Philocthetes

[quote who="Zubaz" reply="7" id="2789404"]... Having governors in the cities might mitigate the off-ness I get.[/quote] I want governor champions for many reasons. They might indeed help a bit with the dissonance between 'my character' the sovereign and the player's unexplained semi-omniscience. Requiring that governors be imbued champions and having the imbuing process establish a psychic link could smooth out that wrinkle. So could some sort of scrying magic/abilities.

Immersion isn't for everyone, but I've tended to 'role-play' TBS games since Civ 1. Your list is a good start on cataloging immersion problems in the game so far. Off the top of my head, I'd add: I don't like having detailed info on other factions without having made some investment in spy units or abstracted intelligence spending. It's bad enough to have that if I've run across a rival's units or settlements, but it's just weird to have it for factions that I've never encountered on

[quote who="Kalin" reply="3" id="2789062"]... Essentially, this means you should level one city with gildar bonus, one with tech bonus, and one with arcane bonus, then build ONLY the appropriate building in each city. IE: One city will be filled with markets to make the most of gildar bonus, one city will be filled with studies, to make use to tech bonuses, etc... This is suppose to deter people from spamming outposts to build markets/studies. It's really not such a bad syste

[quote who="kapeman" reply="9" id="2788540"]Love the idea of watchtowers. Possibly have them increase the visible range only when "manned" by a unit. [/quote] That would be neat, especially if watch towers were the basic level for a series of rural fortifications: tower-> garrison camp-> wooden fort-> stone fort, something like that.

[quote who="Kalin" reply="8" id="2788639"]... What I was talking about is training a company of 12 peasants at my lv5 cities, then move them to the city I want and disband them. The 12 peasants would essentially "move in" to the new city. Not sure where the confusion lies.[/quote] That I can follow. It sounds like Elemental's version of using troop transports in GC2 to bulk up new colonies. GaelicVigil just had me wondering if there'd been a change I hadn't noticed in st

[quote who="GaelicVigil" reply="6" id="2788319"]... Except this doesn't make any sense because a Pioneer only takes away 1 citizen when it is created. It's like Pioneers have citizens in their pocket.[/quote] I haven't been playing much since 1.08. Do new settlements start with more than 1 pop now?

[quote who="Kalin" reply="1" id="2788187"]Um... I'm pretty sure they are deserting TO said town. This is what happens when you disband a unit, the population that those unit used moves into your nearest town.[/quote] The wording on that notice really should be tweaked to make the difference between a disbanded unit and deserters clear. (Or they need to add a new notice for whichever one is not what the info text describes.)

[quote who="CarGuy1" reply="6" id="2781484"]There was a "watch a thread" feature a few years ago that has yet to be re-implemented. I've been waiting patently for it's return. [/quote] Bara has it on his to-do list, but he seems to have plenty of 'more important' stuff to do. The global karma thing was on the list for ages and only happened this week.

There were hints here and there in the early betas that the devs were considering things like watchtowers, walls, and forts outside of main settlements. I'm still hoping to see them too, but I suspect the current situation is related to the idea that Civ-style settler/engineer units (persistent work crews) are 'not fun.'

Better to redesign the elements "by purpose," at least if you still have a hankering that the game's title be strongly reflected in the content. Replacing the Element books with Functional books like you suggest would certainly be an improvement in UI/gameplay terms, but it could easily leave the magic system still feeling rather generic instead of consistently evoking the world of Elemental (i.e. helping with immersion). Really, I'd prefer the elements to be redesigned by 'character,

[quote who="Dave_Genesi" reply="3" id="2773663"]Gal Civ and Elemental have a lot of game play that feel the same. If you enjoyed the gameplay and game style of the Gal Civ games, you will enjoy Elemental.[/quote] Mystikmind, this sort of take would only really apply if you have low-to-no concern for a game having a story layer that establishes fundamental (cosmological/metaphysical) parameters. Lots of the mechanics still seem roughly analogous to GC2, but if you were hoping to find a

[quote who="Gwenio1" reply="2" id="2779075"]Perhaps the desicion for which child goes to whom should be negotiable (you pay to get the extra unit or they pay you to get one)?[/quote] This kind of thing could be really good fun if the arranged-marriage UI/math included the general (sex-neutral) idea of dowries and included both diplomatic capital and 'power rating' in assessing the base value of someone offered or requested for an arranged marriage. But then I'm one of those we

[quote who="Nick-Danger" reply="5" id="2778010"]... So add 'freed up the sov from being required to place some cities' to my list of what was gained from the change. And one could argue this also could be added to the list of what was lost. Reasoning is that with the lore's 'restore civilization to the lands' bit, requiring the sov to 'seed' the lands for city creation doesn't seem unreasonable -- especially so considering the sov is only needed where revitalization hasn't natural

Nick describes my take pretty well. I do vaguely remember catching scraps of talk about some folks (maybe not devs?) thinking that requiring the sovereign for settlement-founding was somehow making the sovereigns less fun or something? Like it was demeaning for a mighty mage-monarch to be bothered with something as tedious as founding settlements? The paucity of talk that I caught and my solid dislike for the change make it hard to remember the specific 'explanation.' Spam is

[quote who="Aniaas" reply="21" id="2777004"]I suppoe I am looking at this from a ver Lore-oriented point of view - which befits the variety of gamer I am. ...[/quote] We might have pretty similar takes on TBS games. I've been 'role-playing' them since Civ 1. And I remain convinced that one of the top 5 mistakes the Elemental devs made was to treat the cosmology (metaphysics) as a decorative detail that could be left very rough long after the mechanics were 'nearly finished.' Now they

[quote quoting="post"]I observe the plans of a global mana pool with growing concern. I think that the idea of a global mana could put users in a bind if they use it all up in some epic battle, all of their spellcasters would be rendered inert. A better solution in my humble opinion is to lower the cost of some spells and have mana regeneration as a function of essence. ...[/quote] I want this both ways. As a once and former spiritual successor to MoM, Elemental could do ve

[quote who="Rishara" reply="8" id="2772761"]The only problem with that is building placement. Unless you choose to just allow the game to pick a site for you if you pick a new building from the city manager screen.[/quote] That's only a problem if you insist on some form of build queue control directly within the city list. I use the GC2 list to change ship build orders, but I always go to a system and check the improvement queue even though there's no control over placement in

For long/large map players, the game could also really use a list for units, with perhaps a toggle between Champions (regardless of location) and Armies in the Field.

On the enchantment spamming, I think (hope) that the devs are working on a major redesign of the magic system and that some or all enchantments will shift from essence = slots as a limit to mana upkeep. Hopefully, that will keep enchantments reasonably limited in early and mid-game but also enable 'good spamming' in late game, where super-powerful magic was once intended to be intentionally 'unbalancing.'

This was added as an option very late in GalCiv2's development. Seems only reasonable to add it now for Elemental.

[quote]Both parents have essence, though neither is over 80.[/quote] So you waited to take a spouse until you'd imbued a champion and gotten him or her through a ludicrous number of battles? I'm not scoffing, I'm just curious about what happens when you seriously postpone starting your dynasty.

[quote who="Nick-Danger" reply="24" id="2760685"]Quoting sagittary, reply 22...As far as the original topic, I agree with ealinnara. Using escalating costs does not usually work very well. Once you get over the critical hurdle, the costs become meaningless... What if the 'cost' is from a fixed resource, one that doesn't increase, or one that increases more slowly than the cost increases? Then each city would cause a net decrease in the resource.[/quote] That's pretty muc

[quote who="Valthaeryn" reply="12" id="2760255"]A large part of the problem here is how the computer calculates point values for armies. ...[/quote] GalCiv2 has the same general problem, too much reliance on on a metric with questionable underlying math. But I have no idea how hard it might be to improve the functionality there. Maybe it's got giant game theory math problems behind it that demand too much dev headspace or too many resources on our PCs. Maybe both, maybe neither.

[quote who="adnurm" reply="7" id="2760157"]You can turn the grid on in options to better get a grip on this resource problem. Also since rescources are global you can make a tiny village just to get a rescource if you can't expand far enough. you don't have to build up every town to the max. I usually have a few max towns with smaller connecting towns.[/quote] I always play with the grid on; it's what the devs mean by a "tile" that I'm not exactly clear about. Is it one movement

[quote who="Twohawks" reply="3" id="2759132"]... added in with 1.07 if you click on resource then hover over not linked it will tell you how far away it is from the nearest city.. they need to be 5 tiles away.. unless you mean something else..[/quote] I'll keep an eye out for that oddball ScreenTip you mentioned, but this "5 tiles" thing is very vague, or at least not simply about squares on the map. Settlement growth is what seems to have done the job, although I wasn't paying close