Philocthetes

I sorta-kinda might be a 'Stay at Home Sov' player, and I don't at all like the idea of making essence some kind of steady-accrual resource. I don't even really like the idea of buildings that might generate essence, even very slowly. Maybe it's partly because I'm confused about how and when the sovereign-gets-XP-from-his/her-units thing went away. Mainly, it's because I want essence to be special , and the general direction of this thread seems to want it to be an Elemental analog to

The lion's share of my GC2 games have been 'tech turtler' things. I've never been a scoremonster, but I did learn that Demiansky is quite right that you can do very well loading up on civ tech bonuses and researching warfare instead of loading up on warfare bonuses and hoping to steal plenty of tech whilst pillaging. Re lwarmonger's "in the end" points, I'd like to see Elemental break the mold there but I couldn't even start being hopeful about it until we see a fuller version of the

[quote who="XeronX" reply="1" id="2620154"]I would personally support anything that helped differentiate Children from Champions[/quote] I'd prefer to see the dynasty system be the only difference between recruited champions and members of a royal lineage. Even the interesting idea of 'lineage spells' doesn't need to be limited to royal offspring, especially if the game manages to include illegitimate children of sovereigns as a source of recruitable champions. Put somewhat di

[quote who="lwarmonger" reply="14" id="2619574"]Well, from the looks of it food is going to be the limiting factor with city size, which is good. The question is whether or not city spam is going to be a problem. I mean, it could be that having lots of resource gathering villages making a few large cities possible is a very good thing. I think this is something we'll just have to play through to figure out.[/quote] My first read of Brad's OP gave me a big "Oh no, cit

[quote who="Tasunke" reply="8" id="2618896"]Yea ... definitely magical creation a la Mystical Factories or some such. ...[/quote] I'd prefer to see buildings left out of the equation, or at least limited to being optional bonuses to things like mana cost and casting time. Maybe I'm thinking of in-game creature creation vs. summoning as sort of like champion vs. regular units. Summoned creatures would come from the standard assets, and magic like the stuff that made the Fallen

It only makes sense that if powerful pre-Cataclysm sorcerers made the Fallen, a truly powerful post-Cataclysm sovereign should be able to do something similar. But I'd rather see it kept clearly as a form of creation, not summoning. Think Saruman making the Uruk-Hai vs. Gandalf calling his friend the King of Eagles to bum a ride.

[quote who="Publius of NV" reply="36" id="2618467"]... I assume that's a poor attempt at a joke. Many otherwise sensible people found much to admire in fascism, including Charles Lindbergh, Joseph Kennedy Sr, and H. G. Wells. I don't think it was the fashion sense. [/quote] Maybe you didn't like the joke, but humour is a matter of taste on the reader's side and for my part, it was an educated and acerbic quip. The aesthetic prowess of the Mussolini and Hitler reg

[quote who="TCores" reply="10" id="2618211"]... We need a way to distinguish between point fixes. It's hard for us to talk about a problem in 1Z4 if it's fixed in 1Z4.2 and we have no way of communicating about what "point release" we're in.[/quote] Agreed. The whole 1X thing seems worth leaving to big schedule sketches from devs. Better if each and every update had a unique version number on the splash screen and in the Impulse UI. The current build is either 0.32.1 o

[quote]My dad is a constitutional monarchist. I hate to say it, but honestly, I'm starting to see the wisdom in that.[/quote] Whether or not you choose to decorate a government with living antiques is a minor detail, but having hereditary positions of real public authority is not. What flavor of constitutional monarchist is your dad? And how would establishing a new monarchy help the US with our wretched excuse for a national campaign system? What we really need is changes to

Vizier is a fun word, but does imply a much broader portfolio than a Chancellor of the Exchequer. If there are governor roles for Empire nobles, some might factions might call them Viziers, others Satraps. I'm still liking Factor for the money specialist. One more Silly possibility for the Financier's street name: The Visible Hand.

[quote]Financiers = Thug [/quote] Thugs sound like underlings for Gildarherds/Factors/Whatevers. If I pretend to be a member of the Serious Party, I rather like Factor. It has a nice top note of productivity, but the finish is solidly flavored with the Latin root notion of a "made thing." [quote]Facilitator perhaps?[/quote] Maybe if there's a Notably Silly faction amongst the Empires. Or maybe a strong overall tendency to sarcasm amongst the Krax [e classic];)[/e]

I just did the rats quest and got no response when I got back to the inn, but I took two very small sidetracks (for goodies) after getting the quest and after killing the rats. I added maybe 5-6 turns duration between accepting the quest and returning to the inn. So I figured it was either that, or the fact that I hadn't even researched Adventuring yet and the flavor text there implies I shouldn't have been able to enter the inn without it.

I had a brief moment of 'normal' num pad navigation in both patched 0.32; didn't get to play much 'unpatched' 0.32, and never got the num pad diagonal moves to work for me. Basically the game still forces me to use the mouse for diagonal moves. Is this By Design?

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="20" id="2616129"]I like that. Guildsmen. I also like Magistrate or something too.[/quote] Guildsmen sounds like another one of those namby-pamby social systems the Kingdoms like, and Magistrate is entirely tangled up with notions of justice, or at least law. Something about the pig farms makes me think that a Financier ought to be called a Gildarherd. Or something else suitably contemptuous of economic exchange. After all, the only respectable wealt

[quote]After all, Mussolini, who invented fascism, called it "the perfection of socialism".[/quote] More like the perfection of modern propaganda. That line of bull is still working almost a century after those dictators fell. All because of a most unfortunate intersection of military power and fashion sense. Well, that and a global depression made worse for Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. Re the UK nationalist parties, I thought it kind of poetic that the UKIP had a lead

[quote who="John_Hughes" reply="28" id="2613547"]That would be all fine and dandy. But is only pertinent when you actually have an "Empire" to run. Not 1 or 2 Hamlets that "YOU" are struggling to grow, so they do turn into something actually viable. [/quote] This seems like it might be one of those scalability things that might end up being less than ideal for those of us who like maps at either extreme of the size range. In my dream world, the brilliant devs would solve the 'temporal

Restarting Impulse didn't help me last night, but a fresh instance this morning updated itself and then the game with no problems. Now I just need to get some time to play...

So what about "first past the post?" Think that it will remain intact until the next election, whenever that turns out to be? And if it gets changed, will y'all end up with a solid structural duopoly like we have in the US or a real multiparty system where coalitions are a normal part of governance? (I had no idea how caught in the middle the UK is until I started reading about this election. I hid from the comparative people in grad school because they were all freaking out over the

[quote who="John_Hughes" reply="7" id="2612888"]Anyone else having Impulse issues? Error (400) Bad request after 32% of download [/quote] Maybe an intermittent bandwidth thing? I've launched Impulse several times today and it wants to update itself but fails. I can even see the Elemental update available, but I when I try to install it, Impulse says it needs to update itself first.

Scraps I've seen indicate y'all are having heavy turnout, and the election places don't close until 2200. Do any of you Brits think that heavy turnout could yield different results than the latest opinion surveys predict. p.s. For the discerning nerds amongst us, there's a fun map toy at the Guardian .

[quote who="John_Hughes" reply="23" id="2611852"]Perhaps the term "Living World" has differing prospects for me and you... ...How do you see a "Living World" being detailed on the Cloth Map?[/quote] Yup, very different takes on the term it seems. Mine's not at all visual; it has to do with wanting game elements, including the non-built environment, to interact as organically as possible and be able to produce surprises long after I've lost track of the number of maps I've played. Basi

[quote]But I have to ask GW Swicord. Is it your intent to play the FINAL game at MAX zoom, with GIGANTIC models running about?[/quote] I won't know until we're closer to RTM, but I'm pretty sure that because I've loved the largest possible TBS maps since Civ I, I'm likely to spend most of my time out on the cloth map in Elemental unless the UI is rude enough to force me to do routine things other than tac-combat (and maybe dungeon exploring) at the 3D level. Even there, the 'netbook-f

[quote who="John_Hughes" reply="18" id="2611218"]... As noted above, it may be a tad early to worry about a "Living World" when all we have is a Cloth Map. It seems the Dev's are playing at least 3-4 builds ahead of us and maybe the world does already have some life, we just can't see it yet. [/quote] I could hardly disagree more. The 3D level is about eye candy for everyone and increasing the appeal for short-game, small-map players. For the rest of us, the world should most definite

I'd be delighted to see a surprise Lib Dem majority, but I'd settle for them being first in a coalition, preferably with Labour (I think there's more hope of them helping Labour get with the 21st). The main long-term thing I hope comes out of this is a shift to population-based, roughly equal-sized districts and the removal of voting rights for hereditary peers. For the short term, I hope y'all's elections help you keep your national mood in good enough shape to support your part of t

So I start reading the thread and think: [quote who="vieuxchat" reply="1" id="2610471"]Why not a real resource ? ...[/quote] I'm not exactly quibbling with you, but it seems to me that ckessel's basic unit-dependent approach would make diplomacy a much more 'real' resource than an abstracted point system. A points schema like you describe would be even more 'real' if it were connected to specific champion units and not just the faction's flag. Then I read ckessel's rep