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[Tormy]

Who needs realistic graphics when you can have graphics like that? They're less resource intensive, stylish and pleasant to look at.

I absolutely agree. Now I am wondering about the quality of the "final" gfx. If it's going to be even better looking, that will be epic. 

[Tormy]

Building a fantasy world
http://forums.elementalgame.com/341359

"If you’ve ever played D&D with friends, you no doubt got a feel that you were adventuring in a world that was much larger than just your party. Elemental is, in a way, about building that world.

Each game of Elemental is meant to be different and customizable in such a way that players can make those worlds theirs.  For us, that means having a world that feels organic. As you build things up, things begin to happen automatically. There isn’t a ton of micro management in Elemental by default (though you can really go nuts if you want).  Instead, trade happens largely automatically. You see people, caravans, etc. on the roads you build moving about living out their lives. You will even see parties of adventurers running around dungeons and stirring up trouble.

The player’s skill comes in by deciding how they want their fantasy civilization to evolve – what its focus will be, what direction it will take, etc."

[Sean Mirrsen]

It sounds like they want to throw a little bit of Majesty into the mix. "I can't wait any longer" doesn't begin to describe my attitude towards this game.

Since there is little to talk about, let's include the spiritual predecessor. Not-so-recently I played Master of Magic via an emulator, and encountered the weirdest bug ever. It's like the bugs you get in DF. A city of nomads I captured, and only that one city, after making all possible upgrades to it, suddenly included into its build list something called "Spell of Righteous". It looked like a catapult. The stats were OFF THE CHARTS. It had 48 ground move, 50-something melee/ranged attack, 80-something defence. It had to be built (with all people put into production) for more than 200 turns. Luckily, I had a ginormous amount of money at my disposal (this was late-game, and I was playing dwarves) so I just bought it for a sum of money I cannot recall. After I cast Flight and Flame Blade on it, it would rape any army in existance all by itself. It consistently killed genies, elementals, and basilisks with one hit. Unfortunately, the game repaired itself after I reloaded a save, and the uber-unit turned into a mundane catapult. But it was awesome while it lasted.

[Org]

I dunno bout this game. Its turn based, and if its like civ, it will SUCK

[Tormy]

I dunno bout this game. Its turn based, and if its like civ, it will SUCK

That was a constructive post....
Anyway, the game will be turn based, but it's not like civ...it's like the old game called Master of Magic sort of. [Actually the game will be unique, just check out the feature list...]

[Leonon]

Additional developer post in Building a Fantasy World
http://forums.elementalgame.com/341359/page/1/#2078725

I've stuck the Dev's post (clarifies and adds to the official update) in the spoiler.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

"Proud to say that I have an ORIGINAL scan of this image taped to my desk  Not that scans are original, but whatever.

Will these internal trade boats and caravans work similar in fashion to trade ships in GC2, except more or less automatic,

Much more automated...you set up your build priorities and the caravans will automaticially ship around the necessary resources.

Are the trade caravans just aesthetic or can we actually attack them to disrupt enemy supply lines and steal their resources?

You better beleive it!

What measures will there be to reduce this so that large maps aren't encumbered by tedious decisions? Or will having cities be a really rare thing?

If you think about most fantasy worlds, there's really only a handful of major cities, with a smattering of smaller villiages throughout the countryside...even on the largets maps, I really never see you managing the 100+ colonies you could in late GC2 games.
I could be wrong, but I feel that many settlements would break the spirit of the game.

Now, as for micromanagement options, we've been discussing methods for queuing up imperial objectives which are then handled by the AI. This would allow you to be as hands on, hands off as youd like, but wouldn't be 'the game playing for you' since it requires 'broad stroke' imput from you.  It'd also give the AI something to work with in Multiplayer games that are being played while you're away (per your settings).

Anyways, we have an internal Alpha 1 due next week...we'll have more to talk about, and time to talk, after that."

[Zironic]

His description of this game sounds like he is planning a TBS of FFCC My life as King.

[Tormy]

Ooohhhh, nice!  -> "Anyways, we have an internal Alpha 1 due next week.."
Also, a bit more info about randomization:
http://forums.elementalgame.com/341359/page/2/#2081619

"We'll have randomization options for continent size, frequency of dungeons, creatures, items, etc, and certain things will be depedant on the world size (areas of the world that will only appear on small worlds, other only on large) but the scope of the world is in the hands of the player."

[Tormy]

Elemental: Tactical battles

http://forums.elementalgame.com/342047

"One of the major differences between a game like Galactic Civilizations and Elemental is going to be the tactical battles.
Players won’t have to actually fight these if they don’t want. If you’ve played Galactic Civilizations, you can pretty much imagine how the tactical battles in Elemental will work in the sense that they’re really just the next step from what we had in GalCiv II.

The idea is that you zoom in to a given battle and you see all your units there. From there, you can set the speed you want the action to take place (from “turns” to real time). 
On the map you give your units orders and those orders appear on the screen and they go and fight it out. You can zoom in and out as much as you desire on the map to see either the whole epic battle or down to seeing individual units fighting.
Our goal is that if you want to see the whole “Battle of 5 armies” type thing you should see each and every soldier fighting if you want or you can zoom out and see it more abstracted.

There will be quite a bit of skill involved in managing the battle in terms of where you place your forces and how you handle your hero.  However, the AI (which I’ll be writing) will be designed to wage war as effectively as possible.
One of the concepts we’re playing around with is a leadership ability. Leadership basically gives a general bonus to your side. The idea there being that players who don’t want to monkey around with the tactical battles can focus on having heroes who are also excellent generals (high leadership) who you can have confidence that they will fight a battle with maximum capability.
The AI too will be allowed to invest in leadership skills to help their generals get better and better.  Early on, leadership won’t mean much.

Sizes of armies

As a player, one of my questions about this kind of thing would be how big are the armies going to be?  The answer is that it’s going to vary a great deal.
At the start of the game, I would imagine the sovereign walking around alone or maybe with 10 foot soldiers armed with pikes. Those early battles will be pretty straight forward.
Later on, however, you could have battles with thousands of soldiers with a few recruited magical creatures involved along with your hero.
Hence, even if you enjoy watching the tactical battles, you may eventually want to build up your heroes leadership ability so that you can have confidence in letting them call the shots so that you can just sit back and watch the show in fast motion."

[Tormy]

Elemental: scale of power

http://forums.elementalgame.com/343449

"Our story so far…

In Elemental, you design your own units. The only units you can create in Elemental are either men or Fallen.
So that we can kill any illusions now: There aren’t cities where you get to crank out armies of Unicorns and dragons or goblins.

There are dragons and trolls and other such creatures in the game. But they are rare, special and have to be recruited.
Your units start out as peasants. And you can train them (which gives them more HP) and you can arm them (which gives them more attack) and you can give them armor (which increase their defense). 
As anyone who has spent time in the military can tell you, one well trained, well armed man is the equal of many many unarmed, untrained men.  So the scale of men in battle is significant.

Of course, when you bring in magic or deal with some of the titanic creatures of the world you quickly see the scope of battle. If you like the Total War series, you can imagine some of what we have in mind except here you can get that Lord of the Rings battle feeling where certain units just make mince meat out of whole squads of enemy units."

[Sean Mirrsen]

The "you don't get to crank out armies of unicorns" better be a slight misconception. If I understodd correctly, the only limiting factor to your armies is the components you can muster for them. So, if you come upon a field with a hundred unicorns, then catch and train them all, there should be nothing stopping you from churning out an army of unicorn-riders. Same with dragons, though I can see them being a much scarcer resource. Orcs and kobolds are going in as soon as modding starts. Dwarves are going in whether or not modding starts, we'll carve them out of raw machine code if we have to.

[Tormy]

Well that's the concept of the vanilla game. You will be able to change whatever you want. So if you want to recruit dragons in your cities from the start, you will be able to do that thanks to the advanced modding features. 

[Mephansteras]

I expect this game will end up with a very large modding community. Should be fun!

[Sean Mirrsen]

Should we plan a community mod for it? I expect a lot of current oddities will be fixed by then, and new ones will be added, but with proper effort our dwarves will be the best mod for this game. Barrels of booze as one of the primary resources alongside training...

[Sowelu]

It sounds like they want to throw a little bit of Majesty into the mix. "I can't wait any longer" doesn't begin to describe my attitude towards this game.

Since there is little to talk about, let's include the spiritual predecessor. Not-so-recently I played Master of Magic via an emulator, and encountered the weirdest bug ever. It's like the bugs you get in DF. A city of nomads I captured, and only that one city, after making all possible upgrades to it, suddenly included into its build list something called "Spell of Righteous". It looked like a catapult. The stats were OFF THE CHARTS. It had 48 ground move, 50-something melee/ranged attack, 80-something defence. It had to be built (with all people put into production) for more than 200 turns. Luckily, I had a ginormous amount of money at my disposal (this was late-game, and I was playing dwarves) so I just bought it for a sum of money I cannot recall. After I cast Flight and Flame Blade on it, it would rape any army in existance all by itself. It consistently killed genies, elementals, and basilisks with one hit. Unfortunately, the game repaired itself after I reloaded a save, and the uber-unit turned into a mundane catapult. But it was awesome while it lasted.

Heh, I'm much more used to seeing flying invisible galleons.  Or Torin (I think) suddenly having every ability in the game...including the ability to create new settlements..  Such a buggy game.  Such an unbalanced game!  And yet fun all the same.

Wow, I look forwards to this so much.