Aeon221

In EU, you hold territories you conquer "in fact", rather than "by law." To possess the territories "by law," which allows you to recruit troops and develop the territory, you must negotiate a peace that awards them (or it) to you. EU had hard limits on the number of territories that could be awarded in a treaty, and also required a warscore (basically, the sum total of the value of your victories, defeats, territories captured, territories lost and war exhaustion) at least as high as the val

I ask you all to hail me, your new vegetarian overlord. Sure, you might have gotten some mildly incriminating data about our worldwide conspiracy. But get this. We pretty much count on the majority of the folks not in on the conspiracy being mind bogglingly stupid. I mean, after all, you aren't scientists. Most of you are folks like the OP, who can barely string two sentences together without hurting himself, his keyboard, or the English language! <p

The current journal mentions checks to see if the relationship is at either a minimum or maximum value for a treaty to be enacted. I noticed that it lacked a check to increase (or decrease) the value of trade based on relationships between states. Positive relationships should impart a positive modifier to trade, and negative relationships should impart a negative modifier. War would, of course, cut off most trade. Real world analogues abound, so I won't bother listing them. <st

Since I was a hardcore Starcraft MPer back in the day (where do you think I got this username, eh?) it's not shocking that I think of time as a valuable resource that can be used to force people into making rough decisions. I do really want to push the idea that the population should never ever ever ever ever be a faceless set of numbers whose sole purpose is generating resources. At the very least they should be ready and willing to riot and rebel, or take up arms agai

Hinterland is a pretty fun little game, check it out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinterland Now that you're up to date on the what of Hinterland, it's time for the relevance! Elemental is a game about heroing around, conquering and fighting and such. Hinterland is too, but at a much smaller scale, where your blacksmith is also a weekend warrior helping you smack skellingtons around.

Iron: It is hefty, and you can smack people with it. Arsenic: Throw it at people and they die! Magnesium: Burns like a motherfuh^h^h^h^npleasant thing. Oxygen: What plants need. Less of. Or something. Anyway at least it is good for people. Helium: Causes people to talk funny. Me, I'd love a game that took a serious peek at the actual elements and thought up creative ways to use them destructively. Or even just a mechanically adept group t

As to whether the suggested system is viable in the game, I haven't given it much thought. As previous posters mentioned, I would also like to see a bit less determinism on the part of the player in favor of a more engaging populace -- far too often, games present the populace as an unthinking mob totally at the service of the player, which does a disservice to the people of the time presented, and our own. After all, parliaments and republics have had a major role throughout world history, f

Dragons are cliche. I vote for something altogether more terrifying, more sinister, and generally more dastardly. The Giant Horned Sea Beaver!

Sounds like a lot of people in this thread didn't attend a class on economic history. There's plenty of evidence for advanced financial techniques even during the early Medieval period -- after all, Genoa really got going as a financial center in the 12th century, and the Mediccis and Fuggers got their start not long after. Now, before you're all "but dat was local or some such I am ignorant wah", these folks were using letters of credit and double entry book keeping -- modern practices -- as

Ah, see, swwu, you misunderstand me. I'm talking about the commander of the unit, not the unit itself. The unit could be promoted in whatever way is implemented. Although I would definitely argue that there are plenty of marine platoons out there that have earned the drunkard trait.

Just to answer a few points, I did not intend to suggest that the developers write the story for each of these units. That's dull in the extreme, and generally ignored by most folks. X-Com's style of generating units is a little closer to what I mean than, say, the prewritten histories of heroes in Romance of the Three Kingdoms (by Konami). I also want to emphasize the importance of traits as seen in the Total War games, where an idle unit might pick up the drunkard trait, and a unit

If you take a peek at any military text from the Medieval or Early Modern eras, there's a strong connection between the commander of a unit and his troops. Sometimes it was hereditary, like an enfeoffed gentleman leading a company of dependants from his lands. Equally common was the practice of raising troops via captains. Unlike the classical practice of raising a unit and then appointing a commander, Medieval and Early Modern governments tended to appoint a commander, pay him, and give him