Here's a thought: what if it is possible for the sovereign to feign death? That way, your sovereign could pretend die, but in reality retreat to a hidden city and regroup. This gives some potential for epic comebacks.
yes
On a related note, it would be interesting to have children's willingness to marry based partially on the attractiveness of the proposed partner. It would be cool to figure out how to code who finds whom attractive.
I definitely agree that there should be some rock-paper-scissors method. However, the danger there is that that system itself will become formulaic. "My enemy is using a lot of archers, so I should send a lot of horsemen" types of decisions make the game slightly more interesting but not poly- or ambivalent.
It's a common and useful feature of most TBS's, so there probably will be.
Just for clarification, modern techs means modern under-the-hood technology, not a modern-day based ingame tech tree.
I would give you karma but you're still in high school.
Is it just me or does the voice sound kind of like a muppet?
In defense of the excellent Civilization games, having cities work the land around them was an appropriate abstraction in my opinion. But I agree that TBS games should move beyond this.
s'more flavored schnapps sounds disgusting
I just checked this. Do I smell a strategy bias? :P
Elemental Forums
It would be interesting to have economic sabotage beyond just blowing up buildings. Flooding cities with goods and counterfeiting to cause inflation in your enemy's cities could be an interesting passive-aggressive way to attack somebody.
I agree with DivineWrath from a suspension of disbelief standpoint. Also, from a gameplay standpoint it seems like it would just be a pain, both to implement and to play.
Elemental Forums
Great idea. The natural extension to this in a magical setting is units with the ability to see through mountains and forests.
Portal I think everything else in the Orange Box has been said. Batman: Arkham Asylum Really solid gameplay plus some interesting storytelling mechanics (I'm thinking of the Scarecrow segments.) The Sims
So zoning? Like in SimCity? I would rather have residential structures be built automatically as your city grows in population, or an automatic upgrade feature where your buildings grow as needed to support population growth. (I hope the anti-automation police find this acceptable) [e digicons]:P[/e]
Cool idea, but I don't know if I like how there can only be one stack in limbo. There doesn't seem to be reason in the lore for that to be the case. I understand that you want to add a risk factor, but I think a better way might be to have soldiers slowly get weaker the more they use time travel, a la Michael Crichton's Timeline .
Dragon Age: Origins on Steam for 25% for next ten minutes. Just thought I would let everybody know.
Anyone else play Pharoah or any of the other Impression city-building games? I ate those things up.
I just skimmed this, but I have one quick thought on walls. Instead of having to manually do each wall segment, you could build walls around all the existing buildings in the city. Any buildings built after are put outside. You can then put another round of walls up when you feel like it.
Interesting diplomatic option. It would tie in nicely with the event system.
I like the assassins idea Tasunke. Considering the lore of Elemental, specifically the Cataclysm and that civilization is basically getting a fresh start, there wouldn't be mercenaries until after there has been some civilization development. This makes sense with the backstory, and prevents the problem of getting hit too hard by mercs early on.
What if in addition to mountain towns you could have underground cities? How cool would that be? Of course I have no idea how you implement such a system and it probably wouldn't be worth the myriad difficulties that arise. But it would be awesome.
I think that this is a very good idea. It would really add a lot of flavor to each faction and to each game you play. It should also be fairly easy to implement using the tile system. Each tile has a certain biome, and the advantages your faction has only applies if the tile a unit or city is on is of that biome.
I just finished reading Shakespeare's The Tempest . If you're familiar with the play, then you probably know about Prospero. If you don't, let me explain. Prospero was the Duke of Milan, until he was betrayed by his brother. The play starts with Prospero exiled on an island alone with his daughter, many years after the betrayal. During this time, Prospero has become an incredibly powerful magician. One of the things I found interesting about this play was Prospero's style of m