Philocthetes

[quote who="Scorpiana" reply="17" id="2332819"]... I seem to remember seeing something like this in one of the Dev Journals, I have been looking for it, but can't seem to find anything. So maybe I (and Pigeon) are wrong or read more into something Frogboy said than what was ment... Or maybe I'm just not that good in finding things again...[/quote] I don't remember any "crowning jewel" talk from anyone until now, but I remain convinced that the essence plus mana approach to a magic sys

[quote who="landisaurus" reply="203" id="2332760"]... Like a hot-dog down a hallway[/quote] [quote who="Aesir Rising" reply="204" id="2332792"]I don't know what that means.[/quote] landi started drinking rather early?

[quote who="Wintersong" reply="37" id="2328757"]... *sigh* *writes an answer**deletes it* Bah, forget about it. [/quote] It's kinda hard to forget about it when you leave a grumble like this. Any chance you're feeling up to helping me understand what I'm 'getting wrong?'

[quote who="Jalicos" reply="34" id="2332226"]... I interpreted Brad's statement a little differently from how everyone else seems to have interpreted it. I don't think he means that your sandbox game will have a storyline, I think he means the things in your sandbox game will have a story. ...[/quote] I'm not "everyone else" either. I was trying to get at 'the same point' when I typed about plotlines vs. story elements and lore as something like text decoration for toys in the sandbox

[quote who="Noctilucus" reply="61" id="2332452"]... I've seen this point come up very early during the Elemental discussions but for the life of me I can't remember whether this was the developers' point of view or just a forum poster. In any case, I'd love to see a slightly more realistic map that's not packed corner-to-corner with buildings and units. The "independent powers" bit is also interesting, imagine having to negotiate a right of way with local barbarians before you can

[quote who="Aesir Rising" reply="24" id="2331892"]... 1) You are a careful, serious writer. 2) You are from the U.K. Or some other part of the world that thinks English is properly spoken by the English.[/quote] /sheepish grin/ I earn my living trying to write and edit boring marketing and technical prose and I had a brief career as an academic, so I have some weird language twitches even when I'm typing for fun. But I'm a native Floridian, not a Brit (al

[quote who="endofdayz" reply="28" id="2331822"]... Lore is fine, even advantageous, but only when its actually lore, ie from the past. As soon as the game is set up to ram you down a specific path because the story calls for it, alot of us will lose interest.[/quote] It seems like there's a lot of noise in this thread derived from confused and conflicting vocabulary, and probably also by some assumptions that might be more common to those of us who've played GalCiv2 vs. those who hav

[quote who="Aesir Rising" reply="22" id="2331600"]I woudn't worry about the spelling. ...[/quote] Wasn't a worry. Just thought your comment with shudder quotes was an implied question.

[quote who="Pnakotus" reply="23" id="2331411"]... The quote you bold is what concerns me - being full of a preset story somehow makes each game more unique? That seems like a contradiction.[/quote] I suspect your problem is that you aren't making a distinction between a plotline and story elements. In this context, plotline is the course of a given game and story elements are the pieces you encounter along that course. The big mess-o-lore is simply a source for text decoration,

Nesrie, I'd like to apologize if I gave the impression I was hassling you for not being a fan-entity. I used to teach US civics and have been a regular poster at GC2 for years. Disagreements are essential for both democratic government and an interesting game forum. I expect I'll be as irrationally fond of Elemental as I am of GC2. But over there I've typed more than a few criticisms while still playing that game for longer than I've played any other TBS. /attempts to get back 'on top

[quote who="Aesir Rising" reply="20" id="2331306"]... I remember a "Geas" spell from D&D. ...[/quote] I was thinking about that old spell also; the alternative spelling I picked up when I was digging around the nets and found what is probably the mythological source that Gygax & crew drew from, and the spelling there is geis .

[quote who="Nesrie" reply="22" id="2330905"]... Also, is there a special reason why you are being so rude to people who have committed the crime of just disagreeing with you?[/quote] I've read Bingjack post at GC2 for a couple of years (more?). He can get feisty, but on the net-rudeness meter, he's way, way low ranking. Hortz, on the other hand, is a new persona to me, and most everything it has had to say about Elemental has been at best unconstructively feisty and often quite rude.

[quote who="Bingjack" reply="10" id="2330705"]... If you told this game's base you were going to double the budget of the game, to put that money into paying some third party studio to do a high end CG cinematic, and not into developing the game and making it even deeper, they would be livid. ...[/quote] I don't have Stardock's customer profile database at hand, but I'm pretty sure Bingjack's right here. That 'base,' at least for GC2, even includes a faction who pretty much neve

I have a very hard time believing that Stardock are planning to 'cripple' the Elemental sandbox in the name of story. My impression (hope?) is that one of the major advances that Elemental will make over GalCiv2 is that the sandbox will indeed have interesting, flexible, and highly replayable story-based components. There's a big difference between building a 'maze/puzzle' version of a TBS and building a sandbox that includes back story in how things like major geographic features, ch

Screen caps really do get the best attention. I looked at them all before I read anything. Then I started reading and wondered whether Brad might finish the fragment, "Shortly after, we will." Go on a two-week bender? Hire a full-time massage therapist for Stardock? Learn to cook Thai food? The possibilities are endless...

[quote who="WIllythemailboy" reply="70" id="2329992"]From what we know so far, you need to defeat an opponent's summoner to truly beat them - and I just don't see any way to beat an enormously powerful wizard through spy tricks. Weaken his civilization to erode the support it gives him, or force him to expend essence to hold it together after you sow discord, yes those I see likely. What I don't see is a sudden "oh, you got one of sauron's agents promoted to be Gandalf's personal secretary, s

[quote who="Aesir Rising" reply="8" id="2326585"]Undead armies are a dying breed. If you want ultimate evil represented in your game world, ensure you cast your vote for spells that turn units of your enemy to do your own bidding.[/quote] Something like an Imperius Curse seems pretty hard for a TBS game on account of it being such an open effect, limited only by what the caster can order the victim to do. But maybe Elemental could include a geis spell that allowed the c

[quote who="Denryu" reply="63" id="2329894"]... I don't remember that heroes needed to have essence imbued in them in order to be heroes. Link? ...[/quote] The best single chunk I remember is in Brad's July FAQ OP , which includes the sentence, "The channeler might choose to imbue a hero with 5 essence points to make him into a channeler." For me, the surrounding context leaves me thinking , but not at all certain, that recr

On the reaching-the-devs point, I guess you're a bit new to the Stardock game group. They definitely follow the forums and they definitely respond to player feedback. The changes to espionage through the two GC2 expansions are a fine example. (And on an editorial note, I suspect that your chances of getting an idea into a busy dev's head tend to be inversely proportional to the length of your post about the idea.) And back 'on topic,' I'm still struggling to figure out your take. To m

Scoutdog, I suspect you have an exaggerated idea of how difficult it will be to accrue a respectable 'stable' of champions while also controlling a decent chunk of territory. (Plus, I don't actually expect to see 'going Gandalf' as a viable option even though I coined the phrase; playing without founding communities is a pretty wacky notion for a TBS game, and the devs probably would already had to have it in mind for the engine design to make such a thing 'balanced.') I also don't ge

I've never been a hardcore wargame guy, but how's this for a twist: instead of leadership just providing flat combat bonuses to troops, put the troop skill levels in that math. Green troops under an expert commander can only gain so much from that commander's leadership skill, but elite troops can better understand and apply the skilled leader's orders. (Yes, I'm ducking the 'logistics' side of the question; those old threads Kuloth linked kinda hurt my brain.)

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="10" id="2329123"]... I was not pasting from any collection of notes... I listed specific ideas I remember being interesting from the many TBS games I've played during the years. While I don't expect to see each of them used in multiple ways I would hope the list of suggestions are traits to appear inside the Elemental game which gamers can then assign to creatures they create. ... [/quote] Heh. I don't have the kind of memor

[quote who="SavageBananaMan34" reply="57" id="2329115"]... Each spy should be specialized, unique, and very valuable. This is an espionage system I'm sure anyone can get behind. It's not overly intrusive and any empire can choose to all but ignore it and still be effective. [/quote] I doubt everyone will get behind any one thing, but I can hazily imagine some satisying espionage compromises based on special abilities for champions. It would do away with any need for a Spymaster's

[quote who="Jonny5446" reply="194" id="2328759"]Get out of my cave travitar! ..... [/quote] [e classic]:lol:[/e]

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="7" id="2328612"]... All of what I've listed can appear as natural abilities without using magic for summoned units.[/quote] Come on dude, the list above actually has "magical" in it, and I can't parse this last bit to save my life. Are you sure you weren't just pasting from some copious collection of notes on game coding and modding? p.s. Knockback was awesome fun in Champions, no idea how resource-intensive it would be for a modern TBS. I'd on