Silicor

I'm glad to hear this development. The only way unlimited play multiplayer works is play-by-email. Its a pretty good model, especially for busy folks but players that spend a ton of time on their turns ussually fare better. One example of a game with this model is Massive Assault Network. They have face to face battles now too, with timed turns. The timed turns still have 'player A' take a turn, then 'player b'. I would argue that some element of skill is r

I'm confused, I think most of the discussion was about the tactical map. Its pretty clear they at least started with squares

A couple factors drive me to multiplayer. Firstly, AI is not capable against human opponents especially in very complex games. Giving the AI the ability to cheat may create a challenge, but it is a different expereience than playing a good human. Even if you get good AI, it may kick your arse when you are new to a game and may provide a liittle fun once you get good, but eventually it will become predictable and boring. Plus, there is something more fulfilling/fu

I hate when there are a ton of unusable spells too. Heck we could extend this to units or anything else. If things are unusable, then that is a sure sign of weak balancing by the developers. A factor I see a lot of developers miss when balancing units is flexibility vrs. specialization. Spells that are global in nature, useful more frequently and in more situations are more desireable. For example, damage spells should always cost more to use, because they

From my experience, I've seen some online games in the past have a strategic level map with multiple factions. One was an RTS where you would go and fight battles across the strategic map and the faction that did best became owner of that region. It was years ago, so don't ask me the game. This might sound fun at first blush, but it results as follows: 1. one faction dominates and players migrate to that faction so they can win too. Game companies then ha

[quote who="Pnakotus" reply="7" id="2092488"]Frankly the quote probably isn't talking about 'multiplayer' at all, just multiverse style faction grinding.[/quote] That is what I'm thinking... which is pointless. Persistent worlds seem over-hyped to me. Never have I seen a turn based game with a persistent world that really added to the game. In fact, I haven't seen any wargames where a persistent world has been implemented well. For a campaign lik

I've had my preorder for a while, forgot to post here...POSTED.

I was trying to find out what was published about the multiplayer and I found this ". It will also have a persistent multiplayer mode in addition to a rich single player mode. This multiplayer mode will allow players to ally themselves with either the Empire or the Kingdom and engage in battles all over the world of Elemental." Couple questions: do you care if there is multiplayer? Would you prefer online multiplayer, play be email or bo

It will be interesting to see what mechanisms are in place to help a player that gets behind. It isn't very fun to know that you are out of it because you lose a big battle or key resource. Anyone know what is planned to give a player that is behind a fighting chance?

[quote who="Tiefling" reply="15" id="2066934"]So... was the OP's complaint actually about large stacks of units or the fact that the AI was bad and couldn't handle them?? [/quote] Sorry I was confusing, both... As Tridus points out having a limited stack size with no other controls meant getting the best unit, best items and creating a stack that was unstoppable was the only strategy. This makes for predictable, uninspired game play. T

Cost is an answer, but I don't think it is a complete answer. It still is only a race, however, with the currency being essence it does create interesting tradeoffs. That's what I'm talking about. Creating tactical/strategic tradeoffs that players will have to make. This is much more interesting than a race. It also has to do with the criticality of losing a production space. If only offense matters, it makes the Killer stack option much more attractive.&nb

[quote who="Tamren" reply="2" id="2064785"]You complain about killer stacks and then suggest that killer stacking should be the norm and not the exception? The reason we have killer stacks at all is that there is a cap on army size. Its possible to overwhelm elite troops by drowning them in grunts. After a point its possible to deploy so many units that the skills and capabilities of your enemy are meaningless. Once the cap is there this is no longer possible. Bleh too many uses of

Great feedback. NTJedi hit the nail on the head, at least where I was coming from. The AI, was very inefficient at developing killer stacks which meant A human player could win as long as they survived for a while. I'm a firm believer in having as many options for players as possible, it is important that each option has positives and negatives. Its also critically important to have killer AI:)

Seeing all the comparisons to MOM, I wanted to get my biggest pet peeve out... Large killer units. They might be ok against human opponents, but in MOM, the whole game boiled down to having the killer stack and the AI couldn't keep up. Regardless of how far I fell behind against the AI, it didn't matter as long as I built the largest army. I'm not saying it isn't a valid path for a game, but to me it isn't epic. I prefer there being some sort of stacking limits so th

my biggest fears would be poor AI and micromanagement hell. I agree that MOM was fun, but my experience was that the AI was weak which caused me to quit playing. My biggest hope is that they are thinking out of the box and can make a game with thousands of interesting decisions rather than thousands of mouse clicks. MOO3 sucked, I agree so lets not go down that road... I just want to think more about grand strategy and/or tactical battles, than controlling t

Man, all these games bring back great memories. I was in the mood for an old school fantasy tbs today, and here I ended my search. I didn't know Stardock had one in the oven but I'm excited. I've been around since the days of Corporate Machine, but this is my first post on these forums. Too bad it is still months away, I guess I need to get out my credit card [e digicons]:erk:[/e] Speaking of old time fantasy wargames, anyone play Conquered Kingd