falconne2

[quote who="Mtn_Man" reply="119" id="2763399"] It's not so much a competition as it is a reality check. I still have a hunch that if Elemental had Sid Meier's name on the box and all other things were equal, it would have been given a far more charitable reception. You would have seen a lot of reviews using phrases like "Despite these problems..."[/quote] Now that's just burying your head in the sand. The Stardock name has as much clout as Sid Meier in the industry, e

[quote who="Fearzone" reply="33" id="2762936"]I think city building sets Elemental apart, and right now seems it's biggest strength.[/quote] Really? I'd be interested to know why you think that. Personally I think city building is the weakest part of the game. It is terribly simple and shallow. There's nothing interesting about it for me at all - just about every 4x game I can think of has more sophisticated city building. It seems to me the developers must have started with some good

I asked about this in one of Brad's posts about the AI, but naturally it got lost in the sea of replies. The mods would be so much better and the game improved so much more, if the core game C++ code was available. Civ 4 got it right by releasing the code early on... that's why the mods for it are so good. Not only are there a plethora of great mods, the community fixed most of the bugs early on so the core game became rock solid pretty quickly. It was pretty much an open source proje

[quote who="Tormy-" reply="98" id="2761626"] The battles in the Civ games are all about RNG basically. It's possible to beat a tank with a warrior, and I don't like it. [/quote] Civ 4's system was created to stop this happening. The difference to other games is the strength stat is linked to the unit's health, so it goes down as the health decreases. This is actually more realistic than what most 4x games use, where attack and defence stay the same even if the unit is at 10

You can always just go up to turn 2 with the option on, hire him, then turn the option off to keep him quiet.

[quote who="Tormy-" reply="52" id="2759732"] There's no tactical combat in the Civ games. The ATT/DEF -> DMG system is way too simplistic. [...having unit unit counters is not enough in my book.] I don't want to mention more stuff like dmg/resistance types etc., because I prefer to play with fantasy themed games anyway.[/quote] It's a strategy game, not a tactical game. The battles themselves are purely mathematical - whether you win or lose is decided by the economic

Forum ( n ): a public meeting or assembly for open discussion

[quote who="Qyth" reply="26" id="2759125"]As far as the AI goes, it always cheated so bad that I don't doubt it will handle it.[/quote] Have you tried BTS? That puts up a good fight even on Noble where the AI and player are on equal footing. I used to beat Civ on Emperor, but that made Monarch feel like what Immortal used to be.

The problem with Elemental right now for me is, even once the major stability and AI are fixed, it's just... too.. simple. For a 4x game it lacks strategic depth. There isn't much to do as a builder - city building is very simplistic and shallow, as is the economic model. It's very rare that you have to make choices or trade offs, because it's fairly obvious what the best thing to do is. After playing one or two games, you can figure out the best strategy to follow, then it's just a matter of

Great to hear that these issues are being addressed. As for the AI, I know you plan to release some Python bindings in the future, but have you considered going the Civ 4 route and moving the AI out into a dll and just releasing the C++ code? Actually Civ 4 comes with the entire game code, which is awesome for total conversion mods and fixing core game bugs. The reason the BTS expansion was so good was because the community had significantly overhauled the AI in vanilla, in the Better

[quote who="Gravedancer" reply="186" id="2754105"]I kept checking back and their servers finally came back up. [/quote] That's good. It might not be obvious but you also have to download and install the "o" patch and if you want it to look pretty, you also want the media pack and blue marble, which are rather large downloads. The Wild Mana modmod significantly improves the AI and makes some good additions to the UI, but it also adds a bit more game content so you pr

[quote who="Gravedancer" reply="182" id="2753691"]Damn, can't get the FFH addon cause they're servers are down. [/quote] Where did you go to download it?

[quote who="Gravedancer" reply="178" id="2753439"]Would this be correct link for Fall From Heaven 2? [/quote] Nah, Kael's blog hasn't been updated in ages. You want to go here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=190 and go for the Wild Mana modmod

[quote who="Gothnak" reply="176" id="2752693"] It's the same with Civ... Civ 1 great, Civ 2, fantastic and then the rest have left me a bit cold as they tend to have the same upgrades and units... I've played more MoM & Etherlords than all the HOMMs or CIVs put together.[/quote] Sounds like someone needs to try Fall From Heaven 2... and a couple of days off work :)

[quote who="Voqar" reply="9" id="2738248"] A lot of this is opinion. [/quote] I disagree. I think it's mostly spot on as I came to pretty much the same conclusions after looking at the numbers. Or maybe it's just my opinion. But I bet a lot of us have come to these same conclusions independently, so I think we can assume the opinions are reasonable.

Even with 9 Ridiculous AIs I barely need to beyond 100 turns before half of them are dead and the rest of the game will be a dull mop up job of the remaining AIs, so I stop. In fact, it's just map size that determines how long it takes, due to having to walk, not AI skill. [quote who="hairrorist" reply="1" id="2749752"]its frankly impossible to find a way to play that doesn't break the game without purposefully ignoring cost/effect.[/quote] I know Stardock wanted the game mech

This is probably due to the bug where parties/squads/companies with damage will go down in size if you reload a saved game. That is, if any of your groups have taken damage when you save a game and you reload that game, those squads will be reduced in number and never get back to full strength. For now, the only work around is make sure all your groups are healed before ending play for the day.

[quote who="Mtn_Man" reply="117" id="2744323"] Actually, it can happen the other way around in Civilization games, but people seem to forget that underneath the hood, the game is just crunching numbers, and it doesn't care what graphic happens to be associated with those numbers. So if the spearman unit happens to have high numbers in the proper column then it can defeat a flying unit, but we're talking an upgraded spearman unit with a high defensive bonus versus a newbie helicopte

[quote who="Sethai" reply="105" id="2743486"]btw i will never play a civilization game. thw whole "spearmen-attacks-helicopter" thing, and napoleon living for thousands of years is just too much of an immersion breaker for me.[/quote] That's like not eating bacon because you don't like the packaging it comes in. You sir have no idea what you're missing :) mmm... bacon

[quote who="Voqar" reply="17" id="2742930"] The builder side of the game just isn't compelling enough for me to want to sit around and build for ages like I would in GalCiv2 or Civ. [/quote] This is what disappoints me the most. The AI will eventually be fixed, but the strategic, empire building part of the game is much too shallow compared to Civ or GalCiv. I hope they add a lot more features to the strategic aspect, because I'm a builder and I hate going to war until ab

[quote who="charon2112" reply="11" id="2742571"] Now, you all do realize that setting the difficulty to ridiculous only effects wolves and spiders and such? and NOT the AI? Right?[/quote] That's map difficulty (the one you choose on the first screen). When you add AIs into the game you can choose their individual difficulty.

[quote who="dragoaskani" reply="96" id="2742516"] Yeah but its a graphical bug only from what I have seen. Instead of a group of 4 units with a combined hp of 42 you get one unit with an hp or 42 and the 48 attack, 20 defence of the combined squad. (at least the ones that happen in my game)[/quote] Not in my games - they go down to one unit every time, including stats. In fact, I just checked a saved game from last night, from just before it did the usual CTD I get after turn 80

[quote who="charon2112" reply="92" id="2742362"] I was mistaken, the shard bug is real, I've seen that. But shrinking units...nope.[/quote] I think that's in reference to the bug where if you reload a saved game which was created when some of your parties/squads/companies are damaged, then those groups are reduced to a single unit (or fewer units) when you reload. That's still alive and well.

I'd recommend Fall from Heaven II for Civ4 as well. That mod's a huge timesink. I was hoping Elemental would take a few pages from its book.

I've tried with all AIs on Extreme as well as Ridiculous and they suck on both. It's a good point that without FOW it's got too many choices to make, but the problem seems to be, even if you give them till turn 100 before attacking (that's twice as long a I normally wait), they don't build units of any substance. Very, very occasionally I see a party, but it's made up of just the basic unit type. I think the problem may be lack of resources. Whenever I capture cities they haven't