Tridus

Exactly zigzag. It's possible to use it anyway and it's possible to fiddle around to make it slightly less painful... but why? This is a problem that's been solved already, there's no excuse for them to use a clearly inferior method just to be different. (And yes, this is entirely a UI issue. I'm not talking about the techs themselves, just that 3d circular room BS.) I want to play the game, not screw around trying to make the UI show me what I want to see.

It's looking like there's a plan behind it, which is a good sign. The unit traits also look good, and I won't miss the stuff that's been removed. Right now the thing I'm afraid of is a combination of lofty expectations (this "it's a whole new game" talk is dangerous IMO when it's really an overhaul of WoM) and the fact that the only news regarding multiplayer has been a line about continuing the misguided direction that's taken from WoM.

Since this is posted in the MP forum, the discussion should be about the MP of WoM. The SP game is a masterpiece compared to the MP game, where large chunks of the SP game aren't implemented and you can't do what are basic MP features in other games like coop. Since the response has been "we never promised MP would have what SP has" (of course they also never mentioned that tactical battles wouldn't exist in MP until after release, or that MP would have no mods since custo

Putting my software developer hat back on, there's not as clear a line between "the engine's fault" and "not the engine's fault" as people would like. Why? Because when you have a project design that calls for the engine to do X and then it takes you twice as long as planned to build the engine and it can't do X (because 3d engines are actually pretty hard when you don't have experience dealing with the quirks of Direct3d hardware), you need to redesign other stuff on the

I keep telling people to expect FE to be an expansion to WoM. It's not going to be a totally different game. From what we've seen so far there's mechanics changing (like traits for unit customization) and others disappearing (dynasties). Other then that, they're still announcing stuff, so its really hard to give a list.

I prefer customized units when customization matters. AoW 2's non-customized units have far more diversity and variety then WoM's customizable ones ever can. Hopefully FE addresses that and lets us make some more unique units.

[quote quoting="post"] I see two issues remaining: 1) # of cities vs prestige - kills city growth after 10 or so cities. If they are insistent on this restriction I think the increase to building prestige noted by others is the best solution. [/quote] If they boost the prestige on bulidings then small numbers of cities will just grow even faster. The entire system in question is just poorly designed from the start and needs a total overhaul.

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="43" id="2976733"] That's one of the big things I'm looking to get into -- rewriting the tactical battle AI. I didn't write the original AI for tactical battles and it might be quicker for me to just start from scratch. In FE, I'm going to press to have a lot of the AI logic in the XML so that modders can improve on whatever I put in.[/quote] Isn't XML a really horrible format for AI logic?

[quote who="Black-Knight" reply="5" id="2976252"] Actually my feeling is that if the single player is glorious the multiplayer should probably be fine too, but the other way around I am not sure. You can get away with multiplayer a lot better than with single player, in my experience, since a good AI is one of the toughest things to implement and as it is now in ELEMENTAL the AI is just unable to do all the stuff players can do.[/quote] How so? Large swaths of the SP game simply

You can't, MP forces auto-resolve. Pretty lame, I know.

[quote who="Stant123" reply="19" id="2975867"] 2 fails? You didn't list any fails. So let's see, #2 you list LOL. I can't speak for elemental, but Sins was released in a finished state. It ran exactly as advertized, and did everything they claimed on the box. That's a pass. #5 you list as don't know. You count a point you have no idea of the answer to as a fail on their part? Are you serious? Your inabili

Graphics are hardly the root of the problem with WoM. The patches and how they haven't really solved the gameplay problems should demonstrate that. There's systems that just aren't well designed and don't interact in a fun way with the other systems. Other ones have a large lack of content. Being ugly or pretty has nothing to do with that. I think it's also worth noting that Civ 4 is strategically a much better game then Civ 3 is, on top of being nicer looking. :)

[quote who="WhiteElk" reply="26" id="2975908"] Simple as in computational power? I find the Civ3 unit graphics to be more than adequate. The units look well enough, but whats more, is just how many more different looking units Civ3 can support than Civ4. Civ4 simply can't handle much unit diversity. Kaels Fall from Heaven mod suffered this severely. Much work was done do downsize the mod to limit the MAF errors. Check the

[quote who="Cruxador" reply="3" id="2975820"]Honestly though, in strategy multiplayer and single player are supposed to be pretty similar, so I wouldn't expect huge problems so much as just a small community and less bugfixing than other areas of the game. If the single player experience is glorious, the multiplayer should be too.[/quote] Maybe, if they actually implement it. Or they could stick with Brad's previously stated plan to continue taking MP in a "different direction

[quote who="Mayjori" reply="40" id="2975728"] if they cant fix elemental:wom, how could they do any better on FE [/quote] Different project lead, several months of dev time rather then trying to patch an already released game, and something resembling a professional design process? If they can't fix FE, then I'm with you that it's time to pack it in on the franchise. But it doesn't make a lot of sense to condemn it as a failure before then.

[quote who="Winnihym" reply="13" id="2975682"]I've had the same feelings, Das; I'm sympathetic. At this point, I think the radio silence we're seeing from Stardock is in preparation for PAX in a few weeks, I hope we'll see more after that..[/quote] I'm hoping the radio silence is because they learned something from WoM and Brad's thing for talking up stuff that never made it into the game. High expectations and what ended up being confused customers

[quote who="cparkin01" reply="5" id="2975372"]I'm starting to find it amusing that everyone (almost anyway) is still expecting FE to be the cat's ass when EWOM has been sucking more and more after each patch. If EWOM was a horse I'd just shoot it and look at FE like a nice case of herpes.[/quote] There's really only a couple of people expecting that. The rest of us are more cautious... but really why would anybody still bother posting here if they expect it to suck? At

It is a shame about the DRM, but Ubi thinks their shit DRM works. The only way to get the message across is to refuse to buy anything that ships with it.

[quote who="TheBirthdayParty" reply="2" id="2975332"] That's why I said approximate release date, not specific one. And are you a staff member? I mean you know this for sure and all that?[/quote] There isn't one of those either, except a very vague reference to "fall" several months ago. If they have a set date, they haven't told anybody. Hopefully they don't have one, because sticking to a release date even if it's not ready would be a very stupid ide

Release date: There isn't one. That you bought WoM: It's in their records. If you've got it in Impulse, they know you bought it.

While I certainly sympathize with the sentiment... we really don't know anything yet. All we can say for sure about FE is that it's being led by Derek Paxton and not Brad. Beyond that? I hope it's fun. If not, I'm pretty much done with the franchise.

[quote who="jshores" reply="17" id="2975042"]Ugh no. It would be impossible to keep up with a game having to sift through the posts from 2 to 3 other games. Is it really a much of a hardship on you?[/quote] Not really, but it does make this forum look highly ridiculous. :D

I will just say that maybe we need a consolidated "Dominions 3" thread, because the top 3 threads in this forum right now are ALL "new Dom3 game" (and there's a fourth down a bit about buying it).

[quote who="Emperor_Nero" reply="22" id="2974955"]I play on a laptop, and as a college student I don't have the money for a high end desktop because I am paying for an education so I can eventually get one, I play strategy games because they're usually not memory hogs. I mean I am only working with 1 gig of ram (Yeah, I know.. WTF?) and an integrated video card, so when does it become a trade off between high-end eye candy and play-ability on lower end systems? On WoM I get these weir

[quote who="Nenjin" reply="4" id="2974707"]I think in-game DLC sales are an end run around Steam's policy. What really needs to happen is Steam needs to re-evaluate their stance on Steamworks integration. I don't know for a fact that Valve requires Steamworks to be on all Steam-playable games regardless of where they're sold. I know smaller indie devs are not required to do that, most of them choose to stay with a Steam-only version because of the effort and lack of pay off involv