Kholai

[quote who="John_Hughes" reply="141" id="2697914"]"A tool that lets you brutalize your opponents all by itself because Diplomacy is a tool you can use to win that is just as strong as military." Now that is incorrect as I see how Diplomacy should function. If you have Diplomatic "clout" but no means to back it, be it my own Military, or I can call upon my Friend, whom I helped earlier, who does, then Dlipomacy itself is a purely defensive mechanism to try and offer up what sp

A Heroic campaign type focussed on story arcs and central semi-scripted quest lines/adventures rather than standard strategy game where the player represents single individuals or small groups of heroes with finite resources rather than massive nations. A powerful create-a-hero designer and an export/import-a-hero feature to carry over the PC hero's stats and gear from previous campaigns to build a long-lasting career. A complete, simple, designer for would-be quest designers

Whilst that's good to know, I don't think it justifies complacency. Reviewers will judge the game based on how it comes out on day one, and if everything hasn't been done to make it a success before relying on modders and post-release updates this may reduce sales and ultimately harm the chances of the game becoming a financial success. Which in turn means reduced motivation to improve it, and no chance for an even better sequel in the future. So yeah, as many radical

Basic human sociology experiments have proven that, whilst initially offering a reward encourages performance of a behaviour, once that reward has been offered the human mind ceases to think of an activity as enjoyable, and begins on some level to think of it as "work". As a result, when a behaviour is being practised with the promise of reward, experimentation also demonstrated the products of such behaviour to be of a lower quality than those who engaged in the behaviour without the

I don't see this as desirable at all. If you want an asymmetric game, have settable handicap rules where one player starts off with more. Concluding a majority of games by mid-game is indicative of an imbalanced approach to the sovereign. Hopefully this shall be changed shortly. [quote]How do you balance a complex game with many options in only a month?[/quote] I believe that it was mentioned that a lot of the development that went into Elemental was in making i

[quote who="arstal" reply="137" id="2697300"]Holding and delaying can be part of a winning strategy, especially if you have other resources to leverage. If you're behind in military, you should be ahead in other areas. Diplomacy makes those areas matter more. I am not seeing this as a tool for losers at all. If you're winning in other areas- you'd have the option of using those, or using diplomacy yourself to save your resources for something else.[/quote]</p

I agree with the sentiment here, so much that I may be repeating some things already mentioned. [quote]First, why does there have to be a static balance at all points in the game?[/quote] Let me answer this first. Why does there have to be balance at all points in the game? Because Heroing and Conquering are both tech trees. If heroing is only useful at the beginning of the game, there should be no tech tree for it and all heroes should be removed after turn 100. Equal in

Back on topic somewhat - What about "genetics"? I assume the soveriegn is more or less immortal to have so many adult children running around, so succession isn't an issue - though it might make an interesting mod - lose your sovereign, switch to playing their child; lose the soveriegn without an heir, game over - but why not have your choice in spouse determine your offspring? Marry princess rescuee #5946? Easy to attain bride, vanilla kiddies. Fairly similar to your sovereig

[quote who="SeanenG" reply="134" id="2696861"]Just something I notice: There are 5 different Technology Paths, and only 4 different Victory Conditions. Adventure, Conquest, Diplomacy, and Magic seem to each map directly onto one of the victory conditions, leaving Imperium as the odd one out. I guess that means there's not going to be any sort of 'Culture' victory, like there was in Gal Civ?[/quote] This is something I'd love for a developer to flesh out as well. If Imperium lacks any

[quote who="arstal" reply="133" id="2697029"]Diplomacy is obvious a tool for a weaker player to compete against a stronger player. A stronger player wouldn't need diplomacy. A bigger player would out-DC a smaller one in the end if they gave diplomacy the same focus. If the smaller player puts all their focus into diplomacy, they'll fall behind in other areas. Diplomacy can be used to beat opponents, buying you time to get better units up, forcing the enemy who r

[quote]Breaking a peace treaty that is approved by the others, would signal your disregard for them. This should, and would, rightfully move you up the list of threats.[/quote] So you're saying that you believe DC should be able to not only force the target player into a peace treaty, but also force every other player into backing/approving that treaty, without providing benefits to any of them? I'm been talking about persuading people with diplomacy and negotiation, you're talk

[quote who="arstal" reply="123" id="2696114"]If you decide to ignore the peace, you're basically signaling your intent to conquer everyone/shatter the balance of power. That should have real, severe consequences. Another factor is when you get bigger, you'll get more DC just from being bigger. You can't turtle and win on DC- you just won't be big enough.[/quote] I disagree. If I ignore the peace, it signifies that I didn't want to sign a peace treaty in the first

Elements of Tactical Combat In no particular order these are the things that matter: Combat Speed . Your combat speed determines how many “moves” / attacks you get during a particular turn. In the begging of Lord of the Rings, what makes Sauron such a bad ass is that he can attack so many units at once. He has, in game turns, an incredible combat speed. I like this, so long as it stays strictly controlle

[quote who="arstal" reply="106" id="2695259"]The problem ultimately, is diplomacy vs players is determined in OOC fashion, where DC is IC trait of the empire/sovereign. This is why I've been suggesting forces (I'd throw an option to turn off though), as it could force you to stay IC some. Forcing peace treaties would be a great anti-rush mechanic, though it would likely only work once, you'd build up a big enough DC defecit that it wouldn't work twice, but it would give time t

I'm a big fan of sensible city behaviour - where a city doesn't just concentrate on a single megaproject for six hundred years whilst it doesn't even have a marketplace. This makes the "natural roads" concept attractive - a dirt track between locations within a certain number of squares that eventually becomes a full fledged road, with inns serving as waypoints for roads between distant cities. But if that's not viable, I'm not opposed to a worker unit, creating a peasant workforce is

[quote who="Folcik009" reply="79" id="2694246"]This just popped into my head: what if diplomatic capital is just converted to Gildar when trading it to another player? That'd make it useful and good for multiplayer. Quite possibly a simple solution.[/quote] That may work, I like this. The primary problem with Diplomatic revenue is that it is a tangible resource that cannot purchase tangible advantages. If it's a tangible but useless resource that then converts into gold wh

Whilst it's good that diplomacy has a resource dedicated to it, as I've mentioned in my previous post in the game mechanics thread, I fear that the immaterial nature of it in raw game mechanics terms ultimately cripples diplomacy against human opponents, though I'll try to keep such things to a minimum here and focus on the AI's trading in general. Diplomatic capital needs to be able to buy things that give it real, tangible benefits to trade and other diplomatic pursuits. Wa

Diplomacy Sometimes you don’t have the stuff you want and you don’t want to have to conquer everyone. Diplomacy lets you do this. Diplomatic Capital is the resource here. The more of you get get, the more people love you. Trade others to get more of it and they’ll like you even more or trade it away to get other resources or get others to attack each other so that they’re too busy to get after you.

[quote who="akiralen" reply="114" id="2691538"]I really liked the idea of skills. I would love to have it tied it with unit level rank. This how I would like to have it: 1. Rank...[/quote] That's close to what I was thinking, and it makes more sense than mine. I like it. A raw recruit can be quick to build but have no skills, then accumulate further skills as they level up, or build a more advanced unit from the get go. Only thing I'd

I'd add to the sentiment that I'd love to see multi-part dungeon crawls to fight through. I'd love guiding my war-torn heroic band deep into a multiple floor dungeon (possibly covering a floor per day, having to either survive to the next level or wipe out everything on the level), dealing with traps, monsters and shiny things. I'm not sure how practical this would be, but this could potentially operate with the same sort of "move around inside a map square without spending move" syst

Ultimately the answer to this is tied in to exactly how complex the economic system is in the first place, I can't think of addressing one without covering the other, so apologies in advance if I ramble on. Questions: 1: What does a unit "cost"? 2: What makes designing a unit worthwhile? What about the design process makes the unit different ? Disclaimer: All numbers used are made up, game terms used equally so, just for points of reference. &nb