cephalo

The militia in Empire:TW acts more like a defense bonus. You get extra troops when you defend that city. It's ok for that game, but not really what you are asking for here. Forgive me not reading the whole thread, but what is the cost of conscription? We have this super cool troop designer in Elemental and it would be a shame if we couldn't use it for conscripts, but since you don't maintain them, there has to be a cost to designing conscripts with advanced gear vs. your typical peasa

I support the ideas in the OP. Fun stuff.

[quote who="Cookie_1" reply="1" id="2437407"]Looking at the "mock-up" of the new Research Screen and seeing that one of the branches is actually "magic" i´m wondering if we still have two divied research mechanism. [/quote] Hmm, so we research spells the same way we research techs maybe. So researching spells is not just for the sovereign, but it's spread among the population the same way building better farms would be. More population, more research.

One thing that is very different in Elemental from previous games that I've played is that there are two different kinds of research being proposed. It's like a combination of Civ and MoM. I guess you can imagine that spellcraft is secret research developed by an individual(the sovereign), and tech research is the same thing in a way only shared with the soverign's community. This is interesting, but I confess that I can't even imagine how this will play. Are there any other games out

Looks like you have plenty of volunteers, but it would still be interesting if everyone can see how the game is progressing. Then we can comment and speculate ad nausium, just like we all love to do!

[quote who="Raven X" reply="13" id="2436862"] Quoting Wahngrok, reply 8 be out for quite some time... 2012 maybe? They better get them out before the end of the world in December of 2012. Otherwise it's a bad move financially. Why invest all that capitol if you won't have time to make it back before we're all killed by the polls shifting? hehe j/k I don't seriously think the world will end in 2012. Might be nice to see

For some reason all the manual upgrading in MoO2 never bothered me. I could see how it would be bothersome, but I loved having all that control.

[quote who="Teucrian" reply="30" id="2432527"] Of course, if it's already been decided, it'll just have to be modded in. [/quote] That's kinda my concern. This is a kindof complicated issue with the graphics engine, and as such it may or may not be modded in. I was hoping to catch this early, but it appears the decision was made pre-beta.

Exactly, that is the question. Do we want navigable rivers? Civ4 did NOT have them, but then again they set out only to make Civ4 and they made it moddable as something of an afterthought. One of the stated goals of the Elemantal engine is to be a platform for many land based TBS games. In that context, I think making navigable rivers impossible carries some more weight. What exactly are you gaining from this considerable sacrifice of a TBS gaming tradition? If

[quote who="Tasunke" reply="20" id="2432119"]I do not understand what spurred this Satirical comment ... regardless, while focusing on land battles, it seems IN-between tiles is the superior choice. I only hope that Elemental Engine can handle complex locations of "other" units in-between tiles as well, so that you can have units on a boat, in-between tiles, and it being able to be handled by the engine. I think this is really more of a programming challenge than a strategic one (s

For merging rivers with 2D tiles(like on the cloth map for instance) where you want to graphically display the flow direction of the river, you need the following number of unique tiles. The same is true for between tile rivers and on tile rivers. 4 x (3 in 1 out) 12 x (2 in 1 out) 12 x (1 in 1 out) 4 x (0 in 1 out) Actually since all these tile can be on an exit delta next to the ocean, which would require special graphics all those x 2.

[quote who="BoogieBac" reply="11" id="2431836"] It may sound like a better solution, but seriously consider all ALL the ways rivers can merge in a tile based system. [/quote] Merging is the same actually between the two systems. If you have 0 - 3 inputs to a river junction and 1 output, you can have a complete drainage system. In fact, the Civ4 screenshot in the OP has all varieties of these junctions. 3 ins 1 out, 2 ins 1 out, 1 in 1 out, and 0 ins 1 out(riv

[quote who="Tasunke" reply="12" id="2431900"]rivers "in between" tiles should be able to naturally expand to large sizes close to the river delta, and ships should be able to navigate among a large portion of wide rivers Also, if (like I think) cities are going to slowly spread to be larger than one tile (like up to 4 or 5 tiles), then you can naturally have several parts of a city be built around a river. Especially cool if it could be built around a "wide" river (like the screen

I haven't seen anything to suggest that this is going to be a dumbed down game. I'm not worried about that a bit. I think the answer is to give players as many options as you can think of, but not all at once ! Stretch the content across the factions and from game to game. As long as you don't overwhelm the player with a dense pile of things to pay attention to, I think everyone would appreciate as many different game mechanics as you can think up. I think it's possible to mak

[quote who="FutileEmotion" reply="2" id="2431459"]The big benefit of having rivers run between tiles is that they look more realistic. This is because they are more to scale, and the fact that they don't have to fill up entire squares makes it look more natural. I'm all for rivers on tiles - I never realized how much of a pain it was in Civ3/4 until you mentioned it and went "Oh yeah!" This, however, causes all sorts of scaling issues - either: A:

I want to start a debate regarding whether rivers should run between squares or on squares. This may or may not be an important issue for Elemental, but down the road this will have a big impact on what we can do with mods. I want to get people talking about this early because this issue might involve changing the game engine. Modding is going to be an important part of Elemental and those of us with modding experience ought to be thinking ahead and thinking out loud.

[quote who="ikros" reply="40" id="2429247"]When Frogboy says he's going to try a new take with continuous TBS, people complain that they want old-school turns. But when he says he's going to bring back great gameplay like that from games in the early 90's, they jump on him because they want something new. He can't win! How about we just let him make his cool game and then we can play it and give him feedback. [/quote] Heheh. I think we can all agree that

[quote who="onomastikon" reply="35" id="2428706"]Good! I look forward to this game becoming a LOT less like a mixture of Civilization and GalCiv in a fantasy setting, both of which seem to be the dominant influence-givers so far. Haven't seen tactical battles yet, but I hope it won't be too HoMM. May Elemental truly be unique!! [/quote] That's something that really needs to be emphasized! Learning from other great games is necessary, but not one of these games was perfect! A

I am assuming that 'tech' progression will be separate from 'magic spell' progression, is that correct? Any ideas on how they will be different or the same?

I don't like the idea of random techs, but I do like situational techs. I like it when there are fictional reasons for stuff. On the otherhand, I'm kindof a low difficulty, sandbox player who makes up a story and then tries to make it come true. Random techs and even situational techs have a good chance of messing up my story! Random techs would get on my nerves. Situational techs might be forgivable if the situations were varied and intriguing, fun even.

The real problem right now is that if you aren't paying attention to your screen position, the info card often pops up in front of what you were looking at. So, even if you already know what it is and you just want to move there, you have to reposition the screen first or the info card will be in the way. It's kindof annoying.

I definately wanna see the next journal entry regarding the goals of the economic system. I can see it working with this new stable version, but without a context, I'm not sure what I should be looking for. Yeah, I got iron. Yeah, I got wood. So what?

This round is a bit rough. I'm sure we will have another like it before beta 1 is over. I think what is sorely needed here is a working autosave so we can continue to test. If they focus on a stable autosave, then a crash doesn't have to be game over. Then maybe we can start critiquing the game. So far, I have no idea what they are trying to do with the economic system because I have to start over before 30 turns. I thought I saw some goods being sent by road, not sure why.

The music in the beta is very good and it fits the theme perfectly. It is written by Mason Fisher. I also love the selection of music from FfH, and I can tell you that what they have from Mason will not disappoint.

[quote who="moodgiesanta" reply="20" id="2422608"]I like auto-resolve, but it would be nice to have some options as to how the battle is auto-resolved. If I really want to throw everything at the battle, a "no-retreat" option would be nice, or if I had a hero or elite troops, a "protect valuable troops" option. The thing I hate about most auto-resolves is that it is only useful for battles that are completely lopsided. This might sound silly, but if I just click "auto-resolve" and lose in a c