ChongLi

Hey, you've got nothing to worry about from me. I'll be buying both games. There is such a dearth of good TBS games that you gotta get em all.

Yes, this was known as the Gerstmann affair. Ever since, I've dropped gamespot and I've never looked back. I followed Jeff Gerstmann to his new site, Giant Bomb. Way better site, dedicated to journalistic integrity in gaming, co-founded by Gerstmann himself.

Also keep in mind that complex strategy games are a very niche market compared to blockbuster FPSes like MW2. I think word of mouth will be the primary driver for this game.

[quote]I think there needs to be some randomness. The only game I can think of that is a computer turn based game without any randomness was MAX.[/quote] I agree. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to eliminate all randomness in the game. In fact, I believe most of it is essential to eliminate the predictability and monotony. The one area where I believe randomness has absolutely no place is in the control/issuing/obeying of orders. It's funny that you brought up Alpha Cent

[quote]There's that boogie man word again. "Random." It's not random at all, not in the least. If you tell your soldier to attack a site and you know that he will be fighting at the site and attacking the nearest enemy, you can easily plan around it. "Random" would be if the soldier suddenly, and without warning, teleported to an unpredictable location on the battlefield and attacked the nearest enemy, then teleported back to your lines, attacked your own soldiers, and

[quote]What I would like to see is a "discipline" rating for your soldiers. Discipline wouldn't necessarily have anything to do with their actual strength or defense. Instead, it would determine how well you could give units orders. Units with very low discipline would never accept orders as soon as they enter melee combat. In other words, you would point low discipline units in a given direction then cut them loose, at which point they would fight the enemy of their c

[quote]I wasn't exactly sure they way Stardock were going with the combat, now I know its definately going to be turn-based (default is continuous, but can switch to classic turn based). I wanted to hear others opinions on what they think is best, personally I'm most happy hearing its turn-based. I kinda think the original MoM combat was very simple, almost too simple. Battles largely just came down to the number of his attack icons vs the number of your defence icons.

Bigger doesn't always mean better. Making the battles take way longer (like the Total War series' hour-long monstrosities) will make it a fundamentally different game. To me, it sounds like the argument for how to make chess better by making the board way larger and adding all sorts of extra stuff. Sure, that may be fun, but it won't be chess anymore.

Here's a brief summary of some of the reasons why Master of Magic is chief among my favourite games of this genre. Combinatorial explosion of wizard spellbooks, races and retorts (skills) (especially Myrran, which unlocks some of the more unique races) Huge variety of spells (over 200) with nearly all of them being unique and useful in different situations (to varying degrees) Insane variety of buffs including (but not limited to): <l

I don't even remember where I heard about it but I know it wasn't from any other SD stuff (I've never played any of their games besides a few minutes of Sins of a Solar Empire which wasn't really my thing). I've been waiting for the second coming of MoM for as long as I can remember. I've even explored making such a game myself, though I've never been able to get past the procrastination stage (making a new game all by yourself is a daunting task to say the least).

AI routines, scripted events, effects, etc. I'm pretty much hoping this game will be a framework to create anything we can possibly dream up in the TBS genre. This will allow me to realize my dream of having a modernized version of Master of Magic.

[quote]I am no expert but afaik 64-bit programs' advantage is not only the the bigger memory pool that can be addressed. First, you have an access to bigger variable sizes, thus allowing you to build a program with more precise floating-point variables, or bigger integers. There are some classes of problems that are hard to solve when you deal with 32-bit variables, as 64-bits give you more "breathing space". Second, well written x64 programs are more efficient (i.e., faster), as you can push

Will this game be making use of huge amounts of RAM to make 64-bit worthwhile? And to think that MoM could be played with

[quote]FYI: Real time is nothing more than a simultaneous turn system with auto turn ends and really small turns.[/quote] You just stretched the definition of the word "turn" far beyond what it originally meant, good work! [e digicons]:beer:[/e] Unfortunately, when you do this, you essentially redefine all games to be turn-based, almost completely negating the meaning of the word. I prefer to use the dictionary definition of turn: <span cl

[quote]@ Chong Li ... play Fall From Heaven II, a mod for CIV IV BTS. Its replayability, its unique tech tree .... definitely a war-focused game, tho I do admit some can eventually build guns or cannons but other than being "mass producable" their not that good, and come far too late to be "winners". If you wan't to find interesting research (although some people have certain rush strategies depending on map size and game speed), I would suggest it ... if nothing else than that the Ci

I have to admit this is probably the aspect of the game I am most skeptical about. I've always considered a sharp divide between fantasy and technology settings and I believe one of the hallmarks of fantasy is that it is stuck in a technological time warp (typically medieval times). Another cause for concern for me is the fact that the research mechanic tends to be one of the least interesting aspects of a strategy game, as players tend to quickly find an optimal research path and nev

[quote]It adds nothing to the game other than feeling like it's necessary.[/quote] This is a really salient point for me. If it's not fun, why is it necessary? Can we live without it?

[quote]I am highly, highly concerned about this sort of system, because if it isn't done exactly right, you get "cheap" victories or losses where you get RNGd a string of either crappy techs or awesome techs that you were never expecting to come out together in a million years. I and a LOT of other people like at least some assurance of getting what you pay for.[/quote] This reminds me of my friend who simply cannot stop playing his custom Telepathic+Creative race in MoO2. This combo

You gotta look at all of the factors, including cost. Spearmen in MoM were the weakest units in the game, however, they were also the cheapest units in the game and they all had 8 figures (except for trolls) which made them much better for buffing than units with fewer figures (the effects of a buff are multiplied by the number of figures).

Master of Magic had elemental damage types but they weren't emphasized. There were a few different types of immunities but nothing like Dungeons and Dragons (+1 soak 5 bash damage, +5 soak 20 slashing damage, 5/- acid resistance, 10/- divine resistance etc). Personally, I prefer a very limited set of elements/immunities as overuse of them tends to eliminate huge swaths of strategic options.

[quote]Templates are a must ... Instead of putting each citizen in their working area one by one, you just create a template that says something like "half the manpower in the farm and the rest evenly distributed". You get things done in one click instead of 20 clicks if you have 20 manpower ....[/quote] Yes, and build queues are another big one. You should be able to create many different build queues and save them in a list and then apply any queue from the list to any city you like

I am totally a quality guy. I want to have a very small number ( Large numbers of similar units don't appeal to me nearly as much and just seem to descend into "zerg rushes" and "wave attacks".

I don't know of any empire-building turn-based strategy game that's anywhere close to being as simple as Risk but cut the game some slack, it's over 50 years old. I digress. I'm not sure I really care too much about the customization of units in the vanilla rules. What matters most to me is how moddable the units are so that I can replicate all of the units from MoM.

MoM can be quite a chore as well when it reaches late-game stages. 90% of the time is spent watching those silly animations that pop up when each city finishes what it is building and choosing a new building/unit for that city. The solution, of course, is robust build queues that can be named, saved and applied to cities both singly and in groups via a flexible multiple city management screen. The tedium of micromanagement is really not a game design issue at all, merely

[quote]Oh no! That doesn't happen in AOW! As complex as the game is, auto-fight is still quite faithful to the way players would act... I guess they spent a lot of time fine tuning that, it was worth the trouble though, give it a try.[/quote] Still, there's only so far an AI can go. It's the entire reason why we play against other humans, AIs just aren't up to snuff. There is no way an auto-resolve would make all the same decisions I'd make in a given combat.