Philocthetes

[quote who="Pherdnut" reply="8" id="1950307"]I was looking at the listings for sci fi the other night. 5 hours straight worth of game shows and BS 'paranormal investigations.' No sci fi. TV execs are idiots.[/quote] Indeed. They score recurring funding for stupid "reality" shows and the ever so sci-fi laden ECW, but somehow can't pull it together to rescue any of the recent half-dozen or more one-season wonders that would have surely built a loyal, if not insanely large, audience. We'

[quote]Aes Sedai are to Wise Women as the Bene Gessariat are to Reverend Mothers[/quote] Don't you mean 'BGs are to Honored Matres'? I don't like rank-ordered lists, but I love hearing a few favorites named now and then. I've enjoyed many of the titles folks mentioned above, and a couple are on my list but not in my local library yet. I'm kind of surprised no one's mentioned Zelazny's Amber novels yet. But then I hadn't thought about them in a good while myself. Back w

One of the more interesting tidbits I've seen from dev-land so far is that this new engine is supposed to have really high flexibility in terms of building UIs for the underlying functions. I agree that the default play of the game should stay relatively simple, both to help everyone when they are new, and also to help attract players who are making their first try at 4X. But I don't think we necessarily must sacrifice underlying complexity to have a sufficiently simple base UI. Don't

[quote]Oh, does that mean we get an AI that remembers stuff from game to game?[/quote] That's kind of what I'm hoping, especially if what it remembers is not as much about drama details as it is about a given players habits and the potential strategic weak spots they tend to create. Also, if the 'persistent' stuff works well for the single-player opponent instances, maybe a similar code chunk could provide a pool of trainable hero units, so you would eventually have different

[quote who="Sole Soul" reply="21" id="1946484"]Canon.[/quote] Doh! Hate fingerchecks, but like the newish edit-anytime functionality. And almost love the homonym fun you can have with canon vs. cannon.

[quote]I don't want to see armies of units marching across the surface of the ocean, or marching across the sea floor.[/quote] At least not without some pretty big magic. With the right spells, though, it could look really neat to have horse cavalry riding over undersea plains while shark cavalry swoops down on them. I missed the talk from Frogboy about no tactical water combat. Was aerial combat mentioned as well? Seems like if underwater fights are too much code bother, flyi

My guess and hope is that the street-version answer to this question will reflect Stardock's past strength in supporting a very wide range of hardware configurations and play styles. For hardware-rich, animation-hungry players, hopefully the Elemental engine will be able to do some amazing things. For those of us who might still be interested in playing this game through a pre-GUI interface, I trust there will also be more than sufficient fun to be had. I'm also a little bit curious a

Darned if y'all aren't making me doubt my initial conviction that I wouldn't never touch the multiplayer side of Elemental. keithLamothe might have hit the nail on the head for me. I'd never be interested in syncrhonous multiplayer, but something asynchronous might end up really sucking me in. Especially if game Closure Conditions include cooperative scenarios where a permanent alliance of players work through a ludicrously complex map with scary-good AIs lurking all over the place. A

[quote]I'm getting sick of the elf/man/dwarf trichotomy.[/quote] I've been fairly elf-obssessed when I'm doing a D&D-related game, but I basically agree that the Tolkien framework is overused. What I hope to hear more about soon is how the game "canon" (text, not weapon) will relate to the planned high level of customizability. Have I missed any big info on the how the campaigns, sandbox mode, and multiplayer might differ?

[quote who="Solam" reply="11" id="1943267"]I guess at 34 I am getting old [/quote] If you're still playing GC2, you should ditch those hairball-hurling Kzinti and come home to the Gerontocrats . We're such funky old geezers that our emporer is in semi-retirement--on account of the real world getting busy with grownup crap (he had a big career boost this year and is actually self-disciplined enough to cut back on his gaming time, the

Well, since my name came up in the OP, I feel obliged to say I really like the Elemental colors as they are. I'm an aging-eyed geezer, read with the page zoomed up anyway, and having it any darker would hurt me, not help. (Haven't seen white anywhere, and would think it should be blocked by the site skin.) Re cross-site karma, I do wish that it was either completely global or completly site-linked. The hybrid thing can make a relative 'newbie' to Elemental seem like an old pro if he o

[quote]Like I said he is trolling here. [/quote] Who? Where? Sniff-sniff...I smell a forum sprawl thing. [quote]But given that everything else about accounts is global, I don't see this changing anyway.[/quote] Everything but karma, you mean. I've been trying to make myself stop disliking the karma thing by handing a lot out lately, but I still have the same kind of ambivalence about it that I do about sweating my score when I play GC2. Karma's a bitch.

Wraithlord started a PBEM thread a couple of weeks ago, and it is still active. I suspect that Stardock will want to have anything along these lines work through Impulse rather than e-mail attachments--that would probably make it easier for more players to use the features. But I haven't noticed any dev-types directly answering questions in this area, and I think it might be related to the fact that the tactical layer is still in a 'very early alpha' state. Depen

[quote]On the other hand, what's stopping a channeler from proclaiming himself a god? [/quote] Nothing to stop a proclamation, but putting some punch behind the claim might not be possible, or at least not until very late in the game. I only said "might not work directly" because I've seen nothing about religious systems for the back story. I'm getting steadily more interested in how they're going to connect the single-player campaigns with the single-player sandbox, modding abilities

[quote]Specific maps, since there's going to be a canonical world. [/quote] I'm not sure that "canonical world" requires "Specific maps." The devs could run a lot of theme-driven parameters through a map generator. I never seriously messed with the GC2 scenarios, so I have no idea if there's a master map at work there or the games all start with locked-down settings for the normal map generation process.

[quote]So my soldier would have a sword, plate armour, horse, helm and shield. Could I also give him magic resistance and healing and call him a Paladin. ?[/quote] Well, Brad has described equipping units with enchanted gear, and strong in-game "modability" seems to be a major design theme, so I think this is a reasonable hope. Given the back story scraps I've caught so far, the typical D&D paladin might not work directly--AFAIK, the closest things to gods in this game will be the

This discussion mainly makes me want to know more about how the devs intend to handle the relationship between the main (strategic) map turns and turns in the tactical layer. But I quite like the idea of some system that might enable two roughly equal forces to fight to a draw during one strategic-level turn and find themselves needing to start their next tactical turn by deciding whether to keep the fight going or to retreat. I'd love to see the strategic map enabling us to consider whether

So does "...decide how much of your power to imbue into your heroes as you build new cities, explore dungeons, perfect spells of ever-increasing power..." mean that players will be building their own spells as well as units? Or should the verb have been "research" instead of "perfect?"

[quote]I'm not entirely sure that this belongs in the "Elemental Ideas" forum, but yes, I completely agree. Even though mine does fit.[/quote] This area of Stardock-land doesn't yet have an Elemental Site Issues or Forum Issues category, or I would have used them. And, yes, you are helpful b/c I hadn't thought about the pic as a multi-site ID b/c until now, GC2 is the only forum I've bothered with since my old days on BBS systems. I guess I'd say that I still like the idea of an

I love the idea of supply lines that are also potential tactical targets, and that have something like the level of detail (quanity, travel time) you describe. Even more, I like the idea that the game might include something like the real-world differences in raw material distribution so that trade treaties alone could become a major part of both the diplomatic and military situations. I suspect, though, that anything along these lines will need some pretty simple & friendly top l

[quote]It's too early to say whether or not this is a good idea because we don't know how hard it is to kill an avatar[/quote] I think that's part of what Brad expects to get from our responses to the beta--do we like how hard (or easy) it is to kill a channeler? In imagination-land, I'm leaning to dead player channeler = game over. At the moment, I think that the real trick there will be those decisions about how much power to imbue in the land and your heroes vs. keep to yourself. I

I agree that no particular "alignment system" is necessarily better--the back story is indeed the most important thing. And right behind that is how it works into the magic system. I've quickly lost confidence that I'm finding all the freshest info. Has anyone seen any word yet on just how the Elements work into the spell system? I saw talk of spell books, and them being unique for each faction (which suggests that faction membership is a fundamental trait of a channeler). But I'm not

[quote]If the area with the Fallen looks like Mordor, how does that land produce any good wood? Or food? That's always puzzled me.[/quote] My guess is that the operative phrase in Frogboy's Mordor reference might be "a lot like."

[quote]It's not so much a good/evil thing as it is the worship of death vs. the worship of life.[/quote] So are there factions who equally worship both death and life? 12 factions seems like there's room for 1-2 both Fallen and Human groups that are actually more like each other than they are like the rest of "their side."

I've been working my current GC2 game and somehow mostly thinking that Bear Cavalary might really just be a training question after all. But really, either you drastically underestimate the importance of honey or I'm too devoted to the Greatest Bear, defamed by Disney, but still the Pooh. Which does bring up the much less expensive-sounding notion of goblin cavalry mounted on war-boars...