As far as I see portraits aren't that good. When they full-sized you can see pixels and stuff. I understand they eat much memory, but! You can just antialias them with some simple filtering on creation. It won't be noriceable to player but portraits will be much nicer.
It's a very strange review. He compares Elemental to Shining Force and describes tactical battles as Fallout-style. It seems that this reviewer isn't very expirienced.
Resource suggestion: Right now you don't have crystals or metal nearby = you can't create good units. You can by those resources from other factions but really, should they help you build up military? I suggest making possible to recruit units even if you don't have resources but for MUCH gold, like 1 metal = 30 gold. Ideally make some market system were the more you use resource the more gold you pay so you are still capped by resource absence but can have some
Edwin99, you ask for too dramatic changes that hard to manage and balance. Another suggestion: let heroes ask sovereign for equipment. Something like "My current equipment doesn't much my status and we are happening to be near merchant AND I see you've got some spare money. If you give me 350 gold I can get myself short sword, cuirass, leggings and helm and will boost attack by 5 and defence by 3". That sort of things would let manage hordes of heroes easier.
Some suggestion: Heroes should have means to levelup in nonviolent ways. Those guys who give cities some bonuses - you just leave them there and they are useless in city defence even if you bother to equip them. I suggest make cities generate expirience for stationed heroes based on research output. We save knowledges - so let heroes come and read a book that makes them more beautiful ;) Exploitable, you say, but XP gain can be very slow and capped by city level (f.e. max train level
Devs confirmed it. But don't worry, it would be added to MP in patch.
Calm down, guys. I'm sure Stardock will add "I want to play on totally random and unbalanced map. And my mom is stupid and fat" option in no time. However, it would be perfect to get "Totally random games" (with only basic pattern so that players wouldn't start near each other and get fair amount of resurces nearby. Something like Heroes, Civilization, GalCiv), "Semi-random map" (generated from existing map with random resources - and MAYBE Stardock can add some minor randomness to terrain) a
So it's Heroes Random Map Generator style? Everybody gets equal amount of resorces and artifacts and map is logically symmetric?
Better than Age of Wonders? I don't think most people would consider it as a big compliment. Tell me it's better than GalCiv 2 :)
Elemental Forums
Ah you slow Americans. I'm already going to bed and you just have midday. Oh, I'll save you. You can pass next 6 hours with this: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/narwhals
Easily modifiable AI => long thinking AI => less thinking AI. There's no way to make AI smart, modifiable and fast. Check Civilization 4 - modifiable and fast. GalCiv - smart and fast.
It's partly because you have to state specs that are not too low or people will think you game is outdated. F.e. new Paradox game Victoria 2 has higher minimum specs than Hearts of Iron 3 which came in 2009 but runs fine on PC where I can't play HoI. And my PC is below minimum specs of Victoria 2.
But... You won't be sued if you release Ultima IV remake for free, won't you?
Pantasd, I hope we get reptile continent to the south in an expansion.
Well, I thought that Windows Installer (which is used in GalCiv 2 AFAIK) is paranoic and wouldn't allow any custom unpacker or indexing program. But it turns out I'm wrong: you can add custom DLLs to installer to do any evil things you want. And you can use advanced packers like 7Z (which I'd strongly recommend for digital distribution). Anyway, the game would have indexing module if caching would be enabled so there's no point to include it in installation as well as index added in i
awuffleablehedgie, you can't do it whule installation because of mods. And installation couldn't effectively use advanced systems with several CPU etc.
Hmmm. That's a good view. On the downside you get MUCH longer loading time for first time and any time you get a big mod. But that's understandable and any user will tolerate big sign "First time I load longer to load faster later!". Oh yeah, and HDD space.
3. Try Victoria 2, it comes out this friday but you can get demo right now.
StevenAus, you see, I'm programmer and there's word "endineer" in my diploma so I've suddenly felt that all my career and years of study filled with wiring, assembling and processor codes were lies and all this knowledge and skills are meaningless. Still I hope I would be able to run game fine on my GeForce 7300. Or at least run. Some betatesters claimed it could be played on GeForce 5xxx series and some developer said it should run on netbooks...
Explain yourselves please.
Hmmm. Sorry, I had PC with 6800 for some time and then notebook with 7300 - and the notebook was slightly better. I guess it's because it's Asus notebook - they usually make some tuning to GPU.
7300 is better than 6800. Not much better, but still.
Harpo99999, so you can't get decent FPS rate even on low graphics? What about tactical battles? I suddenly want to check demo before buying game.
Why is text "The soldiers..." has cool antialiasing and logistic description hasn't?
Is it a safe guess that you need a good CPU (Core 2 Duo f.e.) and not-so-good GPU (GeForce 7xxx should work on low)?