Philocthetes

[quote]Any deception within a game regarding an army has to be approached cautiously...[/quote] I agree, but I'm surprised to find myself interested in the idea of disguising units if there is still a possibility of identifying them somehow. Perhaps my biggest frustration with the unit-based espionage in GalCiv2 is that you can't even *try* to identify an attacking spy. With an Advanced intel level and spy units at home base, it seems like you should at least have the choice o

In stories, cataclysms are a flexible concept, and often the 'world' that was destroyed is a bit more social than physical. Even with world-wrecking magic as the operative term, there's still plenty of room around the edges for things 'not part of our world' to be left out of the cataclysm. Also, we haven't had any dev posts on the Elemental cataclysm. I don't think we should rule out the idea of wilderness existing at the start of the game, and I would encourage them to add such if i

[quote]... Landisaurus is right that the US actually preserved more of its forests than nearly any other nation on Earth ...[/quote] It was the 'most of' that I wasn't catching. I'm so used to seeing rampant American exceptionalism that I was a sloppy reader. In my defense, my main reason for the quote was to see what new folks might think about the wilderness question, particularly the idea that it should be impossible to completely cover a game map with population tiles, but also Jo

[quote]... IMO it would be best if a player has to do relatively the same number of things per turn. ...[/quote] I'd rather see that be a result of playstyle worked out through a highly flexible core engine and UI. What you describe as a weakness of GC2 is something that I really like about it, but then I don't do war wins. When wars happen, whether I started them or not, I *expect* things to get a lot harder and messier than they are during peacetime.

[quote]expires before 2/2010[/quote] That's the planned date for RTM, but you'll get billed for the game when the public beta is released in a few months. [quote]So they had better "lock it down" before then, because I will have a new card number. [/quote] You shouldn't have a new card number just because you got a new expiration date. Or maybe that's yet another reason to appreciate my credit union?

I'm dusting off this thread because of a side-comment from landisaurus in a recent dev journal thread , and because it kind of got sidetracked before it went quiet last month. [quote]We have cut down less trees than most of the world ...[/quote] You sure about that? Our territory was roughly half old-growth forest when the Europeans first started colonizing, and today nearly all our woodlands are newbie

[quote]And, despite the eerie similarity of my avatar, no reference to the Nazis was intended. Nazis BAD! [/quote] Yep, and they were also terribly good at using art for propaganda. Those old SS uniform designs are popular with the BDSM crowd for more reasons than the real outfit's rep for torture. And Neilo's right about how easy it would be to tweak that to be rally-ready for the old facist bastards. However, the Romans and others claimed the eagle and even used it in a roughly simi

[quote who="psychoak" reply="18" id="2059813"]Still in beta, and already clothing discussions degenerate to perversion! We're all going to hell.[/quote] Hey, I was just trying to be a good feminist. I didn't touch that 'mount point' stuff despite the big laugh. Until now anyway. You really are a devil, aren't you?

I've picked on D&D here and there, but I think that the old AD&D item 'classes' could be a good way to group magical devices and handle each group differently. Magic items: made by players to equip regular units, e.g. flaming swords or weightless chainmail Lesser artifacts: made by players to equip champions and channelers, cost lots more to create and can be very powerful Greater artifacts: made before the Cataclysm; can be carried by champion

[quote who="Noctilucus" reply="10" id="2060245"]... But some variety in the spell research tree (or at least in the order you can research them) would work fine. Cfr. MoM where you also had a random factor determining which new spell became available next. ...[/quote] Thanks for jogging my sorry excuse for a memory. I think that the MoM process here could be an ideal compromise between dice-loving playstyles and total-control playstyles. It's a marriage of chance and choice.

[quote who="CapnWinky" reply="25" id="2059370"]A wish spell would truly be awesome! Actually, it would be sweet if you typed in "I want lego" and a lego appeared in your main city.[/quote] Yea, that's the impression I got from Shadowgandor's description--that the spell code actually understood how to improvise in response to a short natural language string. Unless it has some open aspect like that, it wouldn't deserve to be called a wish spell, IMO. And being able to wish a grand Lego

[quote who="Shadowgandor" reply="19" id="2057963"]... Basically, the spell allowed a very very experienced caster to wish for something. You could type the thing you wish, and you get it. Immortality? Sure. A huge army standing in front of your castle? Hah, the fools, wish for reinforcements and you'll be granted hundreds of men. Low on resources? No problem. I just loved the freedom that spell gave you. ...[/quote] That sounds like magical software to me. You really had a text i

Credit unions have been suffering 'bankification' somewhat since they were allowed to seek members based on geography rather than employer(s). But the good ones are still far better than a bank, at least for those of us who don't have big piles of "Please, how may we help you today" money to leave deposited. In the last year, I had quite a bit of interaction with one of the larger banks active down here in the South. I've been griping at my CU fairly often in the past several years, m

Context-sensitive spells are a swell idea, and I'm also hoping to see a good supply of divination magic. Meta-magic like Disenchant Area or the Great Unsummoning also seem essential.

Seems like "unauthorized trading" might be an interesting potential consequence of a severe morale problem. Run that mine badly enough, and don't be surprised to find some of "your" gemstones showing up in someone else's markets, etc.

For those of us who might end up mostly playing out at the cloth map level, names could be the most important "decoration" for units. I'd like to be able to build a names list and associate it with a unit type.

[quote who="WIllythemailboy" reply="6" id="2052748"]... Seriously, though, it's been done, at least in scifi. Niven's Known Space had the population capped, with each person allowed two birthrights, and two birthrights needed to have a kid. You would end with things like China's current forced abortion policy, or Niven's vison of ARM "mother hunts", with second class citizenship and forced sterilization on illegally born children.[/quote] I read and re-read Known Space stuff

[quote]And what is it with you blogger crowd and your red font?[/quote] Maybe whatever SD site those come from has a style sheet that works there but not at GalCiv2 or Elemental? Someone apparently has web dev duty again, so hopefully if there is forum code behind that redness problem, it'll get fixed eventually.

[quote]Yeah, but you can't take out the DVD and put in any other movies. [/quote] Depends on the player. Mine remembers the last 5 discs I played. But I am a little curious about how much power it uses when it is "off" but still plugged in. [quote]22. In-game volume controls. ...[/quote] That would be nice. Could put a little horn or lute icon in the UI to pop up audio controls instead of having to step out to the Options pages.

Very pretty already, IMO. [quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="1" id="2051750"]... P.S. does anyone else think the roadside barriers look like wooden power lines? Especially on the far side of the town.[/quote] My first thought about those was "magical telegraph lines?" But the ones on the left kind of look like fences maybe?

[quote]Any drawing is a mistake, until its done.[/quote] Formally speaking, I believe you are in serious trouble if any major aspect of your belief system fits neatly on a T-shirt or bumpersticker. But that's a damned awfully good oversimplified and/or essential point. Especially for the vast majority of us who depend on paychecks.

Yup .

[quote]oooh. I'm not sure if I'm going to feel offended that you think I'm ignorant enough to not know of Ender's game, or giggle in secret because you took the bait. [/quote] ??? I thought this was a friendly forum. Most of my reply 53 was self-mockery.

[quote who="Luckmann" reply="2" id="2050998"]... I never did see that movie. I'm more of a Sci-Fi person, myself.[/quote] Ender's Game is a science fiction novel by Orson Scott Card. I have a mind like a steel sieve, so I totally deserve the scoff for the reference because I still don't know what it was despite remembering that I quite liked the novel when I read it.

Well, at least y'all have reassured me that we don't really have any clear picture of how essence is planned to work. I try to read every dev post I can find, and all that I feel like I "know" right now about essence is that when you let go of some, it is gone. That still leaves pretty much all the open questions in the posts above, including "Is there any way to get more essence after you start the game?" If the answer to that is "no," then I hope Vordrak is accurately imagin