Tridus

One of the multiplayer options is supposed to be players hosting custom servers. Even if "LAN" isn't specifically included as an option, you could start up the server program on one of your computers and have everybody on the LAN connect to it to play. So, yes. :) (Though I expect LAN to be an option on the multiplayer menu, and it'll probably start the server up for you.)

[quote who="drrob" reply="55" id="2586024"] So materials are the only component to building things? If that's the case, a building (say a school) should take just as long to build in a town with 20 people as a city with 2000. Unless building time takes population (work force) into some type of consideration. (ie, school with 20 people takes 10 turn, school with 2000 takes 2 turns)[/quote] Supplies and labour, yeah. So in this case "materials" ar

[quote who="drrob" reply="48" id="2585908"]So I just checked out the 1z update. Pardon my traditional TBS mindset. How on earth does building a workshop in one city add materials for another city? In my mind, it would be like in MoM if you had a 25 pop city all switched to workers using their production to build a barracks in a new outpost you just created. Again, i'm sure it adds to the fun of the game to have food and material be global, but

[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="17" id="2585877"] That could be an adequate compromise, but a 'proper' in-game Elementalopedia (hay! spell-check flags are working for me at the moment! Go Bara!) would have two things that an in-game browser window wouldn't: visual harmony with the game UI and authoritative, professionally edited text. Maybe a skin could cover the obviously-a-web-site graphical problem, but that would still leave players dependent on the kindness and skills of s

I guess the problem with this is that the creature creater IS Spore. They spent so much attention on it that the rest of the game is terrible. Given limited resources, I'd rather Stardock focus on the game part. This would be pretty nice, but it's not as important as a fun game.

Perhaps the Elemental Wiki should be accessable from within the game, similar to how Lord of the Rings Online lets you access the lorebook while playing. (Really it's just a web browser control inside a game window, which isn't that hard to do in Windows).

I'd really like to see some ZoC effects for units put in a sentry mode. It makes forts a lot more useful (instead of just going around them ala Civ 4), and more importantly gives you a sane mechanic with which to protect your caravans. Since I'm pushing for caravans to be important, protecting them is also important. Put garrisons in forts along your trade network, and you can create some defense against cavalry raids. Of course, all those forts and units won't be free, so how many do

[quote who="Sethfc" reply="25" id="2585171"] Thing is Global resources means its Instantly there and everywhere and always available just because the road connects.[/quote] It doesn't have to mean that. It could mean always available assuming caravans are getting through, which isn't the same as a road connection. "Global" just means that there is one pool for the entire kingdom, and any city with access to the pool can use as much as it wants. [quote]Local means

And as I said, once it's automatic, you have to ask the question of if it's really doing anything useful. Caravans can still do all this in a "global" system, to get access to a global resource you need caravans to come and go. If they stop due to a siege, the city is cut off and dependent on its local resources. If it doesn't have enough local food to feed itself, people will starve. That's entirely realistic, makes sieges effective, and doesn't require a complicated system to do.</p

[quote who="Sethfc" reply="13" id="2585052"]Don't make food a global resource make it more of a 'trade' resource where it must be ferried from city to city and village to village/city etc. its complex to code yes but its not all that complex for the user so long as it can be set to auto or done manually *setting up special routes etc.* most of this stuff in reality falls right in line with its self *builds up on its own* So it can't be too hard to set it up in a somewhat simplistic fash

[quote quoting="post"] So with the new design change of food being a Global resource, i started to wonder how that food just magically gets from one town to another. I suppose the underlying theory is "if it makes the game more fun, who cares?" As gamers, can you accept any excuse of why something is happening as long as you get enjoyment from it? [/quote] In 1G, you can grow a city without a food resource by

[quote who="RisingLegend" reply="175" id="2584681"]Agreed. I would rather see this game push boundaries and experiment rather than fall back on dull systems used in every other game in the genre. Elemental does not need to be Civ IV with magic. I don't know why so many people seem to want that[/quote] I'd dare to say that a lot more people find Civ 4 fun then find Dwarf Fortress fun. [quote]I think Stardock should let us play each of the original camp ideas in the beta

[quote who="Rishkith" reply="174" id="2584634"]Honestly, can someone tell me what was so broken about the economic system before? I thought it showed a lot of promise and was heading in a good direction with some new content and less filler. City placement was tactical and meaningful. Road caravans gave a reasonable bonus and were worth defending, though not totally crippling to lose. I didn't think it was broken and I don't understand why they through it out for a blah

[quote who="markieness" reply="12" id="2584178"]Quoting kryo, reply 10 Having shamans and paladins available to both sides is in the better interest of game balance. It also allows them to be distinct classes with their own flavor since they no longer need to completely counter each other. It's also really boring. They made undeads into humanoids because it was to hard to balance. That's the main problem with multiplayer games. It's very hard to balance perfe

Depending on how overland magic ends up working, I might look at modding in channeler range limits, and buildings that can extend it. Think AoW 2 Wizard's towers.

[quote who="strager" reply="8" id="2583832"]Blizzard is such a sad story.... They used to be one of THE best game designers.... than they started getting greedy, and stopped listening to their fans.... Now everything they touch turns to s....well it goes sour... It started earlier, but when WoW came along, they just decided to tell their fans to go to hell... they completly stopped listening and just put out what they feel like now. They promise their fans one thing, and than give

[quote who="vieuxchat" reply="162" id="2583917"]The problem with caravans is that if they become so dramatically important, then we need ways to defend them. And choosing WHERE they are built would be an absolute must-have feature. [/quote] Why would that be a must have feature? If there's only one road to your border town, it's pretty obvious where the caravan has to go in order to get there. Defending the caravans is kind of the point. If you don't have to bother defend

The main problem with releasing versions frequently at this point is that stuff is changing so rapidly that: A) Nothing is stable. Major changes create bugs that the developers quickly find but haven't fixed yet. Wading through 500 beta posts about bugs they already know about isn't helping anybody. B) Mechanics are being tried, and in some cases rejected. Releasing something that they know they're going to totally change tomorrow doesn't make much sense either. I actu

[quote who="Gammeldansk" reply="5" id="2581743"]How will we compare Lord of the Rings 2020 with our version? [/quote] That's easy: by if an Elf army that doesn't exist in the books randomly shows up at Helms Deep or not. :D

Yeah I agree. GFWL is a good idea that went horribly wrong at implementation.

[quote who="AXidenTAL" reply="2" id="2583227"]Any plans to align factions with elements, or are people liking the current system? [/quote] Life and Death are faction aligned.

It is. :) No GFWL here, don't worry.

[quote who="timothydelisle" reply="152" id="2582903"] On a different train of thought, I think it would be spiffy if your population was a resource as well. It seems a little silly to me that you can have a city with 100 population but have a handfull of farms and mines. Who is working in those farms and mines? I love that population is taken away from the city for units to be trained, but why not have population be required for buildings in the city to function? <

[quote who="Tormy-" reply="147" id="2582490"]If the produced ore will be a "global resource"....I doubt it, but I am not sure. I am kinda confused about this upcoming resource system right now. [/quote] The way it's described, it works like this: 1. You either build an improvement with a town, or use a pioneer, to capture a resource. Let's say Iron Ore. So you get an Iron Ore mine. 2. Your mine produces X Iron Ore per turn (I'll guess 10). So, every turn 10

[quote who="John_Hughes" reply="143" id="2582401"]There seems a very fine line between "abstraction" for simplicity and simply total dumb-downed "I don't like to actually think" game mechanic's. [/quote] At the same time, there's also a very fine line between complexity that adds depth, and complexity for the sake of complexity. Figuring out which side of the line its on is the fun. :)