hairrorist

Spyndel, perhaps that's what happened, but SD's stated position is that the gold master was a finished and playable product containing 8.2 gigajoys right at launch.

If they had done the smart thing and separated to hit and damage rolls... then we could have meaningful weapon choices.

The axe makes even less sense... its given in the same tech as the endgame weapons, but has a 12! attack and no other stat boost, and is more expensive.

Some playthrough feedback Gnil... The staves are very powerful. I didn't realize how powerful at first... are they all true damage? I think thats a mistake, since then it reliably does more than casting. Remember, you can do it twice a round, that's 18 true damage every round for free. The staves should DEFINITELY be a sovereign only item, and they really should not ignore defense. The vestments however, are great fun and balanced pretty we

That might be the stupidest thing I have ever seen someone say Dragoaskani. Who is the one selling a consumer product with an AI? But, to comment, the AI in Galciv was really good. Have you read the latest note where Wardell says he is taking a sabbatical to cocoon himself away and work on the AI?

The AI has many issues, but the most glaring is its tendency to suicide a sovereign against a hardline defense. This is just a simple illustration of a larger problem. There needs to be some kind of reasonable gameplay mechanisms in place to mitigate the effectiveness of decapitation strikes against the AI. The number of times I have caught a sovereign outside his cities, made a quick strike on the town, flipping its influence and then immediately killing the now vulne

What if the staves scaled with shards as well? It'd be another way to make shards, allegedly the source of real power, even more valuable, as well as make an actually useful but not overpowered range weapon.

Ahhh, wait. I like Landisaurus' idea for Arcane Transgendering.

I think we should be able to marry men or women... after all, we're the king, we make the rules!

This.

Just for the record, RPS, along with Tom Chick, are probably the two most honest and compelling gaming journalism sites in the business today. They take their jobs and their roles as journalists seriously and treat the subject with some degree of integrity. RPS will never give a numerical score, and they will never even do a review--what they will do is cover their experience with the game over different lengths of time for a number of weeks, beginning with a "first impressions" and end

The population growth is useless, yes, but it allows you to reach those cumulative +20, +30, +40, and +50% increases twice as fast. I think it only works with sovereigns right now though.

I always take it. It provides truly explosive growth in the beginning, and every 4x fan knows how exponential early growth becomes.

The answer to this, like so many things, is Brad's proud assertion that one developer can "balance things in an afternoon (sic)." But change is happening, at least.

The stackable equipment thing is annoying but honestly, if you can't use those thousands of gp it costs for ringstacks to actually become effective more productively, then you really shouldn't be playing strategy games. The VM problem is significant simply because it is so damn cost effective.

1 per faction per summon spell would be boring... I thought we wanted a more magical world...

It does work... your sov gets +10 hp. I hope no one thought that it was supposed to give every one of your troops an extra 10...

It's very simple to get 4 heroes imbued and to at least level 2 by turn 20. At which point you begin to be literally unstoppable if you attack. 40 damage to every unit on the field will win you battles on the first turn against neutrals right to the end. Scratch that, the hermit has 59 hitpoints, so between turn 20 and completing master quest (if you can avoid conquering the world for that long), you will need 6 VMs--6 L2 imbued heroes, to defeat the hardest monsters in the

King of Dragon Pass... nearly impossible to find these days, though.

Brad, I have been a very outspoken critic of Elemental, in fact, on the verge of a return. Today I played a bit more and keep seeing more and more of the game's potential. Some of the design decisions are incredibly brilliant--I love how cities expand visually, and I love the aesthetic direction your art team chose to take. I would agree that this could be Stardock's magnum opus with a thorough examination of the core combat mechanics to add more