Philocthetes

AFAIK, Brad's current position about core Elemental design is that the single-player experience is the most important thing and any multiplayer work should be avoided or dropped if it detracts from the game being solidly satisfying when played with no active network connection. As long as that's a roughly correct statement about the dev plan, IMO, 'balance' talk should be strictly relegated to the multiplayer context. For the core game, anything you might call 'balance' is irrelevant

[quote who="tetleytea" reply="17" id="2013202"]Now, how do we overhaul the health care system so the pharma companies stop puttong up all these lame commercials with the pretty music playing in the background, scenes of nature, serenity, and some guy's voice saying, "Please take Propecia. Side effects are heart failure, kidney failure, and brain seizures. You might die from taking it, or wish you were dead. Other studies have shown you might sprout three arms or explode from

My guess is that however the packaging system works out, there will be both published packages and local, user-defined packages and you'll always be working with one sort of package or another, not just a stack of whatever came down the pipe. Both user-made and downloaded packages almost certainly will require that every component in the group have a unique name, so the only way to have two types of troll or guardian in the package would be to have related names like Knight Guardian and Guard

[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="10" id="2013367"]...Any takers?[/quote] One here. No single aspect of the idea seems unfamiliar to me, but the arrangment is darned fresh and tasty.

[quote who="NTJedi" reply="6" id="2012752"]The Wonders Feature would be appreciated, but it should be a game option where players could enable/disable the feature.[/quote] Just curious--why would you want to disable 'wonders?' The only frustrations they've ever caused me in other TBS games is when another civ builds one that I want badly (good frustration) or when they don't quite work as advertised (bad frustration).

[quote who="landisaurus" reply="7" id="2012409"]speaking of not-enough shirts. I want a button up shirt with the logo on the back. Rather than a regular T-shirt. I know its kind of a mute point because button up shirts are more expensive and less likely to be produced, and really I want anything SD will give us, but still. there need to be more button up shirts[/quote] Hmm. Sounds like the beginning of a prize design for the beta multipl

I'm not at all worried that the AI moves in tactical will be as weak as they were in MoM, although I'm hoping that the higher-level decisions about troop buildups and movement will be better than they are in GalCiv2. The "continuous turn" talk does still worry me a tad, though, especially because it seems to encourage a few folks to talk about Elemental as if it will be an RTS (or have an RTS minigame as the tactical layer). I *really* don't want to have to pause anything other than m

On the 'indirect toxicity' of CO2 front, I've lost the reference, but last year I read about some botanical research on the growth of poison ivy in an enriched-CO2 atmosphere. It appears that higher CO2 will not only drive faster growth of poison ivy, it increases the production of urushiol, the nasty stuff to which so many of us are painfully, even dangerously, allergic. At least here in Florida, that's a real bitch for those of us who try to avoid industrial herbicides in our yards-

BoogieBac, is there any 'packaging' system in the plan yet? I'm thinking about something like a major set of themed additions, e.g. "Tolkien Elves for Elemental" or "Spawn of the Monster Manual" that might include a wide range of related content items.

[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="9" id="2010551"]...Another thing I'd like is an actual favor system. ...[/quote] Indeed. Perhaps some integration with quest mechanics could help here--"Our Vast Orchard has become infested with hostile faeries who've chased off the orchard-keepers, but our Heroes are all too far away to search out the faery queen and deal with her. If you can help us make the orchard safe before harvest time, you'll have a share of the crop and our lasting gratitude."

[quote who="EvilTesla-RG" reply="3" id="2010427"]...Which is kinda wierd, becouse that video said that Norway is very liberal, well, my family is about as conservitive as you can get.[/quote] Not really. Ideological reasons are often a factor in emigration patterns. I'm a Brit/German-descended Florida native with both pre-US Protestant roots and a step-grandmother (on the 'Anglo' side of the family) who fled Weimar Germany for St. Louis. And, since I still live in Florida, I l

There's a different "Hey, you, out of the gene pool" story in the Wash Post today--even gives an opportunity to whine about video games being 'dangerous' for little kids. A 6-year-old missed the schoolbus and decided to take his sleeping mom's car instead--managed to drive over 10 miles and no one died! Edit: the kid might be an example of how two 'wrongs' might make a right--he

The more I think about it, the more I believe that some 'cross-cultural' mechanics for city tiles could really add to the 'epic feel' of the game. There's historical precedent for major cities having whole sections occupied by a minority from far away. Teotihuacan had several 'ethnic enclaves,' including a Maya quarter, and it was a long way from the Maya heartland. In game terms, it might be simpler to try for something like the MoO2 mixed-population colonies; essentially a one-time

I balked when I first caught mention that the GalCiv and Elemental back stories might be "linked," but the journal posts here have left me wondering if that "link" might not be nearly as linear as some folks seem to expect (or fear). Look at the way time is handled--from the primary (Mithrilar) POV, it seems to be something alien and more or less dangerous. The deepest parts of the backstory, perhaps for both games, are cosmological (which is probably why the tone is too 'Tolkienesque

To aid and abet the threadjacking, I have two comments: 1) psychoak definitely reminded me of Wheel, but his hot language is spiced differently, kind of like comparing a southern Indian curry to a Thai curry. 2) Wrangling with psychoak on a forum seems to be the typed equivalent of making a backyard wrestling ring and playing WWF. It can be good fun as long as you're interested, but it's never going to go anywhere serious, at least in terms of conclusions, consensus, or a league contract.

Thanks for the correction, Mumble. I only root around GC2 and Elemental and was mis-remembering from your earlier sprawl analysis. Joe User pretty much scared me away the few times I've scanned it--I like amiable disagreements, not ferocious ones. Guess that might make my "Free the OT" position just some unconscious form of cowardice or something.

I still think the 'forum interstate system' installed in the last big round of upgrades is another example of technology getting way ahead of policy (this thread pre-dates that change, as the wording clearly indicates). Off-Topic is the same for every Stardock forum site now, so the intent of the OP here is pretty much foiled from the git-go by the fact that Joe User has much broader standards than, say, the game sites that have regular participation by minors. If this were just GalCi

It's worth considering that the lack of dev response in this thread might indicate that the question is still open from a design POV. I admit that might seem like a conspiracy-theorist take on the comparative lack of details on 'magical' mechanics vs. 'mundane' ones. I'm just sayin'...

[quote who="Luckmann" reply="2" id="2007860"]... What would be gained by sterilizing the parents and sending the child to a labour camp? I mean, not that people would be named things like that in Germany if the Third Reich would've persisted, for a variety of reasons. Like many other nations (even to this day, including all Scandinavian nations, Germany, and others) you couldn't name your child anything you wanted.[/quote] The Nazis were a most foul sort of <a href="http://en.

It's also something that makes some of us regularly uncomfortable for a range of reasions, e.g.: There's no decent etiquette for much of anything on the Internet, much less when and how often to give karma to folks on a public forum. Your mother raised you to believe pride is a sin. You don't believe in sin, but you still worry about being unreasonably arrogant. A really good thread can make you forget entirely about pretending to quantify your res

[quote who="elias001" reply="23" id="2007791"]wow..you guys are still posting on this thread. i though the original story which this thread spring from is getting to be old. Anyways, here is my 2 cents on the subject. The parents that named their kid after adolf Hitler..well they are either just asking for it, or they were ready to take the abuse on behalf of their child. [/quote] The best conversations take years, not days, at least if you have

The second excerpt from "Guardians of the Telenanth" hinted at all sorts of magical details, but it is seriously "back" back story given the interesting treatment of time. It seems like more or less "Elder Days" stuff, and all manner of changes are possible between Then and Now. I have no interest in heckling Brad about when and how he'll be parcelling out stories like Guardians, except that I hope he gives himself enough time to be pleased with things when RTM hits. I still w

[quote who="psychoak" reply="17" id="2007705"]... The guy's been spewing hatred for most of his life now. To seriously link his support page as a credible piece of information is amusing at best. I question the logic in Germany's holocaust denial laws equally with their game violence idiocy, but trying to pretend it's the Jews fault that WW2 happened is fucking pathetic. It's right up there with believing the Illuminati run the world. A bunch of mom and pop shop keeper

Well, Brad's second exerpt from "Guardians of the Telenanth" mentions battle mages that are both trained to magic and connected to a major magic item (stronger when closer to it). Seems encouraging for the caster units cause.

Jonny, it looks like you've managed to marry the wilderness idea with ckessel's OP. All the interesting details aside, your post makes me think that one way Elemental could take a giant step forward from GC2 is to replace minor civs with independent kingdoms that can function at least somewhat like you describe. The 'minorness' of the minors has often seemed a weakness to me when I think about sci-fi stories like the Organians in Star Trek. For a fantasy game, it seems even more worthwhile to