pigeonpigeon

[quote who="SaberCherry" reply="15" id="2323260"]However, when you consider the constant amount of sunlight that falls on an acre of land, it is unreasonable to propose exponential agricultural productivity increases, since they ultimately must be asymptotic. That's true of many other things, too, such as relationships involving the strength of materials, like armor durability. You simply can't make steel 10% stronger over and over and over until it can scratch diamond and resist

[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] Even assuming that anything in that screenshot will be relevant to the final game, all that tells us is how many units are in that troop. For all we know, if you had trained 30 knights, that number would say 30. If you had trained 300 as a group, it'd say 300. If you had trained 3, it would say 3... And even if they are displaye

A randomized campaign will never be as good as a good, well-thought out and well-implemented hand-crafted campaign. At least not until we invent computer intelligence with the creativity of a human mind. I would love for sandbox mode to feel like its own, different mini campaign every time. A great way to do this, I think, is to have quests, dungeons and events all tied together - instead of being completely separate entities like they usually tend to be. If you add in revolutionary diplomacy

I've noticed that a lot of people want there to be a lot o randomness in the Campaign. I'm completely opposite! I play campaigns once, and then never come back to them unless maybe I start playing the game again years later. So I don't want it to be random. I want every aspect of the campaign to be masterfully hand-crafted, so that the one time I do play it through it will grab and hold my attention. Randomization is for sandbox mode.

[quote] The very fact that the exact opposite is also true validates bigger maps are more strategic. Take a super super tiny map and the strategic options are clearly very limited. I've played with many chessmasters and any of them will clearly tell you the number of strategic choices would greatly increase if an additional 64 squares are added in between the players of a chessboard as would the strategic options decrease if any squares are removed from the

It's true, KellenDunk, but there is a significant practical difference between them. It's not only psychological. Spending 1000 gold for a 0.1% increase vs. 10000 gold or a 1% increase is hugely different assuming the time required are in the same ballpark. Like you said, it's still diminishing return on investment, but it's not diminishing return per research tier. Diminishing return per research tier is what bothers me.

I apologize ahead of time for this monster post, but there are just too many things I feel a burning need to respond to or comment on... Most of these quotes are ChongLi's but there are some other appearances. Forgive me for not attributing them individually. [quote]Pretty much any killer stack somebody used in MoM has a counter that doesn't require blatant out-spending to defeat. The problem was that the AI was too dumb to do it.[/quote] But that is not the point. The point i

I'd be so happy if something like this makes it into the game. Randomized multi-stage quests would add so much. Even if you only see a quest 1 in 10 games, after playing the game enough you know each quest inside out and they just become rote. Something like this, on the other hand, provided there are enough buildings blocks with enough variety, could really make the quests feel different every time - especially if the building blocks themselves incorporate some randomness. The functionality

[quote who="CapnWinky" reply="4" id="2322054"]Haha. I thought the same exact thing when I saw that picture!!! Let's hope you're right! Great minds think alike! [/quote] Haha, I thought the same thing, too :) And I would love or this guy to be the guardian/protector of a swamp somewhere - functioning on a level compared to player channelers. Again, no schemes for world domination or for achieving any of the victory conditions (and no ability for it, anyways) - just self preserv

[quote who="Ynglaur" reply="9" id="2322329"]Good points SaberCherry. pigeonpigeon: while technology advanced quite rapidly over the past 300 years, look at the last 10,000. In fact, there have been serious periods of technological decline during several periods in history (albeit mostly localized to single continents) and several long periods of stagnation (generally due to wars, famine, ruling classes, etc.).[/quote] Um, more or less exactly my point. When you start

[quote who="Denryu" reply="25" id="2321790"]Anything to abstracted just turns into "Pour money in to get info, and pour more money in to keep other guys from getting your info.[/quote] And if you apply that to Robbie's recent suggestions, it turns into "pour money in to prevent your governors from slacking off on the job and your most heavily invested-in heroes from being traitors - and pour more money in to cause the enemy to slack off, do crazy things, and maybe even ste

Regarding dungeon sophistication. Probably not in the base game, but I would love for the possibility of starting settlements inside dungeons. I'd love a "Mines of Moria" mod that has dungeons at the base of mountain ranges, allowing you to explore and settle down! An underground fortress would be pretty cool, and it would naturally be very discrete. If you could work the engine in such a way to allow modding or future patches/expansions to add in things like that, I'd b

[quote] Things that can probably be done without : -Height bonuses. -Morale (can easily simulate effects with stat loss instead of making it its own stat). -Complex unit stances.[/quote] I would love there to be height bonuses. It would create strategic value in holding the high ground. Also, extra range for archers on high ground would be much appreciated! This would also apply to archers on walls, for exam

[quote who="arstal" reply="11" id="2321791"]Just be sure when you make the decision, to post it up, post why, then let people know if they preorder, they'll have the game at the same time they would have- just that you're going to be adding content before release so you avoid the vaporware tag (you REALLY need to do this on the beta announcement)[/quote] They most definitely should not do this, it would be extraordinarily misleading. If they extend the beta and development process, st

[quote]The 5 ways of moving a knight from point A to B will rarely provide the same end effect. Not only will the end effect be different but his very traveling along the path could encounter a new friend(Independent or Player); a new enemy(Independent or Player; a new quest; a new hidden structure; etc, etc., . Also the longer the distance from point A to point B also means the more likely something will happen and each event/obstacle/creature/etc means the player will need to ma

[quote]Then again planning ahead is what makes these turn based games so interesting to me. If I can garrison troops at the very last moment then I can safely build buildins unles I am force to do otherwise. I think this takes away from the needed planning required to make these games succesful.[/quote] Ah but there is a cost! If you muster a civilian militia at the last second to defend your city, you will suffer huge losses. Civilian militia would be pretty much the worst units you

I'm also on the fence about espionage, for mostly the same reasons as others have already given. I've just never played a game where espionage was fun. A game with horrible , absolutely horrible espionage in my opinion was M2:TW. It was just such a crap shoot... With crappy spies you failed almost all the time, but to get good spies your crappy spies need to be successful dozens of times without ever really getting caught... Also, there weren't really many ways of protec

Yes!! That is great idea. I shudder to think what you guys would be able to accomplish with such a long development and beta process. And I think it would be a good long-term financial investment, so long as you can survive the up front costs (which it sounds like you can). After all, with 6 more months of development and beta time, I have no doubt that you'll be able to make Elemental everything that it should be and more (even i people disagree about some of the finer

[quote]Claiming there are far better writers, I could certainly agree with. I loved the LOTR trilogy, but the Simarillion was so dull I couldn't finish it. Children of Hurin is pretty decent though.[/quote] I enjoyed the Silmarillion for it's story, but I definitely agree that it was hard to get through simply because of the density and biblical style. But that's what the Silmarillion is essentially supposed to be: a bible for another world. And that's one thing that makes Tolkien spe

[quote who="Bingjack" reply="10" id="2320963"]Remember, the lucky few wont be playing E:WOM...they'll be playing a *very* rough, *very* early build of *some* of the eventual features, and it will be more like work than play, with the focus being on *testing*, not fun. Oh my god, I almost said that with a straight face. Whoo-hoo...seven days![/quote] I was about to hit you, but then you saved yourself.

Wow there are so many points that I want to respond to in this thread that I'm just completely overwhelmed. I'm just not even going to try, instead I'll just ay what I want. Also, this thread has gone so far off topic that it is actually pretty funny. Anyways, I am firmly against the "9 unit" stack limit thing. Now matter how much you argue, it did cause the same problem in MoM as it did in AoW. Once you are able to get ahold of the top tier units,

[quote who="AIAndy" reply="4" id="2320136"]The risk with that kind of tech tree is that it can easily be boring.I don't mind that at some point you only get into infinite standard researches but before that there should be some spiced up techs that stand out (maybe with some rule that you at least get one of a certain bunch of techs to keep it fair).[/quote] I always assumed this would be the way it would be... I mean, before you can upgrade "Generic Swords Upgrade I" you'd have to re

[quote]"Doing that to all of your cities" doesn't apply to this discussion because we are talking about "heartripping", which is the specific targeting of your fortress city. In MoM none of your cities mattered as long as your fortress was intact.[/quote] Not exactly. The most extreme form of heartripping is when you go after a target that will immediately defeat the other player. But really, heartripping is the process of barreling through enemy territory to a high value target fast

[quote who="Robbie.Price" reply="2" id="2319832"]I don;t see how the search algorithm fails in retagular worlds.. If you are told to auto explore after running a long way you'll end up doing an arc one way, then turning around and doing an arc the other way, (or just jumping accross the gap), it would need to do an edge detect, and not try to walk off the map. . . . but that's one condition. comparied to the alternitive, 'go to the nearest unseen patch'&nbs

[quote who="Ephafn" reply="1" id="2318780"]I have a question steming from the mention by one of the devs (don't remember which) that fertile areas will grow with time, without any essence cost beside the initial one : Do you have any mechanics in mind to discourage, or prevent, the "smallpox" strategy? (Note : for those who don't already know, "smallpox" in Civ 1-3 consist of covering the map with tiny cities, as close to each other as possible.) Of course if you need to pay essenc