But they wouldn't.  They would just talk into their crystal balls or into their magic mirrors Master of Magic style.  If they can't channel a projection or something to communicate long distances then they would be shaming their master of magic ancestors.

@GW  I understand from where you are coming, but I don't think there is a problem with taking some liberties in a setting that might be inacurnistic.   Like them playing Queen in "A knight's tale" or having trumpets in Shakespear's "Julius Ceaser".  Yeah, it doesn't make any sense.  Yeah, I'm sure a stupid lot don't realize that its not accurate (well, if you don't catch queen in a Knight's tale, just wow...  but I can see believing Trumpets or other brass existed back in Ceaser's time a common mistake.  Its not that shakespeare didn't know better, he just didn't care)

wanting hamelets and villages late game is an entirely different situation though.  Cities shouldn't not-exist, there should just be under-developed locations as well.   Thats in the whole wild-space idea (that I think you created?)

@Denryu > Yeah totally!  I guess you've been reading the random events thread?

Correcting for grammar and gender neutrality, that should end "shaming their Master of Magic ancestors." (Putting someone to shame is equivalent to kicking their ass.)

On your more important point, I'm not talking about whether the game might have some non-medieval instruments in the soundtrack or something. I'd love it if Stardock had the budget to hire Tangerine Dream and Dead Can Dance to co-develop the music. What I'm talking about is how we talk here on the forums. Words shape thoughts, and thoughts shape actions, so I just want to encourage us all to ditch as much as possible of our modern heads when we're imagining the world of Elemental.

I made the noted correction since somebody pointed it out, but it IS a common turn of phrase which almost validates it as a quote.

Well, I wasn't meaning to use soundtrack examples, though I now am aware that both were such examples of instruments.  There are other inacurnistic ideas that I could have used.

What is wrong with using modern heads?    Elemental: War of Magic takes place far in the future, don't you forget.   The dreadlords in the Elemental backstory are the same that the people of earth (who had already achieved space flight) dealt with in Gal Civ 2, right?   They need to reinvent a few things that can't be conjured based only on concept and rebuild civilization from almost scratch, but what little information was retained does leave many possibilies in terms of city structure.   (or anything else really)

The channelers were born just before the cataclysm after all, so they would not be completely ignorant to what was (even if they can't recreate lasers or spaceships)

landi, I'm not trying to sweat the notion of anachronisms in the released game. And nothing is directly wrong with modern heads.

However, I haven't read any backstory that explicitly sets Elemental "after" GalCiv2, or even "before" it in the same linear continuum. The inspirations posts that Brad's made here seem to work very hard to be somehow outside, beside, or otherwise fuzzy about time--which is a darned reasonable thing for SF in general and fantasy in particular.

But I guess what we're finding here is some fairly divergent readings of the backstory scraps so far. I, for one, will be extremely disappointed if the final backstory includes something about the pre-cataclysm world of Elemental including lasers or spaceships. I love my Vernor Vinge, David Brin, and Greg Bear, but I also love my J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert Jordan, and Andre Norton. And I'm not much interested in any mashup stuff in between them, at least for Elemental.

Anyhow, my "modern heads" talk is just about my hope that from guts to GUI, Elemental will be a *swords and sorcery* game. I guess that's some kind of genre conservatism or something, but there it is. If it helps make me seem less fixated, I'm fond of all sorts of genre-bending stuff in print, music, and video. I just have a different hope for Elemental.

Personally I imagine it as after, though I really like how it is open to interpritation

When you read the backstory, you'll notice there is no reference to anything such as 'the world' or 'the worlds'. The only sense of scale is once or twice there is mention of the 'entire universe' but that is pretty resolute "everything that exists" reguardless of if it is a galactic alien alliance, a bunch of worlds that are ignorant of each other and mostly primitive, or not even that much space.  The topic of it is just written around so it never comes up, leaving it 100% to the imagination of the reader.  

The same thing can be seen in works by Brian Jacques author of Redwall.  NEVER in his books are any exact amounts given, everything is "very small" or walls that are "very thick" with no actual relation between anything.  So the size and scale is entirely open to the imagination of the reader, the only book that fails to do this is actually the 1st one that has a cart upon which 500 rats can sit (obviously very large, and that '500' is about the only exact number over 20 ever given)

So I suspect that you won't be disappointed by inclusion of lasers and spaceships, GW.  I suspect (if they are smart, which they are) that it just will never be directly discussed in anything official.   People who like space opera or 'genre bending' can imagine that its like the movie "Heavy metal" where lazers and space ships exist, ultimatly it seems everything is done with swords and clubs on the world at hand, because they haven't developed it yet.  And pure fantasy fans never are given the idea that somewhere at some time science fiction space stuff exists.  Everybody can still enjoy the back story.

I do kinda expect possibly finding "ancient relics" that are vague long lost structure that might appear like modern or future buildings, but never really would they be explained or given in enough detail to exactly be sure what they are.

You make some good points about "guts to the GUI" should be all *sword and magic* TBS action, because it is VERY true and I'll back you in every way for that in terms of gameplay.  I just didn't want something like a "united nations" to be turned down by anybody because something like 'modern nations' wouldn't exist.  Its the future, its not like the orginization structure hadn't been developed yet.  It would just be a choice on the channeler's part of how they wanted to respect each other's land.

I must have been doing a terrible job of trying to support the notion of councils, guilds, etc., while also encouraging people to keep their fantasy RPG goggles on. Maybe it would have come across more as I hoped if I had a 'normal' nickname like The Hand.

I've always enjoyed UN / Galactic Council / Whatever bodies in the various games in which they appear.

The only thing I've never truly liked about them is that the interesting proposals are completely computer generated.  Why can't, for instance, *I* propose an act which increases everyone's trade caps (and makes everyone's spy insertions somewhat easier)?  How come I have to wait for the computer to propose it?

Additionally, many of the more modern takes on the idea allow vote bartering of some form or another.  I've never particularly like most of these, either.

GalCiv has one of the better systems, where influence points are accumulated just like currency, and therefore giving away 100 IPs permanently reduces my voting power and increases yours by the same amount.  The amount of influence people are willing to trade is just never very high, though, and with your Influence reserves growing all the time, it's hard to, say, set up a voting bloc large to make sure the next Galactic Election goes your way without just getting 51% of the votes organically.  And it's also not possible to get the Kor to give you all of their votes just for the upcoming election.

Similarly, most games don't give you enough time in-between announcing a proposal and requiring your vote to go out and electioneer.  So, if the +Trade / -SpyDefense proposal comes up, and I really, really want this to pass, I don't get a chance to go to my friends and say, "Seriously - how much will it cost me to guarantee that you vote yes on Prop. 6?"

EDIT 2:

I could have made it clearer above, but I really, really like the idea of vote bartering.  I'm just not 100% enamored of how it's been implemented so far.

EDIT:

And another thing.  MOO3, I'm looking at you.  MOO3 had this great idea for a bill you could pass in the Galactic Senate.  It was called the "Praise So-and-so" bill, and, basically, it raised everyone's relations with the So-and-So empire.  Great idea, right?  Unfortunately, the only people who would ever vote yes for it are the ones who already liked So-and-So.

Which made it rather ... useless, since you couldn't get the Senate to vote to improve relations with So-and-So unless the majority of the Senate already had good relations with So-and-So, at which point you don't need the bill.

Ditto, reversed, for the "Condemn So-and-So" bill.

I think you have to allow people to express themselves in whatever way comes naturally, but I do agree with your comments. If this thread was called 'Councils, Guilds, etc' it would have set people thinking in a different direction.  

I agree - change the thread title

Once they game comes out and whatever title is given to the council in the game will become the word used in these discussions.   I think bothering about what it is called now is kinda like fighting over what to name your ducks before they hatch.   It doesn't matter what we call it now.   Its not like stardock is going to forget that it shouldn't be called "United nations" and until they name it, it doesn't matter.

"united nations (of sorts)" is as valid as any other name right now.