Philocthetes

[quote who="SnallTrippin" reply="14" id="2178875"]...EDIT- I come to these forums pretty often but is there a mailing list so we can be told when a playable-ish version is ready for pre-order ppl?[/quote] The pre-orders are about volunteering for the public betas, and Stardock are clear that it is hobby work and not necessarily fun. Brad has posted a tentative beta schedule . It sounds like you'll need to wait until Beta 3 (currently targeted for December of this

[quote who="b0rsuk" reply="4" id="2177513"]Can anyone explain what's so good about podcasts ? It's like information, but slower, without ability to search, quote, and skip to interesting parts. It's like trying spread information with Flash. I have seen single isolated cases of Flash being useful.[/quote] Reading and writing are just not as popular as they used to be. Sigh. I sure would appreciate it if at least the mike and camera junkies would put up transcripts along with t

The last time I checked the little Elemental info scrap on Impulse, it said up to 8 players, but I'm thinking that is probably about how many folks can share one MP game. With 12 canon factions, it seems like a singleplayer game could have up to 11 AI factions, but GC2 has more major factions than it does slots for them in a given game. I've never been sure whether that limit is more about keeping down the burdens of AI processing or about keeping the UI from getting too crowded.

I'm sure NTJedi and other mod-lovers will be glad to hear about the 'modded from the ground up' design approach,and I suspect the in-game tools will help get some folks (like me) who've never done it before to try doing a few mod-bits. I also expect to see at least a few gripes from folks who see "land-based" and feel all their hopes for naval stuff and flying units start to tatter. I'm OK with staying on the ground for now, but maybe we can still hope for air cavalry, flying castles,

I like all the variety, including the idea of a Nobody Wins end-game scenario. Did anybody 'win' the Cataclysm? Probably not, or we'd have a back story about how all the canon factions are laboring in the shadow of the Great (Horrible) Survivor who helped make the Cataclsym and managed to live through it.

[quote who="Ellestar" reply="19" id="2173172"]... Isn't "evil" army more likely to plunder and rape than "good" army? And "evil" commanders are more likely to overlook it. ...[/quote] Yes, and from an 'Evil' POV, that plundering is a 'Good' thing. That's part of why I'm interested in seeing major axes of an alignment system use somewhat more abstract labels. Whether being feared is good or bad for a channeler should depend on the channeler's character, not on whether the game assumes

[quote who="dionisus1122" reply="2" id="2171335"]... Is it any wonder that SP players are worried about this game taking too much of an MP focus?[/quote] Nope. I'm pretty serious about giving MP a try at least during the betas, but I'm more serious about hoping the devs stick to their guns on the 'singleplayer is the core of the game' front.

[quote who="John Hughes" reply="12" id="2171170"]A Monument would seem to indicate a permanent state of affairs. What happens if you win a big battle, raise a Monument, only to be forced to give up that same territory later on. Any Victory/Battle Monument would then be rather Moot... [/quote] Not if Brad can teach the AIs to hold a proper grudge. I'd certainly be double-ticked if Those Despicable Folks undid all my hard work in freeing some locals from their oppression and

I'm pretty sure the chances of a native-Mac version are very close to zero. Stardock is a Windows-oriented shop, and their games rely on DirectX.

[quote who="Ynglaur" reply="7" id="2166298"]... I guess I hope that the tactical and operational systems in Elemental allow for timing and location to drive success more than mere damage or damage over time.[/quote] I haven't played Dom3 (yet?), but I very much agree with this hope for Elemental. Complexity is definitely not equal to depth, it's just often a factor in depth. You are on the money about making the when and the where of a spell the real trick in finding its full power.</

[quote who="kerzain" reply="7" id="2164959"]... These are the TBS games I've played and nejoyed, but sucked at: ... [/quote] Well, I try to avoid that anti-oral sex jargon, but language quibbles aside, I'd say you can't really suck at a single-player game if you're enjoying it. On the other hand, if getting a particular type of win at a particular difficulty level is what you wanted and didn't quite get, maybe you could get some help from the forums. GC2 still has a smal

[quote who="kerzain" reply="5" id="2163987"]I pre-ordered just now. I don't know why I keep buying RTS games. I have fun for the first hourt, then the computer starts slowly kicking my butt over the next several hours until I lose in humiliation. I've been buying and playing RTS games since about the time of Civ2 in 1995 or so. ...[/quote] Sure you're not confusing TBS and RTS? Civ2 was not RTS and Elemental will not be either.

How about Summon Dev Journal on the Magic System?

[quote who="Vicente" reply="2" id="2162942"]The problem with all those types of spells (divination, illusion,...), is that when they are used on normal pen-and-paper RPGs they requiere a lot of "DM Fiat" which is pretty hard to translate into game AI or game mechanics.[/quote] True, but that's no reason not to expect far to much of the Stardock devs when we're still weeks from seeing Beta 0. Somewhat more seriously, I suspect that part of Brad's ambitions for this game are to

[quote who="FarAway Galciv" reply="6" id="2162900"]The "everybody loses" possibility is an interesting one, but it might be tough to program the AI so it would be able to intelligently weigh the "I don't want to lose" option versus the "I think somebody else will take care of this problem so I'll go on pursuing my own goals" option. ...[/quote] That's the problem with a forum like this. All the really fun ideas run the risk of being confronted with common sense. [e classic]:P[/e]

This light vs. heavy cavlary talk just reminds me of all the good open questions we've had in a couple-few other threads about weather, whether units will move in a 3D environment, etc. Plus I recently caught a 'History' Channel scrap on how important mud was to Henry V's win at Agincourt. Maybe things would have been quite different if he'd had dragoons instead of heavy cav. To my surprise, I'm more interested in seeing 'real wargame' mechanics in this area than in seeing more and pr

Re 'community,' I am not persuaded that larger all by itself means better, and I suspect it tends to be as much or more of a problem as a benefit. Longer-lived is good, but one reason the boards at GC2 can look 'dead' to casual visitors is that the cross-forum sprawl has discouraged a lot of former regulars who find it tedious to dig through all the general PC talk, Off-Topic rants and silliness, and Impulse shakedown chatter. GC2 was released over three years ago, and we have a brand

I'd like to see some Unvictory possibilities as well--I guess those might be sort of Giga-Events, maybe another checkbox to clear for some players during game setup. I'd also like to see some way to make the Last Faction Standing thing an Unvictory, maybe via back story for (some) human factions and/or a faction's 'Victory Quest.' Just because that's always the way TBS has gone in the past doesn't mean it has to keep on like that. (This is sort of connected to my obssession wi

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="14" id="2160474"]... There's plenty of game expansions which do little improvement and plenty of game expansions which provide great improvements... it's all about the final quality results. ...[/quote] That's a very reasonable point, but so is [quote who="landisaurus" reply="12" id="2160226"]... Dangerous words. A game should never need an expansion and thinking about it before finishing the main product is a double-edged sword. O

[quote who="landisaurus" reply="4" id="2160305"]... well, the way I feel about it is I can't say the races are boring until I've actually seen them. Just because some of them would be short or have pointed ears or scales and the ability to swim does not make them more interesting. If anything its the easy way out. I think until we have a chance to play the different factions, we should not call them "boring". ...[/quote] Wait and see does seem the most sensible appro

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="24" id="2160026"]... So while you may only be interested in singleplayer games... the long term value of multiplayer is greater for everyone.[/quote] But what about the age-old debate over scarce dev resources--time spent on multiplayer mechanics is time not spent on 'core' parts of the game. And then there's the whole business of worrying about a game getting 'dumbed down' so that it doesn't generate too much grief from a horde of short-attention-span click

[quote who="Vicente" reply="8" id="2159865"]Well, all they learn with the Demigod MP will make Elemental MP better in the future [/quote] I so seriously hope so. The Demigod kerfuffle has done nothing to assuage the worries of this member of the singleplayer crowd about multiplayer stuff doing bad things to Elemental. Makes me wonder if we really wouldn't just be better off with a next-generation Metaverse. (And yes, I know that's not 'true' multiplayer.)

[quote who="drgraves" reply="19" id="2157774"]How about a clone spell1 and perhaps a clone spell2. You could send them out in the world and no one would be able to tell the difference unless they were killed. They wouldnt have as much power say around 20% but they could be used as decoys.[/quote] Interesting, and makes me want a corrollary spell, Summon Doppelganger. You could use a doppelganger as a decoy for yourself on some occasions, or to replace someone important in an ene

I saw a few different write-ups for the vorpal rabbit in my original D&D crowd. I suppose you'd need some serious Life magic to forge such a beast-weapon in Elemental, but it could help you win huge tracts of land without having to marry some goat-faced princess.

[quote who="Climber" reply="4" id="2156842"]... 2. Hero ONLY TBS (or called the roaming bard game!) Most fantasy non-RPG TBS requires players controlling his empire. I want EWOM have an option to be an exception to that, so I my hero(es) stack cannot control what city build/produce. Player has limited control on their environment, yet the player has to accomplish their victory, by exploring dungeons, trading, raiding city etc. So play a hero's game, not a sov