Thanaeon

The name of this character is by now lost to history, but he was an NPC in a Runequest Glorantha game I ran some 15ish years ago. He was a Hero in the Gloranthan sense, meaning a favoured of a deity with supernatural powers. In his case, those powers were mainly those of the shapeshifting variety. He was a spy extraordinaire, causing my players no end of problems when he'd take their shape and use it to infiltrate their organisations, undo their plans and generally wreak havoc and mistrust. O

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="74" id="2473096"] I'm sorry to say this, but I've begun to regret pre-ordering the game. Not because I know the game will suck or anything, but because I'm afraid it may, yet I've already paid for it. Okay, you're right. No more development journals regarding these kinds of discussions because people are reading way too much in. If Master of Magic or HOMM or Age of Wonders or Civilization or Ascendancy or MOO or GalCiv or what have you we

I'm sorry to say this, but I've begun to regret pre-ordering the game. Not because I know the game will suck or anything, but because I'm afraid it may, yet I've already paid for it. The direction the game design is heading is troubling. I get that they want a game that's simple to play, and hopefully as fun as possible. On the other hand, I'm honestly worried that in the pursuit of simplicity and fun, they'll do away with suspension of disbelief and depth of strategic choice. The lac

[quote who="SpoonGod" reply="14" id="2471269"]Far from limiting creativity, I think that having just "arcane" damage will force spell creativity. If everything does the same kind of damage, then spells have to have very different effects. No "fireball" and "lightning bolt" doing equal damage but with different elements, for instance. Not that I'm against having fire and frost magic, by any means, but I'd like that kind of "rock-paper-scissors" strategy to be secondary. If you don't

This sounds like a very cool direction to take the game, especially since it opens up the ability for modders to add in new backgrounds and traits compared to the difficulty of adding in more over-reaching attributes.

Is the idea of your sovereign's dominion spreading overland still in? As in, when you found a city, its surrounding lands slowly start to come under your dominion, changing them from the default lifeless state? If so, then faster or slower spread of dominion is a fairly logical perk/trait/attribute. Assuming morale is included (and I hope it will, because battles that are to the death tend to feel too abstract and unreal), sovereign traits/perks/attributes that deal with moral

Most of what I would have said has already been discussed. Experienced units should have an edge in retaining combat ability in combat, whether that is through the implementation of morale, stamina or both as well as other benefits, including but not necessarily limited to higher base stats (attack, defence and HP). Also, at least magical types of damage should be differentiated, but I also think dividing physical damage into blunt and sharp, with blunt halving (or whatever number is found go

[quote who="Campaigner" reply="5" id="2302337"]The solution for that is to play on EASY difficulty. Because if slowing stuff like that would be the default then it's goodbye To get all those cities/nodes/mines that made my great army I had sacrificed army, mana, expansion and teching. The reward for that is a good chance at victory. And I'll be damned if some turtler is gonna rob me of my hardearned victory.[/quote] Way to miss the point there, buddy. I wasn't talking about

Holy excrement the game looks good! This is a good example of the fact that games can look very good so long as there is competent art direction and style without having to have massive system requirements and multi-hundred-million-dollar graphics budgets. (And, conversely, games with big art budgets can still look bland.) I very much like the look of the game, shadows or no.

[quote who="happy_panda" reply="24" id="2270293"]I'm just saying, some of the suggestions to prevent steamrolling would lead to turtling beating actively playing, which is a balance I'm sure needs to be watched carefully.[/quote] Without more detail, I'm not sure I agree. My suggestions were written so that all else being equal, the defender would have the edge. The "all else being equal" being the key part: if someone goes on the offensive, you can be pretty certain they'll be doing

You know, you may be on to something here. My thread on the prevention of steamrolling was born, I now see, as a reaction to the most common and banal form of steamrolling 4X games are prone to; the military conquest feedback loop. That's kinda boring for reasons I spoke about many times in that thread. On the other hand, the kind of effect you're talking about - decisive advantages gained through endgame means and ones with variability - may actually be quite a nice idea. And if there are ma

Hey, psychoravin, I think I've seen you in the movies... Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. You played the really big monster that stabs Frodo in Moria, am I right?

[quote who="psychoravin" reply="19" id="2258590"]First of all in a fantasy wargame there shouldn't be any alliances at all with the ai vs the player. This is another feature that always leads to EXPLOITATION by the player. The ai doesn't use it well and it should be banned from the player to use at all vs ai. When he/she starts the game he/she is at war with ALL since this is going to be more of a single player solo game that's the way it should be. The player should have to deal with aggress

[quote who="psychoravin" reply="12" id="2258275"]The optimum way to combat the steamroller effect vs the human player is quite simple and M2TW does it, but, it doesn't do it well because it doesn't protect itself while doing so. Spartan by Slitherine also uses this method and even MOM used it. Once the human player has reached a certain "advantage" or even before as in the games mentioned above. The Ai surrounding him allies or at least becomes neutral to one another and all go for the human

[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="5" id="2258014"]Actually, it'd be really neat if the game will have a Reserves mechanic. I'd love to be able to train troops, and designate them as reserves. When you do this, they'll go back into the population pool, but be differentiated in that they retain their training, equipment and experience in case you call them to arms (and they could even take up arms automatically in defense). These could be kept track of separately from the rest of your populace.

[quote who="Paradoxnt" reply="1" id="2257755"]1. It would make more sense for troops to move more quickly within their own borders (local knowledge of terrain/paths/foodstuffs). So, while effectively opposite to your suggestion, I can agree on the principle.[/quote] I think I agree, your model would be better. [quote]3. Supply lines, while realistic, might not be any fun if players had to micromanage them. It would also make attacking very diffic

There's been a thread about the desirability of the common state in 4X games where once a faction gets big enough, no one can stand against them since they can simply field too large an army for anyone to survive against, in addition to other benefits like massive research fund advantage and so on. Personally, the "steamroller effect", where once a player gets big enough the game is practically won (typically in the middle phases of a game) even though a boring grind to take the rest

Sounds very cool!

If at all possible, I'd like the option of exporting any complete maps in a picture format like .jpg or .png. I'm thinking that this would be a very nice way of producing maps for RPGs, you see... [e digicons]:thumbsup:[/e]

[quote who="Lord Reliant" reply="16" id="2217358"] *I want to build boats. I have 10 cities with harbors. Before I can build a boat, I'll need wood. Some cities have wood nearby and some don't. I'll also need cloth (for the sails), and iron, too (for nails, hinges, etc.). So, if I want to simply make a freaking boat, I'm going to have to see all of the possible locations that can build one, figure out the time it takes each location to generate that boat, an

Given a binary choice between the two, I vote camp 1: Sophisticated. However, if given a sliding scale between the two, I'd vote for camp 1.2 or camp 1.3 - still pretty sophisticated. I think ckessel above had an interesting compromise idea: rather than modelling full logistics of having all natural resources shipped from one city to another to another, have item building times depend in part on how far away the resources used to build them are. In other words,

I'm heartened to see the maturity of the Elemental gamers' community. On almost any other game forum, I'd have expected to see a huge outcry, wailing and gnashing of teeth over this, but you guys have taken it pretty coolly and calmly assessed the things you like and dislike about it. Kudos. I hardly ever play multiplayer, so I don't think the bot issue is something I have any stake in. Depending on the economy, the simplification may or may not be a good thing, we don'

The original message, I think, said that Beta 0 would by by June , meaning inside the next three weeks. Personally, I doubt that, partly because of the whole Demigod thing. However, June or July is not that far off, and quite satisfactory.

Considerably more than two, I should think...

I, too, like to have morale effects and routing in place. It's not that it isn't annoying occasionally, but if units always fight to the death of the last man, it's just too jarring and the game begins to feel less like battle and more like chess.