Demiansky

[quote who="Myles" reply="105" id="2626335"]The problem is that this is a Civ type game, and that's where the focus must lie. I'm all in favor of including things that make the world feel alive, but not at a higher priority then other parts of the actual game. And the fact is, a lot of these ideas have been completely unfeasible for Elemental, and yes, belong in a simulation. [/quote] I don't really understand this remark. Elemental has been touted again a

[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="101" id="2625942"] Is there an actual game called SimFantasy? It's a snarky word someone around here made up to pick on us folks who want some sort of ongoing activity outside the doings of the human player and the computer players. It's fairly good rhetoric; makes me feel almost tainted by my love of the early, pre-EA work from Will Wright's shop, Maxis. But not enough to make me leave the 'living world' crowd. [/quote] Yeah,

[quote who="John_Hughes" reply="60" id="2625171"]This is not a jab cephalo, but what do you suggest? Hunting for the Herbs and seek out the lost recipes has also been done. Experimenting on peasants, perhaps. But that has dark connotations, and a Light side would have to available to the non-dark side crowd. Something new, interesting and unique is always the goal for sure but what? and how? always remains. If not Crystals, then what? A

[quote]The thing is, does the player has any way to differentiate both cases? If she sees a pair of wandering trolls, is she able to know that they are raiding because there's a shortage of food or whatever "reason"?[/quote] Yeah, I understand what you are saying and it's a good point. But the purpose for giving monsters these kinds of motives isn't to simply make them more convincing as characters. The point it is to make them dynamic. Rather than giving them a scri

[quote who="HuaynaCapac" reply="21" id="2624815"]I see what he was trying to get at - "evolves irrelevant of whether the player is in the game or not." I think the key to the 'living world' feeling is seeing non-player actors in the game interact independent of the player. That's the flaw in many RPGs and strategies: The AI doesn't feel like it's playing for itself. It generally feels like a game equivalent of The Truman Show, with the AI acting out a script for the player. Fr

I think what's critical to making the game feel alive from the beginning is to make a world that persists, grows, and evolves irrelevant of whether the player is in the game or not. At the beginning, the player should only feel as though they can make a very small difference in the world and as they grow more powerful, find themselves acting upon smaller forces in weightier ways. So what do I think this living world will need? Well, first off the current prestige/populatio

Steam is a royal pain in the ass. I purchased Empire Total War not long after it came out and for some reason Steam refused to authenticate my CD. It was a well documented problem. It assumed it was a copy or stolen or something like that. Basically, I didn't get to actually play the game that I threw 50 bucks down for until about 3 months later when the problem was fixed and I couldn't return it to the store because it had been opened. And then, as we all k

[quote who="StillSingle" reply="36" id="2620174"]I think lwarmonger is right on the money here. The only way to make active and passive sovereigns equal on the essance front is for a flat rarely changeable slow increase. Then leave it to the decisions of how to use said essence as the differentiation between Sovs. Then all you need to do is balance the city bound sov bonuses to make it a viable alternative to my Sov is going to kick butt in every battle he looks a

So in most strategy games, the qualities of a war race can very easily be achieved by technology. Galactic Civs 2, though a great game, is probably the best example (or worst offender, depending on how you'd like to see it). Essentially, pretty much every quality you gave a war race at the customization screen could be gained by technological advances, making a tech race just as viable--- if not more so--- than a war race. What I would like to see is war races th

Good point in the OP. Personally, I've always advocated for a research "strategy game" that would play out vaguely like a battle as a sovereign does research. But I wouldn't so much call it research as "communing with the Nether Plane of Magic" or what have you. You would use your magical assets and talents to plunge hidden channels and fight back nether mites all in the comfort of your wizard tower. This would allow a "scholarly" sovereign to advance in scholarly

The consequences of the original post seem to be rather troublesome. If essence is used to restore a segment of land, you end up with an incentive to pack as much as possible into a tiny blossom of "life land" and save the essence for other endeavors. It also creates a dispraportionate incentive on hording your essence and using it to conquer other nations that have used their essence to restore land. Personally, I think essence should be used in a completely diff

I would personally like to see "political capital." Basically, with each major faction you would have an abstract currency representing all of the favors you have done for them. When you want them to do something for you or seal an important deal, you can use political capital to influence the outcome. For instance, you approach the Acacian Kingdom and propose a special trade pact. The Acacians have less to gain from it and innitially refuse. That's when

The OP is well constructed, and I agree with it whole-heartedly. But Alpha Centauri had more than just good lore, it had deep philosophical meaning and perspective. It was almost lyrical in the way that it fused philosophical snippets into the game universe. It illustrated the effect that technology had on each interpretation of the Utopian dream. AC had a lasting effect on my life outlook in the same way that Planescape Torment di

Superb idea, and fits well into the present gameplay mechanics. From my understanding, there will be many, many opponents who are in fact not lead by sovereigns.

[quote who="SoonerToucan" reply="54" id="2585963"]Great story Demiansky, but I have to agree with the team here. Gold is a perfectly fine unit of barter, espically considering we are talking about 25years after the cataclysm. If the trader in your story had say warm clothes or weapons to defend himself, while he may see more use for them they still do not quell his hunger. I noticed one of the wandering heroes had the title "the trader." Will heroes / champio

So I've probably mentioned this before in other threads some time ago, but I thought I'd bring it up again. I think that one thing Elemental needs to keep it interesting and replayable is an infinite number of unique quests. What do I mean by this? I mean that a player should never encounter the same quest text twice. When a player encounters the same quest twice or three times or more, the concept of questing gets stale very quickly. Now obviously it would be

[quote]I believe that having Gold as currency even after a cataclysm is just fine. Gold has retained its value throughout human history. Gold is portable, can be concealed, does not rust, and is easily recognizable. It can be converted to luxury goods such as jewelry or armor ornaments. Being small, it is much easier to trade than other commodoties such as grain, hides, beer or wood. If you are fleeing for your life you can take a pouch of gold but you cannot take 40 bushels of corn.[/quote]<

Hm, a whole host of setting problems stuck out like sore thumbs to me. Most of them wouldn't be issues, except this is a post-armageddon setting and you (Frogboy) have espoused that this game's setting will be engrossing. First off, making cities to function like tetris blocks strikes me as simply bizarre. Overall, I'm not given the sense that the world is recovering from catastrophe at all. There's no sense of urgency and I really don't feel a sens

[quote]Finite Resources – “We require more minerals!” In the newest iteration of Civ, capturing a resource like iron will no longer allow swordsmen to be spammed. If a player controls an iron resource, it will allow the construction of X number of iron units, like swordsmen. If the player wants to construct more than X number of swordsmen, or iron dependent units, then they have to find another iron node on the map and capitalize on it. I think this con

[quote who="Cikomyr" reply="6" id="2572182"] In Elemental, I'd like to see something similar: a mountain kingdom that zig-zags through mountain valleys. Two hefty ends of an empire, separated by the vast territory of an easily awaken dragon, connected only by a flimsy road. An island kingdom that pushes against the coast of a forgotten continent, held at a sprinkling of seashore cities by a fearsome collection of Lizardman tribes. Why not an Underground Dwarven Kingdom,

Yeah, and one of the added benefits beyond remedying city spam is that it also changes the "shape" of an individual's kingdom. Because imposing, nasty hazards will encourage sovereigns to seek "softer" land, they may be encourage to, say, take to the seas to colonize a distant, large, peaceful island rather than the fertile land next door that happens to be under the gaze of some formidable and jelous monster. When you look at maps of medieval kingdoms, they are never big b

[quote who="Sareln" reply="1" id="2569779"]Solid Idea. Here are some thoughts on it: I think it makes more sense to show hazards even if you haven't scouted the area - or would we like the hidden dangers of the map to reach out and 'thwack' the unsuspecting? This could go either way, but definitely something to think about. Hazard rating could have a malus rating for population growth for cities (check the hazard rating on the central tile?). This refle

An intriguing idea, though I don't think it should be too complicated. It would be interesting if different units temperaments gave bonuses or penalties to other temperaments.

In Civilization 4, you can pretty much build a city wherever you'd like and you are limited only by the geology of the terrain. There may be a few barbarians here or there, but even raging barbarians are a pushover. In Elemental, I would like to see Hostile NPC's and dungeons be a as influential on where you place your cities as geology. What I mean by this is that many hostiles would have a range of hostility, and the closer your are to them, the greater likelihood they w

Mortemeer: A lawful evil Necromancer NPC from our merchant campaign. He honored his pacts and word, but had no moral aversions. He was captured by the party of PC's by order of the Milanese Merchant Vanguard and then secretly released by one of the characters, as he might be useful later. Mortemeer sent the party on a series of seemingly innocent side quests over the course of many years to retrieve the bones of all seven of his ancestoral line&nbs