Demiansky

[quote who="RentheUnclean" reply="57" id="2399392"]Hmmm, my reply seems to have gotten lost. Caravans - What is the point here? What is the advantage of having a graphical unit moving across the screen when you could just as easily make any army blocking a road "raiding." With Scouts, Armies, Sovereign's, Monsters, etc. all moving around each turn, do we really need more moving graphics. Given the lack of skill or tension in raiding caravans (no

Hm, I think everyone has shown pretty rigorously that allowing the sovereign to escape for free unless there is another sovereign is a pretty big problem with an abundance of potential abuses. I say there should be a recombobulating mechanism that is built in a specific city before hand. When the sovereign dies, the priests/wizards of this mechanism (call it what you may) spend a certain number of resources and begin a lengthy ritual to recombobulate the sovereign. If the

I think people are concentrating too much on what makes a good fantasy novel and not what makes a good fantasy game. Something that was really, really cool in a fantasy novel might be a game breaking feature for a game. Fantasy novels are scripted and follow a definitive path. Fantasy based strategy games don't. If sovereigns are as frail as it sounds like they may be, 9 out of 10 times, they will not die gloriously or meaningfully like they do in fantasy novel

Some pretty awesome ideas, Wintersong, and I hope they end up in the game. As for adjusting the physical ascetics of your sovereign, I think it would be even more impressive if some of those traits were passed on to your offspring (and some of your bride's qualities as well.) In that vein of thought, you could add negative attributes to your sovereign; perhaps something like "dubious loyalty" which could be passed on to a son or daughter.

[quote]Now I am sorry if I got a bit short with you and Tormy. I think it is absolutely ridiculous for people to continue to harp on something whcih the developer has said is set in stone. I am sorry you are so sensitive to the "w" word. It gets tiresome to see posters get on their pet subject, like some people obsessing about eye candy being the one thing that was going to make or break EWOM. And now people a few people are obsessing about this dynasty concept which again, I have no problem

[quote quoting="post"]I'm just wondering and hoping to incite discussion regarding the balance of troop quality versus quanity. Personally I hope to see both strategies as being viable. However that said I have reservations. If having a large amount of troops can equal high quality troops with good equipment than that might undermine a very exciting part of the game (that part of the game being resource management and unit customization). Anyone have any thoughts on this? [/qu

[quote who="Denryu" reply="30" id="2396176"] Quoting TatertotEatalot, reply 28 I'm thinking we need warehouse buildings to stockpile resources and such. It is this value that will be used when constructing units instead of a requiring to have access of the resource at that time. I am really in favor of this. It would mean the economic model would have to switch over to a more quantitative model - which I am also hugely in favor o

... As for what I would have liked to say before my attention was hi-jacked by hobby-flamers: Rugby, I like your bulleted points. That's essentially what I think I would add for valuable balance to the issue of sovereign death.

[quote who="Denryu" reply="100" id="2395566"] Quoting arunodayt, reply 91 Quoting Demiansky, reply 90 If sovereign death = game over, it will greatly benefit the player and severely penalize the AI. Essentially what you will have is a moral hazard in which the character will be motivated to use his sovereign more carelessly and level up/ gain rewards faster than the AI's. When faced with throwing away hours of work upon

[quote who="Tormy-" reply="92" id="2395356"] Quoting Denryu, reply 89 Quoting Tormy-, reply 85 This is a very subjective stuff. You like it, while others don't. This is the problem. This is why we need to have an option [at least via modding...] to somehow play with different rules. If it can be modded, then great for you. But any game that they try to put option in to please everyone will just please

I love the idea of sovereign dead = game loss, Frogboy, but it will be a disaster if there is no contingency or backup plan other than a random evasion roll. I personally think there should be succession with penalties upon the death of the sovereign if there is a successor available. It would give so much more depth and character to your children and family tree. I understand that, by making the sovereign the primary focus that you add a certain

Wintersong, good points around the end, but I'm not sure I understand your first paragraph, so let me be more specific. Cheat loading (or for Arun's sake, the "loading asset") is something that every single person will use, as Arun has illustrated, and I have numerous times although no one seems to notice. Now, there are certain features and execution of these features that will make the "loading asset" more powerful, and other features less powe

[quote who="Malsqueek" reply="10" id="2387511"]I like the idea academically, Demiansky, but I'm having a hard time seeing the implimentation of the largest benefit (namely: military) I too tend to get real tired of the massive amounts of micro that go along with the super-late game. The one rub I see is how do you elegantly take away the garrison micromanagement from the Megapoles' subsidiary villages? If you go with the slider approach, does that just mean that y

[quote who="Myles" reply="18" id="2387520"] Quoting Demiansky, reply 14 Quoting Wintersong, reply 13 Yes, people will cheat load, but my point was that if you make cheat loading too powerful in favor of the player, you are severely encumbering the AI who is unable to cheat load. Let me illustrate. If you throw the sovereign at every potential battle that you might remotely win and load your ga

[quote who="Wintersong" reply="13" id="2387192"] Quoting Black-Knight, reply 4 Having a mortal sovreign is a pain in the butt, unless when they die, one of their children can take their place with his\her own skills\attributes (like in the Total War series). A kingdom after all, doesn't end because the king dies!! If you are "roleplaying" the sovereign (as in the figure who starts a new kingdom and then leads it to glory), as soon as he dies, your story ends t

[quote who="Raven X" reply="10" id="2386838"] Quoting Strand, reply 8 Clearly you're not playing the Beta. World tiles double as city tiles. The game already has 'Fertile Ground' tiles placed around the world, and they're the prime place to place cities because they're also the only place you build farms. We're hoping there will be many more type of beneficial city tiles like this. Yes I know that...I am playing

[quote who="Raven X" reply="7" id="2386696"]Could be a good idea. Perhaps refine it a little. Instead of these places being in the city, have these tiles be scattered throughout the world and if you find one you can build a town there and then get the more tile specific bonuses you speak of. These "magic building sites" could even be guarded by monsters. [/quote] Yeah, I'd like to see the tiles scattered uninterrupted throughout the world randomly, but perhaps with certain propen

[quote quoting="post"]One of the things that really caught my eye when I was reading the dev journals was when one of the guys was talking about an npc necromancer that raised an undead army from the battered and destroyed cities of previous players' battles. That kind of AI, one that slowly shows up (rather than starting as an established enemy at the beginning of the game), and is at odds with all the other players in the game, could be a really awesome idea and gameplay feature. <br /

Uplift and Strand, both very good follow up ideas. It would definately be interesting if certain tiles could help or hurt a player depending on if they were Human or Fallen. Also, it would make perfectly good sense for an agrarian civ to start next to farmland and a mana-hording civ to start next to a shard.

GW Sword, it's fantasy with Plutonium in it, duh. Actually, I'm not sure what I meant myself--- I think I was aiming for a sort of statistical average of fantasy settings or fantasy that is a rock solid genre. Basically, that choice of words came from a fusion of five-minutes-before-work haste and my wife's geologic lectures, lol.

[quote who="econundrum1" reply="6" id="2380233"]They have already said you will be able to mod the game including adding your own art if you have the tools and the skill. I don't think they need to have playable elves, trolls, etc. That would make it a very generic fantasy game indeed. I'm happy with it as is for the moment, though I may try out new races modded in. [/quote] Well, we've seen in the beta that there are already trolls and giant spiders, and we

One thing that I appreciated greatly about Galactic Civ 2 was the interesting variety of planets that emmerged from the randomized special tiles that you would find on them. I would personally like to see the return of such a concept in elemental with these tiles speckling the whole of the landscape (rather simply from planet to planet). Sure, there can be large resources like iron, shards, gold etc., but there could also be a host of other special tiles that enhance other element

[quote quoting="post"]In most games I have played, unit strength is closely proportional to recruit-cost, recruit-time, maintenance-cost and the time/cost to build the building or research the spell that lets you get them. I'd like some variety, like maybe units with low reseach cost and build cost, but high maintenance, or high reseach cost & build time, but low maintenance (think Kensai in Shogun Total War, or war-dogs in RomeTW), etc. Of course, in a design-your-o

[quote who="Raven X" reply="6" id="2385469"]I see what you're saying Demiansky and it will have it uses that's for sure. It is a good idea, I just don't want to see the minor cities get lost to all PC control. As you state we won't be raising armies from cities that manufacture armor and weapons. They just make the goods then ship them off to the city with the barracks and high population. They initiate the drafting and conscript the units. This is why guarding your caravans in Elemental will

I agree with Black-Knight. I think the the dev team will see very quickly in mid-beta that having a soverign as a strong hero unit will present many, many difficult balance issues--- especially if dying means an abrupt game over. I think they already have numerous ideas where-by sovereigns will have some failsafes to afford them some protection and possibly even (as I would like to see) the channeler's essence being passed to offspring. One of the things I mentioned in ear