. Given the recent talk here & the persistence of turn=day in the beta UI, I'm starting to lean to not having any in-game calendar and just calling a turn a turn. Elemental is plenty ambitious enough without trying to tackle a major problem like building a 'temporal transmission' that can shift gears between the pace of a hot war, th

I'm not sure that 1 day = 1 turn is a very good idea, if that is a fact. It presents a lot of believability hurdles. First, at the point at which you have children, are we to assume that we must hit the end turn button 5475 times before even one of our children reaches maturity? (15 years of age.) Also, it presents a lot of problems for population growth too. Assuming that most citizens won't be arriving from the wasteland at any point but the

[quote who="xGhost4000x" reply="5" id="2511184"]Heres an idea: (This only works if line of sight/fog of war is used) Have roads increase movement speed by a set %, and have them always bo "Explored" so if an empire uses your road system to invade your kingdom you will see them coming, but iof they travel off the beaten path you havfe to rely on scouts and outposts to locate the enemy. [/quote] This is an ellegant solution and should be perfectly sufficient.&

In reference to your city types, I do agree that Elemental should find a way to prevent cities from all sporting the same buildings, but I disagree that the player should be forced to choose one. I'm always in favor of greater options. If I want a city to generalist, but not excel at anything in particular, I want to have that option. So I think a better way to handle it would be to have special, but uncommon buildings or guilds that you can attract to a

Yep, I definately agree. Villages don't even need to be something that you have to manage very heavily--- your cities could be a sort of management hub.

Very good ideas Sar.

This is kind of a silly post. Comparing Elemental with King's Bounty the Legend is like comparing apples and oranges. King's Bounty the Legend is a great game, but you could only have a dozen or so unit animations on the screen at once, hence they could be quite detailed. As for depth, King's Bounty was more of an RPG than it was an empire building game. A better question would be if Elemental will be as fun as King's Bounty, but then again, we won't know until it is r

I agree for the most part with the original poster, but I too would be satisfied if the Human and Fallen factions were both mechanically, and asthetically, very different. If all we end up seeing is a set of monarchies with "you get +5 to your food and you get +5 to your weapons" I'll be very disappointed. I love stardock, but I didn't get much of the right feel when it came to Galactic Civilizations--- until the last expansion, which did it quite brilliantly. I'd li

[quote]This is actually what i would prefer. So in one game, iron might be very rare and thus worth so much more throughout that game, and in another it might be a different resource thats rare. So that money actually means something, because you would be spending it to actually get other resources that will actually build you things. In games like these, money and the economy always takes a back seat which wouldn't be the case when running a nation. It would be one of the most important thin

Well, I say currency should be the weight of a commodity that has a relatively fixed value. Think of, for instance, salt. In Elemental, it could be mana crystals or some such thing. Or perhaps, more interestingly, you could have multiple commodities that represent currency and that change value based on abundance (these commodities could be useable too). Salt, grain, gold, mana crystals, head of cattle.

Lol, they'll be quite flattered when they get older and bring smiles to their faces, even if you get called a cheapskate now ;-) I did the same thing--- I wrote my kid cousin a super hero short story with him as the protagonist (he's a nerd, so I made him "book boy." His power? A super human thirst for knowledge.) Sounds like you had a lovely vacation!

I would certainly like to landmarks named too. Beyond that, though, I think they should give some special benefits too. If you build your city in the shadow of a magnificent, statuesque mountain, it should give you some prestige. They could also give you certain resource bonuses too (think Alpha Centauri or Fall From Heaven 2.)

[quote]In most TBS strategy games I have played, the amount of research points created by an empire increases with its size, while the points cost of the technologies remains constant (at least with respect to the size of the empire). This gives empires who grow quickly in size early in the game, either by building or by conquering a lot of cities, a non-negligible technological advantage compared to smaller nations.[/quote] Eph, you have made a very good point. This is a proble