Sethai

Reply to Galactic Civilizations 3 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

i'm pretty positive. i've read a few posts where brad has spoken wistfully on the subject. he's implied for example that any gc3 would use the elemental engine. i just don't think they're in a hurry. mostly because - whatever you'd like done with gc - the game as is basically works. i think the tipping point will come when people looking for a new space 4x start looking at gc2's clunky, blocky graphics and gems-floating-in-space and say "ugh." though personally i do that already.

Reply to Block Dodge, Block Block Dodge... in War of Magic Elemental Forums

i think there is a more fundamental issue here: how do you make a combat system where there are dodge mechanics and armour blocking mechanics (which come into play often enough to be relevant), without bombarding the user with loads of tedious dodge messages? most games that have thse kind of mechanics have an auot-attack feature. i can now see why they originally wanted to keep the game simple and have almost every attack do some damage. but at the same time, i wouldn't want to sacrifice thi

Reply to 92 Points to Spare - Breaking the Game in War of Magic Elemental Forums

[quote who="Derek Paxton" reply="10" id="2866709"] I must admit that the game balancer part of me wants to remove sovereign customization from the game (which will never happen because it's awesome!) because of the inherent balance concerns it raises. We can balance Procipenee's Attunement vs Verga's high starting strength but when we allow players to make their own it allows them to make crazy combos. We can either remove sovereign customization, keep some traits

Reply to There's too little cursing on this forum.... in War of Magic Elemental Forums

i find that cursing isn't really insulting enough for my needs. i find it much effective to look people directly in the eye and just tell how horrifically ugly they are in comparison to me.

Will there ever be an option to upgrade old units? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

a lot of people keep making the request that we be able to upgrade our military units to newer versions with better armour, more experience and larger maximum group sizes. we make it as an aside, in the thought that it's such an obvious usability thing that is bound to be implemented eventually. only it hasn't been, nor has their been any talk of doing so. and the past doesn't compare well: although there was an upgrade option of a sorts in GalCiv2, you'd have to restructure your enti

Reply to GalCiv III tactical battling in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

@ elestan. good points. regardless of whether or not we'd want such mechanics in battles, it is my experience that stardock so far tend to prefer incredibly simplified (almost suffocatingly simple) battle mechanics (elemental is another great example of this). a system with the variables you describe sounds like EVE levels of complexity (though even that doesn't have arcs of fire), but even in that game a lot of the variables you describe have optimal behaviour solutions that can be c

Reply to Elemental'ists that own GalCiv2 in War of Magic Elemental Forums

sorry to repost this, but i've been thinking a lot about the game recently, and the boards over there are pretty dead. despite my admiration for gc2 and all the hours i've given it, i don't think it's fair to say i really love it. the game just has no atmosphere and the visual style is too cartoony. you never feel that you're exploring the infinite wonder of the cosmos; there's no scie

Reply to Heroes all look the same if I have enough money in War of Magic Elemental Forums

the game mechanics don't have the scope for much variation unfortunately. in theory you have a choice of maybe three kinds of hero: ranged weapons, melee weapons and magic. unfortunately stats don't effect spells nearly enough that there's much advantage to focusing on INT, and even if they did it wouldn't effect your equipment because there is no magical equipment, nor any real disadvantage to armour. the easiest solutions would be - increasing the role of stats in spells. so

Reply to What happened to the big Announcement? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

i too am waiting for the big announcement so i know what to rant about next. good choice of spell winner though; i just hope some more get in: it's not as if we've got too many spells.

Reply to GalCiv III tactical battling in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

It should be done like in Gratuitous Space Battles. In three dimensions there is very little point to tactical battles. everyone can almost always hit everyone so long as they're in range. All we would be doing would be selecting all our ships and targetting the ship with the highest attack: defense ratio. ie, exactly what the game does now. what is needed is simply more mechanics. make it possible for small ships to outmaneuvre the big guns of big ships, bring in range and ra

Reply to Fans of GalCiv 2 look here in War of Magic Elemental Forums

despite my admiration for gc2 and all the hours i've given it, i don't think it's fair to say i really love it. the game just has no atmosphere and the visual style is too cartoony. you never feel that you're exploring the infinite wonder of the cosmos; there's no scientific believability OR imagination. neither is there any sense of dread or unknown at the prospect of war with an alien race. there are too many aliens that look like squirrels, purple gems floating in space and messages like "

Reply to Why not just dump the entire sorcery tree into the spellbook? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

i'm with the OP broadly. if it was up to me sorcery and spell research would be the same thing. it just makes sense. personally i would remove the idea of specific spell research entirely and just research the books: once you get the book you know all the spells in it, even if you can't cast them. we would need many more books though (which i would be arguing anyway). i would also like a tech that increased your mana regen by 1/turn each time it was researched. then, finally, sorcery would ha

Reply to Are we supposed to be hitting the city tile limit? (and other citizen thoughts) in War of Magic Elemental Forums

i can see why people would want more flexibility with the tile limit, but i think they're thinking small. if nothing else, there are performance issues to consider. I think the idea of urban congestion and squalor is beyond the scope of this game. We already have perfectly good ways of limiting buildings without approaching the tile limit. ie, population and level. those are the mechanics we need to make work. once we start playing around with the tile limit, we have effectively ack

Reply to Are we supposed to be hitting the city tile limit? (and other citizen thoughts) in War of Magic Elemental Forums

[quote who="alaknebs" reply="1" id="2851820"]if there's no tile limit... doesn't that mean you can cover a whole map with just 1 city?[/quote] i'm not saying we shouldn't be hitting an ultimate tile limit or that we should be able to cover the map with endlessly sprawling cities; i'm saying that if the game was designed properly, neither of these things would be a risk anyway.

Reply to PC Gamer review of 1.1 in War of Magic Elemental Forums

pretty fair, generally. have been abusing the volcano spell myself recently. you know that casting it on an enemy city doesn't even count as a declaration of war?!?!

Are we supposed to be hitting the city tile limit? (and other citizen thoughts) in War of Magic Elemental Forums

so you may or may not know that level 5 cities will eventually reach a limit beyond which it can construct no more due to a hardcoded tile limit. most games have limits of this kind, but the question that needs to be asked is whether this limit is there for performance/visual reasons, or as a gameplay mechanic. neither answer is particularly satisfying. if it's genuinely a gameplay feature, it seems like a pretty lame one. it's one thing to say that a city can only support a certain n

Reply to I wish the landscape worked like this... in War of Magic Elemental Forums

unless there is some strategy to city design, then what purpose does it serve? couldn't it just as easily be represented by an image that simply grew tith city size? if nothing else then we'd stop running into the city tile limit all the time. which raises another questions: is the city tile limit supposed to be a tactical gameplay restriction, or is it just a performance thing to save memory? i mean, if it's the former, than it's a pretty lame mechanic, and if it's the latter then wh

Reply to Brad, more AI please in War of Magic Elemental Forums

[quote who="jecjackal" reply="83" id="2850715"] With this post, I tried to point out that we could have 10 or so weapons that would continously get better (tiers would be mat used). Each weapon would have strengths or weakness (passive stat changes). Kenata's Weapon Mod is also an excellent example. https://forums.elementalgame.com/400876 Her(?) example gives 1-2 abilities to each weapon. I think this is an excellent idea and if combined with tiers of mats, an excellent

Reply to Why can't we research the 4 starting spell books if our sovie doesn't get them at start ?? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

agreed. not saying it should be easy, but i would prefer them accessible somehow. also perhaps as quest rewards?

Reply to Brad, more AI please in War of Magic Elemental Forums

btw, i personally think the AI would do better with a bunch of premade units. i don't think there's really enough variation in the system at the moment to warrant unit design.

Reply to Brad, more AI please in War of Magic Elemental Forums

much the same as others: the ai doesn't build groups it doesn't go for the right technologies first like a human player: food increases, housing bonuses, groups, armour and weapons. perhaps we're manipulating the game because certain techs are essential (overpowered), and in the long terms this might mean a rethink of technologies, but in the short term, it needs to learn to go for these techs and build those groups. it builds too many settlements too cl

Reply to Elemental, and what would work from it in GalCiv III in War of Magic Elemental Forums

i really like resources and really hope that the GC3 economy would be more fun if it was about achieving a balance of resources than messing around with those confusing and counter intuitive production sliders and focus buttons. i really think this would would help with the atmosphere of the game. most great space games have a sense of the infinite expanse of the cosmos and the unthinkable possibilies contained therein. your evil opponents should have the threat of the unknown. the ga

Why not make all units Groups? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

the more and more I think about this, the more i think it would improve the game. right now the initial jump from individuals to grous represents a huge jump in power that makes it an "essential" tech. one of those techs we all go at in a straight line early in the game (like housing and food techs). what's worse is that the AI is awful at building groups even when it has the techs. this will likely persist switching from a 1/3/6/12 progression to 3/6/9/12 would have many benefits inc

Reply to where did all the resources go? in War of Magic Elemental Forums

yes, i am getting sick of having huge sub continents of land in which there is not point in building even the smallest of settlements. i mean, look at russia: it's basically all the bits to the north of the other countries that no one else wanted, but they've still managed to find some useful stuff there. resource distribution is key to getting the settlement distribution right in this game. more and more now i'm starting to wonder if the solution is perhaps a lot more resources, but smaller

Reply to I had fun (surprise!), but exploits need to be fixed. in War of Magic Elemental Forums

[quote who="Heavenfall" reply="2" id="2848310"]Following up on Istari's excellent suggestion, I too would like to see a D&D system for units. [/quote] tbh, most of suggestions i make for how to do the combat system tend to be D&D based; it's a very good system for this kind of thing. though there's some things i wouldn't keep (i currently like the distinction between dodging and blocking dnd lacks). generally though, the D&D system of random number + stat const