Aeon221

This is a world rebuilding after an epic shattering. A world in which _everyone_ is in mortal danger from giant spiders and rats and people who can fart out fireballs for real. Anyone who can hold a spear is going to be given a spear. Any country that chooses not to arm women out of some sense of obligation to being douchebags is going to do with a military capable force that's roughly half as large as the available pool of a group that is willing to put their women on

Doublepoastin, a lot of the tactical and strategic errors I've brought up are problems with game design. Magic is worthless outside of four-five spells. If this weren't the case, I'd have a reason to spec a city in something other than tech or money. Researching magic, unless you're bored and have more money than you know what to do with, is worthless outside of shard harvesting. Diplomacy is worthless outside of caravans, period stop end discussion. I have no idea wha

Dude, Brad, you're bad at your own game! No offense, but OMG. I'm only going to do this because you are writing the AI, otherwise I would never be this critical of someone else's game. It's goddamn rude, I wouldn't like it and I don't like giving it. But feedback is what you need, and you made a lot of errors. Errors in the tactical battle: YOU MOVED FIRST. Don't. Reposition your troops so that the high def ones are up front and the low def ones are

It's silly that I have to give up power to use the other, meaner half of my population in combat. That's ridiculous! Especially in a post-apocalyptic game where I should be ecstatic to have anyone take up arms! Make it so that recruiting women or men is the default. And then make it so that people who only want the one have to pay a point. After all, they're forgoing part of their population entering the combat force, they're the ones who should suffer. Either that, or m

Well if you can't bring your units to the sea, you can always bring land out of the ocean and walk on that. Option two is slay the crap out of the nearest enemy and eat their food. This is my usual solution.

[quote who="Werewindlefr" reply="8" id="2848742"] So it's a fudge, but as fudges go it's a pretty good one. No, it's not, at least I've seen many abuses this "fudge" can create. See, the issue isn't about what you can get from it, it's how you can destroy an AI's strategy by selling wind. Get a diplomatic resource, then drain the AI of cash, win the game. The AI can't do anything with that resource, so every time it accepts a deal with diplomatic AI in the balance, it potentia

AI performs poorly in rush situation. Human player buys a few heroes, builds a few peons, heads for the nearest capital. AI typically has sovereign and wife as sole defenders, usually poorly geared. Battle ends predictably. All AIs should beeline equipment and begin building at least 2-3 defenders as their first priority after getting the baseline buildings up. Baseline buildings are hut, (study, workshop OR workshop, study), hut, workshop, farm. If you just forced the AI to do

[quote who="darklander0" reply="5" id="2848714"]Good post, good ideas. The one thing that does concern me is the strength of armor in EWOM 1.1. Currently a unit that has 20 or 30% greater defense than enemy has attack can defeat hordes of enemies without taking a scratch. So I would definitively go for defense penalty when an unit is flanked, furthermore I would propose than each non dodged attack when totally blocked by armor does one point of damage, with that mechanic, hordes of weaker cre

Diplomatic Capital is a fudge implemented in GalCiv2 to account for the fact that computers can't discuss things like people would. In that game, it was weighted at around the same value as currency. In MP, two humans chat and end up with a deal at such and such a value that both of them (this is the important bit) think is fair. Instead of chatting with the AI, since it's incapable of doing that, you provide a deal you think is fair, and then use Diplomatic Capital to m

I'd suggest going a slightly different route. Rather than gold piling up into a stockpile like now -- which is the real problem -- it should be treated as a flow resource. You can spend up to the amount you earn per turn, and if you don't spend it it disappears -- lore terms, you give everyone a bonus or something. Works great with other resources in Grand Ages Rome, would probably work perfectly here too. That way you'd always have to deal with constraints, instead of hoarding until

TES games are great because you can mod whatever you want into them. Unbelievably accessible. So long as they keep it that way, the game will be an excellent base for doing practically anything. I get that haters gotta hate, but come on. BethSoft has consistently delivered a great modding framework, and that's pretty much it. Plus NORDS. I fully expect to enjoy playing a beer drinking wilderness man.

Generally have a few high cha govenor heroes, preferably the ones with admin talents, a bunch of strength based heroes, and one or two int based ones. Sov is usually a caster, since I gimp his phys stats to buy more bonus talents. First few turns can be a little rough, but it only takes a little while to get Equipment and then he's armored up and ready to roll. In terms of rush, I typically start building dudes with staves right from the start of the game, get abo

This thread includes a random poster telling seasoned developers with multiple successful games and an independent studio that their style of sales and community management is sub-optimal. I am sure it isn't either a troll or a bit stupid, and that it will go well.

I think it's silly that you can't group them together. It'd help out a lot -- for one thing, there'd be fewer units on the map after it had been researched. For another, it makes sense. It violates the POLA to not have them able to form a group. Plus, it'd help the AI. So I'm in favor, just make it require that troops be in a city with a command post to group them.

Most of the time players go to war with adjacent targets. They can just teleport around any distance issues, and if mountains are an issue, mountains can be lowered. If the enemy is across a strait, they can build a land bridge in about ten seconds flat and not fiddle around with the hassle of putting troops into a container, moving the container, and unloading them. Why would anyone bother with ships again? Want a tactical advantage against the enemy for raids? Land bridge, mountain at the e

Pretty sure there's a green arrow or red arrow + the change in stats shown in your hero's little bit at the bottom for the store when you select an item. Gonna fire up the game to check, but pretty sure it's in and just not very visible. edit: Verified. When you select an item, look at your hero's stats down at the bottom. Changes have an arrow (either green or red) and a number indicating the amount of the difference between the equipped item and the store item.

Right now, teleportation is an easy mode button. Even if the AI somehow manages to get an army together AND somehow manages to bring it near your city AND you have no units anywhere nearby, you can easily teleport your sovereign's army, or imbue the champion leading your army and have him do it (or have him return to your capital, have your sov return there, and THEN teleport the whole shebang). It's goofy. Too much ability to consolidate forces, it makes a strategic reserve and

I'd actually enjoy it if spell research was changed to be more like tech research. Instead of researching spells and levels, you research a book and get to select from a list of spells from it -- with a percentage chance for any given spell to appear in that book based on the number of shards you have for it and the number of spells you've researched from it. In short, spell research uses the boring Civ style. Go with the Elemental one, it's better!

Spellbook idea is the best thing on there. Couple it with a removal of the adventure tree (it never made sense) and an expansion in the amount of turf available to explore. Like the idea of having maps be coastal with inland exploration turf, could work equally well with explorable islands. Would especially suggest that rivers be the focal point of empires -- give movement bonuses to units going along a river, and gank all their remaining moves for crossing it. Bonus to caravans that

[quote who="Wintersong" reply="2" id="2846874"] quoting postBasically, doing exactly the same thing over and over is only fun if you're brain damaged. Like defeating armies and conquering cities repeadtly until you win by Conquest? And then starting a new game to do the same? You have a point in some parts though.[/quote] Conquest is only repetitive at a high level. Once you screw down to the micro level, each situation is sufficiently different

Oh good, I was terrified we'd never get to diddle around in the C++ elements. Well, short of making a billion please please please threads, I guess the best thing to do is wait. Is it out yet?

[quote who="StevenAus" reply="10" id="2846640"]Yes, especially design goals don't need tons of effort to get it down on electronic text on the company's own game forum. Two Questions I think a lot would like would be interested in answers to: 1. What is happening with Elemental's widely touted scripting support? 2. Issues and solutions - what about the War of Magic? Best regards, Steven.[/quote] It's not like this is life or death here, it's

If someone comes up with a really great mechanism that only works if the player builds a whole lot of the exact same thing, slap them. Not hard, that would be rude. But enough to let them know that this is a bad bad thing and they just made a mess. Maybe rub their nose in it? I dunno, I see people do that with dogs and it's just so degrading. You know, to the owner. Anyway, I didn't make the effort of loading up Elemental to play SimStudy:War of Studies. Please don't make me play SimStudy. Re

Seems to work just fine in the early game adventure phase, so long as you're not a fanatic about it. My sov is wandering around evaporating any particularly tough enemies with Arcane Arrow and then clubbing the rest.

Without any sort of economic rationale to develop a fleet, we're better off not having naval combat. Otherwise ships end up like in every other game -- a pointless addition used only when you need to move your land troops across a body of water. I'd suggest having neutral resources in the water that can be harvested by ships without needing city access to the tile. Fishing Ships, say, could establish a resource collector (even in enemy turf! civ influence has no sway on