SolarBall

I'll be interested in seeing how "base game" morale developes as well (If it is included).

For the "poisoning" quest, I asuppose you could just reduce the sovereign's powers in various areas, instead of threatening death. (Although that could cause problems for "single sovereign" focused strategies, since depending on quest requirements they might get much harder ot complete.)

[quote who="vieuxchat" reply="154" id="2475969"] And, just to ask the question directly, why the heck is it damage types, out of all possible mechanics, that are setting people's blood up? The family tree post did not attract any "I'm thinking of quitting the game", research posts did not either, the lack of elves, dwarves, etc. certainly didn't, but for some reason, damage types brings out emotions and "I fear for the game" posts, for something that isn't even that interesting of a com

[quote who="Raven X" reply="139" id="2474799"]Another thing that saddens me is that there are Already a ton of Fantasy War Games out there that cater to the "Carebear" crowd. Heroes of M&M, Warlord, Warcraft, hell even Spore, just to name a few (yes I know Spore isn't a War Game but it has wars in it and it's Incredibly dumbed down). Do they really need to ruin Elemental for those of us who wanted a "Serious" Fantasy War game? Now the "Don't Complicate Me" carebears have struck again

@Denryu: To put some perspective on your post above: You are complaining about "the dumbing down of america", a pretty large subjecty and pretty large trend. You are doing so because one type of game mechanic (different types of magic damage) out of many potential ones (range, movement speed, attack, defense, etc. plus anything they add, plus all the different potential effects of magic) for one ppart (combat) of the entire game (diplomacy, a family tree system that I've

[quote who="KellenDunk" reply="118" id="2474155"] Quoting SolarBall, reply 110 There is a part of me that, at the very least, is hoping ot see some reference in game to the "fireball kills fire elemental" example that's come up a lot here. I am certainly curious to see more of the diplomacy, physical combat, and magic (aside from the damage types argument) systems mentioned in this post, depending on how fleshed out they are at th

[quote who="Tasunke" reply="64" id="2474001"]I don't think Charisma (or whatever) should effect multiplayer diplomacy. In fact, they are creating two separate UI's for multiplayer diplomacy and singleplayer diplomacy.[/Quote] I know this. (what I was suggesting is that, charisma in single player diplomacy has an effect appropriate to single player diplomacy, and in multiplayer would have an effect appropriate for however multiplayer diplomacy works. That way, it would be u

[Quote]I agree that charisma should effect the quality of your offspring, so that it will bring at least "something" to the table on multiplayer. However I think bonuses to diplomacy are a welcome addition to the attribute. I mean, charisma is historically a useful attribute for interacting with NPC's and I don't see why this is any different. Also, perhaps Charisma could effect the effectiveness of any Mind spells and Illusion spells that might make it to the game.[/Quote]

More moddability is always good (Civilization 4 is a nice exampl of this, been playing a lot of mods in it recently), so it's nice ot see that these sorts of things are included.

Firtst thought: Another person asking that the developer jounrlas going. This one seemed unusual in stumbling onto a deeply held gameplay convention. At least from what I've seen the other journals seemed ot go more effectively (the research and inheritance ones, for example, seemed to go pretty well.) For future thoughts and discussions on the actual spell system, the quest system, diplomacy, inheritance/family trees, etc., I would not expect the threads ot go as sour

[Quote]1. There will only be 1 type of mana. Mana. Control of the elemental shards will be handled ala Magic the Gathering. A spell may cost N mana but also require control of M shards to cast. This way, players don’t have to sit there and hold shards for dozens of turns to cast a spell and creates a much more vibrant game.[/Quote] I hadn't realy thought about the magic system yet (given how little information there is), but this seems like a good system for now. (It

[Quote]I like that you can modify physical attacks to other types - without that, there'd be a real problem with traditional troops having a single damage type (mundane). There's a similar issue with PnP D&D - you can pump armor class pretty easily, which means in a caster/fighter showdown, a caster can boost defensive capabilities and shrug off any physical attack easily, but a fighter has to boost multiple types of saving throws; that's one of the more subtle b

My thoughts: The earlier "administration" suggestions sounded good in general, although overly complex. I would enjoy having an option to use your own descendents as administrators, though, with different traits providing different sorts of bonuses ot the areas they administered (Or at the very least, relatives would provide tax bonuses.) As for "females are married off, males stay home", I can see this going either way. On the one han

It's hard to tell from the list without much game experience, I get the feeling that these particular characteristics may be missing bonusers for particular playstyles. (Though more could easily be added in.) The general flavor seems good, though. I'm aklso surprised people are arguing the "ugly" part, since although it isn't a perfect fit it does fit quite well with having less kids.

The above suggestion still leads to a whack-a-mole, just a less severe one than the case where all defenses count for nothing against other damage types. (In galactic civilizations 2, even though defenses were somewhat helpful against other types, they still weren't terribly useful unless the civilization using them had a research advantage or other bonuses.)

To actually flesh out the why I don't see government as a useful addition (Since the post above was admittedly a bit sharper than I wanted.) What governments/social engineering effectively do in gameplay terms if provide empire wide effects that can be chosen and changed within the game (unlike racial bonuses, which are chosen at the start). For civilization type games, where social engineering works well, it is the only way to have these sorts of effects, a

Considering all the other stuff in the game already, I'd prefer not to have different governments. (There are some games where they add a lot to the game, but others where they just end up being extra, and this seems like one of those games, given that we have some channeler customization, civilization customization, and radically different uses of essence.)

In terms of straight stat bonuses, I'd prefer to have percentage bonuses.penalties that are independent of other gameplay changes, so that the bonuses/penalties would last throughout the game. (For example, instead of getting "+1 to mana", or whatever is used for spellcasting, they would get "20% cheaper spells", that would be considered after all other factors had been calculated) I don't care whether the abilities are straight numbers, or new effects, though the

I also agree with the "whack-a-mole" point. If the damage enchantments don't do anything other than add a certain type of magic damage, than having multiple damage types is pretty much going to lead to a whack-a-mole. The more types there are, the worse this will be. The only way I can see damage types being useful is if the different types of magic have different sorts of effects, both in terms of large scale spells and and in terms of enchantments, and the

@The RPG with elemental argument: To me an RPg from elemental doesn't seem that big of a stretch. Playing a mainly channeler oriented game already seems a lot like an RPG, plus the game has objects to interact with, heros, and the combat system will hopefully be pretty adaptable. As for the game itself, I haven't really had a chanceo t play it much, (first came some CTD's that were probably due ot graphics issues, now there are some CTD's fr

I'll almost certainly have the time available, am in beta, and am interested in seeing how things go.

In tyerms of human HP: Since the only races in the game (starting out) are human, it doesn't make sense for them ot have "low" vs. "high" hitpoints (Since there's nothing else to compare them to). (If you are writing in comparison to weapon damage, that will have to depend more on game balance and fun, as the combat mechanics are worked out.) In terms of your uses for mobility: It doesn't seem to me that mobility would need a separate stat from defense

I've already reported the crash to FogBuz (Or however it's spelled), this mainly for some further information. A few days ago I moved all my stardock games from my C to D drive (to keep the C drive from getting too full.) Looking through the debug file, it seems that the game was looking for a bunch of problems when looking for various program folders and "my documents" folders in the wrong C:/D: drive. For the time being, does this mean I'll be having to move the elementa

[Quote]Well these aren't highly specialized combat rules... the variables involved are few. Basically intelligence determines the mind attack and mind defense. Wisdom determines the defense against attacks of corruption... such as casting a beserking spell at enemy archers so they charge melee into battle out of rage.[/Quote] In the game as we've seen it so far, they would be, since very little combat is done with magical creatures, and an even s

Some of your examples (the mind flayers, corruption), would involve highly specialized combat rules that would not come into play that often, but would require a bunch of extra things to keep track of in game, so I wouldn't want these in the original game at release. (For mods, this isn't an issue, although I am not sure how hard it would be to allow such modding, so do not have a strong opinion either way on that issue.)