Philocthetes

Oh, the horror. Reading and writing were in bad enough shape before people started twitting from the floor of Congress. And yes, I know they want me to use a different verb. That's because they're properly embarassed about the whole thing despite hoping they can make piles of money from it. Twits.

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="13" id="2260719"]He just needs some clones of himself made.[/quote] No need to get into all that wetware. A fully interactive soft copy should be able to cover coding stuff and forum participation.

[quote who="Solam" reply="15" id="2260909"]talking about music. I hope we will be able tyo put our own soundtrack in the game. Meaning listening to my music while I play. Music is all good and fine but when you've been playing the game for years it,s fun to have access to your own music.[/quote] Care to elaborate a bit on this? I've played GC2 for years with the game music turned off and my own playlists running in (ahem, grumble-grumble) iTunes. Personally, I'd say we need th

[quote who="Denryu" reply="6" id="2261112"]I'm the same - I want a variety of outlooks in order that we have a game that is widely popular. ...[/quote] I'd actually prefer that the game be a good financial success for Stardock and not necessarily that widely popular, at least if you're talking about sales on the order of Starcraft or Spore. I'm a small-d democrat when it comes to real politics, but for 'culture' stuff, I'm some sort of elitist, if you can count a fan of the <a href="h

[quote who="Demiansky" reply="10" id="2260623"]...A channeler's hero finds an ancient tomb in a dungeon and is driven mad by it. ...[/quote] I like this as an idea in its own right--could spawn follow-up quests, create a new independent power, or both. Back on topic, I wouldn't mind seeing a whole set of Moon spells, both destructive and constructive. Seems like they should last for just a month, though. (Not that I expect to be entirely happy with however the calen

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="20" id="2261024"]Makes sense. Another reason for SOME sort of essence-recouping system.[/quote] I got pushed back on pretty hard about any "essence-recouping" in my half-rant essence thread. I'm still interested in the notion of at least *some* ways to 'divest' from an existing essence investment, probably because I'm still hung up on the idea of a meaningful connection between a channeler and imbued lands and champions. However, I think the more c

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="16" id="2260822"]That, and scrolls of knowledge you can find in dungeons or get through quests..... maybe the simple act of moving your channeler out of the city and doing things with him could increase his research abilities: after all, he's out there collecting knowledge and experiance about the world.[/quote] Perzactly. I really want to see how big a part of the game quests are (I'm guessing it will be a variable in map setup). Becoming a master explore

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="18" id="2260718"]Well, I suppose god vs. god is a bit of an exception, sort of an infinity minus infinity type situation. As I said, it depends on where you draw the line between god and demigod.[/quote] Well, I still think you're not getting the fact that omnipotence is a monotheism thing. And in mythological discussions, a demi-god has a pretty stable definition: the offspring of a god and a mortal,

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="5" id="2259731"]I like. However, I have to disagree with Psychoak on his assertion that research centres should not eclipse the channeler's power. Instead, I fell that they should become the main source of spell income for Sauron people, BUT spell research ability should increase with the amount of essence you have stored: learning the intuitive ways of magic and all that. This will, in my opinion, balance out the Gandalfs and the Saurons better than ineffective i

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="13" id="2260461"]Depends on your definition of "god". Channelers are powerful, but they have limitations. I see a god as being totally omnipotent.[/quote] That really only applies in monothesitic models. Most pantheons tend to have an alpha deity, but they are not omnipotent. Take Zeus as an example--he's king of Olympus, but he can't do something like dry up the River Styx. Heck, he couldn't even count on keeping his lovers safe from his wife's anger.

I've tried very hard to quit being a postmodernist, but... Denny Crane .

[quote who="psychoak" reply="12" id="2259856"]... ursicidal.[/quote] Take your karma like the bitch you are, straight boy.

[quote who="Paradoxnt" reply="19" id="2259743"]Hmmm, no speed differences between units on the strategic map??? That seems rather odd! Too bad, a 'unit speed/% chance of success fleeing combat' would have been a good concept to implement.[/quote] I'm guessing you've not played much GC2. Ship speed (engine tech) is very important on the strategic map. But when ships actually engage in combat, their 'speed' is equal, or non-existant, or something. It's not a huge complai

[quote who="Denryu" reply="5" id="2259467"]... Oh, you meant in the game... Not a bad idea, actually a great idea. He can achieve what he wants by being a complete ass whenever the diplomacy window pops up, I realize that might be a stretch for him, but I think he can do it![/quote] I can vaguely remember at least one TBS game where I could choose a 'tone' in the diplo messaging interface. If Elemental only manages to add one major improvement to GC2 diplo functions, I'

We know the game will have spells, but we're within a fortnight or less of the non-NDA alpha we still know just about nothing about how channelers will learn new spells. So the time for pie-in-the-sky ideas, heckling, etc., is dwindling. With that in mind, I think that the Five Elements need to be partnered with Five Ways to Learn Your Spells: Inherent research ability for channeler and some champions Bonuses and/or direct production from infrastructure <l

[quote who="KellenDunk" reply="17" id="2259461"]It did? I never noticed, perhaps my unis were always faster.. I started using the retreat option to scope out how man defenders were really in unowned nodes....[/quote] I vaguely remember scouting nodes like that, but I'm also about half-sure that most of the scary node guardians were not that fast. Whatever the MoM facts are, the chat does make me think that if there's no speed-type stat for Elemental units, any retreat function

[quote who="StoweMobile" reply="20" id="2258385"]I don't mean to beat a dead hourse, but for hording essence to be a fesible strategy in the game, there will have to be a way for smaller nations to remain competitive in technology + spell research. Other wise Domination will be the main form of play almost every game...[/quote] That's why I'm increasingly fond of the idea of making at least magical research more unit-centered (channeler and champions as producers) than building-center

[quote]I don't see anything wrong with this thread. Neither in Safari nor in Firefox.[/quote] A mod (or Climber) must have fixed it. It was definitely broken for a while, probably some tag-trash that came along with a paste from Word (I've seen that called out as the cause in some similarly broken threads). Word doesn't play all that well with itself these days, much less with others. Not surprised to see it getting wonky with TinyDJ or whatever the 3rd-party input box for the

[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="17" id="2257944"]... I somehow doubt that the alpha will focus on multiplayer basics (considering multiplayer is more of a sideline - not something done in an alpha) or combat mechanics (cloth map only -> probably no tactical combat). I think the alpha will focus on general kingdom/channeler management and that kind of stuff. The stuff that really needs to be in before they can really start adding the other features.[/quote] I'm perfectly ready to a

[quote who="KellenDunk" reply="5" id="2257216"]although one turn a day might be a little light...[/quote] In the early game, sure. But by late game on an Immense or Ludicrous map, a single turn could take an hour or more to work through. If everyone in the game lived alone, worked from home, and didn't go out for fun much, then maybe a couple of late-game turns a day could work. But it sounds about as hard as getting a crew of 'real grownups' together for a tabletop RPG--i.e. very har

[quote who="Tridus" reply="10" id="2256424"]... Well, if the only thing essence is used for is imbues, doesn't that kind of remove the idea of a strong combat channeler woh keeps that essence to use in combat? Or would just *having* essence boost your combat magic, even if it doesn't consume it?[/quote] The latter's closer to how I'm imagining essence the moment--essence as a sort of stat that determines how much mana you can channel at once and maybe also affects your physical combat

[quote who="Ron Lugge" reply="8" id="2256311"]... Again, bingo. If we don't control when important strategic resources (essence) is used, the player is goign to be very, veyr angry. And with good reason -- win or loose.[/quote] Auto-resolve questions aside, I think it might be a good idea to limit essence-using spells to the main map and have only mana used in tactical combat. (Of course that would be a moot point if essence use is limited entirely to imbueing places, peop

"Thread necromancy" is eye-of-the-beholder slang. Calling it on yourself seems weird, but bumping an interesting post that you think deserves renewed attetion seems perfectly reasonable to me. I ignored this one the first time around because we had no real info on how magic was going to work. We've had about three saltine's worth of an info snack in the meantime, so I still have no direct response to the OP. Except maybe that I'm guessing now that spell books will be faction-centered

[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="3" id="2255663"]Some people will always want to skip it. And I love tactical combat, but sometimes I want to skip it, too. But I think treating tactical and auto-combat as two different games is a good idea. In fact I'd say it's a really bad idea.[/quote] There's some kind of typo in the one or both of the last two sentences here. I'm guessing that you mean "Treating tactical and auto-combat as two different games is a really bad idea." But I wouldn't

[quote who="nrkitchen" reply="18" id="2255282"]I read that if you pre order elemental you can get a playable beta version any truth to that?[/quote] People who pre-order will be able to download the public betas. The public beta process will begin well before the game is in a street-ready state. It's an effort to get volunteer informal testers, not a form of pre-release demo.