pigeonpigeon

[quote]Agreed with john_hughes. It'd be a nightmare of building and rebuilding to get optimal researching done[/quote] Not necessarily. Yes, you could do that, but that would mean you are constantly losing out on those tiles in your city. To do this constantly would require that you keep a certain number of city tiles almost constantly under construction. So there is opportunity cost there. The second is that you are spending gold and resources to constantly build and rebuild. So yeah

[quote]So yeah agree that we need some form of army protection but I am not sure a weak caster should be able to defend against a strong caster just like you wouldn't expect a weak army to defeat a strong one.[/quote] Well yeah. My point was just that if people who focus on magic can cast an SMD on someone's massive army, annihilating it completely, then focusing on warfare would be an utter waste of time and resources. Either we would need to be able to build armies large enough that

[quote]Don't take this the wrong way anyone, I was as psyched about it as anyone, BUT, unless something radical is done with material costs, build times etc, fielding the ultimate 10,000 man Battle force may not happen on anything but the HUGEST of maps that make it so you never see another player for 4000+ Turns. Perhaps Beta 2 will shed some new light on the state of that game element but I am skeptical at this point. I hope I am totally wrong.[/quote] Yea

[quote]Stupid enough. The AI can be better at making choices. It seems that you know nothing about testing and math. The choices is finite so the AI should know the values. According to your text I should be glad to play aginst weak AI in chess in case i just have less figures? Do you really enjoy play agains idiot who cheat all the game long? That's all about. No one like it.[/quote] Lol. I particularly like the math bit. Yes, the PhD theoretical physics student knows nothing about m

[quote]yeah i hear what your saying, and while i do want spells of mass destruction(SMD's ha!), i can see where i would be mighty pissed if i had an army of thousands that took me a couple hundred turns to get only to be wiped out by a volcano popping up under them. has to be some kinda check or something.[/quote] Yes, if we can get Spells of Mass Destruction, then we either need to be able to build Armies of Mass Destruction, or we need a means to counter/defend our armies from such

My major reservation about any sort of system that restricts you to commanding a fraction of your army, and leaving the rest to the AI, is that there is no way to share thoughts or anything. The AI simply has no clue what I want from it, and will go do its own thing while I do my own thing with whatever part of my army I control. It would just be so unbelievably frustrating to have a great strategy but be unable to implement it because there is no good way of interacting with my AI counterpar

Raven, dude, you aren't allowed to die. You go and relay that to your gastrointestinal tract and gall bladder, please. There are consequences to breaking the rules, after all. Hell, you aren't allowed to abandon us on these forums for any reason at all! If you ever get stranded on a deserted island I'd expect nothing less of you than to jerry rig some sort of device with internet capabilities, and to post your thoughts of the day about Elemental here before contacting the authorities

[quote]The Civics tree is different. It doesn't lead to its own victory like the others, and unlike the others it's highly dependent. Everything else depends on it. So for my idea - remove it outright. Every X number of breakthroughs in any other research line also gives you a Civics upgrade. That lets you decide which way you want to go, and get the farm that you'd have to get no matter what.[/quote] [quote]Or here, this is an even more radical idea. WE all know that so far i

[quote] One AI promise from me personally to you guys The AI in our games is only as good as I am. The better I get at the game, the better the AI will get. So while I’m working hard to make sure the AI in Elemental is good, know that it will keep getting better long after release. In the Starcraft 2 beta, I started out in Copper. Now, I’m in the Platinum league. Practice makes perfect.[/quote] I would put money on

[quote]Well most of the people [especially those, who didn't preorder] think that EWoM is the successor of MoM. Do you really think that those people are expecting to have an RTS or WEGO style combat system?[/quote] No they wouldn't be - they wouldn't expect anything at all in particular. Most of the potential buyers have never heard of Elemental, beyond maybe the fact that it is a game in development, and will in all likelihood not hear much about it until

[quote]Actually IIRC it was labeled as Turn Based, then it was said it would be CT, then it was changed back to TB. Again I could be incorrect. I know when I pre-ordered I was under the assumption that it was TB. And later I found/read it was going to be CT.[/quote] Nope. I was around the day this site and forums went up, and it's been advertised as having continuous turn combat from the "beginning." I don't remember if we got any info about the combat initially, but

[quote]I think that the vast majority of the potential "buyers" are expecting to have a turn based combat system in the vanilla game.[/quote] In all likelihood, the vast majority of the potential buyers of Elemental have never heard of the game; and if they have heard of it, they probably only know that it will be a turn-based 4X strategy fantasy game. And when they do hear about it, they will expect whatever kind of combat is advertised. [quote]Those were excellent strategy g

Multi-turn battles, regardless of the combat system, would be pretty nifty. But, at the same time, I'm also wary of arbitrary time or turn limitations to battles. I suppose they could get around that by giving an option at world creation for "# of combat turns per strategic turn." That'd at least give players the ability to choose, but it would also be harder to get the AI to function well with it for any random # of turns a player might choose.

[quote]I like controlling my army... I don't like MP ( I know I'm in the minority there.) So any idea made strictly to aid the MP cause at the cost of enjoying my SP experience will get an automatic thumbs down from me.[/quote] You are actually in the vast majority! The fraction of people who play games online, even games like Demigod which were built as MP games with singeplayer as a sidenote is very small. Obviously MMOs and online-only games are exceptions. And thankfully,

I am a big fan of this idea, and WEGO combat in general. And the more I think about it, the more I like it. Other than bringing back continuous turns (not gonna happen), this is probably the only way for Stardock to salvage my excitement for the tactical combat in Elemental. If it ends up being straight up turn and tile-based combat, I am sure I'll still have some fun with it, but it will in all likelihood not be particularly interesting or new. I'd like to be pleasantly surprised, of

[quote]I can say post release I'm interested in putting in WEGO and letting people try out the RTS system we put in too. Regardless, I want to write a free Myth-like mod for fun.[/quote] :( What about pre -release? [e digicons]:pout:[/e] Now that continuous turns are scrapped (to my great sadness, but apparently to a majority of the forum goers' happiness), a turn-based WEGO system seems like by far the best kind of combat, with lots of support from the posters in th

[quote] Natural morale [+modifiers & caps] should be based on a racial basis . IE. It should be easier to "scare" a goblin than a minotaur.[/quote] I disagree (I think - I'm not entirely sure what you mean). I think only the base morale should be racial. Take your average goblin and your average minotaur and yes, the goblin should scare much more easily. Take a goblin that's been through a year of elite training and fought a dozen battles, though, and

[quote]My first read of Brad's OP gave me a big "Oh no, city spam is in the plan now," but that evaporated quickly because I'm very good at misinterpreting terse scraps from Mr. Wardell. In thought-experiment-land, though, I'd still rather see essence as the fundamental limit on city creation and a very rare resource for spell casting. Like thrice in a 1,000+ turn game rare. Essence for significant structures like the Well of Life Demiansky sketched, on the other hand, se

[quote]I can find CT or RTS fantasy wargames almost anywhere. But trying to find a AAA Fantasy TB wargame is almost impossible.[/quote] Wait, what? What do you mean by that, exactly? By "CT or RTS fantasy wargames" do you mean regular old RTS games like Age of Empires or Age of Mythology, etc? If so, dude those most definitely don't count, they're in a completely different genre with a completely different scope than Elemental. Even the combat aspects of a full RTS are extremely dissi

Well yeah, but what I was wonder more specifically was whether the 20 unit limit in M2:TW is due to ram, or due to graphics and/or CPU? Or all three? I mean, I can see all of the above being relevant. The more units displayed the more ram required, but also the more intense the CPU and graphics requirements are. But in turn-based combat I'd imagine the CPU and graphics requirements would be lower as not everything is moving at once, nor in real time, nor do real time calculations have to be d

This would be great. I don't like that all heroes can cast any spell your sovereign knows, it feels cheesy and makes heroes feel generic. If something like this is done, an interesting idea for a spell is one that lets a hero call on your sovereign, wherever he/she might be, to cast a particular spell that the hero doesn't know (but the effect should use the intelligence of the hero not the sovereign). The drawback would be that the hero would use mana casting that

Yes. I would go further and say that there should be many ways of interacting with most of those minor factions and unique features. I could defeat the corsairs and perhaps take their store of loot as my prize, or as you say get some nice naval tech from it. Or maybe I could pay them tribute in return for leaving my ships alone; and pay higher tribute to leave my ships alone and protect my shores! Or pay them to specifically target your enemies. Or if you have a powerful enough

[quote]The TW series only allows 20 units per side on the battle-field at a time. If you have more then that they wait in reserve and come on-screen as units are killed. The waiting units slowly filter in and can be easily picked off. Why? Because each army can only have 20 units on-screen at once. This is done because of memory limitations on users PC's. I think we can find a better way though, don't you?[/quote] I have a question. I'm not particularly well-informed about memory usag

[quote]Nor do I see the need for victory conditions at all. I'd like to play a game that is persistent.[/quote] Games like that exist. For example, SimCity. Although there are scenarios where you can achieve victory, you can play in sandbox mode and you can develop your city to eternity if you'd like. But games like Elemental are not conducive to that sort of gameplay. Eventually, there will be nothing left to research, nowhere left to settle, nothing left to build, etc. What

I would just like to add, perhaps emphasize, that while I am strongly in favor of allowing retreat, it should be strategic retreat. I would rather have no retreating at all than a retreat button that ends combat, and an RNG decides which units get away and which don't, and how much damage they take in the process. I really think retreating should work very much like it does in Total War. Troops that make it to the border of the combat map should suc