Philocthetes

I don't really understand how "pimp" came to be a verb that describes something that seems closer to cheerleading, but that's a swell summary of a complicated and very important subject. And it's a swell example of how private bureaucracies can screw people as seriously, or even more so, than government ones. Scale, complexity, and opacity are the real risk indicators for an organization, not the simple public-private distinction. Re Piznit's remarks about keeping an eye on your own c

[quote who="landisaurus" reply="21" id="2046127"]GW swicord, it was already stated that obviously it couldn't be the UN as we see it today. ....[/quote] Yes, but the too-modern language and thinking is still common in many threads around here, not just this one. I have a long-standing conviction that the language you use to contemplate and discuss something has fundamental effects on your thoughts and actions. That's why skilled politicians do things like invent the phrase "deat

Re "promised us," don't take that too strictly. No contracts are involved, and the more often us peanut-gallery folks call a dev forum post a promise, the fewer such posts we're likely to see. Plus, one of the reasons I'm a very loyal Stardock game customer is that they seem to stand alone in their "Sell no wine before its time" attitude. They are not afraid to slip a release date because they are good at deciding when they'd get even more grief by calling bits gold when there's still

I went on a long Telepathic binge, initially because female characters are still too rare in the context, but mostly because it was real fun to mind-control worlds like that. For a while. Then it started feeling creepy, so I went back to my fundamental 4X rut: tech superiority. My avatar before the Elemental forum got going was a Gangster Psilon I found on the net. The only really bad thing I can say about MoO2 is that its success helped fund the debacle that was MoO3.

If there are good and evil humans and Fallen, then the Calax are the good Fallen--the Flower of Death.

Re hard caps on champion units, I'm solidly with pigeon. (And please, feel free to call me GW--that 'handle' is an accident from my ancient registration of GalCiv1--I had no idea it was associated with a forum sprawl). Re my Bob remark, I wasn't thinking of changing him, I was just repeating my hope that not all champion units will be combat-oriented. I really want to see things like Champion Builders, Champion Farmers, Champion Smiths, Champion Alchemists, etc. That sort of t

[quote who="landisaurus" reply="8" id="2044160"]I have cast post-necromancy to bring about a new idea. ...[/quote] That's an example of "good" necromancy, IMO. And I think the idea of linking some diplo functionality to a sort of pre-mega-event is brilliant. The latter unit-based one might be tricky for devs and/or players, but Stopping a Disjunction seems pretty straightforward and would mean that a full Disjunction event might unfold very differently depending on indiv

[quote quoting="post"]... Or maybe a word from Stardock so that we can make suggestions within the actual framework that will be used..... [/quote] Yes, please.

More info on alignment stuff (faction background) is second on my wish list after substantive details on the magic system. But regardless of how the good-evil-fallen-standing stuff works out, I think we'd all be better off avoiding modern ideas about (and labels for) politics. P Before the Peace of Westphalia , what we think of as "nations" didn't really exist. The world was dominated by dynastic powers (sometimes based on

Bob the Builder reminds me how much I want to see some sort of units (specialized champions or maybe just an 'officer class') that are for non-combat stuff. I'm sure I'd experiment with essence investing in someone who came along and was able to get my construction crews to build faster and/or better. He needs a connection to Earth at the very least.

Here's hoping that the next dribble of info on the magic system will tell us something about how the elements work. Unless I've missed it, no dev has yet said anything about whether a channeler is limited to one element, can work with any or all of them, or can specialize if any-or-all is the default. That basic set of spell book choices in MoM was definitely a major factor in adding replayability to the game for me. I ended up getting a 'favorites' mix and mostly sticking to it, but

[quote who="Martimus" reply="8" id="2043585"]...I think he just means that you can build your own buildings like you can build your own ships in GC2. ... Sounds pretty cool, actually. I am suprised this isn't a feature that was trumpeted before, or if it was, I am surprised that I don't remember hearing about it.[/quote] I suspect that some dev trumpeting impulses were inhibited by the fact that Spoor has a buzz-claim on their Creature Creator even though the concept is no

Back when I could get a weekly fix for my tabletop RPG habit, I really loved sketching stuff like landi's several offerings in this thread. But now all he's really doing is fueling my appetite for more on the Elemental back story and more on the custom-content mechanics. Just how bad was that cataclysm? Is there anything like a legacy aristocracy that might toss out a miscreant son like Leo? If the official back story has no room for a champion like Leo, will the custom-content functi

Singleplayer is the foundation for Elemental, and I just don't see why it is anyone's business when or how often I save or re-load. The whole idea of calling it "cheating" is pretty silly to someone like me who might go a year or more with a game like GalCiv2 before I even pay attention to the fact that I can earn a score while I'm playing. If there is to be any hard-coded effort to encourage players to "become stronger" (and I question the implied value judgement there strongly), it

I would definitely like to see single-player mode able to present some interesting options to join associations. It would be especially neat if any associations like that could complement (or even be one of) the champion-spawning associations that aeon suggested in the Making Heroes Interesting thread. But I'm not holding my breath. I've gone for many, many Alliance wins in GalCiv2 and I've almost always been the one going on bended knee before an AI. I don't kno

[quote who="Martimus" reply="14" id="2043783"]I can say that I hope for fewer spells than more spells. I would like a simple Fire spell that I could research to make better as time goes on, instead of having 20 different types of fire spells. Similar to how they stated equipment would be.[/quote] There's an important distinction buried in there for me. I dislike the idea of each combat 'spell' being 3-5 spells with the latter ones just being improvements (e.g. lightning bo

I'm interested in custom spells also, but I suspect Aesir's "Mechanics" list is too small. GalCiv2 finally got a Custom Tech Tree Editor, and it covers about 40 categories of technology. Admittedly many of them are not likely to have analogs in an Elemental spell category list, but the items Aesir lists so far seem to be just basic combat spells. If we get to build our own spells, I surely hope that we can customize global ('world wrecking') spells as well as our own magics to affect commerce

[quote who="GreatVolk" reply="7" id="2043242"]I'm in. I first had to get a credit card, because until now, I didn't have one. But elemental is a good reason to have one...[/quote] Just remember to treat the thing like an ATM card and not actual credit and you'll be OK. Using a card and keeping it paid off is good for your credit history, and these days even potential employers use credit reports to poke into people's backgrounds.

I liked the fuzzy aspect of adding extra mana in MoM. But that's probably because I was very fond of "pushing" in the old Champions tabeltop RPG. To work, it basically depended on a player picking a really strong story moment and a ref making a good ad hoc judgement call about how much the player could "push" and what the extra effort would do. At its simplest, it was just a bid of additional damage or defense. But with complicated powers, especially when power-sets were interacting, interest

[quote who="landisaurus" reply="24" id="2042528"]Wait a minute! ... Can buildings be directly attacked where adding armored plates might be a thing needed? Are you going to add class rooms and book-halls to buildings to make them boost research? Are you going to add nurseries and kitchens to the same building to make it also boost population growth? I mean, if you litterally have to build your first "Library" by adding bookshelves, then wow. ... [/quote]

I still like the idea of some 'officer-level' regular unit being a potential source of a new hero. Just because you can't deliberately place an order at the Champion Shop doesn't mean you can't be offered the chance to recruit a new hero who started as a regular joe or jane in your armed forces, court bureaucracy, clergy, etc. It's really just a matter of the back story blurb for the given hero, isn't it?

I confess I was thinking about *fleeing* downhill, not charging. I'm a turtler at heart...

[quote]going downhill is easier than going uphill[/quote] I'm Floridian, but I've spent some time in various parts of the Appalachians. Maybe it's just my flatlander legs, but I could swear that once ground became steep enough, it was *far* easier to climb up than it was to go down because gravity was helping me keep my footing, not trying to flip me over my excuse for a 'center' and make the descent very rapid and completely uncontrolled.

[quote who="Spartan" reply="17" id="2039534"]...For that extra special secret agent feel you really need the following: ...[/quote] OK. I want to know too. Is that pic concept art or somehow "real?" I ask in part because when I was a late teenager in the early 1980s, I worked in a mainframe datacenter where we ended up with some wall-o-monitors stuff that amounted to a pretty big budget item. If something like that pic is actually on the market, who knows how many taxpayer and

My favorite part of the OP is the 'transnational associations' idea (#1). It would be especially neat if the back story might be able to support some pre-cataclysm remnants to give Elemental flavor to ideas like a knightly order, a council of mages, or a guild of bards. I don't know how much I'd like to see that sort of stuff connected to 'autonomy' for champion units, but I'd definitely enjoy playing with something along those lines to see if it was fun. [quote who="aeon" reply="6" i