pigeonpigeon

[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="10" id="1976455"]My last post was basically trying to say what I read in your first sentence. The only reason I didn't try to work in non-human and non-fallen playable species was that Stardock seem pretty intent on that as a distinguishing feature of the Elemental story, which makes sense to me even though I didn't often play humans in tabletop RPGs.[/quote] Yeah, I get that, but that doesn't mean SD can't judge the overall quality of player-made conten

[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="15" id="1976499"] It's almost like comparing a big box of basic Legos to a specific Lego model kit, except that's a bit backwards for me because I never built a model more than once and constantly used my entire collection to build parts an ongoing game of make-believe. But I digress...[/quote] LEGOS!! Man, if SD can make a game that provides me with as much entertainment value as legos have over the years (and... still do on occasion :P) - that wou

[quote who="Darkodinplus" reply="11" id="1976447"]Opps that’s my inner real time strategist coming out lol. Well scratch the 3 -5 minutes and make that 10 – 15 turns. The only turn based games I ever really played were galciv II and M.A.X I consider them the exception rather than the rule. [/quote] I think a duration for most death curse effects is a great idea. If there were any permanent persistent effects, then a player who takes over the world by crushing everybod

[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="6" id="1976446"]My guess is that the design challenge might be more on the "how long to make the player wait" problem than on alogrithms to generate factions that still reflect the same game rules a player must follow. If the game doesn't have to do any significant live graphics, a modern PC can do a pretty ludicrous number of calculations. But if that still means several minutes (or more) of waiting for your expanded map, you might be losing steadily more of th

[quote who="Darkodinplus" reply="5" id="1976312"] "If they're not to the death, then what's the point of having a duel in the first place?" Please refer to the last paragraph of my original post. I'm starting to get the distinct impression that perhaps some people didn't all that thoroughly read my original post . [/quote] I read your whole post the first time, and I just reread it, and my question still stands. All three of your scenarios whe

I like your idea but I wouldn't want it to replace hero evolution. Imbueing a hero with power shouldn't instantly create a badass unit. The hero should have to grow into it, maybe as they fight (or do other relevant tasks) they learn how to access more and more of the potential given them by the channeler. [quote who="PsiSoldier2000" reply="3" id="1976003"]Well the mountain pushing was just an example of the level of strenght they could reach.. How about a more practical example

[quote who="Darkodinplus" reply="3" id="1975992"] My definition of a duel is where both men agree to fight at a specific time at a specific place so if the player didn’t think he had a fair chance at beating his opponent he would simply decline the duel. If the player accepted the duel and realized he was out matched immediately he could attempt to flee the duel. As you’ll notice in my original post the duels wouldn’t necessarily have to be to the death they could just

[quote who="Luckmann" reply="10" id="1976027"]With the possibility of derailing the thread, I couldn't disagree more with the last statement. I still hope that completely skipping the tactical combat without feeling like you're 'missing out'.[/quote] I don't really understand what that has to do with my statement, really. Anybody who doesn't like tactical combat or doesn't want to deal with it won't feel that they are missing anything by pressing auto-resolve. My point is that there i

[quote who="Sammual" reply="5" id="1975766"]The problem is scope and scaling. Unless this is a core feature that will replace the standard animations everywhere I can't see it being worth the cost in terms of programming time and CPU time. If this were a small squad real time combat game I would be jumping up and down about this. For a turn based strategy game with easy access modding I just can't see the benifits. For example, Stardock will test the game engine with h

[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="8" id="1975317"] The very best user-made stuff should mesh near-perfectly with the Elemental story (no elves, hobbits, etc.) or should provide a relatively complete replacement experience (the LotR Overlay, the Belgariad Overlay, the WoT Overlay, etc.). Perhaps complete replacement overlays will be so demanding that they will never be able to make the final leap from Gold to Platinum, or whatever. I'd probably mess with some Gold content, but I mainly want

I started to think... I wonder how hard it would be to randomly generate an established civilization of a certain strength, as if it had been playing since the start of the game, expanding, fighting, researching, deploying troops, etc. Having the map expand upon victory seems like it would be an easy thing to do. But having the civs in the expanded world being generated well... It might require more time and effort than the feature is worth (and I really like this idea).

[quote who="dingbat91" reply="6" id="1975463"]i think curses are a good system in games like these as it forces more defencive orientated players to attack to save be crumbled internally, which may show holes in their defence, though it would need some balance.[/quote] I just want to reiterate my hopes that SD doesn't implement anything in order to force defense-oriented players to play differently than they want to. If they want to play defensively then they should be able to just as

[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="5" id="1975396"]I definitely agree that this subject deserves its own thread. But I wonder if we're making too many assumptions that maps will work more or less like they do in Civ or GalCiv. The channeler (player) using personal essence to make territory available for use is a *major* innovation. I've wondered elsewhere whether there might be some sort of cap on the number of cities to help keep 'busy work' under control for the largest maps. But may

I think the reason revolutions and rebellions are generally not included in games is because they are usually annoying and frustrating, not fun. Rebellion needs to be both predictable and avoidable (both to an extent, anyway). And, honestly, I don't know how much I'd like to see rebellion in Elemental. For one, it seems like the channeler will be the life-blood of a healthy civilization. Revolting would deprive the rebels of that life-blood. Even if revolution is implemented, I hope h

First I'd like to say that this is a much needed thread! There are defintely some problems that need to be addressed if vastly different sized maps are going to be available. [quote quoting="post"]-having a tech or magic research tree that will not be completely researched halfway into the game. Alternatively of course the research rate could just be slowed down.[/quote] Yes! And Nooooo! Slowing down the research rate just to make immense maps playable would offend</

...with every new dev journal I get even more addicted to this game. I didn't even know it was possible to be addicted to something you've never tasted! [quote who="lamperti" reply="13" id="1974666"]One of the issues I have with games where you design units (Usually space ships,) by putting together things you have researched and/or built is that you find yourself needing to create a new design everytime there is an incremental change in technology. I.e. I have just researched s

[quote who="Nights Edge" reply="2" id="1974506"]I also am keen to hear about the customization for the channeller. I would hope that there are some things that you can choose at the start, and then some choices to make as you gain experience / essence.[/quote] Yes, I agree. I wouldn't want all channelers to start out identical at the beginning of every game. You should be able to customize your channeler at the start, but that shouldn't be the only customization you ever really get to

[quote who="Tamren" reply="17" id="1974532"]Its really not that far off. Militaries in history and fiction often have entire regiments specializing in support tasks such as hospitals or artillery.[/quote] I know it's not far off. But I wouldn't find it fun to manage a complete military support infrastructure in real life, let alone in a game . If Elemental were going to be a full-fledged war simulation, it would be one thing. But the truth is that militaries and armies and com

[quote who="Lavitage" reply="21" id="1974518"]I guess the fundamental disgreement we have is that you've played 4x games that you've enjoyed, but where you think there's an always optimal, all-trumping tech path. I haven't.[/quote] I guess I should clarify, too. I don't find myself researching the exact same techs every time in most games; I find that there are always a handful of cornerstone technologies that almost always form the core of my research. Outside of those there can stil

[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="24" id="1974364"]And just to pick on my own aspirations for the game, I have no idea whether any new tricks in Elemental will overcome the 'why build it' problem some of us have had with unique production facilities on extremely large maps. If your game has only a few colonies, making a colony able to build units with +1 speed can stand out. But that subset of +1 speed units can get quickly buried if the world that builds them is just one of many tens of unit-bu

[quote who="Lavitage" reply="19" id="1974266"]Sometimes, a player who chooses to fire blindly will hit that combo of techs anyway. Those incidents, when they get so heavily rewarded for rolling the dice and praying, are a bad enough thing to outweigh any positives one could think of to a system like that. This, to parrot you, is especially true on huge maps, where there are more civs and hence more opportunity for one to luckbox his way to a high-powered tech combo at a reduced or minimized c

[quote who="Lavitage" reply="16" id="1973786"]1) In a game where there are a lot of viable ways to win or even ways to fight wars, how can there even BE an "always optimal path"? You should have to adjust your research picks based on what kind of map you are playing on and how exactly your opponents are playing. If you don't have to, then the game has design issues that go far beyond how tech research is determined and this whole debate's moot.[/quote] I would agree with you if we liv

[quote quoting="post"]Custom channeler? Same thing. Would be great to mix and match abilities/skills/spell styles as in MoM with perhaps some extra stuff thrown in (disadvantages? pleasure the min-maxers!).[/quote] I mentioned this in another thread, but I want SD to take channeler customization to a whole new level. The MoM/AoW way of determining your wizard's skill in magic and essentially what kind of end-game wizard they will be before you even start the game always bothered me. I

I'm hoping that the campaign in Elemental will be more of a "when you complete a set of goals, the map expands and you're given new goals" thing. It kind of drives me nuts when I constantly have to rebuild from scratch in every scenario (although sometimes that makes sense). I think Elemental would be a good candidate for that type of scenario based on the story and channelers. This would also solve the problem of really strong hero units carrying over and making everything else obsol

[quote who="Tamren" reply="14" id="1973728"]Leaderless bears are still very dangerous. In an offensive capacity the lack of control would cripple most tactics. But imagine if you loaded them into hidden cage traps, put them to sleep magically and waited for an invader to attack your city. Every street corner they turn would essentially result in constant OMGWTF BEAR AMBUSH! Gives a new meaning to the name "bear trap".[/quote] Haha! [quote who="Tamren" reply="14"