Demiurge4

The Hearts of Iron series has a system kind of like this, when you annex a country you piss off most of the world and increase your threat. Smaller nations will feel threatened but probably won't attack you, so instead they join one of the rival factions. This could work in Elemental by smaller kingdoms forming alliances or a big nation deciding you're becoming a threat to it because you're expanding by force and declare war on you. While simply expanding by regular means, trade and building

Hmm, well do we have an IRC channel for the beta? Thats usually a good way to get to know people and if you want to use vent I'm sure someone in there has access to one.

Maybe let trade posts pop up themselves on top of intersections, so a busy road might have taverns alongisde it or roads will deviate from the shortest route to pass through an oasis in the desert. If the intersections are in your territory you can tax it but if its in neutral territory an independent trade city might appear there with its own army. An easy way to starve this city would be to embargo it and block the roads leading to your enemies territory and the city would disappear on its

Play the game, report obvious bugs, for example if you crashed let them know exactly what you were doing etc. Try to see if there's obviously broken stuf like freezes if you click on a certain menu tab while having a unit selected. That kind of stuff. Also if you think some things could be done better or you think an aspect of the game would benefit from a change in mechanics you can report that as well.

I get what you're saying, I just think its needlessly complex. We still don't know how the really powerful spells will work, take the vulcano that was shown at pax. Very impressive and lots of potential for damage, but the channeler was right there and they were showing off a demo, in a normal game will it take 3 turns to cast it? If its instant whats the range on it? Will the channeler have to be right there or can he do it from the safety of his capital? If say, its short range but instant,

[quote who="pdboddy" reply="74" id="2372424"]Bah, I tried to pre-order, but they don't let you use PayPal to pre-order. [/quote] I think Frogboy said in another thread that they might keep it open for a week and let you purchase beta access with paypal after the beta starts.

Why can't we just use a simple system of power? When casting a counterspell you determine the amount of mana you feed into the spell. If the amount of mana you use is equal to the cost of the spell you have a 25% chance to disrupt the spell, if you feed it more mana your chance increases. Implement this for warding areas as well, say a city, you cast a weak ward over your city that will automaticly defeat any spell up to a certain level and an enemy caster will have to dispell the bubble befo

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="40" id="2370268"] Wait... what? You don't want borders? Wtf?Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of being able to close your borders, but one of the things I hated the most about Civ was that they started out closed and you had to open them up one AI at a time.[/quote] Yeah because its entirely logical that other nations don't mind you walking armies through their territory. Civ4 offset this anyway by having the explorer and one of the s

[quote who="SnallTrippin" reply="58" id="2369191"]Remember you can create a vassal with more than one city, so you could create a vassal kingdom with like 5-10 cities. instead of dealing with 10 vassals.[/quote] Yes but then you're making them stronger then you have to and they might become a threat later ;) Make 3 vassals with 3-4 cities each and play them against each other instead!

Ooh, I'm considering the possibilities here, make each vassal a single city, effectively creating city states or make them a bit larger so they're more able to defend themselves against agression (say, an eastern neighbor you don't feel like dealing with) but risk them winning the war and becoming a new threat? Awesome!

Pfft, do they get a channeler? Like one of your hedgewizard kids or will I be able to keep them in line by having my pet dragon fly over ocasionally to remind them who's boss? :D

Speculation go! But seriously, we don't know, there's not even going to be tactical battles in the first beta deployment.

[quote who="blakspek" reply="6" id="2366180"]Ok for a online savegame, but it would be very hard to get the same 32 players at the same time to continu the game...[/quote] Just schedule it, make a weekly plan, games played for 2 hours on x days over a period of a month all planned in advance, if you fail to show up on a date the game goes on without you. By signing up you commit to the plan and an understanding that you will make time so you can play, easy.

Those games also functioned very differently, Civ4, Colonization etc operate in very simple terms. You have a flat world with each square pre-defined as grass/hill/water/etc and the only updates needed between clients is basic information about unit types, square improvements and the like. SMAC is a bit more advanced in that regard what with there not being hill squares but instead the landscape being completely mallable with terraforming and these changes have to be synchronized on all clien

[quote who="Nesrie" reply="9" id="2365437"] I've played a lot of games actually, including that one, and Civ II, Age of Wonders, Everquest, HHOM3, several of the Settlers series all on a modem. I played Age of Empires II on the a modem too. Please don't address me as if I do not understand that data is being exchanged in turn-based enviroments or as if if I am unfamiliar with how modem play worked or even the basics playing games online.[/quote] Then you also know

Nesrie: Have you ever played Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri? The amount of information to exchange is atrocious, terraforming data such as terrain levels, the effect the new hill has on rainfall, unit movements, combat resolutions, forest/fungus spread etc etc etc. This all has to be calculated on the host and then transmitted out and back to make sure everyone is synchronized properly. Turns take AGES when just one person is slow. Elemental is going to have miles more stuff to calculate, exchang

I just hope there's going to be a lot of "wild" space in the game, because clearing out a monster lair and then having a safe zone is no fun. I want new lairs to pop up in far off places and roaming gangs of minotaurs knocking at my gates, I want that forest to be offlimits because the giant spiders are scary as all hell and maybe end up just torching it because I don't feel like losing a hero and an army clearing them out.

I think you guys are vastly over estimating the level of costumization that will be in the game, what the hell is a level 3 bronze sword? A sword is a sword, you got the short version the romans used to great effect in their shield lines because they stab well, you got the long version thats better for a general melee without well organized lines and a two handed version thats great for offense but piss poor for defending. This isn't Galciv 2 where you gradually improve

[quote who="Sarudak" reply="18" id="2365118"] Quoting BoogieBac, reply 5 Iirc, neither MoM or MoO1 had race customization at all ... but I know what you meant, cool Seriously, I can't wait to get the faction customization in. The plan ATM is to give the player X 'customization points' that can be spend on the 3 major parts of your faction: the sovereign's stats, the civilizations stats, and your magical preferences. You can imagine the HUGE range of possibilities with such a

It would be pretty cool to have a mini rogue-like when your exploring a monster lair, give your hero a certain number of action points per turn and you can move him around to explore it. You clear it when the big beast is dead but you might be able to avoid it until your stronger and steal some treasure off another area of the lair.

In Master of Magic you can cast an overland spell called Detect Magic that lets you know what your opponents are casting and you can decide if you want to use a disjunction spell to interrupt it, a fairly simple and easy system. As for defence, I hope there's a number of terrain altering spells to choose from, for example you can raise rocks out of the earth to create a natural barrier or wall at certain chokepoints to make sure your enemy has to pass through this area or block it off

[quote who="Morslok" reply="6" id="2363811"]Just remember that your channeler has the equivalent power of a Valar (translates literally to Power or Powerful), which are the "Gods" of Middle Earth. So, even if you're playing as orcs from the 3rd age and your channeler is Sauron (which would be interesting to have a channeler who doesn't move around (stuck at Barad Dur) and whose spells are more powerful the closer they are cast to Mordor) you are still only role-playing one of the Maiar,

Well there's no reason not to keep an awesome stack around, good armies win battles after all. But its all about hard counters, spearmen defeat the elite cavalry but have no shields and so are vulnurable to missile units. Swordsmen chop up bowmen and to a degree spearmen but lose out to cavalry. Going into a battle with 20 units of expensive elite cavalry is easily countered by bringing ye olde pointy stick, some bowmen and maybe a fire elemental to scare the horses. Besides, I'm sure there w

I hope its all about philosophical differences, the Fallen were bred/changed to be stronger and faster out of necessity because, you know, the world was destroyed and surviving was a bitch. Humans on the other hand banded together and survived by supporting each other so they're more inclined towards peaceful persuits of agriculture and getting the old world back. This would be shown ingame by the Fallen being more agressive and likely to take enemy lands by force because their agressive natu

Here's how I'd like religion to be handled in Elemental, in too many games the creation and spread of religion is entirely up to the player or rival nations determined by who researches what tech first. What I want to see is for certain NPC city states to crop up randomly over the course of the game or already exist in small "oasis" like areas in the gameworld. These powerful cities will be home to a few heroes and have a powerful army and maybe a specific guardian creature to make them an im