Tridus

[quote who="VicenteC" reply="1" id="2656732"]This is a beta, code is probably running in debug mode, lots of unnecessary things around,... Performance will improve.[/quote] If performance worsened between beta 2 and beta 2a, that is definitely worth bringing up.

[quote who="Aractain" reply="482" id="2656410"]Unfortunatly they hold all the cards. Well perhaps you can resist having fun for a long time but I can't. I need those good games that get made. And you know what? Every "always on" game Ubi has released so far has been really awesome and enjoyable.[/quote] That's pretty much it right there. So long as gamers collectively behave like crack addicts always needing another fix, nothing will change. Why would the publishers worry about it? Pe

[quote who="Raven X" reply="52" id="2656026"] I Know You Can Tweak and Minimize What You See in the Empire Tree. I get that. Being a Sins player I DO do that. I minimize everything, but, Even When You Minimize EVERYTHING, on a Large Custom Map (of course I add even More stars and planets), once your empire gets Big you still have All those planets on the left side of the screen. EVEN WITH EVERYTHING MINIMIZED.[/quote] And you keep missing the point, because we keep telling you th

[quote quoting="post"] + Removed Ale from the game (thanks ESRB...) [/quote] A friend of mine who works in the industry and deals with the ESRB ratings a lot says that alcohol is fine with a T rating. Is Elemental rated E or something? (looks like a good change list, that one just caught my eye)

Incidentally, Gardens still exist. You just can't spam them anymore. See Brad's "my town in 2-A" thread . So you could build a theoretical desert town, and you could rank it up some on it's own. But it will hit a wall where it can't grow past a certain point without external food supplies. Which really makes sense in a desert, doesn't it?

Sweet. :) Will there be enough improvements that you still have to make choices between what you want at the high end, or is there enough space to just throw down everything?

[quote who="Raven X" reply="40" id="2655484"] In my opinion, it;s ONLY more efficient on Small Maps or maybe Medium Maps without a Ton of Planets or Fleets to worry about. Once you get all that on screen at one time, picking the right group of fighters out of a massive line that represents your fleet (and let's be honest, in battle these ships can be destroyed and disapear from the list before you can even click on them). Tell ya what, if you have Sins installed right now

[quote who="Raven X" reply="35" id="2655431"] This is true, a saved game on a bigger map with a substantial starting empire might be useful for testing. Then again it's quite possible (if the current system stays the way it is) that we won't even be able to have Maps large enough to support Huge Games without either Modding it in, or waiting for the 64Bit version of Elemental to hit. The "Clutter" as I call it might not bother some people. Some people might even think I'm bad-mouthing Si

The reason why it (the Sins empire tree) got cluttered on large maps is because things get auto-pinned by default. You can turn that off, and only add the planets/fleets you really care about to it. At that point it functions like it does on a small map even on a large one.

[quote who="Grove12345" reply="11" id="2655217"]But OMG the MMO 40k looks amazing.[/quote] They always look that way early in development. Usually it's a couple months after it's released that people discover there isn't a very good game under all the shiny. See: Warhammer Online.

[quote who="Xtropy" reply="19" id="2655083"] My only concern with something like this, as I said in one of the other half-dozen threads on this same topic, is whether there is ever going to be a time when you are _not_ going to want to take advantage of this adjacency. If you build an officers quarters, like in your example, is there any reason a player wouldn't want to put it next to their barracks? If it's always the obvious choice I'm not sure what the point of requiring the adj

As an update to this - Brad's dev post about 2-A changes and then the one about magic being in beta 3 leads me to think there might not be a 2-B. Though I'm still speculating. :)

[quote who="Raven X" reply="22" id="2655308"] Again, I'm sorry about the colors. I think from now on I just won't use colors and I'll stick to just Bold Text. I think I Did Bold the Parts that needed to be viewed easily. My eyes pick up on it just fine, that's just me though. Also, I make these posts from the Elemental Forums. Not from Wincustomize, not from the Sins web-site, nor any other of these "linked" sites. In my eyes, if you Truly Care enough about Elemental to comment on it and

First of all, you could very easily set stuff in the Empire Tree to stack, so instead of an icon list that long, you'd see one for each type of ship with a number on it. That took up far less space. You've got it set on the most space-taking configuration, and then complain about it taking up too much space. That's pretty silly. Second of all, I couldn't even finish your post. All the highlighting and bolding is distracting and makes it painful to read. Cut that out. :( You're not hel

[quote who="Nick-Danger" reply="50" id="2654967"] Quoting Hound, reply 34Could there be a way to focus entirely on magical power and spell research and stay competitive in the game? Minimal expansion, minimal armies but superior magical power and knowledge to secure and seal some shards for yourself...A number of us have been asking this. No sign of if/how it'd be done. Only ways I can think of include: - Using essence. All cities have some essence

[quote who="shayde0007" reply="13" id="2654942"] Ok that sounds fine - I guess I'll wait and see the changed before I comment further. That said, I kind of like being able to build multiples - it really lets me customize a city in any way I want. I can build multiple barracks to turn my city into a super unit producer - or I can build tons of merchants to get the cash - or food or etc.[/quote] It might be more interesting to have building tiers. For e

[quote who="coreimpulse" reply="24" id="2654872"] larrypeterscomment 22I have to wonder if this is a test of sorts for Sony and if it works they integrate Steam further into PSN. For Sony it beats having to build their own offering to compete with XBL. Steam is already there and has infrastructure in place.Like Tridus, I also seriously doubt this will change anything for Steam powered games.Later,LAR Wouldnt having full steam support chi

[quote who="Nesrie" reply="63" id="2654848"] No offense intended, but usually the "I can't believe they did that" moment finally reveals itself as late as the release month, or if they hide it, on release day by the first purchasers. It's unreal but some companies just bury certain info I guess hoping we might not find out or something. Firaxis certainly hasn't done this yet. I mean they removed Majesty 2 AI teams and no one really seemed to know that until after the game

[quote who="MagicwillNZ" reply="188" id="2654722"] Yes, because it's already been stated by the devs that it's possible to roll up a world with no fertile land at all, or it being very rare. You can watch the AI developer diaries if you want. There's no guarantee you'll spawn anywhere near food resources. Period. I mean, hate gardens if you want to. I don't doubt that there needs to be some kind of adjustment. But barring them altogether is not fair. As they are right now, the

[quote quoting="post"] Twice in the last week I have been called in to fix a computer that would not "browse" the Internet. The browser of choice was internet Explorer (one was 6 the other 7), and while the home page would launch when the browser would start, they could not then type in another URL and have the browser connect. [/quote] Strictly speaking, isn't blocking IE 6 from the Internet doing the user a favor? Using it is the online equivalent of holding up a gi

[quote who="pad152" reply="13" id="2654756"]Will tactical battles be something like NeverWinter Nights down to the character level or hex based (Kings Bounty)? I think the tactical battle system could make or break the game. Would really like to see a video of tactical battles! [/quote] Was going to be more realtime like NWN, was recently changed to be tile/turn based.

Creating Orcs with different artwork and such will require the mod tools, which we don't have yet. It's an advertised feature though, you will be able to do it. :) What I"m looking forward to seeing is if you can do things like customize their buildings and tech tree. Orcs for example have no need for lumber mills, but the slaves do need to be put somewhere before you eat them.

Remember we can't build everything yet. The magic buildings aren't in. So while you won't have 12 Gardens in the city anymore, you do need to make room for the Tower of Arcane Pwnage, or whatever they're calling the things. :) Faction unique (ie: one per faction) buildings aren't in yet either, and he also mentioned working on those. What's changing is that you can only build one of most things per city, but there is still lots to build.

Penny Arcade had some good commentary on this today . The point here seems to be Steamworks, and the extra advantage that gives people using it. Let's face it, GFWL is a pretty huge failure. Steamworks is not, so far. Being able to use it on PC and PS3? That's pretty nice. For Sony, they get a platform developers already like on their system without having to build much themselves.

[quote who="Nick-Danger" reply="58" id="2654468"] Back to topic, this is why I'd not call civ4 a casual game, tho it can be played casually. [/quote] At the end of the day, this is really all I care about, so cool. :)