_Scooter_

Agree strongly with the core point, which is that the more player decisions there are, the harder it is to get the AI to perform well, and so the larger and larger the AI army must be in order to remain competitive. This does suggest that we keep tactical combat relatively simple. However, in its current state, the tactical AI performs drastically worse than the human player, and is very easily exploited, though much of this is to do with mechanics (offense vs defense) rather th

Woah.... I mention Syndicate, and a day or two later there are mentions of a Syndicate remake! http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/syndicate/1110413p1.html Would reaaaallly hope that they kept it as a tactical combat game. That was one of the sad things of Fallout 3, losing tactical combat. Made me appreciate Fallout tactics that much more.

[quote]But someone thinking that the final game will suddenly completely change the game is in for a disapointment.[/quote] It is difficult to simultaneously parse the two messages from the developers that the game will not completely change, and yet we are unreasonable for judging the quality or fun of the current build because, you know, its just a beta. [Not in this thread, but other responses have clearly demonstrated the frustration of the developers with people's comment

[quote]Quantitative: the resource makes more of whatever it makes (farms produce more food, gold produces more gold, etc)[/quote] This would overlap too much with the existing city enchantment spells - brilliance, etc. If I'm going to spend essence (a permanent resource) then it had better give me another permanent resource.

They graphically lose guys, but the (reported) strength does not change, and it doesn't feel like the damage is reduced; I've seen squads with 1/2 men left still deal out very high amounts of damage quite regularly. And it does not seem like squads work as discussed here in terms of combining their strength. If I understand combat correctly (and maybe I don't, but performance seems consistent with this, though I have not labbed anything thoroughly): Consider 2 solo uni

Some interesting ideas in general. I think the biggest problem is, extra movement isn't that valuable - with the exception that if you can move and then attack, you don't have the problem where its suicide to move into a tile adjacent to a strong melee unit, because it can just kill you on the next turn. In order for movement to really be valuable, units would need to start much further apart, and ranged damage toned down, so that being able to reach the enemy line faster was va

Also, even among the human units, there needs to be differentiation. All melee units feel the same. It would be great if spears or pikes were good vs cavalry, or got a first strike when defending but had lower attack value, or if axes were armor piercing, or something. Its a bit unfortunate that swordsmen feel the same as axemen feel the same as spearmen. Give us a reason to explore the different weapon options, rather than just choosing the highest attack weapon a

I like the idea of finding a single random special spell from a quest book - something unresearchable through normal means (or without shards of that type).

Would also need really top-notch writing staff. The imagination and emotional involvement of Torment's plot and writing were what made it so superb. I can see a similar plot-driven RPG in the Planescape setting, but it certainly would need to be something very different from the main story of Torment; its not like the story lends itself well to sequelization.

[quote]Well, if we are keen on having a squad share the HP pool, and not lose any soldiers ...[/quote] These do not need to be combined. It is perfectly fine to have a squad "lose" individual models as it takes damage, but to automatically regain those models when it heals back to full strength. This is the design I would favor. So in once sense the hp pool is shared (the unit will heal back to full strength and numbers as long as it has even one hp left) but in an

I disagree, I don't think we really want to be encouraging the Sov to hang out in map objects, rather than exploring or being in a city.

Frogboy, Obviously we recognize that the current form will not be final, and we're looking forward to improvements. Having said that, it would be great if there was a quick comment that combat mechanics are going to change a great deal. The biggest improvements would be: a) Changing party/squad mechanics so that 3 guys with 5 attack are 5 attack that attacks three times vs the defense, rather than a single strength 15 attack. And in general tone attack do

True, forced popup is fine for magic and tech research, but wouldn't be for city construction completion or unit completion.

I think attack reductions for ranged weapons (and changing how squads stack) are the right fixes for ranged weapons. Which would then allow the units to be starting further apart. I don't think giving a combat speed penalty is the right thing; we should want to encourage ranged units to use light armor, and so be able to get multiple shots. If you give them a big combat speed penalty, then you're not going to get decent speed anyway, so there's no reason not to load them

I should also add; in most of my games, even when I have a decent start, at least 1-2 AIs have started without a food tile and so have been crippled.

I strongly disagree that EWOM tactical battles are anywhere near as good as MoM were, mostly due to the various imbalances in the beta. I do not understand how EWOM battles can feel less constrained, when you start at point blank range, and when many squads kill each other in a single hit. And when the AI doesn't understand this, so it willingly marches its troops into adjacent tiles of units who will one-shot them easily.

Syndicate. Those games are just *begging* for a modern remake. [Without the persuadatron, though, which was just silly.]

[quote]You're able to garrison multiple units into a city in Civ [/quote] Source? None of the actual developer comments have indicated that you'll be able to garrison multiple units. The only things that even sounded vaguely like this were from poorly translated previews from European magazine writers who didn't have great English. And nothing has said that city self-defense will be useless end-game; the city's combat strength will depend on structures, and so as

Yes, yes, one thousand times yes. Particularly frustrating with imbue essence, where the consequences of mis-targeting are significant.

Mapscripts and start locations are still weak. My all-time worst, I started on a effectively a 2-tile island. 1 empty square, 1 food resource, separated from the rest by a narrow strait.

Re Grotius' list. First, if you're in a specific forum (not just on the forums.elementalgame.com frontpage) then there is a Create Post button at the top of the forum list, just above the "Last Reply Info" column header. 2. You don't have to build towards a structure to get it; things like ancient libraries can have their improvement built on them just by clicking on the tile and then the build button; you don't need the city

In the current build, armies start *extremely* close together, only ~2-4 tiles apart. Arrows and most spells have infinite range, so range is never an issue. The current tactical combat.... isn't. [Tactical that is.] It needs a lot of work.

I never said it was impossible. But in Civ4 it didn't work very well. It could happen, but was much less common than land invasions. [Though there were several AI mods that improved on the core AI.] The Total War games were absolutely terrible at inter-continental invasions - particularly Empire, which really needed it. Its much harder to get an AI to coordinate an army with a navy than it is to get it to just use an army.

They can't really be defended with armies in Civ5. Civ is moving to a 1 unit per tile system, and a hex map. You can have at most one unit garissoning a city, while it can be attacked from 6 surrounding tiles, and bombarded from beyond that. So yes, most of the city value will come from the cities themselves (including defensive buildings like castles and walls), including multi-tile bombardment capability, not from garrisoned mobile units. I don' t think that's the

Because pathing alone can't do it. On land, you can trace pathfinding between any two points. You can't do that if you have to load the units onto a transport, calculate a path for the transport, and then unload at the other end. Loading/unloading creates a much more complex problem. It looks like Civ5, which has a big development budget, has to some extent given up on the problem by having land units be able to automatically turn into weak transports, and so they