Philocthetes

I'll see your Dev Tease, and raise you one Insane User Demand. Please, indeed, do whatever you can to polish map-gen code so that horribly crappy starting locations are as rare as possible. But it seems to me that Elemental, being a fantasy TBS, has the room to build some foundation mechanics that would enable an average player to start on one frakkin' tiny island and still have a chance to do well. It worked for Crete in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_

I'm much more likely to be interested in doing and/or reading stuff like this after we have a good general impression of the un-customized game, including mechanics and story elements. That's because any user-made content that's likely to win me as a customer or contributor probably will be riffs on the base game or efforts to 'cover a gap' of some sort. Without more background, the stuff above mostly just goes in one eye and out the other for me. Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to

Spartan started a good thread on heraldry during the first few days the forum was live, but the subject is still well worth discussing, not least because we have more folks reading and posting now than we did last November. I still very much like the idea of a heraldry tool as part of the base game. I like it so much I'd probably pay a few bucks extra if the code needed to be done as a 'mini-expansion' to justify the dev time. Edit re searching for old st

Quick saves are an important part of how GalCiv2 can work well for folks running on boxes that don't meet sys reqs, and they are a godsend when a single player is feeling out new stuff from an update. It's also enables a good workaround for folks who like some or most Mega Events but find a few of them just no fun. Gananim's right about the "save scumming" thing--if the practice offends you, don't do it.

Props for the Sisyphus reference. You remind me that morale's another case where some non-numeric values in the UI might help strengthen the fantasy flavor of the game--say the angle of a morale flag instead of how many flags are in a morale indicator. [quote who="Tamren" reply="14" id="2036440"]...What that means in game terms is that moral should never break in such a way that you were unaware of the situation or couldn't see the problem coming. There should be no "cause fear" butto

Multiple monitor support would be nice for all the folks spoiled with fat hardware budgets & space to use 'em, but my main interest in this area is better support for the possible size range of single displays. I want any non-fullscreen windows and dialog boxes to be *sizable*. I understand that a game needs a base resolution and color depth where everything 'works.' But if/when I finally manage to afford a sufficiently strong rig, I want to be able to resize something like a rall

Anyone else want an elevation system that enables multi-level underground placement of improvement tiles? Something about this thread has me really hankering to build a Hidden City inside a mesa, with obvious entrances only on the mesa top, some concealed access down at the foot, and maybe a few murderholes sprinkled along the wraparound trail that outsiders use to reach the top.

It sounds very reasonable to roll out beta code chunks in major phases--I can't quickly think of a better way to keep volunteer feedback focused on the code chunk you want to hear from them about. I also heartily endorse the idea of carrying on the GalCiv tradition of insanely good support for old/weak/scoffed-at systems. I had tons of fun with GC2 long before I ran it on hardware that actually met the formal sys reqs.

landisaurus, the subtext of the Elemental project is building a game engine that become a baseline for the future effort on Galactic Civilizations 3. GC2 is already darned friendly about running in window mode, so I'm pretty sure that even the beta for Elemental will play nicely for folks who want to run the game while also keeping an eye on this forum, headlines, homework, etc.

The baby-picture screenshots show 3D-looking terraing, but best I can tell no unit or improvement objects appear to be at different Z-axis points. Here's hoping that's something the engine is growing out of. The dragon in one of those shots has wings, which makes me think the devs are at least trying for something by way of flight in the combat system. But I'm almost more interested in whether we'll be able to use Air magic to equip regular units, or at least champion units, w

Jonny, this is still early in the dev process and Stardock opened this forum because they wanted ideas to consider as they prepare for the public beta. I generally favor the idea of keeping combat mechanics simple (at least at the UI level), but I think it reasonable to consider adding Morale as a fourth basic stat for non-spellcasting units. Also, I believe that including morale in the core unit stats would really help strengthen the fantasy feel of the game. How many of great rallyi

[quote who="landisaurus" reply="23" id="2028523"]I'm creeped out by being able to give exact years worth of play. ...[/quote] Faugh, if this game's audience turns out to be even roughly similar to the one for GalCiv2, there will be plenty of us far older than you twenty-somethings. If you want to see some interesting anecodtal data about age and interest in a 4X game, read the How old are you thread at GC2.

[quote who="Jonny5446" reply="15" id="2028883"]...Man I can't believe I wrote so much on such a minor speculatey point.... I.. am.. an... idiot! [/quote] Going on at length is no sign of idiocy in its own right. Depending on whose attention most interests you, too much verbiage can get you ignored, but it's clear that several early regulars around here would not consider PowerPoint to be a writing tool. More importantly, the Elemental Ideas area is supposed to be a pre-beta b

[quote who="landisaurus" reply="9" id="2029138"]I remember some of these people. Where have the gone?[/quote] Hopefully just off to do other stuff and/or think quietly a while before joining back in. I'll take quality over quantity in about every area except staple commodities. I have a terrible weakness for blathering online because I have decent typing skills, but in the big picture I'm pretty sure that a major share of my 'best replies' are ones that I decided not to po

[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="14" id="2027982"]... But Luckmann is saying that the two are not analogous situations; a sword is an object that can be given to anybody to use.[/quote] The 'variable' I'm attempting to convey is "object+skill" not just "object." True you can give anyone a sword, but without skill, they're more likely to hurt themselves than to help someone else. I'm not talking about some militia where you pick up spells at some sort of armory. I was just trying to sa

[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="12" id="2027645"]... Well the reason why I want this has nothing at all to do with realism ... [/quote] I said "fantasy" first and only mentioned history as an attempt to describe what for me would be a 'flavor' problem with any direct controls on population. Realism was not at all my concern--it hardly ever is when I think about Elemental. *Story*, on the other hand, matters a great deal to me, hence the casual reach to history for an example. <p

[quote who="Luckmann" reply="11" id="2027547"]...But in the society you describe, you can evenly distribute the arms - as you would, if all capable adults serve in a community militia. It was implied that in a society of mages vs. plebes, the magic would be exclusive. Otherwise, it's of course a potential non-issue.[/quote] It's the 'versus' that's the problem. In my little thought experiment, magic = ownership & skill w/ steel weapons. A 'universal' militia would not need ev

I appreciate the general intent of the OP, but I have to say that any direct UI option in this area would seem very out of place aesthetically for the fantasy setting. AFAIK, the only top-down 'population control' efforts before the 20th century were to *increase* breeding, e.g. monarchs backing up religious bans on contraception. But I know very little Chinese history, and they seem to have done pretty much everything the Europeans did, just usually at least a few centuries earlier.

I'm not a sociologist, but I think it is a gross oversimplification to say that an ability to use magic would necessarily segregate a population and lead to hostility between those can and those who can't. In rough outlines, the argument makes some sense, but that's mainly because we live in a world conditioned to break stories down into Us vs. Them. Any 'inevitable hostility' really would depend on more than the mere presence of a minority with magical abilities. Let's consider the a

[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="3" id="2026737"]What if specialization happens dynamically based on what you build in a city? If your city is largely filled with economy-based buildings the city will be superior at trade; or if it's filled with military structures units will be produced faster, or training will be more effective. ...[/quote] I'd like this idea even more if the details of the map also played a role. And I'm trying to keep the re-thinking economics thread in mind here.

I agree with Jonny's impulse to, ahem, manage our expectations re any sort of Myrror-analog or sky-islands. But the dev process is still a long way from leaving home for the public beta, and IIRC the screen shots we've had so far are more or less baby pictures, at least as far as the functional UI details go. I'm just sayin' ...

[quote who="landisaurus" reply="5" id="2024358"]Alway, your ideas make me more and more excited to hear about some stort of multiple world system MoM style.[/quote] Has anyone caught the least peep from the devs on this point? I know some posters really hate the idea, but I'm with Landi, in principle at least. I don't know about a full analog to Myrror (Elemental is NotMoM, after all), but something by way of an astral plane, islands in the sky, or pocket dimensions aligned wi

Well, I'd prefer a button-down to a polo, and if the button-down is office-style and not like a mechanic's work shirt, I'd want long sleeves, and possibly a collar. For the small art on the front of a button-down, I'd leave out the Stardock logo--it doesn't fit the color scheme and says "space" more than "fantasy." I'd also lose the :WoM bit. IMO, that's ugly in typing and when you try to say it as an acronym. I also think that a work-shirt button-down leaves a few good places

Hmm. Oceans of air combined with mobile shards could make for a really fun special map context. Only land masses with a Water shard would be able to generate fresh water, so stealing an enemies Water shard might be the single best way to wreck their realm, regardless of any other shards they might control. Or, if mobile shards are not an option, maybe you'd still need a Water shard under your control before you could imbue any land with essence and get its springs flowing again. That

[quote who="Nights Edge" reply="15" id="2021869"]When you talk about diseases being life magic, you're assuming that the world of Elemental would use the germ theory of disease. Maybe, in Elemental, disease is caused by miasma, vapours, the humours being out of balance, bad chi, evil spirits, or magic.[/quote] I'm not making that assumption--I'd prefer that there be no germ model. But we're still (impatiently) waiting for an Integrated Metaphysics post from the devs, so we have no way