ChongLi

[quote]You could fix the buffs to get around that though. It's not in any way an insurmountable problem, especially given that we dont' know how buffs work yet. But in Elemental most of the units are human. A human with 1 day of training and a normal sword is going to benefit from buffs in the same way that a human with a +5 magic flaming sword and elite level training is going to.[/quote] I think doing a point-value system rather than a fixed cap overcomplicates things withou

[quote]It was never meant to be multiplayer and I'm glad. Multiplayer is for geeks who need to get their epeen off cheating other players online. Cheat or no though it's still about epeen. That's another reason MOM is the greatest no multiplayer geeks with epeen to ruin it with their crying boo hooing waaaahing for balance. ;0)[/quote] Hey, no need to be insulting! [e digicons]}:)[/e] There is a perfectly valid reason to want multiplayer in a game: human opponents are

[quote]You ever play against someone else as the Gnolls or Klakons? Oh, right, it doesn't even have multiplayer... With the utterly horrific balance, Master of Magic is indeed a silly game, as soon as it gets upgraded to multiplayer support.[/quote] Sure, it was badly balanced. Fixing it would not have been possible without multiplayer, IMO. Starcraft, the game everyone holds up as the king of balance, took a decade of "testing" by

[quote]Nice. [e digicons]:)[/e] I think the middle ground is a limit based on production or cost or something, like I edited into my last post after the fact. [e digicons]:)[/e] If you've got say 1000 production worth of units in any combination, and I've got 1000 production worth of units in any combination, then if we're using the designer well and there isn't some really out of whack ability, we should be able to have roughly fair battles even if we use wildly diffe

[quote]I was describing AoW, since you mentioned you didn't have much experience with it. The quote should have made that pretty clear. Stack limits were pretty disastrous there if you wanted to do something other then stack up 8 of the strongest units (or 7 and a hero).[/quote] I can accept that stack limits are disastrous in a poorly balanced game. That said, removing stack limits in an already unbalanced game does not help things. [quote]If the way Elemental is being design

[quote]That's nice. This isn't MoM.[/quote] How original. Please stop spouting this nonsense like everyone else, it's getting old. [quote]It used the exact system you describe, and once you had top tier units, making anything lower was almost always a waste of time. 8 Dread Reapers vs 8 anything of a lower tier = you win. The same was true for most of the top tier units.[/quote] Uhhh, no. MoM didn't have "tiered" units. Aside from heroes, there was no clear best unit.

[quote]This is not MoM. the channeler does not stay in his captal city casitng spells all the time. If you so choose, you can go Gandalf and make a superpowerful channeler to kill your enemies.[/quote] You think I don't know that this game isn't MoM? Let me reiterate: I know a lot about MoM and other TBS games (such as the Civ and MoO series). I know what worked and did not work in those games. I do not kn

[quote]Something is always more powerful then everything else, especially in a game where you can design your own units. If I can only fit 9 things in a stack, that stack is going to be 9 channelers with the strongest equipment I can make (and if I get a Dragon, I'll toss that in too). Ordinary troops won't stand a chance against them. With stack limits, you get this problem. You might want to peruse the AoW forums and see how many people simply don't bother making lower tier units on

[quote]Bagh. What mechanic stops you from just making a two, three, or four-square army?[/quote] The fact that you can only attack with one stack at a time and the fact that the defender moves first. This means you could potentially attack with 8 stacks of 9 (72 units total) and the defender would move first in each combat. If his defense was strong with the right units, he could wipe out each of your stacks before you get to move, allowing him to wipe out your whole army without taki

[quote]Not exactly. The most extreme form of heartripping is when you go after a target that will immediately defeat the other player. But really, heartripping is the process of barreling through enemy territory to a high value target fast enough that anyone besides a paranoid would be able to respond in time to stop. A high value target could be a major production city, economic hub, military training ground, resource nodes, shards and other non-city targets. The point is that it is generall

[quote] That still leaves out the arieal units, which if your enemy is anticipating your spells (which it should) it will use almost exclusively. Doing that to ALL of your cities sounds like a TITANIC mana drain. [/quote] Aerial units can be grounded permanently and cheaply with a web spell. Barring that, you can load up with ranged units and fill their aerial units with holes before they get close. "Doing that to all of your citi

[quote]I've never played MoM, but the thing is (and I suspect this is the case with most or all of the spells you mentioned), an attacker can scout out what you have, and then prepare an appropriate assault. In the vast majority of cases it is easier for the attacker to adapt against against another person's defense than to constantly evolve your defense to counter an attacker. Especially because it's easier for the attacker to hide his actions - he can prepare wherever in his kingdom he want

[quote]It has nothing to do with sneaking past anything. You don't sneak - you barrel through at full speed. It isn't just a problem against AIs, either - it's a very effective tactic against players as well. People are a little better at protecting themselves against this strategy, but that isn't saying much considering AIs have proven completely inept in this department. The only way to effectively cover yourself is to devote so many resources to defenses everywhere, and not just on y

[quote]I think we have a bona fide case of faulty cause and effect here: The argument "MoM was a good game, and it had X, Y and Z in it. Therefore, Elemental must have X Y and Z to be a good game" doesn't really make much sense to me.[/quote] I think we have a bona fide case of jumping to conclusions here. Nowhere did I say that EWoM must have X Y and Z to be a good game. MoM is a known quantity, EWoM is a largely unknown one. Sure, it may be possible for it to be an amazing g

Ooops. Double post! [e digicons]:blush:[/e]

[quote]You know it's very possible to have a game that is very different from MoM but still has vast numbers of spells, races, units, extremely customizable wizards, gargantuan strategic and tactical variety, amazing synergy between different units, buffs and counter-strategies. I mean, you essentially just described what we all want Elemental to be, other than the large variety of playable races. So, according to this paragraph, if Elemental ends up being as good as it's toted to be, you won

[quote]I feel obligated to respond to this. I sincerely hope that Stardock doesn't determine the evolution of Elemental in order to guarantee the ability to mod it into an exact duplicate of MoM with better graphics. I appreciate that you really want to mod Elemental into MoM, but really, come on. Let Elemental evolve and go down its own path, stand on its own legs. Don't limit a whole new game just so that you can mod it back into an old one... That said I fully support Stardock's dr

Woah. This discussion really took off. For those of you that may be skeptical about all the comparisons I make to MoM and the claims I make that things should be "like MoM", I hope this explanation satisfies you: It has been stated many times that this game is intended to be a spiritual successor to MoM though not exactly like MoM. Knowing this, I approached the discussion with my extensive experience in MoM and its many pluses and minuses. In my opinion, if you are making a succ

[quote]But then there are those of us who don't want to have a stright-up MoM clone..... the game will be largely python-moddable, so I feel we should concentrate more on making a new, innovative game than trying to resurrect MoM. If I want to play MoM2, I'll just download the mod.[/quote] That's fine, just so long as it's not innovation for innovation's sake. Half the new ideas I see being tossed around here worry me. They will end up bloating the game and increasi

[quote]I'd prefer if your alignment was largely based on your actions with the starting magic choice being secondary. If death always equals evil and life always equals good in Elemental I'd considered that an uninspired solution. The game however is still a long way off so beta testers could manage to persuade the devs to change course on a number of issues. I'd personally like to have the option to pick any starting element for my Channeler opposed to life and death always being inn

Campaigns don't interest me very much, sorry. I play through em once and that's it. The lack of replayability really hurts the concept. One of the best parts of 4X games that has been the major feature since Civilization 1 (and earlier) is random procedural map generation. Infinite replayability, as they say. Hand-made maps and campaigns for them seem like such a wasted effort by comparison.

[quote]There seems to still be a lot about the world of Elemental that requires explanation. Such as this post Frogboy just made in the new FAQ . As for the life and death magic debate I'm assuming that it isn't replacing the tired but true good / evil alignment choice. I would think you could pick death magic and still have lush green land and be considered a "good guy" by your people and other nations.[/quote] In MoM you were

[quote]The game is being built the exact same way you would mod it. There's no reason to alter the source code.[/quote] There will always be reasons one might want to alter the source code. The game will never be as flexible and moddable as building a new game from scratch. [quote]Well, if it's something like units or spells or whatnot, then no, you can get by without any alteration to the game itself (unless you want to do something REALLY drastic like add a fifth eleme

I don't like the idea of tying things together. The great thing about MoM was that you could play a life wizard and rule the dark elves or play a death wizard and lead the halflings. There was amazing variety and strategy in the many different combinations of races, spellbook colours and wizard skills (retorts). When you start taking away choices from the players, you make the game less interesting.

Standard C is easier to learn than any of its descendents (C#/C++/ObjC) since you don't need to worry about object oriented programming. If I were you, I wouldn't touch C#. Proprietary microsoft nonsense will not help you for anything related to game development/modding.