pigeonpigeon

[quote]I'm just suggesting alternatives to problems, and so far I like this idea and you haven't voiced any real problems against it (except that it's hard to imagine for you).[/quote] Then you haven't read carefully enough. My major issue with it to begin with was that it stymies player choice unnecessarily. Like I keep saying, if troops are implemented well then there will be no such thing as 'the best strategy.' Whether you decide to build an all-elite army, an a

[quote]I think I misunderstood you on the peasant point. I was lead to believe your primary issue was being able to level up peasant armies, which made me think of clicking on each peasant regiment and picking attributes that you wanted to give them upon gaining experience, giving some minor improvements in some areas and another specific number of peasants improvements in other areas. [/quote] Well I do want to level up my peasant armies, just like I'd level up all my other tro

Awesome, this is looking great! A couple questions though - how will infinite techs fit into this new system? I'm assuming you haven't given up on them. I think one of my favorite aspects about this system is that it really does encourage specialization. Because the cost to reach the next breakthrough is independent of which tech you actually choose, if you forego archery and all related techs and delve deep into some other aspect of the warfare category, then decide to work o

[quote]Hm....continous turn based: Baldur's Gate style. There are no tiles in that game. Correct?[/quote] So? Baldur's gate also doesn't put you in charge of armies, you have control of a small handful of characters. There is nothing about continuous-turn based combat that inhibits the use of tiles. Tiles just wouldn't make sense in a party combat system, particularly when the 'battlefield' is just the regular map. Everything is small enough scale that everyone is always in range of e

[quote]I think that diplomacy goes alongside Democratic style governing because it shows a willingness for cooperation and compromise. As you said, a despotic government could wake up one morning and declare war without any sort of debate. That amount of power lies in the hands of one. If one person has all the power, how diplomatic would they be? It's like the typical only child, who stamps his/her feet and gets whatever s/he wants (granted, I'm an only child and I don't stamp feet, but stil

[quote]Well, I suppose if there was a bank of body parts for each pre-existing creature (as parts of the object of "body") ... then if nothing else you could re-arrange body parts of the two or three creatures involved in "fusion" and perhaps have an automatic blender to render the textures to look half-way decent. Then as far as stats are concerned, you have a certain (stat bank) related to the relative power of the creatures, and an HP bar using averaged? combined? HP of the 2 or 3 organizm

[quote]This is a bit beside the point, but one thing that we know definately isn't historical is the way in which almost every strategy game recruits soldiers: you train them one by one, and then they stand at the ready indefinately, never returning home to work the fields or see their families. Even in mordern nation states, we have a certain level of reserves that live in the general populace, prepared to take up arms should a dire war arise.[/quote] Yes, that is true.

Your army is silly because it works both ways. Those of us who enjoy customization lose it under your system. To switch around some words in your own sentence: "There is nothing wrong with enjoying limiting control over your game, but if it mandates that everyone else lose that same control over the game, then there's a problem." Additionally, you're overcomplicating the matter, I think. [quote] I may want to have an army of peasants, but I certai

[quote]Yes it is artificial even if you don't want to see it, read some history books about medieval times and what knighthood meant. A hard cap is really easy to imagine given than knighthood was plain impossible to attain for most of the population (peasants), so what is totally weird is been able to field as many knights as you can "pay" (paying them is pretty weird too). And yes, I know there were mercenaries (Venice used them a lot for example), but that was just a small part on how armi

[quote]Well, considering that the system will be continous turn based, I doubt that we gonna have tiles on the battlefield. [e digicons];)[/e] This does not means that the size of the battlemaps cannot be based on tiles however.[/quote] I don't follow your logic. There is nothing about continuous turn-based combat that inhibits tile-based mechanics. In fact tile-based combat might even be more 'natural' for continuous turns than a free field would be.

[quote]Remember when i convert 40% of my pop to soldiers i am taking a severe hit in terms of my economic development compared to someone that only converts 10% pop to elite troops. Meaning there has to be some sort of incentive for me to go the 40% route to offset the fact that i am taking an economic hit. What would that incentive be? Just lower maintainence cost? Next, when the elite army and mediocre horde army meet, will they be evenly matched? Or will the elites win all th

[quote]Not necessarily. It could be done quite easily with a Spore type interface.[/quote] Dude, that's just naive. How long did it take them to develop Spore? And ALL it is is a creature editor, basically! There is no gameplay in spore. It took so long to develop because creating a functional creature editor, along with the necessary procedural animations was a really daunting task. And making an analogous editor that produces models, textures and animations that fit in with Elementa

[quote]Because hopefully the game would be balanced such that other options are as viable, and folks have different ideas of how they wish to proceed (as we're demonstrating here). If done right it'd be an option, not a requirement.[/quote] You just argued my point for me. If done right, other options would be viable anyway and thus no 5% cap would be needed. [quote]The thing is that normally you can train up to 100% of your military in elites and usually that's what pla

[quote]With the current system, if you wanted 3/4ths of your militiamen to be spearmen or swordsmen, making it so would be pretty intuitive, even without the sliders. If you have the compulsive need to personalize every single one of even your levy soldiers, then accomodating you specifically to consumate that compulsion is only going to do the game damage. [/quote] I humbly apologize if unit customization is one of the aspects of the game i'm most excited about..

I would personally rather Stardock not spend the enormous amounts of dev time that would be necessary for allowing players to mutate creatures or make hybrid creatures. The graphical component alone would be prohibitive, and the algorithms used to determine what the outcome would be in terms of functionality would be just as bad...

[quote]That's pretty false man. That hard cap would come from testing and balance, like the number of elite units you can recruit in Medieval:TW, or the base growth rate of units on HoMM, or any other number that appears in a lot of games.[/quote] Eh, this seems different to me. In Medieval:TW the number of elite units you can train per turn is limited, not the total number you can have at any given time. Same in HoMM (in this one the numbers can even be justified as racial repro

I remain unconvinced. I mean for most of the problems I've brought up, the solution involves adding complexity, adding sliders, etc. I still think people will be really confused as to what goes into their equipment score, and then having sliders that affect priorities on a system that is vaguely defined and hard to keep track of just makes that problem even worse. Also, you are treating this as if everything is going to be a free market, which is fine, but not necessary. I

[quote]From the main map interface look at the bottom right bar. It shows your progress to the next tech milestone for the tech area you're researching.[/quote] He is talking about overall, not just on the tech currently being researched.

[quote]The only things that should give magical resistances to regular troops should be either rare items, mithril, or star-metal.[/quote] We have no idea what resources are going to be in the game, so saying something like that is just silly... That said I'm not opposed to resistances conferred to regular troops only being given by rare items or equipment made of rare resources. But I also wouldn't be opposed to different types of equipment conferring small amounts of certain types o

[quote]Thats an interesting notion ... I only wish that the food have to come from somewhere ... as opposed to people being fed on prestige alone, and farming not being required. (or rather, avoiding extreme cases where 100,000 people are being fed on the food of 30,000 people)[/quote] That is already a non-issue. As it stands your population will not grow beyond the amount of food you can provide them, so there is no way you'll ever have 100,000 people being fed on the food of 30,000

I'm still hoping for no tiles, personally.

[quote]As some have pointed out, including you, over time the normal restraints on powerful units (time to train, cost, special resources required, etc.) become less effective. So, another restriction would be needed to limit their number -- thus unit 'potential'. Only a small percentage of units would have the 'potential' to be the very best (1%? 5-10%?).[/quote] Yes, I said that tends to happen. But I believe I also said (in different words) that it doesn't hav

Buhh now it's gotten all complex on me, though. So when, exactly, does my equipment score go up? Does it always go up? What if I'm using all my resources to their full potential? You're saying that there's really more to be had, but my measly little peasants are hogging it? Why would I let them do that when I have a kingdom to build from the bottom up [e digicons]o_O[/e] :P. Also, my impression of the planned economy system is that as long as a resource is being u

[quote] Im not sure how viable "multiple research" will end up being. It usually seems like with a fully visible tech tree, if you have the option to place all your research points into one project, thats what is going to inevitably happen.[/quote] Or if you have the capacity to research multiple techs more efficiently than researching just one at a time. For example you might be able to research 3 techs at 100% efficiency, 2 techs at 75% efficiency and 1 tech at 50% efficiency.

[quote]I agree, but I would insure that their is a fair distribution of ultra rare resources. Not that everyone has the same resources, but that everyone has a relatively equal amount of ultra rares in their area. Just to make the playing field even. It would be good if they had a prospecting skill so you could find out what is available in your area and could tailor your technologies to luck of the draw.[/quote] I think this is a very important map setting. Civ IV