Scoutdog

My take on this whole thing is that the magical/unscientific nature of the game will allow us to "justify" pretty much any system we can think of. Take the steel example: in a scientific world, the durability of a metal is fundamentally limited by the internal "stay-together-ness" of its atoms, because all (regular) matter is made of atoms. However, in a magical world, steel can be made of a precise mixture of Earth and Fire, and refining the precision of the mixture is how you make stronger

[quote]Guess you didn't see the (8) next to the name or the 8 figures standing there in a single tile square (with a selection indicator around them).[/quote] Actually, I am beginning to think that since people will be a resource, that number miiight just be to display the population "cost" of the unit, and is irrelevant to the actual performance of the thing. But I agree with Pig: The screen's probably outdated already. [quote]Look, it's pretty clear that we want 2 completely

[quote]I said "like great wyrms etc".[/quote]Well, actually you didn't, but typos do happen... if you meant "etc.", then I retract my comment. [quote]It also isn't enough that they are difficult to produce. They might, after all, be your enemies (in caves, dungeons or swamps).[/quote]If so, they would also be extremely rare. I will attempt to dig up Brad's journal on beasts tomorrow: it should settle things.

Granted. You have a large sum of money in a plastic bag that happens to be on Io. I wish 55% of the population would bvote for me when I ran for any office.

[quote]Sounds way too complicated and unbalancing. Multi-figure units need all the help they can get to survive against the powerful single figure units (like great wyrms, great drakes and sky drakes).[/quote] You got your games messed up again: EWOM will ikely not have units called great wyrms, great drakes and sky drakes. That's MoM. It is likely that the game won't even have that many powerful single-figure units. If so, you will likely have to invest loads of esse

Well, basically all an "endurance" system means is that you have two different health-realted numbers: your HP, which decreases when you take damage, increases over time, and kills you if it reaches 0, and an endurance number that stays the same until you take a certain amount of damage, then goes down a little and stays there until you take that amount of damage again, and so on. When your HP recovers to the point where you lost an endurance "point", it stops healing even if that is

[quote]It's biased towards helping those that leave defenses thin or non-existant.[/quote] Except for the facts that 1) conscripted units are really lousy and probably wouldn't make much difference, and 2) even if you have a strong defense, you can still conscript people. [quote]It's a game mechanic that can easily be replaced by always having an ultra-cheap 1-turn unit that can be produced.[/quote]That forgets that units will be designed, not premade, and completely removes t

[quote]Would you prefer if all combat calculations in the game were non-random?[/quote] Actually, no: A little bit of randomness is fine, with "critical hits", occasional misses, and that sort of thing, especially when the game doesn't really do it randomly so much as intentionally to stir things up a little (think mega events in GC2, or Great People in Civ 4[although I'm not entirely sure if the latter are actually "intelligently" placed]). However, randomenss should be relatively ra

[quote]As far as RNGs go, if you don't like them, you can always go play a FPS or other purely skill-based game.[/quote]That's not the point : FPSs are not totally skill-based. In fact, I can't think of a single game that is. It's not a matter of "just go play something else". How wpould you like it if somebody told you "since you don't like a sepearte life/death system, just go play MoM"?

Well, it looks difficult to program, but if they found some way to get it in, it would be a LOAD of fun.....

[quote]Here's hoping that whatever system they use for doing the actual math involved, that it will be moddable. MoM basically rolled 10-sided dice for each and every point of damage a figure was attempting to do. If the roll was 3 or less (30% chance), it scored a hit. All of the successful hits were tallied up, then the defender's shields were calculated in the exact same way (10-sider, 30% chance) and successful blocks were subtracted from the successful hits. This system allowe

[quote]So what is the count now? 80 for "longer", two (2) for "current" and two (2) "maybe" posts?[/quote] Well, depends on if you are counting people , or people's posts .......

Could be. We know nothing about how numbers will work here, and decimals would make a lot of sense at the lower training levels..... plus, we son't know whether that attack is buffed or penalized in some way, or if attack even behaves like the rest of the stats. It's also possible that unit number is some sort of "engurance" system: if you lose health to a certain point, a unit dies, and you can't heal "past" that point.

[quote]Looks to me like they are using an 8 figure unit.[/quote] ..... with all attack, defense, speed, and HP values cumulated as opposed to being kept seperate. Probably like in GC2 fleets, where there were individual ships but all the stats were added intoa single total.

Indeed. You would probably have to do it as, say, a last desperate attempt to save your final city a few turns before casting the Spell of Making...... under normal circumstances, you would probably just give everybody a stick and tell them to protect their families, friends, and country(wo)men.

[quote]It's only optional if you don't need to do it to win.[/quote]Which you won't. The training system will balance it out, and if it doesn't, then that's just bad betaing on SD's part.

[quote]My argument is that horde-style armies detract from the tactical nature of the game. Just as a horde of players stampeding onto a football pitch detracts from the tactics and overall strategy of that game. It's not at all hard to justify. Many games have restrictions on the number of concurrent participants in the action.[/quote] Except for the fact that large groups of people are a challange to control. If that horde of players on the football field were still under the coach'

[quote]How is that any more unbelievable than somebody throwing fireballs out of their fingertips?[/quote] Well, the fireballs are obvoiusly generated by magic, and subject to its caveats and vulnerabilities, plus that is a sensible application of magic that people would really use. Why would anyone powerful enough to cast a "thou shalt not have more than nine soldiers within one area of land" spell even care ? [quote]We're discussing the relative merits of unit cap vs

[quote]Its above the head as far as I can tell. The eye is below it. [/quote]Well, to me it really looks like the profile of a human head, draped in moss (although I am thinking more of a skill now). Although I could be wrong.... or both could be heads. (Or neither for that matter)! [quote]I imangine he has just risen up from the swamp[/quote]I'm going to disagree with you just for the heck of it and say that the way the vines are draped makes it look like he was p

[quote]with earthy body covered in moss, grass, and even a willow tree.[/quote] I... uhhh..... don't think that's a tree. I think it's the creature's head.

This is completely unintelligible. But I love it anyway.

Bad idea: never having ideas.

Well, the main problem with a regular-unit-based system is that it ties espionage to military power: you need to be able to recruit, train, and attack people using your military abilities. What I want is a system where espionage is a valid gameplay style in its own right, independant from military power. (A style, though, that you can turn off if you don't want to deal with it).

Most likely, this is one of the "beasts" you can recruit to your side. I want to take it into my math class and see how long it takes for the text-iobsessed girl in the back to notice something's up. [e digicons]}:)[/e]

[quote]Games don't need to be believable or explainable[/quote] So, you don't care if macemen spontaneously appear on the tops of trees whenever you attack a swamp creature, or if farms produce nothing but research points?