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[Sergius]

I’m a map junkie. I love making maps.  I even bought a program called Campaign Cartographer years ago just to make maps.

That's cool, I got the same program too, tho it's a bit hard to use (feels like an old CAD program). Check out "Fractal Mapper" - there's not much on it that's remarkable, but it does make nice squiggly coastlines out of your polygons (you can choose the level of squiggliness).

[Tormy]

I’m a map junkie. I love making maps.  I even bought a program called Campaign Cartographer years ago just to make maps.

That's cool, I got the same program too, tho it's a bit hard to use (feels like an old CAD program). Check out "Fractal Mapper" - there's not much on it that's remarkable, but it does make nice squiggly coastlines out of your polygons (you can choose the level of squiggliness).

Actually that was Brad's post [Stardock CEO], not mine...I just quoted him. 

[Sowelu]

When you have a large empire, I agree.  But in early and mid game, especially in early game, I like to have as much control over my resources as possible.  It gives you something to do early on when you don`t control many resources, and prevents early game from being something you just have to click through until the real game starts.

I prefer option 3 because of this.  The entire flow of games shouldn't be decided by which player is willing to micro the early-game and which player isn't.  If you get a few turn advantage in the early game because you micro'd, well, that often means the game is over, but nobody knows it yet.  Either make it mandatory, or make it impossible.


Hmm.  All servers hosted by the game company.  I wonder how well that will work with mods :/

[AlStar]

Option 3 seems by far the best to me. Option 1, while tickling my need to micomanage, seems like it could very quickly become a hassle in large empires. 3 seems like a good balance between managing multiple resources and not having to set up every single caravan line within your empire.

Options 2 and 4 would ruin part of what makes Elemental so interesting to me - all the complex relationships between different goods and cities. 4 especially - they might as well call it "Civ 4 mode" (which is fine, mind you - I like Civ 4; but I don't want Elemental to turn into Civ 4).

I'm really looking forward to this game - it's currently looking like it might be some kind of blessed union of Settlers and Master of Magic.

[Tormy]

Hmm.  All servers hosted by the game company.  I wonder how well that will work with mods :/

All mods will be hosted by Stardock's Impulse system. Anyways, I am pretty sure, that we will be able to play multiplayer games without connecting to Impulse. 

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

Hmm...

What if the game could use both option 1st, for the early game (or for those masochists...) and option #3, for late game.

But that would be too much hassle?

[Tormy]

Armies of Elemental
http://forums.elementalgame.com/353657

One of the things we really want to drive home in Elemental that we think will make it stand out is that a well equipped army is a big deal.

The Roman armies dominates much of Europe not because Romans were inherently better warriors but because they were well trained and well equipped.

Contemporary fiction tends to trivialize the significance of a non-industrialized society being able to train and equip 10,000 men with swords, plate mail, steel helmets, leather boots, etc.  But in reality, being able to do that is an incredible achievement.

In Elemental, your first turns will not be about designing and producing fully armored troops. On the contrary, when you see mounted units equipped with plate mail and swords we want it to give the same feeling as when you see the Mongols in Civilization show up with tanks on your island. It’s a big deal.

Because people in Elemental are a resource, it creates a lot of interesting choices on the type of civilization you want to build. You can, for instance, focus on having mass armies of poorly trained and poorly equipped peasants. These hordes might be able to conquer the world or they might meet a civilization that has a much smaller force but one that is exquisitely trained and equipped. That battle, which players can optionally fight in full tactical detail, should be breathtaking.

And of course, what I jut describe doesn’t even touch on the fact that we are talking about a world with magical items and beasts of almost unimaginable might.  As I’ve mentioned previously, someone gets ahold a dragon (and by a dragon I mean 1) that is a huge deal.  Nobody is going to be running around with a “throng” of dragons.

If you’ve ever read Tolkien’s Silmarillion you get an idea of just how mighty some of the beings in Elemental will be.  For those into that kind of thing, if you’ve ever wanted to know one of the inspirations for the Arnor and Dread Lords you can think of them as Maiar.

There are things lurking in the world of Elemental that are just breathtakingly powerful and rare. And rare, I mean that you may only encounter or hear of one maybe after months of playing the game.  We’ll talk about that more later though.

The point being, the armies of Elemental are truly going to be yours. You will have ultimate control over what kind of army you want to have. We’re very excited.

--

I am also very excited! Fully customizable armies = Pure awesomeness! Now this + modding [ & huge online modding database] = All of your Elemental games/multiplayer matches & campaigns will be very different from a tactial perspective even!

[wallish]

As I’ve mentioned previously, someone gets ahold a dragon (and by a dragon I mean 1) that is a huge deal.  Nobody is going to be running around with a “throng” of dragons.

Ah, but with modding we could be running around with dozens, no, hundreds of dragons.  Turn the game from a "War of Magic" to a War of Dragons!!!  Whole 'fleets' of dragons swooping down on cities, burning them to the ground as enemy fleets intersect them.  Huge hundred-ton beasts colliding in mid-air, falling quickly with their claws at each others throats as they hit the ground and crush hundreds of mere human foot soldiers with a resounding THUD.

In a War of Dragons, there is no surrender.  There isn't even victory.

In a War of Dragons, we all lose.

*suppresses evil laugh*

[Tormy]

As I’ve mentioned previously, someone gets ahold a dragon (and by a dragon I mean 1) that is a huge deal.  Nobody is going to be running around with a “throng” of dragons.

Ah, but with modding we could be running around with dozens, no, hundreds of dragons.  Turn the game from a "War of Magic" to a War of Dragons!!!  Whole 'fleets' of dragons swooping down on cities, burning them to the ground as enemy fleets intersect them.  Huge hundred-ton beasts colliding in mid-air, falling quickly with their claws at each others throats as they hit the ground and crush hundreds of mere human foot soldiers with a resounding THUD.

In a War of Dragons, there is no surrender.  There isn't even victory.

In a War of Dragons, we all lose.

*suppresses evil laugh*

Absolutely...Brad was talking about the vanilla game. We can create whatever we want with modding. Races/weapons/armors/spells/buildings/resources/models/etc. This game will be THE GAME for the strategy fans. I didn't said fantasy strategy, because we will be able create a sci-fi based mod even for example, because the modding tools will be so powerful. 

[Tormy]

Elemental multiplayer evolves
http://forums.elementalgame.com/354571

"As some of you know, we had to assign quite a few members of the Elemental team to help with Demigod after it was released.  Most of them are back on Elemental but a couple of our developers are still attached to Demigod to refine the multiplayer system in that game.  It’s been particularly challenging since initially there was virtually no “Stardock code” involved and now it’s thousands of lines.  So we have definitely “gotten involved”.

The good news is that it will likely benefit Elemental in the long run.  While Elemental is being designed to focus on the single-player experience, there are some multiplayer features that we feel Demigod must have that we’re going to develop that will be put back into Elemental too.

For example, personally speaking, I’m convinced that the only sure-fire way of totally making these games 100% reliable online is for us to just host the games.  I’ve asked our guys to look into finding ways to do that for Demigod in a future update that won’t require Gas Powered Games to change their code (so it will seem peer to peer to Demigod but it’ll actually be our servers doing it all).  This will be helpful for Elemental because we’ll have a lot of additional experience in this area.

Another feature we’re going to look at developing is letting groups of friends join into randomly generated skirmish games.  Right now, in Demigod, you can’t get a group of friends into skirmish games.  We want that to change in there and in turn it will be available for people who want to play Elemental.

Another idea we’ve had is for Elemental to have various game modes.  Basicially, vastly increase the number of winning conditions that people can put together in order to set up games that could be played in less than an hour. 

Some of the aforementioned flexibility is only possible because of the way the computer AI is being designed for Elemental.  Like in Galactic Civilizations, I’ll be coding the AI in Elemental. But this time, it’ll be moddable and I plan to make a lot of this available to the community during the beta to see if they can do certain game modes better than I can.

All in all, I’m definitely looking forward to all the options."

[Soulwynd]

For example, personally speaking, I’m convinced that the only sure-fire way of totally making these games 100% reliable online is for us to just host the games.

Liar liar pants on fiar.

That's DRM, Demigod was haxxored and MP playable on day one.

[Tilla]

For example, personally speaking, I’m convinced that the only sure-fire way of totally making these games 100% reliable online is for us to just host the games.

Liar liar pants on fiar.

That's DRM, Demigod was haxxored and MP playable on day one.

But the DRM would have been haxxored in day one too, plus cost them money to implement in their game for the securom or whatever license. Stardock particularly has been burned BADLY by DRM vendors directly, when Starforce posted a torrent link to one of their games on the homepage

[Soulwynd]

I think you missed the point.

It's a way of making sure people who like the game and want to play it MP, buy the game. There will be no server code available as they will be hosting every game, so no multiplayer hax until someone creates an emulator. It's the MMORPG DRM scheme, but without monthly fees, sort of like guildwars.

If demigod had other means of DRM, it wouldn't matter, but if it had a centralized multiplayer host, then they wouldn't be able to hax the multiplayer mode on day one.

It's not to ensure quality, it's DRM. They could have been honest about it at least.

[Sowelu]

I think it's reasonable in some ways for non-DRM reasons.  It keeps hosts from cheating as badly as they might be able to otherwise, and cheating RUINS pub communities.  Any way you can reduce that is a good thing.

[Soulwynd]

I think it's reasonable in some ways for non-DRM reasons.  It keeps hosts from cheating as badly as they might be able to otherwise, and cheating RUINS pub communities.  Any way you can reduce that is a good thing.

True. I'm not saying it's bad or that there are no other reasons. I'm just saying it's DRM and I'm suggesting it's the major reason they are doing it.

The only problem would be service shortages and them closing up without releasing a server code.