I'd be willing to jump in on this. I have very little programming experience, but do have a design background. I'd love to learn more about modding. Personally, I was planning on undertaking a solo learn-to-mod project with Elemental once the game settles down a little bit. But I can jump in sooner rather than later.
Sounds like a rehashing of the ridiculous world vs. ridiculous AI issue. If you set the world difficulty to ridiculous, but don't change the difficulties on each individual opponent AI , it's not surprising that they're all getting wiped out. Basically, you're amping up the wilderness so that it's filled with lots of evil creatures - including spiders - but you're not scaling the AI's competence (or, in this case, extra resources) to go with it. Result: you,
[quote who="TheProgress" reply="14" id="2855307"]Quoting Nikitosina, reply 11It is sooo stupid to work on AI before implementing all features and making general changes like global mana pool. Not really. Working on low level stuff such as the helper methods and assorted APIs is not a waste of time at all. Working on improving the AIs higher-level reasoning isn't a waste of time either: not only does it allow Brad to learn new ways to deal with the AI, but it also allows for the AI
Yep. I'd definitely buy it. It's going to be a great game. But for now it's in the "fire it up each patch for a couple hours" camp. 1.1 is a long way from 1.09, which was a long was from 1.0. I can only imagine how good the expansions will be, especially with Kael's influence as a designer. So I'd so, buy it now so you get the free expansion, then play it later.
[quote who="luketan" reply="26" id="2848868"]Allow some form of conversion In MOM you could use alchemy to convert gold to mana. [/quote] Alchemy makes a lot of sense for EWOM, I think, especially if combined with a sovereign trait that increases mana generation. Got lots of extra mana? Turn it to gold! Lots of extra gold? Turn it to mana! All at a horrible exchange rate... Unless you build alchemy labs in your cities to make the
Yep, I'm in the "wait on Civ V" camp, too, in part because I'll probably need a new computer to run it, but also because I know a year or two from now I'll be able to get Civilization V complete for half the cost of buying the main game and expansions separately, and with better AI, more features implemented, and further-along mods. In the meantime there are plenty of other more complete games that warrant attention.
I cannot stress enough how important it is to make sure your drivers are updated. Not just with Elemental, but with any and every game I've ever had stability issues with, this is almost always the reason why. To people having a rough experience and seeing lots of crashes, make sure your drivers are current. If you don't know how or have never done this before, here's what to do (at least in Windows 7; as I recall Vista and XP are pretty much the same): 1) Go to cont
Ok, as ranty as the OP is, I pretty much agree. While I'm loving 1.1, that's because I'm a civilization-building junkie and I'm intentionally playing a low-magic sovereign. I can tell, though, that while magic looks better, it still needs to get beefed up for the name of the game to really make sense.
I've played way more SotS than Sins, because at heart I'm a TBS guy and not a RTS guy. If you, like me, prefer TBS games, I'd plug Distant Worlds over Sins as an RTS that plays like a TBS. Sins is more polished and looks way better, and undoubtedly has better combat, but DW has in spades all the stuff that normally gets left out of strategy games (like a wonderful economic system, and the possibility to play without just trying to destroy everything in site). It's really alm
[quote who="lambdaman" reply="27" id="2841643"]I'm curious about the term "lockdown" -- I've always heard "freeze" or "feature freeze". Is this a gaming industry term?[/quote] I'm guessing it's different language in different places and with different people. I worked closely with a programmer who called it "feature lock." Same concept, different words.
I believe 1.1 will be stable, as long as everyone playing the BETA releases continues to post actual crash-dumps so Stardock can capture all of the bugs and squash them before release. Please remember that the current releases are not meant to improve stability, per se, because they are beta releases. If you want stable, play the pre-beta 1.09. For my part, I'm waiting for 1.1 because I have limited gaming time, and I'd rather play a stable game. Betas aren't usually
Distant Worlds and Football Manager for me. Both are extremely addicting.
Screw the west coast, I love Hawaii!
Thanks for the heads up! I'm not an RTS fan, but 10 cents is an amazing deal.
You might be able to pick up 4 and 5 in the same package... I know for a while they were shipping SE5 with SE4 thrown in, too. I think it was the "Delux" version. Might be worth checking the nearest Gamestop (or European equivalent). Edit: I'll also second the Sword of the Stars suggestion. Very different game from Space Empires, but undoubtedly well done.
Haha, well done. I enjoyed reading this AAR.
I've had a Sager for the last year and a half, and it's been a great laptop. I'd definitely recommend them.
I'm pretty sure it means they won't be releasing any new content you have to pay for between now and next year. You'll always be able to play and download EWOM, but I suspect come late 2011 they might start working on an expansion (a la Dark Avatar and Twilight of Arnor).
I saw this before 1.07 (which I haven't had enough time to play). I mostly play on the cloth map, so I can't say how common it was, but sometimes when I would zoom in close enough my city names and info bars would get replaced by those of some other faction I had already met.
[e digicons]k1[/e] . I would love to see these things get into the game. I already love the model, and most of the stuff that got me excited is in there already, but all of these ideas would improve the experience, in my opinion.
If you liked Fantasy Wars (and/or the Elven Legacy series that follows it), I'd recommend Battle for Wesnoth , which has a similar gameplay model. The graphics are all 2D, so that may not be your thing, but it's tactically deeper than Fantasy Wars, and there are lots of campaigns of various length and difficulty. Best of all, it's free.
The AI has been expanding in my games, so far. In fact, one of them plopped his fifth city in the spot I was planning on putting my third. I think having just 2 AIs on a large map is why you haven't run into anyone yet.
[quote]This is a good thing. These companies paid for exclusive content, which means Stardock gets more money (right?). More money means more incentive for development on Elemental and beyond. What is the downside?[/quote] This. I'm all for Stardock getting some of Walmart and Best Buy's money, even if it means I have to wait a couple months for some minor quest which, frankly, will probably be nowhere near as interesting as the content modders will be creating.
Thanks Frogboy. We'll be waiting with varying degrees of patience. [e digicons]:)[/e]