Demiansky

Is it just me, or does it seem like houses are a waste to build? You know you'll have to build them for an exanding city, so it's really just extra clicks for the player to actually make them put the houses on a given tile. It'd like to see houses placed in the city in heaps at the beginning, and as you research "city planning techs" (rather than housing techs) those houses are organized more neatly, thus making room for more buildings in your city. So rather than having eve

The United States will not remain a super power, but it's in no where near collapsing. You'll see China continue to shoot forward, but they cannot grow forever with an authoritarian government. Put too much power in too few people and they are bound to make a really, really wrong decision. They're bound to derail sooner or later. You don't get as much done in a democracy or very quickly, but it is very, very resiliant and war weary. Read Fareed Zakaria's Post A

[quote who="Melchiz" reply="212" id="2542955"]Better question: Why is the world (read: collectivist nations of Europe et al) obsessed with the political philosophies of Americans? Are we not free to choose our own system and reap its benefits? Why does it concern you that we are different? Is it envy? Fear? Ignorance? Since the United States of America declared itself free from the whims of European leaders, the rest of the world has scowled at our independent nature. We

Our government needs to spend, but they need to be long term investments in technological industries. Deficits aren't good, but people need to understand that deficit spending isn't necessarily a bad thing. If your deficit spending is invested and produces substantial revenue, it can easily offset the money spent during the investment and the interest owed. Not only that, but the U.S. debt is consistently "inflated away" because most of the debt is owned by priv

Well, in regard to the original post, I don't think most people know what "socialism" is or what it means. And aside from that, I bet they've never even heard of the U.N. Human Development Index. For those of your who don't know, it was a massive multinational endeavor by demographers to to assess the development of each nation based on per capita standard of living (money), education, and life expectancy. Wonder who ranked in the to

I would give you karma, but you use emoticons as a rhetorical crutch.

[quote who="Jharii" reply="28" id="2542049"]Channelling spells have been around for a time, and were actually in MoM in the form of spell upkeep (spells continued as long as you could maintain the upkeep or you shut it off). I would expect to see some form of this in Elemental, anyhow. [/quote] Hm, I think we have a different definition of "channeled" spells. What I'm talking about is mainly in combat (there could be plenty of channeled spells on the

[quote who="Tasunke" reply="55" id="2542890"]Yea ... I totally have to agree that "building Border towns for Resource and Food aquisition" seems to be the next logical step to reducing city spam. Reduce City spam by favoring a few large cities plus TOWN SPAM!!!! (aka border-settlement spam, rural area, developed, controlled, but not overpopulated ... ect ect ect) [/quote] I think the larger and more prestigeous a city, the broader "zone of control" it has on resources.

What Rising Legend said? Yes, yes, yes! He's always got a very rational overview. I'm sorry, but I'm very disappointed with the way cities are turning out. Personally, I think the tile system--- where players decide to build on each tile in an authoritarian fashion--- needs to be scrapped altogether. It adds very little to the game, as far as strategy. As soon as I'm done raiding with the wife, I'll contribute more to the debate. Until then, liste

[quote who="MagicwillNZ" reply="13" id="2541614"] I for one would enjoy boar cavalry.... Well, I don't know about you, but I'm going to cross-breed until I put all of Earth's mundane mounts to shame. The speed of an cheetah. The tusks, size, and weight of elephants. The orneriness of boars. The badassness of bear claws. I call them Cheleboarbears! [/quote] I'll take 2!!

I've always applauded Elemental's choice of artistic style. Very original and refreshing for a strategy game!!! The story, though, is unfortunately, not very moving. Sure, it's enough to keep me interested and make a worthwhile setting but not exactly earth shattering in the grand scale of fantasy narratives. It's about on par with Warcraft's backstory. Could be better. Someday, I hope to see someone step forward and posit a story a

[quote who="Wintersong" reply="3" id="2539890"] Quoting Scoutdog, reply 1 I know there will be an item editor included with the game..... however I think it will be based completely outside of the actual game, as a modding tool. There still might be some sort of "forge" in the game, but the devs aren't talking..... As a mod tool is required so we can create items without the need to play a game (or use notepad to classic modding). But I really hope to see in g

[quote]But of "Does it make sense?". It you cannot thing of a way for it to make sense, it doesn't work no matter how "cool" it is. And "It's magic" is the same as "Because God says so". Or "The Devs will do the work" doesn't cut it for me. If I want to have female population to have an impact in population grow, I don't just say it and let the Devs do the work. I actually create a thread about it and try to touch some view points about how it could work (or not work). That allows

Well, er, I have to agree with Wintersong on that point. People are drawn to Sci-fi and Fantasy specifically because it creates a coherant setting that ISN'T our own. But people still expect that setting to make sense. Honestly, I don't see how channeled spells can't fit into a magic physics system. Give me a physics system, and I'll indicate how it'd fit in.

I imagine that if Master of Magic had item forging mechanism, there will be a much more detailed one in Elemental as well as mod tools.

[quote who="Wintersong" reply="16" id="2539907"] Quoting Demiansky, reply 14 Okay seriously Winter, you are grasping at straws here. This is silly. You make plenty of good points in other posts, but this is arguing for arguing sake. Yes, I want a cosmology to be consistent too, but you can come up with a billion and a half simple mechanisms by which a fire elemental would spill out of a super fireball spell while it is being cast. This

[quote who="Wintersong" reply="13" id="2539711"] Quoting Cerevox, reply 12 It is kinda like aftershocks or preshocks on an earthquake. The main deal was SO HUGE that you got little deals running around too. They are stil earthquakes, not earth elementals. Just before a storm? You can smell ozone but no storm elementals shocking people. Yes, magic is "magic" but unless presented with a consistent methodology of why "spirits appear from not

So I didn't even want to start reading the post because it was so lengthy, but once I started, I couldn't stop until I was at the end. Very good post, and very good points. I would like to add that a visual mechanism for morale would be very easy to implement. All you would need is a little smiley face next to a brigade's life bar. Green smiley for high moral, light green for good moral, yellow for average morale, orange for low moral, and red for dismal moral. E

[quote who="Itsfishtime" reply="4" id="2538931"]I mean though what if ive reached the last teir of the adventuring tech. I have done all the quests and annomolie sort of things in the near vacinity of my "known/inhabited" region. I dont want to always have to go adventuring out for new ones going furthur and firhtur away all the time. I feel no matter how long i play there should still be some quests to do around my home. Maybe not as many quests like the frequency of them being formed could

[quote who="Cerevox" reply="8" id="2539390"]Or darkness, light, weakness...any buff, any debuff, the numerous spells that stuck around the whole battle, the summoning spells.... One shots spells were in the major minority in master of magic. So on channeling spells, basically, if you are calling forth a super fire spell, fire elemental would begin to manifest around the target due to increased fire mana levels? i actually kind of like this idea.<b

What also might be interesting is if you could research your own spell chains. You would have a certain amount of "points" to attribute to the chain based on some variable. You would start out by deciding the build up effects. If they are loose cannon, random effects, you gain extra points to spend. If they are always positive, they cost points. The earlier the effect is in the spell chain, the more or less you gain points. Once you've fleshed out all of yo

Well, the point is that using a channel spell as listed in the original post would be stronger than simply casting them in sequence one by one, because it locks you into the commitment for that spell for 8 turns. Ideally, chain spells would generally be high end spells that have lot's of umph if you can finish the whole thing and get it to land in the proper place--- but aren't completely vacant for the 8 turns you are casting them. So really what a channel spell is, is the caster

I had an idea for a new way of casting spells. Rather than simply the classic way, which was to begin casting and at the finish of the cast, witness an effect, instead some spells would be "channeled." Channeled spells take multiple turns to cast and manifest different effects throughout the duration of the cast. For instance, "fire channel spell." The fire channel spell would take 8 turns to cast. On the first 2 turns, it would fire fireballs at targets o

[quote who="Cerevox" reply="4" id="2535128"]Um, no offense, but getting an article in all the big gaming review websites is kinda like having the kid on the corner yelling your praises. No one takes the big game sites seirously anymore, they just trade high scores for cash and everyone knows it. The only time anything on those sites gets noticed is when they pay enough to get the whole damn site reskinned as an ad for the game. And the big game review sites tend to cater more towar

[quote who="ChongLi" reply="12" id="2537456"] 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. "Random" would be if the soldier suddenly, and without warning, teleported to an unpredictable location on the battlefield and attacked the nearest enemy, then teleported back to