Tridus

Here's a question regarding people as a resource: can I return them? If I raise a peasant army, can I later disband that army and tell the peasants to go farming again? It seems like there would be a significant long term cost to raising a huge peasant army if I'm then stuck with a huge peasant army long after I need it, because those peasants aren't acting as town population raising income and what have you. Of course, that may be a good trade off. It's hard to say at this point beca

[quote who="Ellestar" reply="25" id="2225699"] A deeper economic system can add to the game what exactly? Other than problems? [/quote] A deeper combat system can add to the game what exactly? Other then problems? A deeper magic system can add to the game what exactly? Other then problems? This kind of thinking leads to games like Spore, which have absolutely no substance whatsoever. A good economic model gives people alternate paths to power,

[quote who="Luckmann" reply="10" id="2221414"]I put up a server. My friends ask me "What's your IP?" either externally or internally over a VPN or LAN. They jot it down, badabing, badabom, they go straight into my lobby or game. We play. We cheer. We scream. We weep. Not to be confused with the LAN-lobby system, that have failed me oh so many times in oh so many games. Most recently Titan Quest. The "I can't see your game"-syndrome, but if you reconfigure everything to connect dire

[quote who="Spartan" reply="7" id="2221459"]Hmmm..... Seems the consensus is shifting to "option 3". With that thought, I have a question... I really loved Capitalism 2's econ system. Has anyone else played it? I think that system would be a natural for this title. [/quote] Yes, some of my earlier ideas were based on ideas from Capitalism 2. The exception is in the UI. Cap 2's manufacturing UI is based on supplies. For those who don't know, here's a shor

I gotta be honest, I don't really care for option 4. I'm not sure *what* about it bugs me, but it just seems blah and uninteresting. It's probably just how abstract it makes things, I really am not a fan of the "one iron mine somehow feeds a global empire's iron needs" type of model.

[quote who="Spartan" reply="20" id="2220852"]Looking at things from a demand side of things with a focus on "simplicity", if an automated system is to be implemented and effective I would like to be able to select something to produce at a given city, from a list of options that I have the appropriate resources for within my empire and have the AI automatically deal with sending everything needed for that unit to the city. The list of course would change depending on tech and resou

[quote who="Luckmann" reply="4" id="2220458"]I'm not coming from Demigod. I don't even know what issues have been caused there. I come from decades of gaming where direct-IP connection have worked flawlessly. It's when you start trying to automate things that you run into problems. Telling two computers to communicate isn't that much of a feat of engineering. Edit: Alright, 'decades' may be pushing it a bit. But still. [/quote] On the modern Internet, there'

[quote who="landisaurus" reply="9" id="2220269"]underwater reseources and forests! I want that! (and floating bear cities.... wait, let me try that again?) so are we going to get this for beta 0? or is "backburner" mean until after beta 0? [/quote] "Backburner" means "first we get everything we want to do on a map working, then we build the editor for it." So likely not beta 0. Likely not until beta 3.

[quote who="Luckmann" reply="1" id="2220128"]And you seriously think that keeping and maintaining their own servers would pose less problems to them than allowing peer-to-peer connection(s)? [/quote] Considering how badly P2P has worked out for Demigod, and how "I can't connect in MP to my friend" IS Stardock's problem, yes. They can ensure connections to their own servers far more effectively then between random people on the Internet. I'd still rather see direct IP and

[quote who="Tiefling" reply="3" id="2218890"]Quoting DrGuppie, reply 25 Resources should be flowing to where they're being used, not to where they aren't, in option 3. I would consider it a bug or a flaw in empire management if resources are somehow going someplace that you didn't want them. OK, maybe I should have expanded a little... How does the game know what I want? Just as an example, I may want to train pikemen in town A and soldi

Option 3 seems like a winner to me. We can still combine things to make our uber swords in nifty ways, but when the gruntwork is being handled automatically, it doesn't really create micro problems. :D[e digicons]:frogboy:[/e]

[quote who="Sammual" reply="13" id="2217354"] You are giving us too much credit. The game is not even in Alpha yet. At this point everything is on the drawing board. If this change was announced in Beta people would be bitching up a storm. Also the multiplayer bots were a very cool idea but I don't think that was a top issue for anyone other then Frogboy. Sammual [/quote] I don't think so. The community at this stage is people with a real i

[quote who="BoogieBac" reply="12" id="2217206"]For those wondering about resources, here's what were shooting for.... NATURAL Early Game: 3-7 Mid Game: 8-12 Late Game: 13-20 MANUFACTURED Early Game: 6-12 (2 Levels of Basic Helmet, Armor, Weapon, Shield, Greives, and Boots to equip on your units) Mid Game: 12-30 (4 level of above + some Accessories) Late Game: 31-50 (6 levels of above + more Accessories) AND these manufactuing

[quote who="arstal" reply="17" id="2217228"] BTW: having a system that encourages the creation and usefulness of cannon fodder would be a good thing. Generally, every TBS game I've played such as AoW- what ends up happening is players go towards spamming one unit primarily, usually high-level cavalry, to win. I'd really like to see a game where quantity counted as well as quality. 10 foot soldiers might not be able to beat a dragon, bu

[quote who="Mythor" reply="24" id="2216478"]My suggestion, and I'm not sure if it's even remotely feasible - would it be possible to have the build/recruit screen be aware of everything you can possibly build in your empire, from brass tacks to Ultimate Swords of Power and thus any build/recruit screen would simply present you a list of *everything* you can build? If you try and build something that that particular outpost doesn't have the materials for the nearest outpost that has the missin

Most PC developers look at the sales of games with steep requirements like Crysis, then look at the sales of games with modest requirements like World of Warcraft, and quickly figure out that eliminating 90% of all PCs sold from playing your game for eye candy is a monumentally stupid decision. Considering that Sins is a year old now, and considering that there wouldn't be a lot of money in major graphics overhauls at this point, I wouldn't expect it. I would expect a S

Well, I guess the difference is that people don't want to play multiplayer to play the AI when they're *trying* to play humans. If I want to team up with a friend and play against a few AIs, that's one thing. But if I'm trying to make a 1v1 game against a human and an AI comes in, thats not really what I wanted. It's effectively the same as a single player game at that point.

Couple of questions/comments: 1. Are you concerned that hosting every game could turn really expensive in the future? I mean that is a never ending expense, unless you expect the multiplayer pool to be so small that it won't be noticable. For those of us who have computers that are capable of hosting a game (being the server in a client/server setup), making your servers do the work seems unnecessary. 2. I agree with Annatar about the bots. They seem to make more sense in a ga

I wouldn't worry too much about the essence costs right now, guys. It's pretty early, all of this can change in testing.

Okay, thanks. :)

I did, but my friend said it was a charge and not a check. They don't look the same on a statement. Said friend could have been wrong, of course. :)

A friend of mine reported getting charged yesterday too. So presumably that means things are getting into gear.

[quote who="Wahngrok" reply="13" id="2185862"] It's just like radio except that you can skip bits. So what's wrong with that? But for those who want to skip the Demigod bit: Elemental gets discussed starting at 28:40 minutes and runs until 46:39 (total time of the podcast is 55:34 minutes). [/quote] Pleanty. I still haven't managed to get through it, several days later. I haven't had an hour of sitting around to listen to the thing. I could likely read it in

I agree, I really don't like podcasts. I wanted to hear about the Elemental stuff specifically, and 15 minutes later they're still talking about Demigod.

[quote who="eobet" reply="4" id="2169414"]DirectX can easily be emulated these days, with Cider for example. But I personally will not buy such a product (call it philosophical reasons). [/quote] So just to be clear, you want to take a niche game and put it on a niche OS, but won't buy it if they take the most straightforward way to get it there? This seems like a strange way of encouraging them. A full port is never going to happe