Philocthetes

[quote who="Tridus" reply="20" id="2317079"]I haven't seen anything about you choosing some other schools of magic during game creation. Did I miss something?[/quote] Apparently, Scoutdog's take is more or less his imagination (plus his distaste for making uncertainty clear when he types). My reading of the what's-a-channeler part of the July FAQ leaves me pretty convinced that there won't be anything like 'elemental affinity' in the game, unless it is possibly embedded in faction-cen

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="14" id="2316959"]I rather like the system we have now, which is why I want life and death considered non-elements: you choose life or death, but you also get to choose an actual element from one of the four. This works out to eight permutations, as opposed to the six you would get if life and death were treated just like the others.[/quote] Unless I missed a dev follow-up to the July FAQ, it sounds to me like your access to Earth, Air, Fire, and Water is b

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="18" id="2316546"]I still don't understand this. If you don't want to listen to people discuss how to beat the AI, then don't click on the page. More of something you completely ignore and don't have to even have to see coudn't possibly affect you're gaming experiance.[/quote] Just think about 'spoiler' reviews and you should get some sympathy for what I'm trying to type about. I don't presume that the Elemental boards will somehow be free of posts from zer

[quote who="Tridus" reply="12" id="2316460"]... Playing the game a lot leads to the same thing, because you learn what the AI does as you play against it. If you're not interested in it, you don't have to go around reading peoples how to beat the AI guides. I certainly didn't need to see the AoW 2 AI's code to be able to write up a guide on exactly how to beat it every time.[/quote] Well, I guess I should have said something like "lots more" of the kind of zero-sum maximize

[quote who="Darkodinplus" reply="8" id="2316481"]... I would point out GW that depending on feedback from the beta a life / death magic system similar to the other 4 elements isn't out of the question. The changes would be easily implemented considering the actual usage model for all the elements is exactly the same. The only thing that would need to be added is life & death shards and allowing the Channeler to pick a naturally regenerating type of mana from all 6 elements. Edi

[quote]... It's somewhat annoying in most 4x games that everyone you meet is a full on equal enemy or mere minor nuisance like a barbarian. There's not really much in between.[/quote] Indeed. And on this point, I'd very much like to encourage some of the newer folks to check out your old thread on Independent Kingdoms . We have a generously long public beta plan, and I definitely don't want to see a 'subtle' point like this lost in the noise about art decisions or

[quote who="Tridus" reply="20" id="2316454"]... AoW:SM can. I found stuff made in the map editor to be better for the most part then the random maps, though.[/quote] Man, I really miss the days when Games Domain was really By Gamers, For Gamers. Even the current wikipedia page doesn't make it clear that Age of Wonders eventually attempted to do sandbox maps. And even though I have no real idea what you really like in a TBS game, your preference for the map editor over the random

The Lost Room is avaialble via Netflix. I liked it a great deal, and I'm mostly glad no one tried to make it an extended series because then it would almost certainly have ended up suffering some or all of the weaknesses of Warehouse 13. I've more or less seen the 13 pilot (in pieces on several different days) and caught at least large chunks of the episodes so far. I think I half-agree with Scoutdog's dad, except that I don't specifically need a villain like C.B.G. Spender to fill th

[quote]... The way I look at it, life magic is derived from things living, growing, and being happy. Death magic is derived from (for lack of a better term) suffering: the more miserable and brutal the ecology gets, the more ambient death magic there is. ... [/quote] That sort of take is exactly why I've been longing so long for an Integrated Metaphysics dev journal. I suspect (and don't entirely like) that what you describe here is how Life and Death magic will work in the shipped ga

[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="15" id="2316343"]... Not to disparage Landi or his contributions (after all, he's one of the biggest contributor to these forums), but I agree with Scoutdog and Tridus here. He has on many occasions said things like "It doesn't look like we're going to have multiple plains. I can't imagine why, considering they were one of the fundamental features of MoM." ...[/quote] I wasn't praising his Myrror obssession even though I'd kind of hoped for some other-

[quote who="sciborg2" reply="1" id="2316164"]Will the AI code be public knowledge then?[/quote] Gawds above, below, and sideways, I surely hope not. Modding is interesting and all, but having the AI code out in public would inevitably lead to a bunch of tedious best-strat nonsense that could swiftly drain the life from the game for those of us who could care less about multiplayer and don't even think of 'winning' very often when we're off in the singleplayer sandbox.

[quote]... I doubt anyone has come out and said it that brazenly, though I recall a post along the lines of "We need Myrror like MoM!"...[/quote] That's more than a few posts from landisaurus and more than a few sympathetic replies from other MoM lovers. And it's another good example of how "Elemental must be like MoM" talk is a red herring. landi is very involved in discussions about *lots* of ideas that MoM didn't (and couldn't have) included. It is not MoM's fault that it i

[quote]aside from much-needed i-told-you-so ammo against GWSwicord[/quote] Your tenacity on this point makes me suspect that my earlier carrying-on was at least partially plausible to you and you're perhaps having a bit of a denial problem. I don't recall anyone "demanding" five elements, and as both Winter and you note, you seem to be the only aggressive "four-elementer." Really, why the heat? That silliness aside, I believe that the way things are named is as import

[quote who="Darkodinplus" reply="13" id="2315728"]... Six technically. I would assume that the life rune is the symbol in question colored gold while the death rune is the symbol in question colored black. There isn't a standing definitive answer one way or the other but that is my current stance considering the information available. ...[/quote] Have you seen the Black Rune done in gold somewhere? There's already a gold rune in 'the five' as seen on the draft box art and the forum gr

[quote]And, reciprocally, if there is an idea that someone likes, they should come up with a better reason than "It was in MoM" for why it should be considered. ...[/quote] You're missing Denryu's main point. The "It was in MoM so it ought to be in Elemental" stuff is a red herring. I've mentioned MoM regularly and am one of those GC2 folks who waited a long while for the project formerly known as NotMoM to get its street name. But I never praised an idea or function simply because it

[quote who="Darkodinplus" reply="9" id="2315566"]Interesting details provided here. I do wonder however was there any particular reason why life and death magic doesn't opperate like the other types of magic? Having life and death shards could have been very interesting for game-play and magic.[/quote] I have similar concerns, mostly because I had expected (hoped for) an alignment system that overlaid some sort of 'integrated metaphysics.' Prior to Brad's recent posts that make life a

[quote who="Wintersong" reply="15" id="2315234"]Life/Death element doesn't use shards per se so if you were to be able to start with a different element, then you wouldn't have access to that type of mana/magic unless that part is added too. Altogh we know now why there hasn't been any life/death medallion, I wonder which is the (current) lore reason for it.[/quote] My primary interest is how the game lore will affect un-modded sandbox play. I'm a little disappointed to see what strik

[quote who="Darkodinplus" reply="5" id="2315217"]He is talking about this but I would point out Capnwinky that data is pretty old and subject to change.[/quote] I've mentioned that old 'req' line many times and not noticed a dev reponse to it. My guess (hope?) remains that it is about the MP side of the game, not the real sandbox singleplayer mode. Dealing with even 8 other human players sounds like a hassle to me, but playing a Ludicrous-size map with only 8 factions on it does indee

[quote who="Wintersong" reply="5" id="2312742"]The world needs exactly 0 feminists. Exactly the same amount than needed chauvinistics (I think thats the proper word, sorry if it isn't, just think the opposite of feminism). Where is equalitarism when you need it?[/quote] Decent enough long-range goal, but we might need a much larger number of feminists than are currently fighting the good fight to thoroughly stamp out male chauvinism (the misogynist form is just a subset of that fancy

[quote who="Denryu" reply="23" id="2312185"]...I don't like the idea of champions out fighting the world and also mysteriously contributing to research at the same time (unless it were by discovering scrolls, collecting reagents, or finding focus items).[/quote] Yes and no. If a particular champion has 'spell scholar' as a trait of some sort, he or she should be able to assume a research production role (be assigned to non-combat duty) regardless of location. If the location is a magi

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="25" id="2311873"]... Most fantasy games include these popluar fantasy creatures because the customers already know their traits and abilities. There's no need to spend time writing a description and history for the customer to learn the unit... aka 'vampire' will drain life blood, is undead and holy attacks hurt. Why create a new unit called the Kabalkoz write a huge history and then add its description which does the same thing, when t

I'd be interested in a bit of quoting and replying here, but something (probably pasted text w/ background 'HTML' tags) seems to have broken the thread in FF 3.5.

[quote]Well, it generally applies to ethically-limited techs like necromancy, holiness, and slave labor...[/quote] I think I get you know. I read "tech" to be about mundane things, not magic, and so far I haven't been expecting any "social tech" like GC2's Xeno Ethics to be in the game at all. Early on, it sounded like the devs planned to keep mundane knowledge fairly simple in comparison to the magic system. I'm still hoping to see something like that. The game will lose cons

[quote]... That is, techs that if you research one, the other becomes unavailable.[/quote] That totally furrows my brow, but I'm not sure whether I that's a good thing or a bad thing. Can you give a couple of examples of how that might work in a game or might have described a moment in the real history of technology? I can easily imagine something like that in a magic system, but for mundane knowledge, I'm stumped.

[quote who="Wintersong" reply="3" id="2310851"]If we see pregnancy (not in a mod) I would be really surprised. Conditions that affect population growth (be whatever they are) would be normal. ...[/quote] I can't imagine pregnancy being a fun variable for regular unit combat mechanics, but it seems like a potentially interesting factor for some Life magic, especially for a channeler with a Life focus (if we'll be able to focus on an element). After all, the Lore scraps so far indicate