Philocthetes

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="13" id="2310423"]...(remember, we're talking about a world before emergency c-sections here).[/quote] The really neat thing about history is that even though it's all already happened, there's always more to learn. I knew you were not quite right here, but I had no idea that the first recorded maternal survival of a c-section was in freakin' 1500 . Also, while I agree that gen

[quote]... send regualr backups ...[/quote] Isn't that a bit too Information Age a thing to consider for this game? Even if Elemental's mundane knowledge will include printing presses, it won't have anything like copy machines, much less computer networks. *Maybe* some magical analogs will be possible, but if they are even remotely 'normal,' that will be a big style flaw, IMO. Also, unless the dev goals have changed, most important research will be magical, not mundane, and th

[quote who="Wintersong" reply="11" id="2310386"]Why would any general allow his soldier women get pregnant while on duty? (duty as let's say they serve for some years and then they go to the reserve if the squad is disbanded)[/quote] Because he or she lacked a means of suppressing fertility among the troops? Surely you're not suggesting that any officer corps has had serious success in regulating the sexual behavior of their troops? Without medical or magical means of birth co

[quote]... Why do you guys think the benefits of a tech are available empire wide once a tech is completed? ...[/quote] Because social scientists are a terribly small part of the audience for Civ-form games? And maybe even more because the weakest part of modeling in these games is how time works? Faux-snarky talk aside, I generally agree with you about much of the balking about losing a research site seems a bit narrow-minded. In particular, I have almost zero sympathy for a

[quote]... over exposure of sun to naked wenches ...[/quote] I still kinda hope we can 'look up' in Elemental and see stuff in the game sky. You just made the Sun blush there. [quote]... sharp sword vs. bush is pretty one sided ...[/quote] Double-entendres aside, strong hedges can take decades to mature and when they are composed well as a barrier to animals, you'll need to do a lot of blade-sharpening on your way through them. That machete path-clearning stuff you see

It might be interesting to have a History of Medieval Weapons supplement for the game, but even though I 'like micro,' I'd be pretty annoyed at having to think about 300 different instances in just a single class of weapon. Maybe two years after I've been playing the base game in a few different modes, but out of the box? My eyes glaze over at the thought. I'll be more than entertained if we just get a modest step up from the weapon-defense complexity in GC2, say the ability to carry

[quote who="KellenDunk" reply="7" id="2307460"]I don't know about that Night's Edge. I really like the textbooks from the courses I've taken. getting an intro C++ book and going through it from start to finish seems like a good idea to me.[/quote] Good point. Different learning techniques work better for different people. Nights Edge favors web-aided direct experimentation, you had a good experience with a book, and other folks might do well with instructional videos or ev

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="19" id="2306296"]Awwww........ another thread derailed by sex............ I guess prudes are a dying breed......... although that was sort of inevitible.........[/quote] Dude, the real problem is that simple nudity isn't about sex, it's about comfort and/or practicality. But an idea like that is a 'scandal' to many in the US because we have a good does of Puritanism in our national history and our modern consumer culture depends on oversexualizing nearly e

[quote who="Denryu" reply="8" id="2306011"]I am for hedge walls as they allow for nude sunbathing of the wenches! [/quote] Let's not leave the willies to suffer trapped in prudish textiles when the ta-tas are free. Nekkidphobia is an equal-opportunity gender oppressor. About three hairs more 'seriously,' Denryu, if you're still occasionally thinking about amateur polling projects, the Watergate-less posts about nipplegate make me wonder how many of our younger cohort know how

MMO is a no-go for me, but the '87 Hero System was my favorite RPG ruleset ever (and I still have a copy of the original Champions rulebook somewhere). I hope the two main guys behind that are still getting something from the big corp that bought the rights.

[quote who="KellenDunk" reply="21" id="2305111"]Could you please explain the war on verbs? I can't really seem to find exactly what it is from that google search you linked.[/quote] Dang, the search phrase is an old idea for me, and I didn't look closely at what shows up on a fresh search--the first Google hit at the moment is for shit, IMO. But then the b*ogosphere is hardly very helpful yet for folks who at least half-like a good bibliography. The general 'war on verbs

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="5" id="2305051"] ... Books my parents get me for Christmas when they don't want to buy game consoles.[/quote] That's your parents trying to teach you, which is not at all a bad thing, but would pale in comparison to you taking charge of your own education. If the books they gave you piqued your interest but didn't teach you enough, why didn't you try to find better books?

[quote]Even the urban dictionary isn't of any use in deciphering that retort.[/quote] Pomo is outdated academic shorthand for postmodern (-ist, -ism), and hence closely associated with 'politically correct' prattle. A ho without the Santa context is usually a prostitute. I thought you'd enjoy the smutty, disingenous anti-intellectualism.

[quote who="psychoak" reply="16" id="2304895"]Objectifying people is bad though.[/quote] What, you're a pomo-ho now?

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="13" id="2304849"]Actually, I am surprised there isn't more talk about abolishing "whom". Even I (a relatively prescise speaker compared to a lot of other people) don't use it......[/quote] Gah! Who vs. whom is about a very simply distinction--subject vs. object. Who is typing this question? To whom is the preceding question addressed? Suggesting that we abolish "whom" sounds like some disgusting guerilla campaign in support of the larger <a href="h

[quote who="ChongLi" reply="24" id="2304805"]I like the idea of creating items, MoM style. I do not like the idea of creating spells. I've seen many instances of the former done right and executed extremely well. I have never seen the latter done so well. I think it really comes down to complexity. Items are simple, predictable and can be broken down into discrete categories based on use. Spells are far more complex, unpredictable and varied and atte

[quote who="kyogre12" reply="17" id="2304796"]... I was thinking more along the lines of turning your own walls into fire, kind of like "upgrading" them, making it easier to defend that city.[/quote] MoM had a Wall of Fire spell like that. I'd like to see a mana-based version in Elemental, but unless the spell was permanent without a mana upkeep cost, I'd object to seeing it cost essence.

kyogre, I want to thank you again for providing this service. I also want to thank the Elemental devs for not wasting their time thinking about Twitter very much, and to share a news link with other folks who are also beyond ready to see Twitter fritter away into the dustbin of old fads.

As this gawl-danged innernet ages, I'm getting pretty convinced that you're more likely to get fully remote work if you're a contractor (1099) than if you want to be an employee (W4). On the whole, folks who are at least adequate managers tend to need to share physical space with their subordinates. (It's a primate thing, I suspect.) Add the overhead that goes with a traditional FTE salary line, and it is little wonder that most employers want to be able to put their hand on your shou

[quote who="kyogre12" reply="15" id="2304650"]... Yeah, they would probably be overpowered. I've been trying to think of why you would ever loose your ring/helm/sword, but so far I've got nothing. It'd be hard to do it like it happens in LotR without you just being defeated. But this got me thinking, can you put essence into a building, period? Can you give a trebuchet the ability to fling magical rocks that explode on contact with their target, or turn a city wall into a wall of f

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="17" id="2304607"]... The "levels" I described in my list were more like rock layers than anything else: the path you mentioned would descned through the undead layer, though the bug layer, and into the dino layer, then climb back up to the dwarf layer before returning to undead.[/quote] I'd be OK with rock (decor) layers, but the level-to-critter mapping just seems too 'gamey,' and I really don't want to see dinosaurs cluttering up a high fantasy game.

I would really dislike an underworld that worked like a deck game stack of levels. If the base Elemental is to have an underworld, its layout and features need to be shaped by the Elemental back story, and any 'progress paths' should take full advantage of the 3D aspect of being underground, i.e. to get to Important Place A, you might need to take a path that goes to much lower depths, and then climbs and twists back up around Place A before finally descending back to its entry point.

[quote who="Paradoxnt" reply="9" id="2304151"]Well, I just hope any underworld isn't just as big as the above ground map. I don't mind underground city or mines, but when they have just as much explorable terrain as topside = silly.[/quote] I don't expect to see an analog to Myrror in the base game, but a good Myrror-like mod could be the first one I use regularly. Heck, I'd even be interested in an underworld mod that was larger than the surface map, like in <a href="http://en.

[quote who="Tridus" reply="7" id="2304240"]... One of the current leads on World of Warcraft has a Ph.D in Marine Science. You don't always need to be in computer science to do this stuff. [/quote] My first job was cleaning tapes in a mainframe data center back in the early '80s. For a season or two back then, I fancied becoming a CIS engineer, not least because the university where I worked had a big factory for those degrees and my high school wanted me to do something technic

[quote who="kyogre12" reply="9" id="2303750"]...This brings me to a question I have. How much can we "parallel" Lord of the Rings? Will we be able to infuse essence into our keep/tower/fortress/etc to make it nearly indestrucable? Can we infuse most/all of our channeler's essence into an object (ring, armor, magical boot etc) and use it to increase their power, but at the cost of if it is destroyed, we are destroyed, or another channeller can capture it and use it against us?