Jingseng

[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="4" id="2760705"] Both parents have essence, though neither is over 80. So you waited to take a spouse until you'd imbued a champion and gotten him or her through a ludicrous number of battles? I'm not scoffing, I'm just curious about what happens when you seriously postpone starting your dynasty.[/quote] Well, I'm not terribly in a rush to start a dynasty - it just doesn't really do anything when you get down to it.&nb

[quote who="JSJ101" reply="12" id="2769587"]Hmm... not to be Debbie Downer here but, there are well over 100 million people in the world who go to sleep every night without enough to eat, there's the systematic murder of ethnic groups, rape of women, and abduction of children in Africa and elsewhere, regular abuse of domestic servants throughout many Middle Eastern countries, etc. But, I guess this game having some bugs and balance issues is pretty bad, too.[/quote] <

Action RPGs attempt to appeal to the reward addicts - and most of those gamers wouldn't have interested in SPORE in begin with, this line answers your own question. minimal effort to tap into fresh market segment = more money, provided income exceeds costs - and that's best achieved by reducing costs. You have to understand, the people at the top calling the shots and signing the paychecks aren't gamers and aren't game devs. They

Minor update - Turn 348 it has been two turns since all of Kraxis was conquered. Of Magnar's 7 settlements, 2 are completely surrounded by my area of influence. My sovereign's 'Vigilant Minion' summon just single handedly destroyed a magnar army rated at 411 in the first turn. Of my 6 combat groups, 2 are garrisoning former Kraxis settlements as forward bases. The other 4 are moving into position along the magnar border. Peace tre

I should clarify, the latter half of "tl;dr" is not directed at anyone in this thread, nor anyone in particular... but rather to the community at large, particularly the portion that likes to complain/denounce the company and devs.

So... coming up with a name on your own is hard, so you use random name generator... ...but the random name generator is criticized for not coming up with good names... Irony? =)

Hmm. I can see that would be useful information; as i recall, the issue with cloning, I believe is same session. However, the error does persist, once it has occurred, through separate sessions. The issue with carryover is separate session (exit and restarted). it also persists. subsequent new games using different sovereigns will not have the carriedover/bugged npc as before, although a new one may develop. That

Back with a more in depth analysis. In the current game, I am the empire of Resoln. I have personally crushed Capitar, Altar, and Iyana. All of the minor factions have been destroyed. Only Kraxis and Magnar remain, and both are at war with me, as they have been since around turn 75. it is currently turn 344. I control the bulk of the map ; Kraxis is/was to my north. Magnar is to the north east of Kraxis. I have

With regards to testing, I think the industry overall is to blame, more than Stardock 'individually' these days, "beta testing" pretty much means - publicity demo. We give the player base a near complete version to play with, catch the most egregious errors, and triage everything else. And you can't blame them for that. On the one hand, it's cheap, basically free advertising of the best sort - hands on. Customers don't have to ho

I agree - and I'm not saying it wont be, but rather, that people shouldn't expect it to suddenly become everything they hoped for in the next week. It's a complicated process to model a decision making algorithm, more so a good multi-factor one. people should expect it to be a gradual, step-wise process of improvement, particularly as changes to the game in other areas are rolled out.

Yes, i believe this is by design, to prevent "neutral" cities from growing/building and increasing their area of influence - since they are meant to be "minor" factions and not "major" (playable) factions. As mentioned, razing them is generally the best choice. Trading them a thousand materials for their gildar before assimilating their faction would be an even better choice. Another option is to engulf their area within your area of influen

"Evaluate" - notice this word comes from the root word, Value. It means to attach numerical values for the purpose of comparison and decision making. Intelligence, as it relates to games and game theory, has basically two components - Evaluation and Temporal awareness. You must be able to make a decision on some sort of sensical basis. You must be able to differentiate between "now" and "not now". The first component is the dominant one.

Well, the negative talent which lowers your own side's morale seems to apply multiple times for some reason (or carry over, or some damn thing) so it is not uncommon to start fights panicked, despite a combat rating of 700 vs. 19. The whole morale system really needs to be either scrubbed or overhauled. Morale generally only changes by 1 pt up or down per turn. And no battle should last 50 turns. Moreover, how the hell

Actually, It has happened to me a few times that the resources bar at the bottom is NOT visible on city level up - it is instead focused on something else (due to lack of priority of actions, everything scrambles to pop up at the beginning of a turn) such as a unit, a harvestable, or even nothing at all.

Description for Educated says "Wordly" (ironically, not a word) ... and not, I have to assume, "Worldly"

There are currently only 4 options for city specialization - they aren't too bad to be honest. It's just, there are many settlements that don't particularly fall under the specializations of gildar, tech, or arcane... and which might not really need a mire skarth (or bandits... eh???). There are plenty of possible specializations that can be awarded to growing settlements. When a city levels up, I think it'd be nice to display a city level u

I think one of the main problems for players right now is that there is too much uniformity - I'm sure that makes the game easier to make and check and push out, but it does make for some dullness. I'm hoping that balancing pass and changes will lead to a more in depth look at Variety in general. For example, every unit has a base movement of 2.0. Really? Come on... The trader has a horse pulling the wagon... ok, maybe it's a heavy wagon.&nb

My first heir had 118 essence. Keep in mind that essence bonuses from temples and shards are automatically applied. My second heir had 568 essence. third had 15. Fourth had 315. Both parents have essence, though neither is over 80. Seems normal to me.

actually, i haven't noticed the npcs attacking monsters very much, even when they wander about in their towns. And for the most part, monsters only attack my trade wagons and pioneers - they rarely attack my other units or settlements (although they do, occasionally)

when starting a new game, I often have the ability to build units I haven't yet researched... and which have the appearance appropriate for a faction i am not leading (but was in a previous game). Most recently however, this took a curious turn. I had wedded My sovereign to the wandering npc Arussa. Some time later, in the same game, i found her clone: another npc named Arussa. The computer apparently didn't know how to deal with this, and assigned clo

I could really do without a real-time system, semi/pausable or not. That isn't the game I bought at all. Keep in mind how horrendous that would be for multiplayer. That sort of gameplay reduces down to twitch gameplay mechanics which are generally far more frustrating and exploitative than anything remotely resembling fun. Keep in mind Baldur's gate was singleplayer... It would be nice to be able to pick your starting locations h

Well, in theory, a sovereign could take over an unprotected settlement and come back into power - sovereigns are the most powerful unit in the game currently and can easily field a ghost army capable of crushing any 'real' army (summoned minions don't seem to be counted in 'army' power, despite being ridiculously powerful) but yes, the diplomacy system is uneven... and too strict. And despite all that, it still often doesn't make any sense. I have wargs from

have screenshots of the exact diplomacy screens. or at least i think i do - press "prt scr" and there was the characteristic pause.

TL;DR I have apples. I hate apples. I like oranges. You have oranges. You hate oranges. You like apples. real world: we trade apples and orange. Elemental: My apples are worth 0 to me, and your oranges are worth 50,000, so we can't make a trade. The diplomacy ai seems to have trouble attaching the correct values to trade/treaty items. Possibly because there are only two values in