pigeonpigeon

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="7" id="2016318"] Only a few scenarios would provide an opportunity to retreat and still escape with siege weapons... those which involve beings within the castle under siege without any long range attacks.[/quote] That's not true. Catapults, being essentially the longest-ranged weapons available, will be as far as possible while still in range of their target. Therefore, moving catapults out of range of whatever ranged forces within the c

[quote who="psychoak" reply="18" id="2016370"]Thanks for the list, Mumble. [...][/quote] Thanks for the post. It's a fresh take on the topic in this thread and one that I think bares a lot of truth. [quote who="GW Swicord" reply="19" id="2016622"]Great rhetoric, but not an easily supported fact claim. We're barely scratching the surface of the role of genetics in our length and quality of life, and we have a food production system that is nothing short of the lar

I'm not arguing with you that there shouldn't be lots of options, NTJedi. I agree with you. But there also does need to be a limit. I don't want to have to sift through 5 pages of radio buttons and drop downs just to set up a game. Fear of bugs is a horrible reason to include too many options. The time making all those features optional would've been better spent finding and fixing the bugs. The only really good reason for making features optional (and it's a damn go

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="25" id="2016641"]Wrong... the basic core aspects of the game should not be optional and this section should be the most heavily beta tested to secure stability and game balance. Critical features such as wonders should be optional because all critical features can't be fully beta tested before the games release. Take a look at how AOW:SM originally introduced a critical feature such as "Surrendering"... it took many months of complaints on the forums bef

[quote who="MooiNiet" reply="21" id="2016613"] Back to the premisse: our "new" channelers at one point start to lose control over that much power. You get "random" blowouts, the chance of which increases as the excess gets greater. So at one point you have to start letting it out and doing something usefull with it or suffer the consequences (and I do believe that there are legion effects one can think of to get to that point: to much magic attracts demons/dragons, flareouts destroy terr

[quote who="alway" reply="22" id="2016404"] That is not what I meant. Those are examples of technology imbued with a magical effect; entirely different than being able to utilize magic in the way I meant. How I meant it is technology is unable to cast magic, and while it can be imbued with a magical effect, that effect cast on it cannot be cast by other technology.[/quote] I'll use the example of the One Ring again. Sauron didn't just make a ring and cast a spell on it. Magic (al

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="9" id="2016326"] Well you're wrong here. Anything in the game may be bugged... this is true. However the best method to reduce unbalanced or lost gameplay is by having all critical features optional. Let me provide an example to help you better understand the importance.[/quote] It isn't feasible to make a game in which everything that could possibly be bugged or unbalanced is optional. The result would be an enormous number

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="23" id="2016330"]Of course Wonders should be balanced, but what developers may consider balanced might be considered unbalanced to a large portion of the gaming community. This might take weeks or even months before the developers agree with the community and find time to adjust game balance. There's no reasons why Wonders should not be an optional feature.[/quote] By that logic, the whole game should be one big option. That exact

[quote who="Tamren" reply="18" id="2015926"]And depending on who you ask, magic is everything.[/quote] If somebody out there decided to write a 'magic fantasy' book on the premise that everything is magic, simply because there is somebody out there who doesn't understand it... Fantasy doesn't require magic, but if you're going to call something magic it damn well be for a better reason than "some people don't understand it, therefore it's sufficiently advanced technology that is indis

[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="23" id="2015486"] Plus, even if you want to win, to keep a 4/5X game interesting as you play more and more maps, you really need to have more 'character' options for both the players and the AIs. If there's no way to express your Profoundly Vengeful nature other than simple military dominance, how are you any different from someone who is Extremely Authoritarian or the other neighbor who is Addicted to Battlefield Glory?[/quote] Kenken has a good po

[quote who="landisaurus" reply="17" id="2014732"]There isn't an article on bear cavalry yet? We need an article on 'bear calvary' too, that says its a common misspelling of "bear cavalry"[/quote] Haha there is probably more information for that entry than any other right now! After all, bear cavalry so far has been the single most controversial topic on these forums, not to mention widespread!

[quote who="Tamren" reply="8" id="2014814"]If I could snap my fingers and produce a fireball, I could probably teach you how to snap your fingers so you could make fireballs as well. The thing is, neither of us know how it works or why. If a third person were to come in and say "oh yeah thats magic, you are pulling in energy from the Ether" well what the hell does that mean? It would still be magic to us. This "magic" works in a predictable fashion, and because of that you can teac

[quote who="Seedy" reply="2" id="2014579"]Well, in literature one of the answers is "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" (Clarke's 3rd law) Which, over the years, brought on things like: Any sufficiently advanced magic is indisinguishable from technology. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws Mostly magic is just stuff that operates outside of our current understanding of nature and physics, or appears t

[quote who="Luckmann" reply="18" id="2013948"]Maybe it's just something I carry with me from Civ/SMAC, but I really, really feel that exclusive one-per-civilization buildings (Super Projects, Wonders, etc) should affect the entire nation and whatever local effect it gives should be "a side order of fries", not the meal itself.[/quote] I guess I agree with you, actually. I'd rather avoid the problem all together rather than have something like my idea implemented. Also, on a se

[quote who="Mumblefratz" reply="19" id="2013402"]*If* we *can* do better then I'm all for it. However I don't believe that we *will* do better than that. I don't believe that we have the stomach to take on the vested interests in this country nor will we be able to wade through the onslaught of mis-information sponsored by them.[/quote] In conclusion: we are in complete agreement... We both agree that the proverbial dart would provide us with a better system than what we have now

[quote who="Tamren" reply="15" id="2013647"]Sorry! I use a program called Pidgin for chatting and the internet as a whole has pretty much corrupted my book learned vocabulary. Thats just the way the internet works. [/quote] Haha, well 'Pidgin' makes sense in that context (it is a real word - it just doesn't mean the annoying fat birds that do nothing but crap everywhere and invite people to kick them in the streets of manhattan). A pidgin is a simple language developed to allow commu

[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="14" id="2013616"]As long as that's a roughly correct statement about the dev plan, IMO, 'balance' talk should be strictly relegated to the multiplayer context. For the core game, anything you might call 'balance' is irrelevant because it is not a competition.[/quote] I don't completely agree with you there. Single-player also does suffer when there are major balancing issues. It forces you into playing a certain way (unless you don't care about intention

[quote who="Tamren" reply="12" id="2013524"]Seems neat. So building wonders allows you to attract the expertise to build mini-wonders elsewhere? Makes sense, but balancing it might be difficult.[/quote] Maybe. The point is to make one-city wonders still useful even in large maps (because they never really are). In small maps they can make a huge difference, and in large maps... They just kind of get drowned out. If you're playing on a small map, it could be balanced so that yo

[quote who="Tamren" reply="13" id="2013514"] That is exactly what I meant. It doesn't matter how the "upkeep" gets to the soldiers, running out should not cause them to desert on the spot or starve and die overnight. In most wars soldiers got paid regularly on the spot. They then took this money and either spent it at home or locally. In Elemental, who said you soldiers were getting paid at all? They are essentially fighting for thier nations survival under your banner. Sure they might d

You know how wonders that confer a bonus to just the city/planet they're built in tend to be washed out in larger maps? Like in GalCiv, having one planet that can produce slightly faster ships really stops being helpful in huge maps, where you have maybe 30 ship-producing planets. I thought of a way that that problem could be somewhat solved. Let's say you build the War Academy. It provides +100 XP to all military units trained in that city. But in addition, it could be possible to tr

[quote who="Tamren" reply="11" id="2012812"]But then what happens if the upkeep gets cut off? The effects of a realistic supply shortage take time to happen. Current systems don't model those effects at all, if you fail to meet your quota, then whole units simply desert and evaporate. Doesn't it make far more sense for the decay to be gradual?[/quote] You misunderstand me. I don't mean upkeep costs in the sense that you need a supply route back to one of your cities or anything. I mea

[quote who="Mumblefratz" reply="11" id="2013076"]It's tough enough to find data at all let alone data that's somehow adjusted for "standard of living".[/quote] Cost of living. Not standard of living. Big difference. And yeah, much of the east and west coasts have high costs of living, but there are also places with extremely low costs of living. Like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and the middle of the country in general. And I know its hard to find data adjusted to things li

[quote who="Mumblefratz" reply="5" id="2012986"]I'm an expletive deleted liberal that happens to disagree with tetlytea's comment at least as much as you do. You appear to have a highly distorted view of how liberals think and I actually take at least as much offense at your comment as tetlytea's. For your edification liberals do *not* equate police with the Nazi SS, and that is as foul of an accusation that someone can make.[/quote] Yeah, "expletive deleted l

[quote who="Mumblefratz" reply="17" id="2012718"] But the point is that we *already* are spending this much money right now by hook or crook one way or another. The burden is also disproportionaly shared by those that have insurance but the bottom line is we pay this one way or another. Now if we can replace our $5711 per capita system with a $3000 per capita system we can actually save almost $800 billion of what we're *already* spending.[/quote] Yes, but you're missing my

[quote who="Mumblefratz" reply="12" id="2012488"] Another point I want to respond to is a few folks have commented that some countries healthcare systems are "unsustainable". Not really sure what this means. If a $2000 per capita system is unsustainable then how can a $4000 per capita system be sustainable?[/quote] It isn't. But just because $4000 isn't sustainable doesn't mean $2000 is. But really the current costs aren't what are unsustainable - even in the US system - it'