StillSingle

I think that having a reward for staying at home in your cushy city would be the way to go. I'm with the people above who believe that Essence accumulation shuold be divorced from leveling. If it is not, then I fear the game will revolve too heavily around sending your sov out to kill stuff/find adventure huts. While I hear you on the risk and return side of things Tasuke, I believe the rest of your stats should be linked to leveling, but NOT essence. The rewards I

The next starcraft - speed chess style!!! Then have a look at the commands per second stat of those Koreans!!! Actually, watching a game played with finite times for turns before you automatically lose would be really interesting..... start memorising those shortcuts!

good point! sounds much more towards the theme of the game. "Our sages have finished chisseling knew konwledge on their stone tablets!" :)

Why not treat it as a give/take system. Have a slider that goes up to 50%, which allows you to syphon off up to that much xp from battles to your Sov. Think of it as how much the armies are relying on magical communication with the Sov during battles to know what to do. :)

Great idea. Looking at some of the Hero stacks I've seen in Z4, I can't see it being entirely improbable that they could take a city. Hero stack of battle rank 40+ yesterday, if they set to try and take a city, they probably could. This system is actually in civ (the original). The pirates or whatever they were ccalled, could actually take cities, then they went hell for leather building more units!! I've seen a whole continent taken over by pirates!!!!&n

The above problems people have with the current research system could probably be solved if the Research point cost was tied to the technology rather than the technology tree. Personally I think there should be a small additional RP cost if you skip a tech, but I agree it shouldn't be as big as it is currently. eg, skipping farming for mining, should increase the cost to get farming but not by the same amount it is currently. Changing the point of time when you pick the ac

Got to turn 90. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6868387/Elemental0_32-2010-05-08T15-11-09-92.zip Dump file http://pastebin.com/B3VxS9y6 debugg.err text. http://pastebin.com/aNDHmgBj dxdiag text.

Just a note on teh MoO 2 command point system: It was crippling early game, and useless end game (command points stopped being a constraining choice factor). I would recommend against any type of MoO 2 command point system every time. The whole envoy thing in my opinion was a greaser of diplomacy. I'm with everyone who states that diplo should be all in one turn for any reason at all, including keepin the diplo easy to keep track of (most people say tere is mag

I like where you are coming from, however I prefer the broadbased approach taken by civ, and is currently (at least partially) implemented in the beta 1Z3 (haven't got around to downloading 4 yet!!). That is ALL units require extra movement points to move into forests, swamps, hills, etc. I believe this is better at replicating the increased difficulty of traversing the terrain. An implementation to imitate the extra incumberance of heavy equipment would

I think the gyst of what people are getting to when talking about making diplomcy a finite object is: restricting the ability to make diplomatic overtures to stop the diplo spam. So its not, oh, I just did diplo to all 30 team to sell my latest tech in 1 turn. It will be more like, save up, start the diplo with 1 or 2 teams, more saving, try another 2 teams. I've just realised something about all the diplomatic systems described above when talking about getting

Perhaps a hybrid of some of the above ambassador ideas above might achieve the problems with standard diplomtic systems: Players can set up an ambassador in another team's empire. This could be accomplished a little like the original civ, where you had to build a diplomat, get it to another person's city, then you could create an embassy. I prefer the simplified version mentioned above, where you can choose a champion or better to become an ambassador, mainly because this

[quote who="vieuxchat" reply="19" id="2611156"] You could have a list of envoy that wouldn't be real units, and assign them to some tasks. [/quote] That is a good way around having to move envoys around. Doesn't seem to dovetail into using family ties and position in the family dynasty to increase the persuasiveness of the envoy. Perhaps using a hybrid of the system you suggested could work: At the beginning of the game, each player can make

[quote who="vieuxchat" reply="15" id="2610958"] Quoting LeegleechN, reply 12 I like the idea of drawing envoys out of your family and other special units. I think it ties the systems together nicely. I don't really see a reason for having "Diplomacy Points" though. Why represent them with an abstract number when there are so many more interesting and concrete ways to do it, like the experience and traits of your envoy units? Because with 20+ envoys

[quote who="LeegleechN" reply="12" id="2610798"]I like the idea of drawing envoys out of your family and other special units. I think it ties the systems together nicely. I don't really see a reason for having "Diplomacy Points" though. Why represent them with an abstract number when there are so many more interesting and concrete ways to do it, like the experience and traits of your envoy units? [/quote] I agree with you here. The only problem I see with using "actual" uni

I like the way you describe the cross pa th synergy system. It sounds like it would add incentives for people to research all fields, rather than a specific one. However, I don't see how the synergies will create more strategic decisions when researching. Firstly because to my knowledge, the tech tree is semi random which means that if you get lucky you might get to play wi th crossbows (your example), but this is purely luck, not did I decide t

MOO1 was on CD :) I do beleive it was my first ever game I purchased too!! Long live pocket money :) Just been playing MOO2 the last couple of day, and yeah, couple of hour games is great!! Spying is neutered though and the creative race skill is overpowered. Other than that it is sooo much fun!! Hey Pawels, I agree with you for the options needed to turn of research trading/brokering. Makes for more thought out decisions regarding

[quote who="Nick-Danger" reply="20" id="2607075"]For game phases (early/mid/etc.), a hard definition (turn 50 for early, etc.) bothers me, as it gives players some out-of-game foresight on when things will change. I'd prefer it be random, one that would vary amongst AI and change from game to game. Also, a gradual change would be better than an abrupt one (since priorities are multipliers, instead of jumping from 3 to 4, make it more gradual). [/quote] I'm not really an AI

[quote who="PyroMancer2k" reply="2" id="2606736"]That's not quite how the MoO2 system worked as I recall. Each level there was 1-3 items but you got to choose which one of them to research for that level. There was no "random" picking which techs were available. There was 2 Racial traits that did effect the tech tree though. Creative allowed you to get all of the 1-3 items at each level and thus gave a huge advantage. The other was Uncreative which it then picked randomly for you which of the

Just a techincality, the current model is based on increasing the Research points needed to acquire the next level. Hence if you suddenly build a ton of schools in 1 turn, the turns needed drop significantly. Looks like the MoM system is similar to the MoO system, which I am a huge fan of (I'm assuming Rarity = tech level, approximately). I'm not familiar with the MoM system, but does it not allow you to research some things each game? I like not being able to predic

[quote who="TheProgress" reply="12" id="2606109"]I would like to see the races and factions more fleshed out to ensure they are unique and recognizable. Not just from a lore / visual perspective but in terms of unique magic, weapons, armor, units, buildings, etc as well. [/quote] Yup. I'm for that.

I like your idea too Mike D. To be honest, I've never really thought of that, but now that you mention it, unless the weaknesses and strengths are hefty, they do not really change how you play too much. Take for example MOO 2. you create a race. There was never any point in selecting just +10 spying, it wouldn't give you a big enough difference to actually go all out spying. you had to pick the + 30!!! then you could go to town!. <p

I'm with Frogboy on this. Go the canon races first. Look at how MOO 2 did "race" creation. Really, you had 18 or so race pics with little city population icons, along with 18 premade "races". You could pick ANY of those "races" and customise their strengths and weaknesses, but you were stuck with the pics in the game. This was gerat! In Elemental, having set "races" with all the graphics already done, not being able to make a half dragon ra

Spot on Lwarmonger! I did point out that Elemental has a slow technology procession compared to Civ. I was actually saying I want to keep it that way and that having roaming GIGANTIC random quest mobs would be bad. It would force you down the war path to try and get units that could attack, not die, do some damage, retreat, heal, repeat. Which as you accurately pointed out stunts EVERYTHING else in your empire.

The idea is great!! More customisation choices. The points raised above about have premade factions needing to be included can be gotten around by having a module in the AI algorithm that actually designs its faction/race at the beginning of each game. Also, by putting all these customisations options, you could have a competition with the beta testers to create races/factions and award the top five creations (with backstories) be bundled as prefab factions/race

[quote who="lwarmonger" reply="6" id="2604463"] that having every player tech to a powerful military will not be a problem. [/quote] I don't want this to happen period. My greatest Peeve in the Civ series is that you never have wars, skirmishes, dissagreements and the like in different eras. Research was waaaaay to fast, and that was without the uber random monster event we're talking about allowing here. In civ, you'd go from having barbarians to rif