"Standalone" is good news. Sir_Linque: What I was trying to say is: assuming Civilization 4 is a decent game, it's very easy to create a mod that will be about as decent. That's because core mechanics are arguably fun*. Unless you introduce a stupid change, the worst case is you end up with a strange Civilization 4. I guess Fallen Enchantress will be c
I'm a lurker who's lost faith in Elemental. I decided not to buy the game: Here's how it looks to me: Just because your game is the first fantasy 4X game in years doesn't mean it's also a good one. Master of Magic, Master of Orion and similar were one of many. There was competition, and some games were better than others. Now there's basically no competition and it's silly to assume Elemental must be a good game just because it's retro. Clearly, there c
I blame sales and marketing departments. By the way, I find it offending that you treat every game as a product. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, a roguelike game I'm highly involved with, consistently delivers high quality releases, for free. There's no "final release". There's constant improvement. More interesting items, skills, monsters, player-designed dungeon elements put here and there among totally random corridors. http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/
[b]UPDATE[/b] Version 1.40[b]h[/b] is out. It fixes a couple of things, including... [quote] AI now actually can and does use the ships for military transport! The downside is, I had to increase all transport capacity to 8 to overcome this complicated bug. But the AI ship invasions are working now. Beware... and enjoy! [/quote] http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?x3nzvpjcr5ng4cf
You don't need obvious superficial differences to make sides of conflict feel very different. Look at Dominions 3. It has huge variety of themes and units, yet vast majority of it is just humans. But this military uses only archaic weapons, obsidian swords, copper, feathers, hide shields, slingers. Those are black knights, effectively tin cans, slow and outlawing any use of magic. Many nations don't have any form of archery, or have only crossbows. Or no cavalry. Even within a single nation t
The thing to remember is that plate armour, like everything else in warfare, has evolved over time. One of the finest achievements was so-called Maximilian Armour. Good protection, and surprisingly flexible. But it was still expensive. In World War, smaller breastplates were good protection against pistol and submachinegun rounds, but they remained too expensive for mass production.
How about just making full plate [i]expensive[/i], so it's not a good idea to dress scouts or archers in it ? They're not for taking damage.
Black Knight: It would help your case if you used more argumentation in your posts. Anyone can make a statement "X is not good for Y" or similar. Try to explain why. ------------------ I think most of it boils down to killer stacks and how you feel about them. A single very powerful force, not even an army, which is used to defeat 95% of enemies. It really gets tiresome after a while. A lot of fantasy is about extraordinary heroes, but there are also notable examples o
Thanks for the information, random_target. I can see why monsters don't [i]spawn[/i] in your Area Of Influence - it could be frustrating when your city would be attacked with no warning. In Master of Magic, only lairs and nodes generate monsters. You didn't have to put a city between 3 ruins. However, if monsters are not aggressive enough towards cities, then it bothers me. Why in the first place can you afford to paint the world with cities ? Settlers in MOM don't come from nowhere -
As long as the only way to download and run the game is via Steam, I don't have any problems at all with those people. That way, Steam is practically irremovable part of experience, it can't be escaped. If I had a movie on DVD, with long unskippable advertisments at the beginning, cheap ugly box etc, and there are no alternative sellers, it still decreases my enjoyment. Maybe it's not their fault and they had no choice (suspiciously common excuse), but it's deffinitely not mine either. So in
Correct me if I'm wrong - but area of influence causes monsters not to spawn ? And you spread it by founding new cities, even tiny outposts ? If so, that's backwards. Not only founding a new city isn't risky (you don't have to protect it from monsters), but you actually do that to protect yourself from monsters. Shouldn't raiders seek to plunder, and monsters to dine on my citizens ?
[quote who="falconne2" reply="389" id="2793643"] As I said before, it's the same as voting down a book by a politician, not based on its content, but because you don't like the party he's in. That is an ad hominem; guilt by association.[/quote] No, not the same. I don't have to know the author is a politician to read the book. But if I buy a game that uses Steam, I have to use Steam. As long as it requires Steam to function, the point can't be ignored. Time for my own ana
[quote who="falconne2" reply="387" id="2793610"] Well, when there's something actually wrong with the system being used, like the delivery process being too long or the DRM preventing standard use, then sure, that's a relevant complaint. But I think the complaints about Steam are largely philosophical and regard hypothetical situations, such as "What happens if Steam decides to block my account?". And when people who don't even play the game go on Amazon to complain about it, I think tha
Stardock deserves all flak it gets for not granting full refunds. Framing that as trolling is incredibly lame.
By the way, can you name a single game where citizens have a mind of their own ? Usually it's either "negative relations forever, because your main race is X" or "unrest gradually decreases with time". About walls: Heroes of Might and Magic 1,2,3 went so far as to link population increases to walls ! And yet, it made sense. Better walls mean more safety, so more people want to live there. I see two main ways to implement sieges: Dominions style (higher level of abstracti
Perhaps a [i]chance[/i] of also being ugly would be less harsh. Heh, does the game require your children to be 18 before they reproduce ? Talk about political correctness. People in medieval or ancient ages would marry a lot earlier than that. And in Song of Ice and Fire they marry at 13. Age of adulthood could be another distinguishing factor between factions. Some would allow earlier, some later. You could take diplomatic penalties if you married your children (or let them m
[quote who="Grove12345" reply="114" id="2787420"]Why are people afraid to stick to what worked? And why not stick to gorgeous 2d instead of primitive 3d?[/quote] "Everyone expects" 3D. 2D can be more time-consuming, too. Make a 3D model and you can shoot it from different sides. I play some old games, including Master Of Magic, DooM (with Doomsday or Vavoom source ports), Hexen practically daily. These games have low resolution, and are technically primitive in some ways, but
As I said in another thread: Those who do not understand Master Of Magic are condemned to reinvent it - badly. However, the game [i]does[/i] have significant [i]design[/i] flaws that shouldn't be repeated. That it has lots of balance issues - things costing too much or too little compared to others - shouldn't surprise anyone at this point. So I don't see the point of discussing balance of [i]individual[/i] spells, units, races. [b]Please
Yes, with the patch MOM is more balanced in the sense it's harder overall. Instead of increasing the already ridiculous bonuses like city growth, unit maintenance and power base, the developer fixed many [i]flaws[/i] in AI. Finally playing on Hard doesn't sound like kicking a spaniel. Although there's one minor side effect - you tend to get some magic items from enemy heroes even if you can't afford them yourself.
Alternate suggestion: Increase Watchtower's vision range substantially. Make it 6 squares, for example. [i]Master Of Magic[/i] has a similar problem. City Walls are useful during sieges, but they increase vision range by +1 to 3. Considering many units had movement of 2, it didn't help much. And food is too valuable in early game to spend on scouts.
[quote who="Magog_AoW" reply="35" id="2784839"]A fantasy mod for Civ 5 would do. [/quote] A fantasy mod for Civ 5 would be very hard to do. I mean, look at all the eyecandy. A lot of effort has been put into it. You'd need lots of [i]high quality[/i] models. Anything else would look out of place. Quality and style would need to be consistent. Elemental should be easier to mod in the sense the bar isn't as high when it comes to eyecandy.
The question has already been answered in the other thread. Squares and not hexes because Brad Wardell doesn't like hexes.
[quote who="_PawelS_" reply="6" id="2783757"]Civ5 with the ability to design your own units would be interesting...[/quote] Is this ability interesting in Elemental in the first place ? Based on opinions on this forum, unit design in its current state could be replaced by a slider. Do you want a better, more expensive unit or worse, cheaper ? Ok, there are bows too. So you could have 2 unit types: bowman and footman, and a slider for each. And instead of equipment, units could
Interesting. You make it sound like Elemental plays like Warcraft/Starcraft where there are explicit "starting positions" with gold mines. And there are explicit spots to build cities. Guarantee of having resource X at starting position is pretty much that, especially if it's a critical resource.
I like how it works in Master Of Magic. The Word Of Recall teleports a single unit to your Summoning Circle for 20 mana. Summoning Circle is at your capitol. You can research a low-level spell to move your Summoning Circle to another city for 50 mana. [b]And the spell is in Sorcery school only[/b], so it's not something everyone uses.