Philocthetes

My biggest problems with the 'good vs. evil' stuff flow from the fact that the game metaphysics shrank during development, rather than growing to become a functional and fun part of the game. Because the magic system is as flavorless as prison food, there's no meaningful, engaging difference between the two sides of the Life/Death element--except perhaps for the hardcore competitive types. The Life/Death element has ended up like Pluto, demoted from one of 5 (or 6) Elements to a word

[quote who="Zubaz" reply="58" id="2894903"]I don't understand why this is going before a caucus for review. ... The feds should have better things to do, shouldn't they?[/quote] That depends on whether the hearings are aimed at some long-term policy work on privacy in the digital age or just more smoke and mirrors intended to get broadcast time by jumping on a 'popular sore spot.' I suspect the latter is the case, but I'd be very pleased and impressed if it were the former.

[quote]... I've given Derek the okay to expand the development time on Fallen Enchantress so that it's tremendously good. ...[/quote] There's never a bad time for No Wine Before Its Time. Except when you have to suffer the crap that comes with your stock being publicly traded... This is very good news indeed.

[quote]Only a troll lives on both sides of an argument.[/quote] I'd be the first to admit that psychoak is a rhetorical thug, but you're wrong here. People new to an argument and people vexed by severe indecision can easily 'live on both sides.' As a lapsed philosophical anarchist, I feel that way about my commitment to democracy. I'm no Tory, but Winston Churchill and I agree on the basic notion that although democracy is an awful mess, all the alternatives seem worse. Also,

That sounds like the last AI was taken out by monsters, or some other combo of all the ones left losing their capitals to each other and monsters. I had that happen a few times under beta versions, maybe in the early releases before I gave up playing regularly. It would be interesting if you could tweak a save from a bit before that happened to disable the Conquest victory and see if the UI results were the same. If you're focused on, say, the Spell of Mastery, would the game keep run

If you're interested in 'the oldies,' you might get some fun out of SimTower. It's originally Japanese, not a Will Wright game, but he apparently liked it enough to encourage Maxis to do a localize/re-brand thing.

[quote]I suspect that moohoo bastard GW has a similar view of me.[/quote] Don't worry, sweetie, I'm sure I'd at least dislike you in the real world and might well find your company intolerable. But here in Brad's playpens, you're useful in a couple of entangled ways. In and around your amusing, sprawling rants you often make me think and occasionally have come close to persuading me to change my mind about something. Mainly, though, I often get vicarious gratification when you

[quote who="StevenAus" reply="5" id="2890514"]... I guess Stardock thought it would be beneficial if the different "local" communities mixed a little more. ...[/quote] It can still get messy, even with the source-site info in the UI. The folks at Wincustomize seem considerably less comfy with trash talk than the gamers seem to be, not just 'swear words' but even 'clean but mean' talk. My GC2 friend Mumblefratz actually attempted to map the forums a while back, but I can't find

[quote who="scratchthepitch" reply="43" id="2890371"]...Be prepared. [/quote] Oi, amigo...

I'm pretty sure "the Doc" isn't a gamer. His Stardock 'home' is the Wincustomize site, and he might also be a regular at Joeuser. Stardock owns many forum sites, and there's some cross-posting between them. When the cross-posting first started happening, I found it very disorienting because I didn't care about anything Stardock but GalCiv II. Mostly, I still wish each domain was its own little world, but I've been able to adapt a bit more since the forum UI started tagging where a giv

[quote who="Jafo" reply="23" id="2890328"]Oh....we're running out of it alright... Don't be fooled. It's finite in that its creation takes ONE HECK OF A LOT LONGER to create than it does to use.[/quote] Indeed. psychoak was correct when he referred to the fact that new petrochemicals are being generated by ongoing geological processes, and he was rhetorically clever when he pretended not to know the timeframe involved in the production of those 'new' comm

[quote who="LightStar" reply="6" id="2890152"]... Oh, and I would not believe anything that comes from Wiki Leaks, ever.[/quote] Really? So the various Department of Justice actions and the State Department whinging PR are just more waste of taxpayer dollars? I know more about organizational theory than the average bear, so I'm always inclined to think any waste complaint (GM, Congress, the UN, whatever) has a good chance of being valid. But if the Wikileaks info was all

[quote]Also breaking CRTC policy throttling peoples downloads that they think are torrents but also include any encrypted download[/quote] Woa, that could screw me seriously if my Florida ISP took up the habit. I'm a contractor; many of the files I work with are increasingly large and almost always hosted behind HTTPS URLs. I haven't had to push gigs at a time up to a server yet, but I've certainly pulled down a few gigs for a modest project more than a few times.

[quote who="NorsemanViking" reply="87" id="2889475"]... It's not the huge map, but the gameplay allowing city spam that is the problem!!! You shouldn't be able to have more cities then in games like Heroes of Might and Magic, still the maps should be huuuuuge.[/quote] I agree with Kadrium about the comparison to HoMM not being too useful, but that's no reason to ignore the fact that we have a serious city spam problem even though the largest maps still feel cramped to many of

[quote who="CarGuy1" reply="33" id="2889482"]... "They" is the plural of he, she, or it. There are two people in this video using their hands, hence the use of their.[/quote] That still leaves a disagreement in number between the subject (someone, singular) and predicate (their, plural, hands). [e classic];)[/e]

[quote who="Mandelik" reply="9" id="2889285"]Count me out on this! It's perhaps not Good and Evil (as the latest post indicates) but at least the lore is clearly manichean and we'd like to stick to the already-in-the-book lore. ...[/quote] Mandelik, can you give us a brief sketch of how Kingdoms vs. Fallen works in the book? Is Essence part of how reclaiming lands from the Cataclysm works, or did that get cut from the book as well as the game? The twisted lands of the

[quote who="DrJBHL" reply="7" id="2888646"]... Then read more carefully. ...[/quote] I don't believe I've misread (or failed to read) you at all. You are not reading me well. I am not trying to be combative. My first reply was simply because I'd mistakenly thought I found a workaround to the fbook dependency. When you replied in a mildly hostile tone, I tried to clarify. Your subject line reads wrongly for me, given your body text and the apparent limited access for the conten

[quote who="DrJBHL" reply="3" id="2888629"]... You really should read the OP. All you have to do is “Like it” on facebook (and please start using the “https” browsing option there as well as doing it in “Chrome” which sandboxes it).[/quote] I did, and I was momentarily pleased to think that fbook was not a requirement to check those 'guides' out. Your subject line is a bit misleading because these makeuseof.

[quote who="jeffalford" reply="2" id="2888621"]I always go for the largest size Can't wait for 64 bit support [/quote] I'd completely agree, except that my budget has meant I'm not running a 64-bit rig, so I'm almost glad to see that I can still play the largest available maps. In GC2, Immense maps are my faves. I think they actually help the AIs feel more 'differentiated' because they have more room to play amongst themselves and it takes far longer for me to build

Doesn't seem like you have to submit to fbook to get to this content: http://www.makeuseof.com/pages/ leads to a catalog of PDF files. Correction: This is an fbook WTF. The links from the Pages page above just lead to blurbs that tell you you have to submit to fbook. Boo.

[quote who="Mumblefratz" reply="26" id="2881406"]... I guess if you want to save something from a PM then you need to make sure you archive it elsewhere. ... [/quote] I've long wanted to be able to export my PMs to a local text file. 50 is such a tiny limit, at least for those of us who've been around for several years. Re deleting the One Copy, wouldn't it make more sense to leave the message in the database until both parties have deleted it? Just hide it from whoev

Seconding Mandelik's response to "a real loser of a concept." The early concepts were indeed rich and varied enough to perhaps build three different games. Unfortunately, the release version somehow never lived up to the plans and ideas kicked around during the very long pre-beta and beta days. The hope thing is still there, though, at least until FE starts nearing feature lock. My #1 wish: Bring Back (and Finish) the Essence Mechanics.

1.11 is the last released version; 1.19b is a beta for 1.2. If you want to try the beta, change your Impulse prefs to include Show pre-release versions.

Can't remember where, but I'm also pretty sure I saw a Stardock person post something like what Alstein said in reply 3. If you want an authoritative answer, you can always write to [email protected].

This is a very interesting post, at least to this coding spectator. Where are the real code monkeys? Is smakemupagus asking about things that are obvious to the AI folks inside Stardock? Is this two-competing-objectives thing possibly a way to make AIs that really do have a 'world view' that affects their decisions? I would be beyond happy if WoM and/or FE ended up being the first Stardock TBS that had a couple of kick-ass AIs that avoided war at all costs instead of assuming that war