Philocthetes

I first noticed Spartan over at GalCiv2 and until recently he had different user pic over there. But here, he's been a leader in getting folks to adopt user pics that show an Elemental focus, so now, when you look at his old GC2 posts, they show a grab from the initial Fallen art. The pic I'm using now is something I found on the net that another Master of Orion fan made. I don't want to change that for my posts over in the GC2 areas, but it doesn't seem to fit here. Would anyone else

I'm a member of the Gerontocracy over at GC2, born at the tail end of 1964. This thread frightens and confuses me because when I see the word "Dragonlance," I feel a great flare of frustration because I got partway through the real thing with a D&D crew before the problem of being grownups made us have to ditch the attempt at finishing the story. I was not one of the players who suffered from spouses and children, and the gametime schedule didn't interfere with my earning money. And no co

I still don't have a clear idea whether the devs plan to have a scoring system at all. I got drawn into the GC2 Metaverse a long while after I got obssessed with just playing, and I'm still not always sure I like what thinking about scores did to my playtime (I did learn to get "better" as Mumblefratz uses the word, but what I do in my MV games sometimes seems, well, a bit off on account of my tendency to roleplay the abstract ruler in any 4X game). I kind of fancy the idea that Eleme

[quote who="Tamren" reply="8" id="1941280"]Swicord? Stuff it, the Rule of Cool has taken over. If you guys get bears and pegasi, I get my T'rex.[/quote] But maybe not if you're playing a goody two-shoes? Seriously, though, a thunder lizard sounds like a far better mount type for combat units than a dragon. I'd love to see those too, and they're big enough that the only rigging problem for the rider would be what kinds of polearms might work well from the howdah. I

Because I have no self-control about digressions, I have to keep going about the bears. I wasn't talking about their domestication, but about their body mechanics. In evolutionary terms, bears are on a path with an option to become bipedal--horses aren't. Bears run on all fours, but they do a lot of their work, and I think their strongest fighting, while standing upright (or at least not bearing weight on their forequarters). They way they hunt salmon alone just says to me that gettin

[quote]We need ridable bears. [/quote] Seems like that would call for some tricky re-engineering of bears and/or saddles. Bears stand up to fight. Or maybe you're seeing these war-bears as more like an ancient chariot, something you jump off of once you get to the fight? Not that I'm encouraging thread-jacking or anything...

Re WoT balefire, I wasn't at all suggesting a spell like that could work in Elemental--seems like a coder's nightmare to me. But then, I'm no coder. Re the recent "evil is subjective" or "evil is relative" talk, I think that in the real world that's true to an extent--but never utterly true because you are never free of a framework that tells you what's good (swerving into the mailbox so you don't run over Kitty), what's evil (running over Spot because he keeps crapping in your yard),

[quote who="vieuxchat" reply="3" id="1940706"]Do you know that when you pause you have as much time as you need ? [/quote] I still think "we don't know enough" is the most important point so far. I can imagine some pretty different situations with a Pause button, some of which would be OK and others of which would leave me wondering if I'd bought some RTS thing by mistake. The last RTS thing I played much was Starcraft. I bought one of the holiday multipacks, got into the looks &

I'm sure I don't know enough yet to even begin being worried (or stoked). If things end up working like the video Shadowgandor linked, I won't worry, I'll just hope that auto-resolve is OK. That is *way* too much mousework for me to enjoy for a tactical engagement. And the demo makes me think that, pause buttons aside, the mode is too close to RTS because it would leave me feeling like the computer is pusing me, not me pushing the computer. (I'm thinking from a single-player POV here

[quote who="vieuxchat" reply="5" id="1931208"]It was indeed too powerful. Those beasts should have a big big big upkeep (mana and/orgold/any currency (like sanity?) that can be in) When you got a worm you were almost indestructible. They ate five or six heroes for their lunch.[/quote] I did feel a tad guilty summoning my own worms, but they were *really* satisfying to beat when I found them guarding a node. IIRC, I pretty much always lost a hero or two in battles like that.

[quote who="Nights Edge" reply="9" id="1930518"]The technology in Spore took a lot of time, money, and manpower. I'm sure they can achieve a lot, because the creator in Galciv 2 worked well, but I wouldn't expect them to replicate Spore's astonishing level of customization.[/quote] True, but only to a point. In software, what took tons of time and effort a short while ago tends to become a canned routine for today's dev tools. Plus, Stardock have been working on various aspects of thi

Balefire. Now there's some seriously unbalancing magic, if you're talking Wheel of Time--that balefire actually burns backwards in time, destroying a person's recent actions as well as the person.

[quote who="landisaurus" reply="5" id="1937938"]That is one reason why I lean on the side not random anything. Good calculation can create something you can become "good" at. on the other hand, random lets casual players still play in the same game without being totally creamed.[/quote] If this were going to be a pure wargame, I might end up with the minimal-randomness folks. But one of the most interesting things I've seen so far at this early stage is that Ele

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="2" id="1937531"]In Elemental, dragons are a very very big deal. For most players, they're more like forces of nature. You won't be easily able to get them on your side because they're just too powerful.[/quote] This was a regular (and often heated) debate in my old RPG circles. I'm really glad to see that the Elemental plan is going this way. I confess that I've read many Pern novels, and even had dragon-riding D&D characters, but "more like force

[quote]I want to be able to threaten an opponent. I found it a bit unfair in Galciv when an opponent would tell me that my Influence starbase was making him mad and he wanted it gone when 30 turns before he had parked one right beside Earth. I want to be able to make him tremble without actually going to war.[/quote] If there are treaties, I'd also like to be able to try bribing someone into breaking the ones they have with another faction. [quote]From what I understand, the t

Hmm. 12 civs. That sounds like there's definitely room for the good, the bad, and the indifferent both amongst humans and Fallen. [quote]I think there should also be neutral units/races, I just don't want to see something where there's no clear good and bad guys.[/quote] I agree--*except* I think the "good guy" list should be determined by the character of your channeler and civ. Drengin and Korath may fight and despise each other, but the rest of the GC2 civs are just so much

[quote]I just always hated it in any game (AOW, MOM, ) that when you killed the enemy leader a whole enemy empire suddenly vanishes![/quote] I think I might actually like having my channeler's death being one way to end the game. Being able to do something like a Spell of Return might by another (Immortality instead of Ascension). But I think auboy105 might be onto something re the other civs, at least in single-player mode. What a vanquished channler built shouldn't necessari

[quote who="Solam" reply="17" id="1929912"]I thought that each race had their own unique spellbook. I don't seehow everybody can have access to all spells by the end of the game.[/quote] In today's thread on the 12 civilizations, Brad said "Each of these factions has its own technology tree and own spell book to make each faction play very very differently." I suppose there might be some "tech theft" functions, but I'd be surprised if there aren't some th

[quote]Though I would limit access to them greatly. It should take great magical power or portals to get there, and even then they would be dangerous places.[/quote] That's pretty much what I was thinking. For me, I knew I was getting a good handle on MoM when taking turf in Myrror became part of my basic plan whenever I started a game on the pretty plane. For a long while it was just a place to go shiver in fear at what was guarding the nodes there.

I'm not sure how much or if automation will be involved, but I've seen several references to a rating and categorizing system on the Stardock side. I'd assume that part of getting a top rating will be about balance. But you know what sometimes happens when you assume...

[quote who="Tiavals" reply="8" id="1929310"]Well, something like this was in Master of Magic, and I assumed that's where you got the idea. Every now and then a constellation would go in conjunction or the Moon would be waxing or waning, changing the power-structure of the spellnodes in the game. A simple mechanic that usually affected little in the game, but a nice touch nonetheless.[/quote] My memory's not that good and my MoM disks got corrupted a long time ago (sigh). I was just do

I think this should be a matter of play style. If you take the GC2 map settings as an example, the game could easily support both an open-spaces style (very large maps, few stars and planets) and super-busy maps (abundant everything). I'd play on wilderness-rich maps, if given a choice.

The occasional flying mountain would be fun, too. I guess it depends on just how 3D the new engine is. There's talk about terrain contours having battle effects. Mabye flying stuff wouldn't be that hard on the code side--just two "places" to stand on the Z axis that share X,Y coordinates.

I'd about bet money that plans for stuff like this are already on the books. Didn't that sort of unit in MoM require mana every turn to maintain? That would be another good twist for the resource management layer. Summon a Horde of Doom? Sure you can--but your next fireball won't be much bigger than a lit cow-fart.

[quote who="psychoak" reply="4" id="1929021"]I'm going for the classic. In life magic, you heal. In death magic, you steal health from the enemy to give to your guy.[/quote] Some stuff I've read since I made the OP makes me pretty sure that's how the game's going, and that works for me pretty much. But I'm still really hoping that the alignment system will be on a sliding scale and not a binary choice. Maybe trinary, if a scale is just no good for the other mechanics?