malekith

[quote who="ddd888" reply="9" id="3099996"]multiplayer games do not work like a slow look around trip, they are frenetic and rushed to the top 50 60% of my civ games ended in less than 30 min and at least 20 30% were over even b4 just took a bit to make ppl surrender but they were totally over ofc you would have to adapt a bit settings, not like its possible to play a huge map with 20 players in it [/quote] I think you've just described why multiplayer in T

[quote who="Lord Cobol" reply="5" id="3098633"]If you have 4 rookie soldiers in a fight, they will all learn something about what its like to be in a fight. Total experience gained would be more than if only two guys were in the fight.[/quote] Right, and so the optimal thing to do is for your champion to drag around an army full of rookies to every fight. Any time you haven't filled the available army slots before engaging, you're doing something wrong. I&#39

[quote who="CdrRogdan" reply="69" id="3097867"]Maybe it has to do with being able to design my own units, but finishing researching chainmail doesn't provide the same excitement as getting a destroyer or a battleship, or a knight or an archer.[/quote] I've been thinking about this. Putting more of the pre-designed units on the research track would help (at least for a player's first few games). More than anything, though, I think the major problem is the increm

Why reward stacked heroes with higher total XP? Why should killing two ogres with one army reward more total experience than killing one ogre with each of two armies? All that does is force the player into creating a stack of doom again. If anything, I'd like to see interesting incentives to splitting armies up, and fighting more competitive battles. I can see a very persuasive argument for not allowing the number of heroes to influence the XP gained by the rank

Enjoyed the read. Quite well written! I agreed with most of what you presented regarding the strategic game. I felt your proposals for managing city growth and sprawl a bit lacking, though. My personal preference is for all growth-affecting modifiers to act as multipliers for basic prestige-based growth. Take this scenario, for instance: - I have just my capital founded on a 4-grain tile and 1 prestige. 4 grain provides no grow

Would it be sufficient to simply be able to insert units at the front of the queue without impacting the remaining time on the current project? I'm hesitant to suggest increasing the productive output of cities and it simply wouldn't do any good to have to split the current output between two queues.

[quote who="feelotraveller" reply="116" id="3086437"] ...the attack and run away (hence no retaliation) can only work repeatedly (and hence lead to 'excessive kiting') if it is triple the initiative and +1 movement, or double the initiative and twice+1 the movement. [/quote] True, right up until the slower unit gets backed into a corner.

Kiting is the symptom. The size and availability of intiative disparities is the disease.

Both systems can work and both have their own design pitfalls. Tactical RPGs have made good use of an open intitative system for years now. But, by the same token, strict turn-based battles in King's Bounty have a ton of depth, balance, and flavor. I do tend to be of a mind that open initiative systems rely on counterattacks to balance out the large advantages generally associated with initiative. The rarity of counterattacks in FE will make initiative very

[quote who="Edwin99" reply="50" id="3075668"]Tactical Battle Question - Why does an AI with Archers facing an opponent without archers or an offensive casting magic casting champion rush to close with the enemy? As a human player I would wait for the opponent so as to maximize the archer dealt damage before melee combat is entered. Can I assume that some Sovereign AI's are smart and will not do this?[/quote] I'm guessing this is your answer: [quote quoting="p

[quote who="Alstein" reply="1" id="3073767"] event driven stuff. Does that mean you are planning to implement GC2/FFH-style random events? That's a feature I really want to see added. [/quote] No, he's almost certainly refering to how the back-end architecture handles notifications from an external source (another player). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_handler

[quote who="ajax bomb" reply="25" id="3072914"]This is a good point. removing the ability to train and build simultaneously has led to champs being the only real option early on... wish they would revert this and allow for more units to be produced from the get go. [/quote] Agreed. The interesting nature of the guns-versus-butter question is made irrelevent when you can get your guns (champions) and your butter without sacrifice. Decoupling troop product

There's a giant unit design feature that is entirely player-facing (the AI doesn't use it). It serves no purpose. The cities that build these troops... they serve very little purpose. The tech trees that improves the cities and the worthless troops... no purpose. If there's no reason for a player to build troops, more than half the features in the game serve virtually no purpose. Who cares what race you pick? Diplomacy? Sauron doesn't

Who's going to build this canon fodder, and why is it a good decision?

[quote who="EviliroN" reply="13" id="3072168"]THIS is what champs should be... all of them [/quote] If every champion is as powerful as Sauron, there's no point in building normal troops, and they may as well be removed from the game. If they're removed from the game, who is Sauron going to send flying?

I'm confused. If champions' spells' costs are payed out of a global mana pool and their summons are maintained though global mana regen, why does the imbued champion need an upkeep as well? I understand that changing Essence to a binary value removes the one downside to imbue as it stands (and makes imbuing a no-brainer), but couldn't a more reasonable balance be struck? What if an imbued champion's spells cost x% more to cast? Or what if the act of imbuing actual

Found a save at turn 31 with the latest patch. Playing a pretty blah sovereign/race: Irane/Tarth. Medium sized ridiculous world with 5 ridiculous opponents. 6 cities (2 taken from opponents) 3 techs (warfare -> equipment, diplomacy -> caravans, adventure -> gold mine) 2 spells researched (hurl bolder and imbue champion) 6 food 4.2 gildar/turn (and 3 more gold mines coming online over the next ~5 turns)

[quote who="Rune_74" reply="23" id="2772121"]So what? I play more then one game at a time...maybe I'm a bit different. [/quote] I wasn't criticizing your opinion. I tend to really sink my teeth into games, and have trouble changing gears in the middle. At least, that's how it works when it comes with complex strategy games, which is just about all I play.

[quote who="Rune_74" reply="21" id="2772096"]Why did this get to a Civ 5 vs Elemental thread? [/quote] It's a pretty natural comparison. There is a lot of overlap in the group of players to which both games appeal and the release date of Civ V is rapidly approaching. From my perspective, we've been cruising around the lake bailing water out of our boat for the last 3 weeks. Next week we come across a yacht filled with bikini-clad models. You better be

[quote who="Pvthudson" reply="1" id="2771435"]http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/9553042 Should have waited for CIV 5 it will be awesome...and work [/quote] Wow. Just, wow. One more week.

[quote who="cwg009" reply="88" id="2770669"]Agreed, that's what I'm trying to say too. Except I'm taking the argument one step further to argue that they are only of great effect up until the time you are able to go conquer or found new cities with the missing resource nodes you need. After that my only use for them is to fill in influence gaps to keep the monsters out of areas I don't want them. Edit: I'm playing on large normal difficulty maps with 9 ridiculous difficul

[quote who="cwg009" reply="85" id="2770642"]How much gold and other resources does it take to build all those one-resource-per-turn buildings? And then some people are building the really expensive multiplier buildings to multiply that 1 resource per turn (which I think is nuts, btw)? Have you bothered to do the math on how many turns it takes for these spam cities to pay you back all these resources and start turning a profit? It takes a really long time (at least for gold, for spell re

[quote who="sagittary" reply="83" id="2770634"]It's a possibility however you run into the un-intuitive notion that population growth is independent of population. That is, if I have 20 people in one city, I grow faster than 10 people in two cities. It also does not seem to necessarily limit spamming as there still isn't a major benefit to big cities. As well, we also don't want to hurt big empires just because they're big; if, despite all penalties and setbacks, a player can still manage a l

[quote who="cwg009" reply="79" id="2770596"]Good post overall, but I disagree with you about increasing influence generated by cities. The whole reason I like this idea is precisely because it does allow choice: players who don't want to spam cities no longer need to, players who do want to spam cities still can. Right now I have no choice, I have to spam level 1 cities to fill in the gaps between my big cities that actually have resource nodes. I do not want to be forced to do this. But I ha

How about a system where overall population growth is not tied to number of cities and planting more cities actually hurt the growth of your core cities? Instead, you'd have an empire-wide fame value that would determine the total number of citizens you gain in any given turn, and they'd be divided up amongst your various cities. Fame would be gained through 5 means: civics, warfare, magic, adventure, and diplomacy. City-level prestige buildings would allow you to control wh