Demiansky

In response to Raven, I don't think anyone that has played Galactic Civ II has played it any differently than you (except the AI, who often builds a little bit of everything on every world.) The problem arrives when you hit the 40 planet mark and you have to start garrisoning defense ships on your planets or post outrunners, build up all of your spacedocks in every sectors, return to each planet every time you get a terraform upgrade, rally your ships, and then be prepared to redo a lot

So I was playing Galactic Civilizations II and, as always, I found the game was getting tedious as my collection of planets became an empire. While managing a small number used to be fun, zipping around the galaxy trying to keep track of my scores of planets got tedious pretty fast, and AI governors were just never as good as the real thing. How might this stumbling block be averted in Elemental? So I thought about how empires were hist

Complete non-sequiter--- you shouldn't be playing risk to begin with. You should be playing Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_Imperium

[quote]The troll example may work in the late game (it is tough) and if it is near so the player may react on the event. However if it has been triggered in some distant area the ammount of generated trolls would became overhelming.[/quote] Well, I don't think its necessary for all dungeons to have linear growth, otherwise they go right back to appearing "canned." In some cases, a population of monsters might decline because they can't find enough food (the pl

I went into Beta expecting not to enjoy the mechanics of the game--- rather, I was expecting to have fun watching the game itself evolve and grow. That being said, almost everything works properly for me, and I haven't experienced any crashes ;-) Any bugs I have found have pretty much already been reported.

[quote who="mrakomo" reply="38" id="2381488"]Oops, I have forgotten the setup conditions in the example. [/quote] Wow, some awesome examples mrakomo! You set some great, but simple, parameters by which an infinite variety of dungeons can spring up through the world that would influence the landscape. Perhaps upon emmergence, they can also have a variable that observers proximity to civilization and that civilization's might (trolls are likely to spawn in the distant w

[quote quoting="post"]I've listed suggested behaviors of independents which are moving on the world map. These behaviors can also be placed for AI players by any gamers which are creating a map. Frogboy might like these suggestions for allowing gamers more options on creating challenging maps. Hope Stardock likes these ideas: 1) Guard: Unit(s) does not move on the map and always stands its ground. 2) Guard Area: Unit(s) normally does not move on th

[quote who="Voqar" reply="32" id="2379794"]It's a turn-based strategy game with RPG elements and randomized content. Having dungeons with deep story lines seems a bit outside the scope of a game like this, and more appropriate for a more pure RPG. Maybe for campaign-oriented gameplay. [/quote] Well, I never really suggested plopping down deep story lines into dungeons to begin with. I'm personally not so much in favor o

Is the channeler a complete authoritarian dictator, who controls every last cent of ever last peasant? Or do his citizens have some degree of personal autonomy? I ask this because there has been reference made to wandering heroes or private adventurers roaming about, and I was curious where exactly they come from (if every channeler controls everything that every citizen does, then do they only come from neutral cities?) Certainly, I hope they don't just spawn out of the blu

Well Robbie, I like the idea of some multi-level "caves," but there would need to be a very careful balance between multi-level and linear dungeons. Obviously, if there are too many multi-level caves, most players won't ever even bother raiding them if there is a great risk that they will just be causing themselves an even bigger headache than when they just let the first level rampage.

Well, I don't see why they wouldn't set up shop on top of some kind of shard or mana source. But then again, if a channeler is able to harness upwards of a dozen shards, a necromancer would pale in power in comparison.

When I move the cursor the the right side of the screen, the screen instead scrolls to the upper left. All other directions scroll properly.

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="5" id="2373919"]Galactic Civilizations II already does this. The AI will outright tell you that it's coming after you because you keep conquering little guys. [/quote] Yeah, but I don't ever recall seeing a diplomacy modifier that states something to the effect of: "You have pushed around the little people! -2" The closest I've ever seen is: "You've declared war on my friend!!" In any games that penalize bullying, the score is alway

...Okay, so I'm not sure the thread title properly represents what I plan on proposing. Basically, I was playing Fall From Heaven 2 the other day when I realized something: The easiest and most rational way to win in most 4X games is to never attack the strongest opponent, but to instead gobble up as many small opponents as possible until you outstrip every other opponent in all categories of progress. This will generally produce a game that is rife with tedeous,

[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="7" id="2367462"]This is exactly the sort of stuff I've been trying to type about in other discussions about wanting a building-block story layer (and not a linear campaign story in the sandbox). And I especially hope to see much more than simple dungeon-crawling in the final functionality. Dungeons are just one type of encounter area, and I think they'd be much more fun if they were rare when compared to things like a camp of trolls or maybe even a ma

Very good idea, and historic too. Most middle age conquests didn't result in swift assimilation like you see in a lot of games. Instead, you would conquer a region and then keep them under your thumb, funneling away resources and the best land. This feature will help extensively in keeping conquest from being the one and only best strategy.

One thing that I was really hoping for in Elemental, but was generally lacking in games like Master of Magic, are "dungeons" that have a purpose. What I mean is, classic dungeons (even in most D&D campaigns) are just convenient smash and grab adventures in which monsters sit around in rooms atop stacks of "treasure," waiting for adventurers to slay them and nab the goodies.&n

[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="23" id="2366473"]Also, I'd prefer if most dungeons would regenerate eventually once they're cleared. And they needn't be populated by exactly what was there before, either. Sometimes a dungeon might slowly become repopulated over time, and maybe sometimes a powerful creature will move in overnight. This would keep the world alive longer. For example in Civ IV, I often start a new game when the whole world is covered by civilizations - it's just not as much fun

[quote who="CapnWinky" reply="2" id="2364617"]I understand where you guys are coming from but I disagree. I think part of the fun of exploring ruins/dungeons/towers is not knowing what to expect. I think it's pretty cheap to get a bestiary report just by going up to a location. If you want to scout something out...then do it the ol' fashioned way and go explore and get the heck out of there if it's too dangerous. Now, this is based on the assumption that the locations mentioned ab

I'm almost certain that they would. But even in Master of Magic, the information still wasn't explicit as I would have liked it to be. It could say "A Guardian Spirit was spotted in the ruins" and upon entering, it could either be one Guardian Spirit OR 1 Guardian Spirit and 8 squads of teleporting, death-dealing Unicorns whom would promptly teleport into your ranks and murder every last one of your casters before you had time to retreat. In Elemental, I'd lik

You know, I had this issue in my D&D campaigns, especially when characters were able to extend their lives for centuries. That is, eventually the world would become urban and developed enough to reach a late renaissance age of technology (after the heroes avert the usual worldwide catastrophe that stints development). To remedy this, I had a simple solution: the laws of physics in my D&D campaign did not accomodate gunpowder or fossil fuels. Instead, there were

I personally find that grid based system actually entail greater strategy than free form maps. The only time I've ever had even a minor challenges on a free form map was with Warhammer Mark of Chaos--- and even then it was only because each scenario was carefully choreographed. I expect that WOM battles will always be fresh because of the diversity of units that we will encounter from battle to battle--- forcing you to reinvent new strategies each time. In the Total

Hm, yeah I think that fear or intimidation is a very important thing to document. What kind of interplay will be between a fear slider and a relations slider could be very complex though.

Bingo to the both of you. Yeah, sorry if I didn't express things clearly enough, Pidgeon. I don't like complete random chaos in my games either :-)

[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="15" id="2360324"] In real life, when you are negotiating with someone you don't know ahead of time whether someone will accept of deny a proposal--- especially if you ask someone to do something drammatic and especially if you are calling in some kind of prior favor that they are alleged to owe you. That's the whole point of diplomatic capital--- you are pressuring someone to do something that is somewhat against their own interest&nb