pigeonpigeon

I haven't read the whole thread, but I don't understand why some people are so chagrined that diplomatic capital will have no use in human only multiplayer game. No such mechanism should be in place! Why the hell should the ratio of my diplomatic capital to their diplomatic capital affect anything when it comes to me making a deal with them? The only reason anything like diplomatic capital has a use even in single-player is because diplomacy is generally a very weak spot

I'm really looking forward to these changes. But I do agree with others sentiments that the pacing of the game is still way out of whack. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I have trouble training even small armies. I think the most soldiers I've ever had control of in a game was maybe ~100, and that was with several level 4-5 cities and smaller ones. It's just so expensive to train, and to maintain, large numbers of troops that armies tend to be really small.. And magic is definite

[quote]So, we don't need Minor factions that are as fleshed out as normal AI Factions. They wouldn't need as advanced an AI as a normal AI Faction would, but they need to be more then speed bumps and they need to be worth keeping around or they'll just get mowed over or seen as fancy goodie huts.[/quote] Correction: they would need just as advanced an AI as the major factions. It'd just be different, and admittedly wouldn't have to take into account nearly as much and therefore might

[quote]In regards to the factions being able to give you benefits via diplomacy, could that extend to include swearing fealty, and/or becoming a protectorate? Instead of just being absorbed into your civilization, they'd keep control and such, but you'd still get whatever perks they provided. Or you could also just attack the city that is protected by the drakes, only to have a rather large and angry drake discuss with you that it wasn't the best of ideas to attack that particular faction. Ei

The images are broken... At least they are over here. But.. [quote]For example: We’re looking at having it be a bigger deal when a City Levels up and giving them points (almost like a character) to put into traits like food production, research production, etc. [/quote] I would absolutely love a feature like that! Especially if you make it have truly significant effects; would help quite a bit in making cities feel more special. Being able to do things with point

[quote]I like how everyone is ignoring that this is the list of the "basic" spellbooks, and 7 more are available to be found (but not taken at Sovereign creation). Assuming even that no new spells are added to the core books between now and release (unlikely), that'll still put it at 150-160 spells if the average number of spells holds.[/quote] Personally I'm not so worried about the quantity of spells. For one, quantity is something that can easily be added later, and soon enough tha

[quote] I understand. and the stories that do make fun of this trope are few and far between. Wheel of Time's Lan is one of the best swordsman you meet for the first half of the series or so. He gets faced with 7 ordinary thugs and he thinks to himself he will probably die and looks for a way out of there. And I'm perfectly okay with Champions destroying legions of men over the course of a game and coming out fine. It fits the genre. I'm just saying it's not realistic in

[quote]As it is, for any Champion to fight a dozen men... unless the dozen men just really suck, well. It's unrealistic. I doubt that happens much in real life and that concept has just been popularized by Hollywood. Everything should have a counter. A counter that isn't "do the exact same thing but better". [/quote] Realistic ?! Man, have you ever read a fantasy novel in your life? The ability of a hero, or anti-hero, or antagonist, to defeat large number of inferior foes is

[quote]Which is largely irrelevant. The point was getting a Champion is cheap and easy. Sure you have to spend the game equipping and training them and all that good stuff, but the point is you can have MANY of them.[/quote] I am getting a little tired of explaining this. That I can recruit many champions is IRRELEVANT to this discussion if I DO NOT HAVE THE ABILITY to turn more than A VERY SMALL NUMBER OF THEM into VERY POWERFUL heroes. If I have 20 champions, and by diverting my res

[quote who="Tridus" reply="291" id="2669862"]So Annatar and I don't have brains? Cmon Raven, that's beneath you. [/quote] Eh, give him a break. He's stressed out and medicated. And Tridus, I think we've established that you and I pretty much want the same thing, and I think that Raven has agreed that he wants more or less what I want, and therefore by extension what you want despite his hyperbolic rhetoric :P. But to be honest, Annatar has been making uncharacteristica

[quote]You don't see a difference between an extremely rare and extremely powerful Non-Player Character Creature that (by past accounts) can relatively easily defeat a *Sovereign* and a bunch of guys you can recruit at the start of the game for 60 gold?[/quote] Either I am doing a terrible job getting my point across, or you are doing a terrible job of understanding it :P Recruiting a hero for 60 gold at the beginning of the game does not a powerful champion make. To really get the ch

[quote]Come on now, we're not talking about dragons or super powerful fantastical creatures. We're talking guys-who-are-not-the-Sovereign.[/quote] But that's the thing: I don't see the difference. Why must champions be limited by the strength of a single unit of regular troops, when sovereigns or fantastical beings needn't be? I am not saying we should be able to go around and recruit/train up dozens of champions to mythical strength and power. But if I decide to focus my energies on

[quote]"Viable" does not mean "Turn it into a super unit". Viable means the single champion remains *competitive*. If champions count against the army stack size limit, then a single champion needs to be competitive with the stack of units that can be used in his place. This is a balance issue and involves the Champion's stats (base and through leveling), equipment, and magic. In order for this Champion to be Viable, he has to bring enough utility to the army so that when you have a c

[quote]Champions should never, in any way, shape, or form, be "super units". They will be powerful units because they can use magic, wear increasingly powerful equipment, and gain stats from leveling up - and that's exactly how they should stay. The *only* consideration is that a late game champion has viable utility in tactical combat *if* he's part of the "stack size" limitation. That utility is not necessarily about how many units he can take out by himself, since some spells function as "

[quote]Doesn't help you if you're pursuing a millitary path and not a magical one, which people have previously campaigned to make a perfectly viable path to victory. Only it's not if your big army gets completely steamrolled by some god mode teleporting champion because people want champions that can fight hundreds of units at once single handidly.[/quote] This conversation has been derailed by teleportation. Ever since Frogboy's example, that's been the core complaint from people wh

[quote] But that's exactly the type of thing people are asking for with these super god mode champions they're advocating. If players can do it, an intelligent AI can do it too. It's hardly "War of Magic" when the "war" part doesn't apply because the AI has a god unit that nothing you create can fight except your own god unit. If your god unit happens to be far away when his gets to your capital... oh well. Better luck next time. It's pretty silly to say that we can do it, but

[quote]As long as the game's AI is horrible, yea. But it's not so fun when it happens to you. I mean, good grief guys, we had people screaming because there were tough creatures spawning in their starting locations and those creatures don't even target anyone in particular yet. It would be a riot if a player's 10 hour long game ends because the AI somehow managed to build up to a single mega unit that teleported itself to your capital, dispelled your protection enchantme

Yes, that's what I said in my original post. But he said the max of 10 units per army somewhere else. After the devs spent months telling us about the massive tactical battles, I'm reticent to read too far into tidbits of information provided in various different places. These tidbits combined with silence about those features make it sound like they've been tossed out, but after spending so long building up excitement about them I feel like, if they are going to get rid of them, they could a

[quote]I honestly Don't See a Problem with having a Super Powerful Champion by End Game. Remember back in MoM by End Game when you could make Super Powerful weapons and Armor for your Champions that made them Invincible and Unstoppable? That was fun as hell.[/quote] Or in HoMM. Take HoMM III, where the hero doesn't participate directly in combat except via spells, or HoMM V where heroes also have an attack (but are still sort of outside the battlefield). In the beginning of a game, wi

I'm confused, and have been for a while, about population levels in Elemental and army sizes. Ever since the game was announced, up until relatively recently, we were told that we would see battles in Elemental between armies numbering in the thousands each. I've never seen a developer in the forums say otherwise, but everything we have about the game, as well as some statements by devs, make it seem like that is no longer even remotely the case. First, based on the currently populati

Bah, forums broken. I'll use the double post to give a tactical version of Countermagic. 1. Countermagic 2. Tactical 3. Arcane Knowledge: not sure, maybe ~20? I envision it being a spell that really starts being useful in the mid-game. 4. 0 5. No. 6. Drains (Enemy INT/Your INT)*(Spell Cost) to counter enemy magic. Can only be cast if unit hasn't already used magic or attacked this turn, and ends the unit's turn. Subsequently, until the caster's next turn,

Is Arcane Knowledge the mana cost required to learn a spell? If so: 1. Countermagic 2. Strategic 3. Arcane Knowledge: not sure, maybe ~20? I envision it being a spell that really starts being useful in the mid-game. 4. See Notes 5. No. 6. Drains (Enemy INT/Your INT)*(Spell Cost) to block offensive magic cast at your armies/cities/resources/etc. 7. Book of Mastery 8. This spell could be be global or local, an enchantment or a one-turn deal. If an ench

I think someone mentioned this earlier, and I meant to reiterate/expound on it in my post but I forgot: different ways of casting spells. It would be a long way towards making magic more fun. The basic and less powerful spells should be cast by choosing the spell and choosing the target, and seeing the effect. But more powerful spells could require more complicated procedures, like rituals. Some could require not only possession of a shard, but being at a shard. Some could r

I'm with Raven - I'd rather the units have a fixed size, and thus look smaller the farther out I'm zoomed. The scaling has bothered me ever since we got the 3D graphics. I would like to keep the option, though (and as it's already in, I don't even feel bad about asking for that :P)

There are great suggestions in this thread! I like that you will only implement spells that the AI knows how to use, but I would hate to see magic, of all things in this game, to suffer for insufficient AI. Frankly, if a game called "Elemental: War of Magic" is released with lackluster magic, with largely straightforward and simplistic spells, it will be a big disappointment and I imagine it'd have a significant effect on its reception. I would rather see Elemental delayed until Winter than b