Philocthetes

Shortly before we had our hands on beta builds, I wrote a chunk on my hopes for essence and the thread was pretty lively for a few days. Some of the things in my OP & the replies are clearly moot at this point, but newer folks interested in the subject might enjoy the 'historical' perspective. My new biggest hope for essence is that it NOT be a factor for some sort of mana pool cap. Details of spells & other 'investments' a

[quote who="TCores" reply="5" id="2629666"]I wrote a detailed personal experience in city build for 0.295 and I'll write one for beta 2. ...[/quote] Another one I missed in the swarms that would have been easy to spot if we had an AAR topic for this forum.

[quote]I congratulate myself for being the first entity writing (and posting) (some kind of) an AAR for this game.[/quote] I'll take that as an example of why adding the AAR area now is a good idea. I'd have read whatever you wrote by now if it wasn't buried in the main threads somewhere.

I know this might seem like a post-RTM thing, but I'm sure I'm not the only tester who's not getting enough time with the builds and I would really like to see some reporting from the folks who are managing to get several hundred turns (or more?) into a game. Especially now that Beta 2 is going to be 'more complete' than had originally been planned. I'm not calling for the creative writing mode of AAR during the beta, just the themed summary stuff like "How My Dynasty Grew" or "How I

[quote who="Raven X" reply="60" id="2628647"]Essence definitely needs a re-tooling. Things should cost less Essence and there should be more ways then just leveling up to gain Essence. Fully agree. ...[/quote] Given that we barely have ways to use essence at all right now, it seems odd to say "definitely needs a re-tooling." I don't have any sense that essence costs need reduction because I don't even know if the latest build lets you do anything with it other than found cities. (I've

Nick, thanks very much for that reference to Ultima Online dev talk. Demiansky's response remark about 'too many players' being the problem has made me realize that MMO might not be a never-ever genre for me, I just have to wait to try it until computing resources are cheap enough that outrageously detailed background processes can easily and significantly outnumber players. [quote]... I think my original post about living worlds might be misconstrued a bit. From the start

[quote]Hmm... I'm no expert on Random House and I'm curious what it did to cause you to hate it...[/quote] Basically they won the gobble-up-the-little-guys game in English publishing and sold themselves to the even more deplorable Bertelsmann. Concentration of ownership in media production and distribution has been a worry of mine since the late mid-'80s. It is making mass media of all kinds more about brands and target markets and less about, well, art.

[quote who="Myles" reply="105" id="2626335"]The problem is that this is a Civ type game, and that's where the focus must lie. I'm all in favor of including things that make the world feel alive, but not at a higher priority then other parts of the actual game. And the fact is, a lot of these ideas have been completely unfeasible for Elemental, and yes, belong in a simulation. [/quote] The way you and others have been using the term "simulation" is a matter of degree and not kind. Civ

I'm also still a bit put off by the fuzzy 'lore' overlaps with GalCiv, but I don't think that's a negotiable item at this point and I'm mostly just happy to see Stardock starting to pay more serious attention to the text/narrative parts of their games. I more or less hate Random House for a host of political and aesthetic reasons, but I very much hope that their evil empirelet helps Brad earn so much cheese that he ends up starting the Elemental 2 effort with an Integrated Metaphysics dev jou

[quote]... Really, it's that sometimes I feel that it'd be better if we chose members of congress by drawing lots. I'm only half-joking about the lots.[/quote] If I remember rightly, the classical Athenians used a lottery to select people for administrative duty (citizens had to volunteer to be in the lottery). Back in the '70s, some clever comic book writer took that notion and ran with it as a way to get Matter-Eater Lad off the active duty roster of the Legion of Superhe

[quote]Is there an actual game called SimFantasy?[/quote] It's a snarky word someone around here made up to pick on us folks who want some sort of ongoing activity outside the doings of the human player and the computer players. It's fairly good rhetoric; makes me feel almost tainted by my love of the early, pre-EA work from Will Wright's shop, Maxis. But not enough to make me leave the 'living world' crowd.

[quote who="HuaynaCapac" reply="61" id="2621660"]... If anyone's played MOO2 they'd work like governors, just instead of assigning governors to star systems you'd assign an ambassador to a faction. They'd then rest in the capitol city/palace and travel to the other faction's capitol city/palace whenever you request an audience. High rank or importance can simply be translated into a bonus. The impact of who you send would be some function of faction relation level [shown on th

[quote]i have to say i find american politics baffling.[/quote] I have a fancy MA in gov't with a specialty in US national and I still find many things baffling. Democratic stuff is very messy to start with, and because we are a democratic republic (limited democracy, checks and balances), it is even weirder. Folks used to the comparatively logical public bureaucracies of places like France and Britain can get serious headspins when they learn that our national bureaucracy is more or

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="18" id="2624776"]... Why did the trolls leave their lands? I don't think having an apparent motivation (even in an RPG) is any sort of basic requirement for a "living" world. I also don't agree that the world shouldn't focus on the player. The player is the star of the show. The objective is to make a strategy game that feels like it's playing in an RPG world. An RPG world does not mean SimFantasy. [/quote] You are s

[quote who="Campaigner" reply="189" id="2624368"]Factor...? lol? Never heard the word before. Gotta be a word that sounds evil.[/quote] The problem is that your parameter is an eye-of-the-beholder problem. Susarian suggested Factors way back on page 1 of this thread. [quote]... Factors [from our friends in Medici Bank (1397–1494)] [/quote] The Medici reference alone made that a fun idea for me, and putting it together with the roots of th

The 'above the fray' thing sounds nice, but to a lapsed anarchist who used to teach US civics, it is impossible to swallow the idea of any hereditary positions in government, even mostly ceremonial ones. loukeeya's remark about Charles points directly at the problem. No one gets a say in who sits on the throne, so it is a dice roll with results that can last decades. I don't know the stories of many British monarchs, but I'm pretty sure one reason that Elizabeth is so beloved is that she has

Coin-monger is my favorite in this new crop. The European Parliament has Quaestors who are just finance bureaucrats, and the classical Roman ones weren't consistently associated with brutal exploitation. I still like Factor quite a bit.

[quote]... I feel it is slowly moving to the extent that having a facebook or twitter account is almost a compulsory must. I don't know if I feel comfortable about that. ...[/quote] Darvin3's might be right about the general public, but I have a couple of colleagues in IT-land who've started Facebook accounts because they felt a need to show that they are keeping up with the times. And on the global paranoia theme, I've read several stories in the past year or so about the ris

[quote who="Tormy-" reply="22" id="2624132"]... What? I really liked the new Star Trek movie! [/quote] Fneh. I've watched the entire Trek franchise since the first round of re-runs for the original and there have been many weak episodes and films over the decades. Abram's flick is by far the worst effort to actually hit market under the brand. It's an unbelievable train wreck of interesting casting and good fan-boy jokes with utterly, completely, almost supern

[quote who="MagicwillNZ" reply="43" id="2621349"]... Well, you know, I'm hardly an expert in the subject, but the queen does have quite a few reserve powers. ...[/quote] I did some casual poking around and learned that the British monarch does indeed have a bit of a functional role, but mostly limited to things like refusing to dissolve Parliament when asked by a PM or appointing an outgoing PM's chosen successor to office without going through a general or party election. Best I can

[quote]why is there no full MoM conversion project[/quote] I'd probably prefer buying MoM again from Gog.com to playing a 'strict' MoM conversion mod. But a volunteer effort to make a MoM2 with Elemental's engine could be the thing that finally gets me seriously interested in modding as both a player and a contributor. The Guardian Spirits are one of the things I've been missing regularly since the beta started. I still think that controlling a shard in base Elemental should r

[quote who="Stmorpheus" reply="3" id="2620847"]Secret gate - this spell would put a secret gate in a mountain range that only the player who cast the spell could see. this would create a permanent passage through the mountain. if there is a detect magic spell in the game, it could be used to detect the passage. then if the enemy player so chooses they could cast the spell that lowers the mountains and destroy any helpless units that are inside.[/quote] Now that's

[quote who="psychoak" reply="8" id="2621220"]I'd still much prefer just adding the hero unit into a regiment. More important people is terribly subjective. If I can do it, and I want to guard an envoy with a thousand people, let me make the stupid choice?[/quote] Indeed. This 'stupid choice' thing also fits better with the build-complexity-with-simple-parts thing Brad mentioned in a hat-tip to some other serious TBS designer whose name deserves to go into decline on accoun

[quote who="Stmorpheus" reply="15" id="2621056"]i think the main problem i have with the current system is that you can ONLY get essence from leveling up, and you can only level up if you fight stuff. ...[/quote] Exactly. That's why I want someone who saw it happen explain to me where the 'old plan' of sovs sharing unit XP gains went. Or maybe the devs just need to step in promptly and say what we are seeing here is part of the game being 'crippled' for Beta 1 and that by Beta 2

[quote]... I think he believes in a central figurehead with a lot of conditional and emergency powers but also with a lot of incentive to not use them. ...[/quote] I never took a proper Brit-US comparison course, but I thought that the UK royals had been stripped of all real government powers (other than their wealth). Is there something in the unwritten British constitution that would have let Elizabeth II tell Mr. Cameron, "Thanks, but no thanks. I have this cousin who would do a mu