Philocthetes

[quote who="Szadowsz" reply="3" id="2226575"]...I seriously must be blind I went looking for such a thread and couldn't find it. That being said with the recent announcments the forums have picked up again after a bit so, I figure its ok to make new posts if the old one isn't active and over a month old[/quote] If you used the forum's Google-fueled search, I'm pretty sure you would not be shown hits from older threads, but I'm not quite sure where the time-based cutoff is. If you use

[quote who="landisaurus" reply="21" id="2226610"]... are all armies lead by heroes HoMM style? I was under the impression you could have troops out on their own MoM or Civ style.[/quote] Could be that champions will act as a 'local' version of an ability bonus in GC2. Instead of having the Hyperion Logistics System give an empire-wide bonus, individual champions could join an army stack and enable it to include more units than your empire-wide logistics ability permits.

[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="20" id="2226485"]...I'm a king! I don't have the time to say where each individual sword goes. But I'm the King! If for some reason I care about a particular production chain or supply route, I should be able to affect it![/quote] That's it in a nutshell for me. But that shell is wrinklier than a walnut's on account of needing (deserving?) both some really hard UI work and some way above-average automation to support players who don't want much of thei

[quote who="Seboss" reply="6" id="2226452"]...Hmm yeah, not the best way to make us -We Outsiders- feel at home huh.[/quote] No worries. I've been around since the day the boards went public and I'm definitely an outsider from at least a few POVs. Stardock could cancel multiplayer tomorrow and I wouldn't blink; I think that a game no one can win and can go on indefinitely is superior to any zero-sum game; and I want a TBS with options that let me play with economies that don't

There's some related discussion in Ynglaur's Name Generator Request thread and thread of Martok's from way back in the first days of the boards that's mostly about using regular units as a possible source for champion units . The state of any name-generating code will be very interesting to see in the first beta.

[quote who="landisaurus" reply="6" id="2226050"]well, the persistant world part as I understand it relates to how the world will expand (rather than getting new maps) and because I didn't know much about it I did not specifically address it. ...[/quote] Well, given my lack of multiplayer experience, I probably have a weird first response to the phrase "persistent world," but what I *think* I know comes from Brad's very old journal on the subject and

I think having a strong quality vs. quantity dynamic will not only help differentiate Elemental in the TBS genre but also help reinforce the fantasy feel of the game. Not to annoy the Tolkien-averse, but for us other folk, it's worth noting that much (maybe most) of the arms and armor in the forces led by Aragorn were heirlooms, not recent acquisitions. Saurman and Sauron were fielding huge new piles of kit, but they were working Seriously Bad(ass) Magic and/or wrecking their lands to do it.<

I'm pretty sure that somewhere on the bottom parts of his To-Do list, Bara has an item along the lines of "Create a Watched Posts tab" that would effectively replace the old Watch This Post function. Instead of getting mail every time a reply came to a thread you wanted to follow but not join, you'd be able to see the activity on a page similar to My Replies and My Posts. I really wanted the email back for a long while, but Bara's idea for a page-based replacement has steadily

[quote who="Ellestar" reply="8" id="2225972"]... Obviously, you can live just fine without tourism income. ... So it doesn't seem like a good setting for an economic victory.[/quote] You're more or less ducking my question about where you saw evidence that the Elemental plan is based on closed economies. But at least you ended up with what I take to be your real point, which is that you want a deeply combat-centered game and not what I (and probably others) would consider a 'real' TBS

Am I missing something, or have most of the replies so far mostly ducked the "persistent world" part of the OP's question? I'm also very curious about that idea, especially in terms of large/long games, but border questions are not the first thing that comes to mind when I wonder what that term might mean in a UI. And an expandable map seems almost the oppositie of a "persistent world;" it's a changing world by definition.

[quote who="psychoak" reply="10" id="2224934"]... I want to ignore magic, as in poof, the unit goes inactive for two days while resources are magically transported with no means of getting there. I don't want to ignore magic, as in I researched a badass teleportation ability, outfitted some guys with it, and sent them out with my field armies to keep them supplied without needing caravans. Supply lines add a lot of depth, vaporware supply lines defeat the purpose of having su

[quote who="Ellestar" reply="1" id="2225720"]... Because you can't bankrupt a closed economy from outside.[/quote] What gives you the impression that all faction economies are 'closed?' I'd be interested to see options for a closed economy and/or a barter-only economy during faction setup, but my impression of the GC2 model and the possible Elemental models seems to assume that open economies are the norm. How else can you explain tourism income in GC2 or automatic caravans in Element

I agree with Sammual about the mana-for-upkeep question. I can't imagine the game not including persistent mana-fueled spells like Flight, and with essence, "Imbue Flight" (wings or not) makes perfect sense--we actually should have a whole set of these spells whose only purpose is to make you sweat that question of hoarding your essence or fielding Really Serious Champions. The sphere of influence stuff, though, is not at all too complex-sounding to me. I'd hope to see something along

[quote who="Kitkun" reply="3" id="2224157"]...Anyways, they'd have to be a bit careful in some ares like dispelling spells, or any persistent powrful spells would be next to useless as everyone would simply band together and dispel them immediately. Other than that, looks great.[/quote] What you mention here sounds like just another good reason to have a Cooperative mode for magic in the game. All the spells will cost mana, and presumably some form of 'attention credits/moves.' MoM le

I'm more or less with psychoak in hoping to see the normal upgrade process require direct connections between warriors, armories, and training camps. And I also don't really expect to ge my wish. That said, the idea of using spells for field upgrades makes pretty good sense to me regardless of how the economic/production system gets implemented. If we do end up with something like Camp 3, it seems almost a necessity, at least for those of us who like to see narrative holes plugged in

[quote]and I'm a good chunk of your recent karma as is...the real competition is annatar though. That guy's got tons of karma, and not from doing anything (its all from the off-topic threads. And he's very helpful, so I'm not trying to downplay that he deserves it exactly... just it isn't frame elemental forum contribution exactly). Though, in his defense he is a regular in the IRC chat.[/quote] I wish I didn't so love to aid and abet threadjackings...Anywho, before I get to the 'real

This actually sounds like an Impulse question to me, because that's the app we'll be required to use to download and install the betas and released game. But I'm one of those Stardock geezers who still has a few fingers on his cold, dead hands wrapped tightly around Stardock Central, which means I have no idea at all if or how Impulse would handle interruptions during a basic download-install process (I'm working on this 'attitude problem,' but progress is slow). My hope

For anyone curious, the older threads landisaurus mentioned include A time and Weather idea , Weather System , Elemental: Tactical battles , and Disasters and Other Random Events , among others.

[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="5" id="2222269"]... having a channeler on each end could make it much easier than a channeler sending something very far away with no associate at the destination to help.[/quote] Trust the pigeonSquared to come out swinging promptly upon his return. The brilliant idea of channelers cooperating for a teleport spell opens up a slew of possibilites for long-term efforts like a Bifrost Bridge between capitals and even short-term alliances to do something

I like the general ideas here very much, although I might have called it all 'militias' and just had separate effects for whether they were automatically invoked by an attack on their homes or they were called to arms by their leige. On the wealth point, I think Demiansky is onto something--the classical Greek definition of citizenship depended on being rich enough to provide your own arms and armor for when you were called to battle. It was the rich moms who told sons to "Come home w

[quote]but, unlike play by e-mail, "play by web" would suggest a web-based interface. [/quote] If I understand correctly, the multiplayer back end is based in Impulse, which is quite bluntly IE-dependent. I think the only question here is whether Stardock wants to support both serial and parallel multiplayer. Or at least I hope so for those of us who are multiplayer-curious and 'real-time' averse. Plus, I can't really imagine playing a decent-sized map in a parallel fashion.

Bara, apologies for appearing to ignore you, but I could swear I didn't see your reply until I posted my own just now. I can easily imagine Google shorting a customer like this, if for no other reason than to drive traffic back to their main search page. I'm glad to hear y'all are considering restoring your own search functions, and I understand that there are plenty of higher priorites for forum coding. I'm curious, though. Would it be poor form for the site UI to call out th

After looking at a few variations on this 'bug,' I'm thinking maybe there is some hidden date parameter on the forum-based Google search? New example: Local search for "independent kingdoms" yields only 3 hits, one of which is a bizarre link to page 2 of the Elemental Ideas topic page, which does not include the Independent Kingdoms thread I was looking for. Direct search at Google with the site: parameter yields 5 hits, including the one I wanted and the weird hit for the topic area

[quote who="Demiansky" reply="2" id="2220608"]...What I'd like to see most, though, are soldiers that can be raised very quickly in times of trouble (with great production penalties resulting until they return), then disbanded when the trouble has subsided. ...[/quote] This seems like it goes well beyond the idea of vassal empires. Why shouldn't your own capital be able to invoke the same mechanics? If I'd been really hasty in sending my fielded forces off on some very long

Scoutdog, props for trying to work with the scraps of game canon we've had so far. I'll be interested in seeing a re-write after we know the basic mechanics for champion units.