sagittary

I'll agree, Frogboy. I think one major obstacle is something you touched on in your post: there's not a lot of infrastructure for these B-list titles despite the fact that they're often strong consistent sellers, if not necessarily multi-million sellers. This is tools, this is retailers, this is other things, but I think this is also developers. One would be hard pressed to say that most developers aren't at least tempted or dream of making a AAA title of the highest quality a

As big as I can get using what ever setting makes for a long game length. Honestly, I kinda feel like the largest Elemental maps are kinda small, if not in physical size than in feel, compared to other games.

Conceptually speaking, combining resource nodes with settlements. Which, as far as the existing game goes, is a good way to streamline the game since when is the last time you dropped a settlement that wasn't near any resource at all. And the times you do can potentially be simplified into something other than a full blown city.

One thing I'd like to see in quests are more personal/internal quests. For instance, you enter a quest hut and the inhabit accuses one of your generals (champions) of having wronged them in the past. Or you find a treasure and two of your generals argue over who should get it. Or heck, even just that on the noble woman/man quest, one of your champions asks you if they can marry them instead!

4) Cheats that make AI challenging rather than frustrating. Whatever cheats an AI gets should be done so that the AI remains challenging and beatable rather than unwinnable. It's not really fun (in context) to go up against an opponent that you literally can't hurt outside of some massive time investment for a single problem ie you run into a dragon (or sovereign for the matter) in the first 5 turns with 15 Dodge, 15 Armor, and 20 Attack. Even rushing Warfare, you're still going to

I'd go with whatever language would offer the most power and ease of access to a hypothetical Elemental fan with little to no coding experience and offer C++ (or whatever) to the experienced scripters. The reason being is that the easier it is for Average Joe Gamer to mess with stuff, the easier it is for the Average Joe community to get excited about any and everything. Few things are more powerful than word-of-mouth advertisement combined with people being able to pimp out their own stuff.<

First, swapping out units for new units is trading resources/gaining free resources. It's just skipping over the middleman of conversion to resources and then to units. Second, I'd prefer a cheating AI with disclaimers. A bad AI won't be enjoyable; it's not really fun (in context of a 4x game) to play against someone (AI or human) that zergs you with pioneers and doesn't really attempt to you to test your strategy. A bad AI will simply be bad at the game no matter what

[quote who="StevenAus" reply="69" id="2868760"]But if a lot of people can't be bothered and choose to stop playing until FE instead... Best regards, Steven.[/quote] It may just not be practical, unfortunately, to do a lot of changes to systems right now. Anything they change now is probably going to change in FE; it's not really a great use of resources to spend time designing, building, tweaking and what not a system that's just going to be replaced in

One thing to remember is that many of us are viewing the game as players not as game developers/designers. For many purposes, designers are worried only about the mechanics of the game... which is very different from the aesthetics of the game. That is, Weapon X adds +1 to Damage. Whether this is a sword, a magical spell, a funky monkey, that's mostly just fluff. Players on the other hand, care about the fluff first. What would most players want? A sword x of +23 rather

[quote who="Pyruvate12" reply="25" id="2866608"]So SD, any word on giving your modeling tools to the Elemental Community??? With all the work modders here will likely do for you, your budget will be glad you did [/quote] That's part of what Jon is here to do. It's not really a matter of if, more like when. Though it'd be silly to assume that modders will dent their budget since their budget is their budget - if they're not using it for one

[quote who="Mystikmind" reply="19" id="2865747"] Quoting Pyruvate12, reply 17Several points to touch on: A uniform is a uniform, but biology is also biology. Mistikmind, if I showed you two U.S. Army soldiers in the same desert camo, one male and one female, are you saying you couldn't tell them apart? The clothing/equipment can be the same, but there are still sufficient differences, IMHO, to distinguish them - especially if we are talking about sheets of metal that need to f

[quote who="Pyruvate12" reply="17" id="2865667"] A uniform is a uniform, but biology is also biology. Mistikmind, if I showed you two U.S. Army soldiers in the same desert camo, one male and one female, are you saying you couldn't tell them apart? The clothing/equipment can be the same, but there are still sufficient differences, IMHO, to distinguish them - especially if we are talking about sheets of metal that need to fit a person properly to do their job of protectin

I would say, for each healing pot or jerky brought increase the price; the price goes back down over time when not being brought. Likewise, for the effect of the health restoration, each item used decreases the effect with the effect increasing back over time (for that unit). For instance.. I buy 2 jerky for 100 on turn 1. -Jerky price goes up to 110 then 130. I use a piece on turn 1 and get back 100 health. - I eat a second piece of jerky, I only get b

[quote who="Wieke" reply="12" id="2859906"] Quoting Frogboy, reply 10In the future, the betas will go through the beta groups. There was way way way too much concern/worry that we were ruining the game for the beta testers so we tried to hold back as much as we could. Bad idea. Meh, that's the risk you take as a beta tester. Meybe next time, put up some sort of spoiler warning, let us know what were getting into.[/quote] Pfft. Stuff changing is a g

[quote who="Sarudak" reply="12" id="2857992"]Is Kael even a dev? He's a project manager and the producer. On a team that size I doubt he'd be doing any development.[/quote] Maybe but don't think that he won't be heavily involved in development. :) So while he may be not poking things directly, he's certainly a developer.

[quote who="Derek Paxton" reply="29" id="2857355"] Quoting kapeman, reply 27 Quoting Derek Paxton, reply 25 In my opinion the first fix for caravans is to get a warning indicator in the game for when enemy units are in your lands. By biggest problem with caravan attacks is that its a surprise that monster was there at all, requiring me to scan my lands every turn (not going to happen) or have monster attacks seem effectively random. &nbs

[quote who="Corbeaubm" reply="3" id="2856363"]Also, dodge vs accuracy appears to be a straight-up "chances of result" type of thing. Basically, if you have 15 accuracy versus 5 dodge, you have a 3-in-4 chance of scoring a hit. Dodge is pretty weak overall, unless you cheese Guardian Aura to get ridiculous amounts of dodge (read: over a thousand, in which case an enemy with accuracy 20 has a 1-in-51 chance of hitting you).[/quote] Defense on the other hand is

[quote who="Shalkto" reply="8" id="2856718"]Just like GalCiv 2 i would like to be able to customize the AI. As long as it's marked clearly thats a much better way...people are so ADD these days and don't read everything[/quote] It has nothing to do with ADD as the game does not indicate at all that there's any different between the two. Elemental/GalCiv is one of the few if only games that makes a distinction between these two things.

It's good to know that prestige and world danger aren't the only sticks to help limit expansion. Hordes of powerful monsters can be as annoying as they can be limiting. And they can also be very unreliable (read: unfair) and unpredictable. It's no real fun if one of your opponents ends up getting creamed due to random stuff with no input from other players (AI or human). And it can be frustrating if it appears the AI is somehow 'favoring' the AI even when it isn't. I've had situations w

More or less.... Accuracy vs Dodge - > Do I hit? If I hit... Attack vs Defense - > How much damage I do (if any)

[quote who="asadex" reply="7" id="2856149"] Quoting sagittary, reply 6I think we're over complicating things. I think you're complicating thigs BTW does nobody noticed that everytime a unit or an army stop his movement on a caravam it desappear till the caravan move again[/quote] And how am I doing that? Rather than the player having to manage a stack of units for every trade route that part is effectively automated for th

[quote who="troglyte" reply="9" id="2856075"] Quoting sagittary, reply 7While I agree that ICS is bad in general, I don't agree that expansionism is bad. Fact is, a city is -always- beneficial (this game or other games) because ultimately, you will likely get far more out of it than what you put in. Expanding is something you -want- to do even if you're trying to stay small. Limiting empire size doesn't work because all it does is say "Stop expanding here"; you end up building just as fa

Book 2 hasn't been released yet. Soon(TM)

One is through the Stardock website, one is through the Elemental one. From what I understand, all of Stardocks forums are on the same system, they're just split up. So it's the same thing just a different look. As for why you can see more sub-forums, I don't know but it's probably why many of the sub-forums get far less traffic.

I think we're over complicating things. :) The basic issue is "Player infrastructure needs to be vulnerable". This is to allow for monsters to do more than simply attack units but actually have a significant effect on the short-term game as well as to allow for factions to hurt a superior foe without necessarily engaging in combat. Rather than attempting to add micromanaging on to the caravan system (and really, it is because are you ever -not- go