Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

I might pre-order it. Ive been a followers of Brad for longer than most. Back when he was on Atari's and OS/2 and he was the most mentioned game source in the AI newsgroups. I heralded his coming to the newsgroups when he finally decided that Windows and Intel machines were advanced enough to support his games.
Ive always pre-supported his projects.
But I wont be expecting a MoM.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Brad talking about Elemental...

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-t...t=48528&page=2

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Official release news from Stardock:

http://www.stardock.com/about/newsitem.asp?id=1135

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

I agree... the AOW series could have evolved greatly yet the devs lacked the vision. They now pursue an unpopular game because it brings more money. As I wrote in the AOW forums... it's like Michelangelo giving up his current works/interests and goes into becoming a tax collector because it's more money. If only they would have known what might have been.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

If they get more money out of this "unpopular" title, it can't be unpopular. I think you're just angry because you don't have a PSP to play their game on.

Also, your metaphor sucks. It's more like Michelangelo going to the Vatican to paint the Sistine Chapel because a Pope wanted him to make something to show for huge masses of people who wouldn't know a chisel from a brush.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Sorry about the double post.

S.R. Kol, thanks for the forum link! That's great stuff. I especially liked how he described betatesting and its importance to the final game. That's really the first thing that really caught my interest.

Does anyone have any more detailed info about how the betatesting works? Is it straightforward "all preorders get to the beta", or is it something else?

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

I have pre-ordered yesterday. As far as I could tell there are two ways to preorder- either choosing to join the beta or not.

I've chosen not to join the beta as I prefer making rather then finding bugs :)

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

I just pre-ordered, probably a rash decision but have to support people developing one of the very few types of games I want to play :)

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Yes, Triumph moved away from the AoW series, precisely because it was "unpopular" in terms of sales.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

I pre-ordered. Looks cool and like Dragar, I like to support my favorite genre.

Also, Gamespot has a preview up here. Pretty much the same material as others.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

I am going to wait a bit before pre-ordering. In addition to the bad graphics (which isn't a huge a deal), I don't like the fact that the game will only contain 2 races.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Well, it's VERY common this early in development for a studio to either only have definitive info on a small amount of their content, or to be intentionally saving a lot of it for later, to dribble out to you over the next year, or even some things as a surprise just before release.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Actually it is "unpopular" at least in replay value as their forums rarely have posts. The game received more money because the console games are more popular amongst the kids. They've chosen to keep making sequels because it pays NOT because it's a great game. On this note they've chosen money over producing quality... so my metaphor example was accurate in my opinion.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

My own opinion is that if you are trying to get your living by making games, you can't be too picky about what games you're doing, and I'm currently studying to be a game artist. One of the reasons I'd like to work for something/anything else than games is that game creation is often both boring and restricted.

Also, now that I checked what they're working at, I noticed that I know the new game you didn't like. I read a praising review of Overlord (PC, PS3, XBox 360) in a Finnish game magazine. The game had some gameplay problems, but it really did give that feeling of bullying your minions and being an evil mastermind. Wikipedia also said the same thing. It seems like it would be really fun to work in a game like that, even if it didn't make that much money.

And finally, wouldn't milking the same cow-game to the inifity (and beyond!) be more about "money over production quality"? Unless you know that they had enough (good, manageable) ideas to make a (better) sequel, I'll give them the benefit of doubt and presume that whatever they're working at is fun to make, and thus will get more work put into it, becoming better all the time.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Actually, I'll just toss mine in..... I'd bet Overlord was "fun to make".

However, for me at least, it was pretty enjoyable to play for the first couple of hours. Beyond that point, the game becomes a bit open-ended, and you get to spend a lot of time running (slowly) back and forth, trying to figure out where there is something that you can do.

When you get frustrated with that, and find a Walkthrough just to tell you which mission to do next (you may have 5 available, but 3 of them may actually REQUIRE something from another you haven't yet done), then you might find that the whole game is actually very disappointing in scope.

It's fun at first, then it's disappointingly slow for how disappointingly small it is. It's truly a poor game that rather than just hang it up and come back to it later when I got frustrated, I just shook my head and deleted it.

Oddly, I still have AoW2SM installed on this machine. >.>


I think it's easy for a game like Overlord to get good reviews. Most reviewers don't play a game for a week before starting to type. If you can keep their interest for a few hours, and ignite their imagination as to how good your game COULD be, then people will make it look great. But really, how many people love it a year later? That is the test of popularity.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Did you ever try Black & White? Sounds kind of similar. I really wanted to like it, but eventually gave up on it.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

I would estimate about 5% of game developers are not trying to make a living by making games such as Illwinter. These are the developers which have the artistic heart instead of the greedy mind. From my understanding of TriumphStudios(AOW developers) they started with the artistic heart yet this has withered away.


The game lacked depth and replay value. I can go into details, but I'd prefer not drifting too far away from the original topic.

The AOW series was no where near its final stage of evolution so the sequels would not have been the same cow-game. The AOW-SM became such a smashing success because the developers were using ideas from suggestions of gamers... I help organize one of the main topics the developers were using. The community was bursting with ideas and begging for a sequel, yet Triumph lacked the vision to see AOW series proceed any further. The sad part of all of this is Triumph has chosen a new direction, yet it's clear the gaming community recognizes the Overlord game(s) have no value to stay on its forums... unlike the AOW series.
Considering Triumph builds their games for multiple gaming consoles it greater restricts development options as compared to development for only PC games.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Honestly, my experience with, and feeling towards Overlord almost exactly mirrors my Black and White experience, so you may be on to something. ;)

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

actual 2 races x 6 factions per race = 12

http://forums.elementalgame.com/329355

also, sounds like i may be getting windows 7 in 2009 or 2010:

"Stardock is even toying with the idea of taking advantage of 64-bit machines, which allow in excess of 2 gigabytes of RAM, to support "huge, epic maps -- I mean, truly epic," Wardell noted.

"People play campaigns in Dungeons & Dragons in the real world that last for years. We could do that with 64-bit. We couldn't do it with 32-bit because you can't make the landmass that big -- that's been a big memory limitation," he claimed. "If someone wants to play a game that lasts for three years, who are we to stop them?"

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Sounds good to me. But then Im known for being addicted to large-map games.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

That's not the 50+ races of DomIII surely :(

This game looks promising but I'm realizing KO and JK spoiled me a bit :D

EDIT: Also, 2 pages manual! That's not definitively 300+... I hope so they're going for a game "easy to learn but difficult to master" as DomIII and not just for a simple game.
DOUBLE EDIT: Starforce and every-hour check requiring to be always online and to uninstall iTunes and cd-burning programs? I'm an honest gamer buying what I like, but I'm out of this :o
CORRECTION: The informations from the 2 edits above were a joke from the devs. Those guys are stupids. I like them :D (But of course still like KO and JK moooreee ;) )

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

I think it's fair to expect that big part of computer owners will have 4GB of RAM in 2010. DDR3 should be standard by then.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

I'm kind of surprised that anyone would pre-order a game that doesn't even go into beta for 7 months. Then another 9 months of beta before the game is probably released. You're basically spending $50 on a promise of something that you might like to play at some point in the distant future.

Did I say surprised? I meant jealous. Hey guys I'm developing a game that combines the best features of Dominions 3, Master of Magic, the Age of Wonders franchise, the Total War series, AND the upcoming Elemental game. Should be released Q4 of 2015. Taking non-refundable preorders now. :D

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

"I'm kind of surprised that anyone would pre-order a game that doesn't even go into beta for 7 months. Then another 9 months of beta before the game is probably released. You're basically spending $50 on a promise of something that you might like to play at some point in the distant future."

actually, if you bothered to read the info you would know that your credit card is not charged until the beta is released in june 09.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

I wonder what they do with individuals who use a credit card which expires in Mar 09. Nothing I need to worry about, but I'm sure the scenario exists.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Ive pre-ordered longer than that. I have no problem with providing some support for independent game developers. Heck I pre-ordered VGA Planets 4 in 2001 and Im still waiting for it.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

good question. perhaps the card you pay with has to have an expiration date of June 2009 or later.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Even on the off chance that the web dialog would allow it, I'd go out on a limb here and guess that Impulse would not actually authorize you to DL the beta client, until your card had been successfully charged. So to sum up, they would do nothing, so would you. ;)

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Isn't it already available, according to http://home.comcast.net/~twisseman/vgap/v4home.htm ?

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Not technically. Ive never received my official copy.
Its been available as a beat for download for years. And everytime I ask about a release someone will say "download the beta and jump into the MP games". Personally I think thats a terrible way to learn the game.

Recently AIs have been added but are still badly implemented and hard to use. Plus docs and tutorials are woefully lacking.

But I think the biggest problem is that it has gone TOO FAR in development. It has so many features that its almost impossible to learn the game from scratch at this point. And they just keep adding more. Ive begun to think that it will never achieve a "release version" unless Tim bets help from someone like Shrapnel.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

I read a sort of preview of this game on gamestop and it was nonstop alarm bells ringing for me.

Not anticipating this one at all.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Could you please elaborate?

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

You have a refreshing and ultra-rational approach to things, I too would like to hear why you're not interested.

Personally I think the game is starting to sound more and more like the fantasy version of GalCiv in which case I'll probably pass. GalCiv is great in its own way, but I don't think it has any replay value once you attain a certain level of competence. Same with Sins of a Solar Empire for that matter. A disturbing trend...

It's still too early to actually glean anything from the interviews and press releases though. Everything is still in the dreamtime phase where everything sounds "awesome" and no important design decisions have been revealed.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

I didnt find the comment surprising. And even with more info provided I wouldnt doubt that some people would not be interested. The good and bad of Brads styles of games tend to not be very impressive in areas of MP.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Agreed, GalCiv becomes utterly pointless once you have mastered a few tricks, and other than putting strict self imposed limits on yourself (and I'm not talking about cheese...) the games are just an exercise in waiting for the inevitable and then deciding what the quickest way to win is without actually having to do anything other than click 'end turn'.

That said, I will likely get this game at some point anyway, just because I like Brad's overall philosophy of software, even if I don't always enjoy the actual products as much as I think I should. Still I'm sure I'd get enough game play out of it to justify the purchase.

I just hope that the actually design the game to allow for a competitive AI, as opposed to the incredibly open design of GalCiv which makes it seemingly impossible to actually have an AI capable of defending or attacking reasonably.

I have the same problem with AoW, though at least there you have MP, but the SP is just... uggg... tedious and painfully boring once you get the basics down due to the sheer idiocy of the game design crippling any potential for the AI to actually be somewhat competitive.

Oddly to most people, MoO3 had the best design to allow for a competitive AI, even if the initial release had a craptastic aI, however, the modders have actually addressed most of its major shortcomings, so that game actually plays pretty well now, well, if you can accept the macro style of empire management...

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Seriously, out what little we know, I'd be curious what looked out of place or wrong to you. :p


Re: Sector24 - GalCiv did peter out at some point, which made me sad. Recently I've just gotten back into Sins though, and I'm trying to wrap my head around what makes a good MP game for it. I know many people were really enjoying the MP aspect originally, and the game is only getting better - and while it doesn't pace itself for you, and get AS deep as Dominions, I'm discovering that the level of strategy is actually quite deep for an RTS.

I think that if a good 2 hour movie is worth $10, Elemental should end up well worth the $50 they are charging. ;)

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Part of my reasoning as well. I want to see Brad's "approach" the industry succeed, and while so far Stardock hasn't made any of my "favorite games of all time", they have yet to totally disappoint me either.


This one I don't get. As long as I could trade technology with people, I could keep my horse in the race, but at higher difficulties I don't see how you could ever be on top of the game, the AI just expands so fast, and produces so many ships all the time. Actually, it reminds me of how I feel about Dom3 SP. :P There reaches a point where one on difficulty setting, I can bulldoze the computer in my sleep, and on the next they just enact super-alliances that I can't find tactics able to defeat the 10-1 odds coming down on my head.


I love AoW2SM, for the game it is, and the world it contains. I'd still play it more, if you could auto-resolve battles and stay competitive in the game, but I find I have to manually play out every tactical battle, so as to absolutely minimize losses, and it just gets so annoying.


I thought I was the only one in the world that thought that MoO3 was pretty awesome. I almost cried when I played it far enough to see how broken it was, and then not long after, the "big patch" arrived, and fixed some things enough that the game it was could shine through the flaws that it had. Damn, now you're making me want to see if I can find that disk again..... Nice to have some variety in between Dom3 MP turns. :happy:

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Here's my problem with Sins:

If you play SP, all you have to do to win is throw pirates at the opponent. If you turn pirates off, it's still fairly formulaic. Killing the enemy capital ship causes the regular ships to route, so you can always win any fight without taking serious losses. Again, it's one of those issues where you have to impose severe restrictions on yourself to create a challenging situation.

MP is a whole different issue, the game is interesting from a meta-strategy standpoint, but the first player to slip up and lose their fleet is out of the game. There's no way to rebuild once you tech up your fleet size at the cost of your income. So 90% of the game is feinting and retreating for that critical battle in which you irrevocably cripple your enemy. Then you just have to mop them up.

Admittedly an oversimplification of the game, but I think you get the idea I'm trying to get across. It was definitely fun for 20-30 hours.

I must be radically more stingy with entertainment/dollar ratio because I don't think movies are worth it unless the huge screen and surround sound make the movie. I like a game where I can sink a good 40-300+ hours for my $50. ;)

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Well I've played it both with notech trading and with tech trading, and tech trading only makes it easier.

The point is that you can completely ignore building any war ships at all until you see someone has researched transports, and even then, if you have kept up your engine tech you just build some fast ships and pick off the AI transports when they do show up.

The AI was terrible at defending them, and terrible at hunting down your ships. So who cares if they have 100 ships and you have 10, they cannot take your planets and you will eventually out tech them (since you aren't wasting credits on ships) and be able to plow their fleets with a couple battleships or whatever you need to make to counter them.

Its also fairly trivial to keep on buying them off so they don't even DoW you, and then you just let them screw around with the other AIs while you tech up to some decent military techs and have a small fleet of FAST ships to deal with whatever you need to deal with.

Mostly my issue with the game is that space is completely open, and the AI cannot handle that strategically or tactically. You can yo-yo their fleets with your faster fleets, you can draw them out then jump their underdefended planets with your fast transports. You can Culture bomb them and they don't retaliate effectively.

Like I said, its cool to have alot of tools to use, but if the AI cannot counter them effectively then the game is pointless once you finish the initial set up for your end strategy.

I had this discussion with Brad waaaaay back when, and advocated that they move away from open space to node lines, or at least something which let the AI focus its fleets more easilly. He rejected it for what were good reasons to him, but ultimately the decision made it impossible for the AI to deal with your fleets. He admitted as much latter when I kept on asking why the AI seems to not see your fleets when it should. Well it turns out it saw them, it just had no way to actually process the threat they posed. So it continued to leave transports undefended, and leave planets open to lightning invasions by speed 20+ ships...

All of that would have been moot if the design forced you to use nodes or warp lines, or whatever.

And i've played GC2 on the higher difficulty levels, it makes no difference, just takes you a little longer to achieve dominance. Oh, you can play with different galaxy settings and such to make the game more or less challenging, but ultimately it always comes down to the same thing. The AI cannot handle its fleets, so once you finish your economy set up, and survive (nominally by paying off a neighbor not to attack you, which is dirt cheap compared to actually fighting them), you just pump out a few teched up war ships, conquer someone (if you feel like it), or use them as active defense while you go for culture or tech or alliance, or whatever vic condition you think is fastest.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

I could never bring myself to appreciate GalCiv; too many little things about it bothered me.

For that matter, I've never found a Stardock game I've liked. What do they lack? I can't put my finger on it. A certain wit, a certain satire, a certain soul. Too much cliche, not enough craftsmanship.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Heh...

Even for my rant on GalCiv I still got my moneys worth from it, even it wound up in my uninstall and don't care if I lose the CD pile...

Oh, there's plenty of wit and satire in GalCiv, though I would agree that it may or may not be ones cup of tea.

Honestly, I don't care too much for any of that 'craftmanship' if the game mechanics are great, and if the game mechanics suck then no amount of craftmanship is going to make it interesting (basically ALL RTSs in my opinion...)

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

AlphaCentauri = wit/satire/soul

GalCiv = flat/stiff/stupid

it had the game mechanics, but it didn't have much of anything else. If all I want is game mechanics I would just play Tetris.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Different strokes for different folks...

Some people (though I'm not one of them) like the flavor of GC, but ultimately it comes down to is the game worth playing or not based on the underlying mechanics.

Tetris sucks horribly though, the mechanics are fatally flawed due to the fact that there is no 5 piece block!!!

;)

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

don't be bad-talkin Tetris!!!

:p
;)

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

Well I like GalCiv. However I also had this kind of "boring, been there done that" nagging feeling when playing it. And I was like thinking while playing, hey you're supposed to have fun with this game what's wrong with you???

Anyway, that's why I never really got into it. Its nice and interesting and has the elements in place but something was missing that I can't put my finger on. Dunno, the "magic" maybe, the one that MOM had and dominions has.

Still there's a chance that elemental will not be a fantasy GalCiv spiritual clone, and even if it would be it will still be worthwhile just to run the campaign and more importantly to get an understanding of where FTBS stands as of 2k9.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

I'm curious when you played GalCiv2? I didn't even try it until the release of the Twilight of the Arnor expansion, and my roommate bought it and told me I should check it out. It seems to me like now the problems that you describe are not as present as you portray them - the first being that the AI puts emphasis on military might in diplomacy, so not only are they more likely to view you as food if you put off building any ships, but it will cost more to convince them otherwise if you choose to stick with that method. Plus the dynamic between ship capacity, component cost, and engine speed, seems to make it an enormous money sink to go for the fast transport killer concept. At least, in all my tinkering, I never saw it as viable to even get your tech to the point you could have a 20+ speed ship with -any- weapons or anything else at all, without having produced some sort of mobile defenses (read: ships that can actually kill other warships) in the meantime.


I agree with you Omni - AlphaCentauri stands in my ranks of "favorites of all time", and I every time a new Civ version is announced (they made one for consoles? come on.....), I cry over it not being AC2.


For those of you who may not have tried Twilight of the Arnor, my roommate liked GalCiv2 from the beginning, and he says Twilight is an entirely new ballgame (and I believe him). There's tons of new content, and no 2 species play the same, etc. I found it to be a much better game than I am seeing described, where it sounds like dissatisfaction with the base game. ;) Anyway, my point being that if they apply the things that transformed GalCiv via Twilight, into the first build of Elemental, and then add to it in fun and interesting ways as it looks like they intend to, I think it should be a pretty cool game.

(Oh and I agree that $10 is a bit exhorbitant for a movie, I usually wait til movies hit the local theater-pub, where I can get movie + 2 pints of hard cider for $10. ;))

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

My comments are based on GC2 and the 2 expansions. The core issue is that of the open movement system making it far too easy to exploit AI tendencies with small and faster fleets.

TotA plays like a different game because of some new rules for colonization and racial specials, but while it provided a nice little bump, once you get through the new mechanics the core is still the same.

Some people love it, I'm not one of those people. It's not a bad game, it's just not a GREAT game, and IMHO a badly flawed game from the movement system standpoint.

MoO3 got movement and map strategy so completely right it's a shame that the rest of the game was such a puddle of **** (well to most people) which killed anyone wanting to 'borrow' mechanics from it.

Sword of the Stars is another good one though. However, they really stripped down the empire management to bare bones so you don't really get the planet building fix most 4x games tend to provide. It's also horrendous at micro on large maps in long games.

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

I totally agree with this sentiment.
I admit I have bought the GalCiv games and never played them much - they just have a kind of flavorlessness to them. I am probably a fool b/c I preordered Elemental but it seems like it could end up the same way.

Take a look at their video clip. Phrases like "the solders saw their extermination was at hand" to me sum up how Stardock games feel. They masquerade as classics like MOO2 but miss the sense of humanity. I mean, who talks like that?

Re: OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS
 

If they aimed for the most boring trailer ever award they surely succeeded.