pigeonpigeon

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="4" id="2079183"] 1) There's way too many possibilities for exploits, bugs, abuses, cheats, etc., . Lets not place a brand new untested engine on a brand new airplane without any backup options. I want the game to succeed.[/quote] Oops, guess we should take out channelers. And essence. And individual units capable of wasting entire armies. And a rethought 4X economy model. And fully customizable units. And a physics engine. Wow th

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="2" id="2079146"] Having something completely new for a critical piece of any game such as trading is the same as making a new airplane and having it try using a new engine design. Let's not increase the chance of the games failure with something new which COULD cause major problems. [/quote] Um, airplanes are designed with brand new engine designs all the time (well, not all the time - new planes aren't designed all the time). If no one ever built

[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="1" id="2079098"] Me too, but more on 3 than 2, at least until mid-game or so. The idea of a vigorous, widespread merchant's guild operating across a wasteland doesn't really make good story for me. The idea of independent merchants coming to play an important economic role after different channelers have reawakened substantial territory, on the other hand, sounds like Elemental.[/quote] Yeah, I guess Merchants' Guild isn't really the right word for

[quote who="alway" reply="23" id="2078841"]The universal entropy must increase, but local entropy can decrease. For this example, assume you have a peice of ice and a glass of water in an isolated system. When you put ice in the glass of water, the entropy of the water decreases. The entropy of the ice increases by an amount slightly higher than the amount by which the water decreased. So there we have a simple example of decreasing entropy on a local scale. Other examples would inc

[quote who="alway" reply="5" id="2078896"] Hawking radiation is inverse to mass of the black hole, and so a supermassive black hole would not evaporate very quickly.[/quote] Oh right. For some reason I had that reversed in my head. I feel ashamed :-\ [quote who="alway" reply="5" id="2078896"]Another thing to remember is a black hole has the same mass as the star it formed out of. As I understand it, matter did not start to form until well after the big bang, and so the

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="22" id="2079000"]Yes, I'm also very curious about foreign trade. Ideally multiple trading systems will be optional within the game... thus if one type of trading system has exploits, bugs, and imbalances us gamers would be able to choose what system they prefer. In an effort to make everyone satisfied with the game... here are three types of trading systems which have been discussed and hopefully all can be available as optional choi

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="25" id="2078770"]As I wrote earlier the disrupting of trade can be done indirectly via independents. And people are bound to find exploits, workarounds or cheats for avoiding the consequences. Also within multiplayer it would be totally clear for one human opponent to soak all the benefits of being trade friendly while his ally wrecks havoc on trade from enemies. Then the allies receive the benefits of both worlds and work towards a victo

I think it's important that the Master Quest vary significantly from game to game, or it will become boring and wrote. It needs to change, and change a lot, you can never know what to expect or you'll be able to prepare for it too well. it also means in order to be able to see someone's progress on the Master Quest, you will need more information than "Player A just slew Monster Y," because that won't be enough information. Another thing to consider is, will the Master Quest be the sa

[quote who="landisaurus" reply="3" id="2078706"]I'm really curious how combat is going to work in the map-only betas.[/quote] Most likely auto-resolve.

[quote who="landisaurus" reply="14" id="2078624"]YAY, frogboy drew that horse for us. it isn't that bad. This makes different buildings look really big, with each building takeing up one over-land tile. how big are cities going to actually become? I'm trying to imagine my MoM city if every building took up a space on the over map, I'd have truely sprawling metropolises. I'm also curious about this 'mana generator' is that a node

[quote who="heft" reply="3" id="2078687"]Nobody really knows.[/quote] No, but we have damn good ideas about a lot of it. Such good ideas that I would actually say we do know a lot of it. Our knowledge isn't exact or complete, but we have a working knowledge about much of the world, its past, its present and its future.

[quote who="Zyxpsilon" reply="22" id="2077660"]Arrrggghhh - i KNOW some are there. But, let's zap together in a hypothetical future for a simple demonstration; what if the darn phenomenal & super-massive singularity gobbles up your exemplary galaxy that was roaming around when we observed it? Where is it now?[/quote] No. Because said 'phenomenal & super-massive singularity' itself would be at the center of its own galaxy. And even if it weren't, and collided with an

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="23" id="2077867"]Diverting trade won't be an option if you are trapped behind the larger nation. You could be a nation stuck fighting with clubs and wearing furs because you cannot trade for the resources you need and all the diamonds and wood resources in your area will soon be owned by the stronger nation who's suffocating you.[/quote] I really think you're blowing this 'problem' way out of proportion. For one, if you're completely trapped behin

I agree with Denryu also. We shouldn't randomly receive information on other players' progress towards victory conditions; but it should be possible to gather information about it if you so choose. This could be done through spells, spies, or quests kind of like GW mentioned. A good point has been raised though - all victory conditions need to be preventable by other players. If I discover that a player is approaching a Master Quest victory, I want to be able to do something about it

[quote who="mrakomo" reply="1" id="2078049"] This is exactly my point. If you attack two or three cities with the invisible wall, you will not be surprised if the third, fourth etc. city has the invisible wall too. So if AI wants to handle properly, the invisible wall will have no desired effect. [/quote] You're still missing the point, and you're wrong. For one, the invisible wall will have achieved its full desired affect on at least the first encounter. And even

[quote who="Tiefling" reply="11" id="2077768"]If I understand correctly you have to make a choice anyway whether you want to have a powerful channeler or give up some of your power to found new cities or create powerful heroes. More cities means more units per turn and more units and powerful heroes means a more powerful army. So there is some sort of balance already between a powerful army and a wimpy channeler vs a smaller army and more powerful channeler. If there are

Nice update! Definitely answers a few questions, like whether it'll be 1 building per tile (nope!). That said I'm not entirely happy with it... The middle city appears to be a mining colony. It has the required keep, barracks, housing, a mine, and mine [training?]. Does that mean that the only way to take advantage of a map resource is to build a full-fledged settlement on it? That would make me sad. I want to be able to establish a small colony near/on resources like mines or what-ha

You are speaking in another language, Zyxpsilon, one I suspect is gibberish... And EVERY equation must have the same dimensionality (units) on both sides or you may as well be saying "my pet rabbit is taller than the color blue." But yes, time is a dimension. Mass is not a dimension (and neither is missing mass). Gravity and strings aren't dimensions, either. And "the relational factor between any given type of extra dimensions that can only occur within a less than

[quote who="Lottario" reply="17" id="2077570"]Well, when quasars (at least, I think it was quasars. My memory says either quasars or pulsars, and quasars makes more sense) were first discovered, they were thought to be white holes. So I wouldn't say nothing we've ever seen couldn't be remotely construed as a white hole. But yes, they weren't white holes, and no such objects have been discovered so far, so you're right. I just like science history a little too much...[/

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="16" id="2077355"]The internal banditry you mention sounds like another type of corruption as we saw from the corruption within CIV_4.[/quote] I guess it does, at that. I hated corruption in Civ 4. But there is one major difference - in my proposal you can actually compensate for the 'penalty' if you want. It'll cost you, but in the end what you gain by spending to make your lands safe for trade might more than make up for it. [quote who="NTJedi" repl

[quote who="Tridus" reply="7" id="2077279"]Elemental can do similar things with magic. If you lump your entire army in one spot, its an awfully tempting target for a meteor.[/quote] But that can't be the only counter. What about a player who sacrificed much of his channeler's magical power for more settlements or more powerful units? Or a player that focuses on healing/defensive magic? If the only real counter to a gian killer stack of doom is to have powerful map-level offensive spel

[quote who="landisaurus" reply="6" id="2077288"] I don't know if something that is a 'beast' can really be sentient by definition. One of the definitions of beast is 'an animal as distinguished from humans', another is 'a person who is brutish or vile', and lastly 'a lower animal'. Well, dragons are certainly not 'lower animals' and in many stories they are able to turn into humans. It makes the line between dragon and human very fuzzy. Its like

[quote who="lwarmonger" reply="7" id="2076984"]Auctions yes, across countries no. There was nothing like a commodities exchange market where all nations had perfect information and could place their bid, nor was there anything like a commodities market that nation states as actors could go and trade.[/quote] Yeah well, there also wasn't magic. [e digicons]8O[/e] [quote who="NTJedi" reply="9" id="2077038"]If trading is only available via trade routes the weakest players

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="11" id="2076970"]Well one multiplayer option would be to the option to disable the graphs progress bars. Within Dominions_3 you have the option to enable or disable graphs which displays army size, research, gold income, gem income, etc., etc., . Disabling of graphs makes it more difficult to judge the overall strength of opponents. In regards to the singleplayer sessions the AI opponents should have multiple personalities and this s

Bah jumping into a conversation like this 3 pages in is hard. I feel an urgent need to answer all dangling questions from 3 pages :P [quote who="Moosetek13" reply="13" id="2070070"] Space and time are inextricably linked. They are two aspects of the same thing. But, can you define the relationship of (and between) these things? It's the same as love and hate. Up and down. In and out. Good and evil. What is the relationship that time has to space, o