Kantok

Reply to Dragon Age turning into Mass Effect? in PC Gaming Elemental Forums

Where did you see that they're going the ME route with DA? I remember the huge debates on the DA forums before the game launched because they weren't going the ME approach. Some were thrilled, others hated the idea. Bioware often said that doing the voice over for each playable character in DA was way too much overhead (ie, one male male and female of each race, not counting if you wanted base classes to each sound different).

Reply to Giving minor factions teeth in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

Something else that I think would work well establishing minor factions would be if they had the option, once diplomatic relations were established and decent, to bargain for your Sovereign's spell casting prowess. It would reinforce that they were independent nations, but small, and without the one big resource that makes you different. It would also subtly reinforce the importance of Sovereigns in the world to the player as well. Maybe as part of the trade agreemen

Reply to Cities... ugh! in WOM BETA Builds Elemental Forums

[quote who="Spicy Mike" reply="54" id="2670823"] But wait - food, or potentially food-producing areas? If you fold the actual food production into Outposts & Villages as I proposed, then your empire is based on those villages. Lose them, and you start to lose other settlements as well - you can't just build one, gigantic, metropolis and fort up. I haven't messed with Empires yet (game keeps crashing), but I did read where Brad was talking about how you ne

Reply to [Suggestion] Random City Traits in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

I like this idea, though I think it would need to be presented in a very clear, concise way in order to avoid becoming confusing to new players.

Reply to Cities... ugh! in WOM BETA Builds Elemental Forums

[quote who="Spicy Mike" reply="48" id="2670750"]Some thoughts on cities. Summation: So, to have one Metropolis, you need a total of eleven settlements - two Cities, supported by four Towns, supported by four Villages. Food production can be completely abstracted into Villages, and special tiles & their structures could add to the 'Village' count. For example, a Village with a Farm on Fertile

Reply to Cities... ugh! in WOM BETA Builds Elemental Forums

After another play through, specifically keeping this thread in mind, I had the following thoughts. Food as the most limiting factor in city spam/expansion is quite achievable with a few changes, most of which Frogboy has said are already being considered. Kill Fisheries and further limit the number of building spaces per level. Once those are done, balancing the seed maps so that players start with one food resource near them and otherwise food resources are rare. Ki

Reply to Ogre Huts and Kingdom equivalent in WOM BETA Builds Elemental Forums

You're just assuming Ogres aren't smart enough to build themselves huts. That's racist. I'd be careful if I were you. I'm not sure if there IS a kingdom equivalent yet. I had an ogre hut in the middle of my kingdom for about 300 turns and nothing ever came of it. Made me wish I could at least go in and wipe them out or something.

Reply to Cities... ugh! in WOM BETA Builds Elemental Forums

[quote who="lswallie" reply="43" id="2670664"] No he is basically shutting this thread down with his response. If your going to let the community in on the development don't do it half way and pick and chose the responses you get. He doesn't want to hear anymore criticism on city building - mechanics are in place basically what he said. I just get irritated when a dev overlooks concerns from the community because we supposedly agreed on said mechanic months ago. We are now testing

Reply to Cities... ugh! in WOM BETA Builds Elemental Forums

[quote who="bloodystump11" reply="41" id="2670612"] I've only just begun testing the game but this is what immediately hit me about city building. There is no requirement to plan ahead and commit to a long term plan. Everything builds within a handful of turns. If you make a wrong decision, no problem, you can have something else ready in a few turns (on another note, perhaps make building removal take time too ). [/quote] I agree with this. That's why I was so keen o

[Beta3][CTD]Sound stutters once and then CTD in WOM BETA Builds Elemental Forums

It happens sporadically while playing the game. I am always able to reload the most recent autosave and continue on passed the point where I crashed. The problem has decreased greatly since I switched from full screen mode to windowed and lowered the resolution. In ~3 to ~4 hours playing today it has happened a few times. Here are the crash logs for each time. I'm uploading them all here because they are different crash logs for the same issue happening r

[Beta3][805][UI][Suggestion] in WOM BETA Builds Elemental Forums

The tooltip that displays during mouseover in the bottom right corner should move itself to somewhere else when the thing you are mousing over is IN the bottom right corner. I do some of my beta testing on lower end laptop so I play at low resolution and often times the thing I'm trying to select is covered over by the tooltip which makes me stop what I was doing to move the screen so that the object isn't in the same area that the tooltip displays. It's a minor thing, bu

Reply to Cities... ugh! in WOM BETA Builds Elemental Forums

[quote who="pad152" reply="19" id="2670121"] Would like to see the spell "Lower Land/tile" allowed to create a beach tile! Magic can raise or lower a mountain but not a beach? [/quote] Don't use Lower Land to create a beach. Use Raise Land on the ocean and it will create a beach and meld it into the coastline.

Reply to Cities... ugh! in WOM BETA Builds Elemental Forums

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="17" id="2670097"] Thanks. We're considering the same system for the magic system. So spell points would be replaced by Spell levels. When you learn a spell, your lore masters approach you with info about the spell you just learned and give you the option of either going on to the next spell to learn OR giving you the opportunity to spend that time going up a level. The display at the bottom would display your spell knowledge level. Spell

Reply to Elemental: Spell Book in Blogging Elemental Forums

I agree with some of the posters here that there needs to be more defensive strategic spells. I should be able to dedicate my magical might towards protecting my empire. There should be warding spells to alert me when certain CR armies near the area I cast them on. Spells that inhibit magical travel. Spells that slow mundane travel or cause morale penalties (think of casting an eerie fog over a mountain pass leading into your kingdom that slows movement to 1 o

Reply to [.805][CTD] CTD while exploring world map in WOM BETA Builds Elemental Forums

Saw frogboy talking about lowering resolution in the B3 change log so I tried that too. It is always during map movement. Debug.err Memory Dump Having a blast otherwise. Hope these help.

Reply to [.805][CTD] CTD while exploring world map in WOM BETA Builds Elemental Forums

I have had this CTD many times (six-ish) now and it always seems to be caused by the same activity. When I am fairly zoomed in to the world map and using the left click & drag to move the map around. "Throwing" the map, or trying to move it too quickly, cause one stutter in all the sound, then the game hangs for about a second, then CTD. Here is the debug.err for a second crash with the same cir

[.805][CTD] CTD while exploring world map in WOM BETA Builds Elemental Forums

Wandering about with my Sovereign about 10 turns in. memory dump debug.err dxDiag

Reply to Sunday morning random thoughts in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

Interesting Choices . I think having to spend your essence to accomplish different major objectives has awesome potential for strategic decisions. The problem with it as is, you are required to use essence to found new cities so there really isn't much of a choice. No matter what else you can use essence for, if you need to spend it to found cities (or revive the land for cities) then you're other options are automatically not nearly as important. Th

Reply to Brad’s June Elemental flame thread in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

[quote who="Raven X" reply="121" id="2664189"] Quoting Kantok, reply 120 Quoting Raven X, reply 119 Quoting messed up, sorry, redone. I meant to post this yesterday btw. Sorry about the spacing change at the bottom too. In my eyes, ANY company that needs to put out a Patch on the First Day of Release to make a game "Fun" seriously F'Ked up somewhere along the lines of designing the game and they shouldn't ha

Reply to [discussion] shards in WOM Ideas Elemental Forums

I think as part of the leveling system (since Brad has admitted he's considering talent trees of some sort) you should be able to talent your Sovereign into removing the need for a particular shard. IE, you select the appropriate talent and your Sovereign can now ignore the cost of one fire shard. You should be able to further specialize to remove the need for more fire shards (you are becoming more in tune with the element of fire) or you could generalize to remove the ne

Reply to Brad’s June Elemental flame thread in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

[quote who="Raven X" reply="119" id="2664161"] Quoting messed up, sorry, redone. I meant to post this yesterday btw. Sorry about the spacing change at the bottom too. In my eyes, ANY company that needs to put out a Patch on the First Day of Release to make a game "Fun" seriously F'Ked up somewhere along the lines of designing the game and they shouldn't have released the product to being with. If that were to happen in a company I owned someone would be

Reply to [.804][Feedback]Brutally Honest Feedback: Magic and beta 2b in WOM BETA Builds Elemental Forums

Since Brad has said he is considering talent trees for Sovereigns I think one possible solution is to have talents (or feats or whatever) that allows you to nullify the need for a shard to cast a spell. Essentially, your Sovereign is so good with fire spells (or so in tune with the element of fire) that he can ignore the requirement for one fire shard on any spell. If you continue to level this talent you can ignore further spells. This gives you the option of playin

Reply to Brad’s June Elemental flame thread in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

To everyone worried about the release date (and it certainly does seem very soon) I'd say this: Has any of Stardock's games seemed unfinished when you got them upon release? Ever? If not, then have faith that they won't release this product unfinished either. If they believe they have a good shot of hitting the time line he posted here, then I trust them. I might not see how it'll happen, but then again I'm an engineer, not a video game designer with a hi

Reply to Brad’s June Elemental flame thread in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

[quote who="ddd888" reply="90" id="2663592"] lol this is ridicolous we are in 2010 we should be able to have a carpenter warrior and fit it into a good stats system i dont want to read a book (in fact i do read books but not just when im playing a videogame) same as i dont want to solve differential equations (and i do that too at times) in a game, but need both aspects to have a good GAME[/quote] He's

Reply to Brad’s June Elemental flame thread in Elemental Dev Journals Elemental Forums

[quote who="TyLarson" reply="80" id="2663285"]If you want sovereigns to be more interesting I really think that getting rid of the stats options on the creation page will help. No Attributes should be visible while making a character. Nothing shuts down the creative process like the urge to min/max. I am a former pen and paper game designer so I know a bit about this. Just have talents, professions, and skills available. What this does is it encourages the player t