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[Sowelu]

My guess, if Master of Magic serves, is that you start out somewhat below Sauron but once you get to the end of a very long, large game, your power grows pretty close to Morgoth.

But then, consider that Lord of the Rings was a VERY low-magic setting!  Magic was something you did inside your own empire, if you did it at all.  Gandalf uses magic so rarely you could count the times on one hand.  I mean MoM never had the massive armies you see in Lord of the Rings (unless you want to take some pretty major liberties with scale)...

But the ability to cast curses on distant cities without even being nearby?  The ability to conjure up great magical avatars from beyond time to serve you?  Those are mid-game spells.  Summoning giant dragons, and causing city walls (and units!) to plunge into great rifts in the earth?  Well, they're expensive, but sure!  Training orcs and twisting them with chaos magic, that's child's play.  Causing all dead mortal units in the world to rise as zombies...causing mountains to erupt as volcanoes, corrupting the world or twisting life forces worldwide, banishing almost all summoned creatures in the world...  You see where I'm going?  Sauron has NOTHING on this.  Master of Magic is like if five different more-powerful-than-Sauron wizards popped up, and attained that kind of power in just a small handful of years.  Oh yeah, and they're not vulnerable to losing a ring.

Sauron was only more of a schemer because he was completely incomparable in terms of overall power to Morgoth.  Sauron had hordes of orcs, Morgoth had hordes of Dragons and Balrogs.

More on topic:  I hope they don't try to be 'funny' like in Galactic Civilizations.  The endless stream of horrible jokes in that game was part of what ruined it for me.

This is definitely a question we need to ask on their forums.

Oh jesus.  They had better can the shitty humor.  It RUINED that game.  I am not understating at all when I say that the humor is why I stopped playing it (and won't buy sequels/expansions).

[Pathos]

What was the terribad humour, then?

[Sowelu]

The worst of it was the research descriptions.  They were, swear to god, things like "Laser IV.  It's...uh...kind of better than Laser III, I guess?  Our marketing team took the week off."  I wish I was kidding.  MOST of them seemed to reference the fact that they didn't actually have anything to say.  Which, alright, but...dude, if you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all.

And then I look back to Alpha Centauri, and weep bitter tears.

[Graven]

I... I liked the jokes in GalCiv 2 At least most of them, and especially the first time I read them. Some of the "Research complete" messages could actually bring a smile to my face.

Anyway, yeah, I'm looking forward to this game, mostly because I really want to see a fantasy-based 4X game. And it's by Stardock, that gives me faith.

[nenjin]

The whole Gal Civ universe is pretty cartoony. At least the ships look bad ass. By the looks of things, Elemental is going to be a little more serious. Although you could have arguably said the same about the Gal Civ expansions, with titles like Dark Avatar ect... the reality couldn't have been farther from the truth.

Still, very excited for this. I enjoyed Gal Civ immensely.

[Asehujiko]

Did they get around to making impulse less horrible in the meanwhile? That's what kept me from buying Galciv II and SoaSE.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Did they get around to making impulse less horrible in the meanwhile? That's what kept me from buying Galciv II and SoaSE.

I haven't had any trouble with Impulse. Of course I never needed it to play Galciv 2 or SoaSE.  Not sure why you'd want to buy SoaSE though.  It's basically good for three games and then you've basically seen everything there is to and the base gameplay is pretty repetitive and monotonous.

[Nirur Torir]

I'm in the beta, and there is no NDA.

My computer died a few versions in, and the old one I'm using now has a built-in video chip that is slightly under-qualified to run the game. On the plus side, it didn't outright block me from trying to play. I think the game is technically all there, but the buttons are invisible.

Spoiler: This is my options screen (click to show/hide)

I can't say much about the current status of the game, but it seemed like it would be fun from the early versions I played.

[Pathos]

I haven't had any trouble with Impulse. Of course I never needed it to play Galciv 2 or SoaSE.  Not sure why you'd want to buy SoaSE though.  It's basically good for three games and then you've basically seen everything there is to and the base gameplay is pretty repetitive and monotonous.

How long does three game last for? =p

I'm in the beta, and there is no NDA.

My computer died a few versions in, and the old one I'm using now has a built-in video chip that is slightly under-qualified to run the game. On the plus side, it didn't outright block me from trying to play. I think the game is technically all there, but the buttons are invisible.

Spoiler: This is my options screen (click to show/hide)

I can't say much about the current status of the game, but it seemed like it would be fun from the early versions I played.

Looks good, man. xD

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

I haven't had any trouble with Impulse. Of course I never needed it to play Galciv 2 or SoaSE.  Not sure why you'd want to buy SoaSE though.  It's basically good for three games and then you've basically seen everything there is to and the base gameplay is pretty repetitive and monotonous.

How long does three game last for? =p

I'm in the beta, and there is no NDA.

My computer died a few versions in, and the old one I'm using now has a built-in video chip that is slightly under-qualified to run the game. On the plus side, it didn't outright block me from trying to play. I think the game is technically all there, but the buttons are invisible.

Spoiler: This is my options screen (click to show/hide)

I can't say much about the current status of the game, but it seemed like it would be fun from the early versions I played.

Looks good, man. xD

Well keep in mind that my opinion on this isn't very popular by all appearances.  Everyone else seems to thing SoaSE is the best thing since Homeworld 2, even though the similarities between the two are mostly aesthetic.  I guess I'm the only person on the entire internets who was paying attention to it before it came out and noticed the Spore-like level of dumbing down... or something.

The length of a game depends on how big of a map you use, but it can last from half an hour to maybe 2 hours, or even more.  Of course if you play a half hour game you might get more games out of it since you can't reach the top technologies in that amount of time, but overall the game just doesn't have much to it.  You capture planets, upgrade them and build defenses when your resources automatically raise high enough, decide what planets to build shipyards at, what planets to build research stations at, build as big a fleet as you can, and send them to duke it out with the enemy, then repeat.  You get more ships as you go along, but there are only a few types and they're static.  The battleships have minor customization in that you can choose to upgrade one of three abilities whenever they kill enough ships, but everything is just so static and unrealistic.  There's no story beyond the intro movie.  It all feels uninspired and and unprofessional.  It runs like crap but the graphics aren't even very good.  Sure the models are shiny, but turrets don't move, fighters launch from and land in solid parts of the models...  It's just a massive disappointment to me.  Especially after they claimed it would be a fully real time 4x game with huge attention to detail and a simulated universe with orbits and everything.

[alway]

I'm in the E:WoM beta, as will be anyone who preorders. They open up the beta to new people once every month or so. At the moment, it is about a week from Beta 2. Beta 1 is more or less just a game engine debug period, and as the CEO Frogboy has constantly stated on the forums, it will NOT be fun. Beta 2 is the multiplayer beta, which will last about 2 weeks, and mostly be just a debugging of the multiplayer code. Beta 3 is where the actual 3d graphics engine gets implemented, and then the betas after that are when they actually start nailing down the gameplay mechanics.

As for SoaSE, it may be some odd setting on your computer which makes it run badly. From everything I've experienced and heard, it can run on just about any system in existance. To Stardock, allowing the largest range of PC owners to buy their product as they possible can is a much better choice over putting in really demanding graphics and thus alienating most of the market.
When it comes to the simulated universe, they removed that model since it really didn't hold up very well as a game mechanic. The whole realism vs fun thing.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

I'm in the E:WoM beta, as will be anyone who preorders. They open up the beta to new people once every month or so. At the moment, it is about a week from Beta 2. Beta 1 is more or less just a game engine debug period, and as the CEO Frogboy has constantly stated on the forums, it will NOT be fun. Beta 2 is the multiplayer beta, which will last about 2 weeks, and mostly be just a debugging of the multiplayer code. Beta 3 is where the actual 3d graphics engine gets implemented, and then the betas after that are when they actually start nailing down the gameplay mechanics.

As for SoaSE, it may be some odd setting on your computer which makes it run badly. From everything I've experienced and heard, it can run on just about any system in existance. To Stardock, allowing the largest range of PC owners to buy their product as they possible can is a much better choice over putting in really demanding graphics and thus alienating most of the market.
When it comes to the simulated universe, they removed that model since it really didn't hold up very well as a game mechanic. The whole realism vs fun thing.

The whole realism versus fun thing is pure bullshit perpetrated by people who for some reason want to paint anyone who enjoys realistic games as some sort of bizarre backwards lunatics that hate fun.

[alway]

I'm in the E:WoM beta, as will be anyone who preorders. They open up the beta to new people once every month or so. At the moment, it is about a week from Beta 2. Beta 1 is more or less just a game engine debug period, and as the CEO Frogboy has constantly stated on the forums, it will NOT be fun. Beta 2 is the multiplayer beta, which will last about 2 weeks, and mostly be just a debugging of the multiplayer code. Beta 3 is where the actual 3d graphics engine gets implemented, and then the betas after that are when they actually start nailing down the gameplay mechanics.

As for SoaSE, it may be some odd setting on your computer which makes it run badly. From everything I've experienced and heard, it can run on just about any system in existance. To Stardock, allowing the largest range of PC owners to buy their product as they possible can is a much better choice over putting in really demanding graphics and thus alienating most of the market.
When it comes to the simulated universe, they removed that model since it really didn't hold up very well as a game mechanic. The whole realism vs fun thing.

The whole realism versus fun thing is pure bullshit perpetrated by people who for some reason want to paint anyone who enjoys realistic games as some sort of bizarre backwards lunatics that hate fun.

Fine, in that case let me phrase that differently. They had to dumb it down so the controls weren't as bad as DF and so they would actually be able to turn a profit selling it to RTS players. It was a highly successful game which managed to sell well over 500,000 units despite being developed by an indie dev team consisting of 9 people. To add hyper-realism would have driven many potential buyers away and only attracted the niche of people interested in hyper-realistic games.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Right, just like Spore.

[Sowelu]

You know, I like games that don't have a week-long learning period sometimes.  If I'm going to drop some cash on a game while I'm employed, it had better damn well let me start having fun before I waste ten hours of work learning how it works.