pigeonpigeon

[quote] I would emphasize the importance of not changing game mechanics to resolve a balance issue. The solution isn't to change the game mechanic but rather to provide more meaningful improvements higher up the chain.[/quote] I agree and disagree. This isn't purely a balance issue; an arbitrary maximum (a rather low one, at that) on the number of times you can build a given improvement per city completely eliminates many player options. The balance issue here is secon

I'm not sure how much I like the limitations on the number of standard improvements. Especially if the number of possible such improvements doesn't go up massively by release. I mean, let's consider a metropolis-sized city as an example. 52 mini-tiles max; let's assume that 6 full tiles (24 mini tiles) are taken up by resources, shards, the keep, major projects, etc. That leaves 28 tiles to be divided up into other improvements; unless we need to spam housing, that leaves plenty

If you're going to have a campaign, then the first, preferably optional, mission should double as a tutorial. Many people, myself sometimes included, will jump into a game without reading any of the manual. In the absence of a tutorial, it means you just have to figure things out yourself and it is usually pretty easy to go a long time ignorant of some very basic parts of the game (I could imagine people not really knowing how prestige connects to many game mechanics, etc). Some tutor

[quote]No for me... still getting CTD and problems reloading saved games.[/quote] All of you guys voting no (or yes)... You do realize he said they'll be asking after beta 1Z. IE, not now... If you'd vote 'yes' now then I can't imagine you changing your mind later; but saying 'no' now, a week before the purportedly most major beta update yet and when they're actually going to ask us is just a little bit premature. That said, if they were to ask now , I'd

The time = money idea is interesting and novel, and it could be a really neat option for experienced people who play multiplayer frequently. However, it doesn't solve the problem you yourself brought up in the beginning: "From a sheer budget point of view, we cannot justify the resources required to do multiplayer if only hard-core grognards are playing it online." The idea you suggest here would probably largely be used by just those hard-core grognards :P Sadly, though, I have no su

That's long.

[quote]Wintersong I really don't care what you think. Alot of people preordered it with the belief that they would get into the beta. And yes we did pay money, the money is on hold in the bank and as soon as stardock hits the button, it gets transfered. And if people are told to just wait till mid march or later, then there was absolutely no point in preordering, since the game is going to release in september. So yes, because we put money into this, we should be allow

I, for one, would like to have control over everything that makes sense to have control over and that actually matters. As the supreme ruler of a nation, I should damn well be able to choose where to put my roads if I so choose, and having that ability matters . Dictating which food my troops start marching with is irrelevant and a stupid analogy, as roads, if restricted to reasonable numbers, can be a major strategic aspect. Not being able to build a road somewhere that I'd r

[quote]Sovereign will still age and die, right? One of the children will be a new sovereign if and when the current sovereign dies, right?[/quote] That was never the plan, so my guess is the answer is "no" to all of your questions considering they haven't said anything to the contrary. Sovereigns were never intended to die of age, or to be replaced by a descendant, though many people have been clamoring for something like that.

Very nice! I think this beta will actually be fun to play, at least for a little bit! :P Although there is one particular item in that list that really, really bothers me (and I know it bothers many other people, as well): [quote]Female children go to the other faction but their children have a 67% chance on growing up of joining her family’s faction.[/quote] So if I have a female descendent that grows up into a very fine hero, I can either keep tha

I'm definitely in favor of road-drawing, to wherever I want! (So what if I want to build a road to nowhere?) Roads could be slowly built by themselves, no worker unit needed. If you want there to be more than just a gold cost associated with road building, like others have suggested it could tie up some of your city's population, or it could be treated as part of a city's build queue. I am definitely in favor of avoiding worker units, but I also would rather not lose the abili

[quote]Well, if the Succession system is used, and there are no avaiablle generals to control it .... If there is someone by marriage or birth that is affiliated with the City, they are the appropriate Governing Rank, and belong to Nation X ... the city belongs to nation X under that family affilitated CHampion.[/quote] Let's all please pretend Boogiebac never suggested that a city will flip nationalities if its governor dies and you don't have a suitable replacement (and someone else

[quote]- As player, we could -choose- which trade-off we want?[/quote] I think most people here would agree with you WildBoarPie. The problem, however, is that as of now there is no trade-off. Making a ton of cities and developing all of them to the max is by far the best way to go about things. Many if not most of the suggestions made so far in this thread would create that very trade-off. The food footprints or requirements of cities, governors, etc - the

I really like the food-related solutions to city spam. Back in the day when a Camp 1 economy was expected, I think similar ideas had floated around. I think it should be relatively easy to come up with a system where large cities are not capable of feeding themselves and depend on food imports from surrounding smaller settlements - or alternatively, for a large city to feed itself it must have a large swath of good, empty land around it, discouraging densely packed cities. The former

[quote]The AI at deity Civ IV does not 'cheat', it just have very more loose rules to play with than the player has. It pays next to no upkeep for having lots and lots of cities, it pays less hammers for units, it starts with a lot of bonus techs where the player has only two, etc.[/quote] This is also known as cheating. Sure, it doesn't type in porntipsguzzardo (points to whoever gets it), maybe it doesn't have unlimited LoS, but the very fact that it pays

[quote]Elemental would need a system where the AI has limitations like the player does, without choking the AI so that it can never ever keep up with the player. Meeting the AI and knowing you are dead right from the start is hardly the way to go imo.[/quote] I'm a bit confused by this whole post. The Deity difficulty in Civ IV cheats, big time. If it didn't, people like you probably wouldn't find it very difficult at all. In order to create a difficulty setting that would challenge p

[quote]The idea of governors concerns me a bit. I would hate for Elemental to fall to the same game-breaking problems that struck EU: Rome, which quickly deteriorated into tedious shuffling and replacing of governors as better ones became available or old ones died off. It was a game killer for many people. I don't know if they've improved it since, but it crippled the game at release and many people never went back to it (myself included).[/quote] I suppose that dep

[quote]- How random is the "governor" stat on a family member? It would be unfortunate to go one game with 300 turns before you can raise a settlement to city due to an unhappy RNG.[/quote] I'm hoping for a system where each family member/hired hero has some base set of stats, including governorship, which can be increased in a variety of ways. If a hero spends his days leading armies and winning battles, you should be able to increase his combat and army related skills. If a hero spe

This thread wins! The best part about it is this: [quote]Allowing resource tapping improvements, and them only , to be built away from the main city hub. The obvious benefits that you wouldn 't have to build another city to tap it, AND you wouldn 't have to 'snake' your improvements to get there, but the improvement WOULD NOT be defended by whatever walls and stationed units the city had ava

[quote]Imagine the multiplayer game: two players attacking each other. One or the other lose the battle. After that: o no, let us try again![/quote] That's irrelevant. In multiplayer, such an option would just need to be disabled. The ability to replay a battle that you auto-resolved is not a bad idea for single-player, IMO. I agree with the apparent consensus that auto-resolve should be very good at winning with minimal casualties vs. significantly weaker opponents. Personall

[quote]One nice thing about cities in Elemental is that they don't really require any micro management if the user doesn't want to mess with them. There is no morale or approval or what have you. You want a mining outpost? No problem, plop down your keep, build the mine and you're done. Your entire civilization gets a benefit. Want to increase that benefit? Build a road to it.[/quote] Like Sarudak said, what is the advantage of not</

[quote]For similarities to Norse Ragnarök, See:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragnar%C3%B6k For painful similarity to the Dragonlance series/world. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonlance[/quote] Haha, this post is funny. I can't speak to Dragonlance - I know nothing about it - but comparing this to Ragnarok only displays ignorance of Norse mythology (which isn't an insult, most people don't know all that much about it, but then don't pretend you do). About the only s

[quote]Could you ever meet/resurrect/conjure a Titan in the game?[/quote] Frogboy has dropped hints that something like this might indeed be possible. He has said a few times that there will be beings of incredible power that show up once in a blue moon (you'd have to play many games to see even one), beings that might even dwarf the might of a dragon. Whether they still intend to go ahead with that, who knows. But based on that I suspect they have, or at least had, plans for

I'm also a little concerned about the proposed shard requirements (maybe for nothing, though, as we don't really know how stringent the requirements will be, or how broad). But I would like a system where the majority of spells can be learned and used by anyone with the appropriate magic books (possibly modified by some randomness - don't really know where I stand on that). But in addition, the more shards you have the more powerful your spells of that type (or partially of that type)

Damn, you heard me cry before I even knew I was going to! Can I have your time machine? And will there be enough variety in buildings, and/or maybe other city features, that all of our full-grown cities won't be just variations on a theme? One of the things that I think add the most life to fantasy worlds is the uniqueness of many of their larger cities, even within nations. I've been worried about this ever since you guys reneged on your initial resource system, which would h