OT: Stardocks Fantasy TBS

[NTJedi]

Here is a requote from information released earlier on ideas and foundation concepts for the game:

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Posted 11 Feb 2008:
Here's Brad's post on the Quarter to Three forums from last year.


I don't want to hijack the thread here with an tangential discussion on what should be in a fantasy strategy game. But here's my 2 cents on that:

1) Character building. The player is a character in the game. Nearly all magic in the world actually flows from the player. If you've ever read The Silmarillion (Tolkien) all the magic in Arda basically comes from the spirit of the things created by Eru. So in this sense, the player is a kind of Valar of sorts who can choose to invest their growing power into their creations/minions or into themselves (or a bit of both). That's an over simplification but the point is, part of the game mechanics is having to choose between making your forces more powerful or actual character.

2) The game is very spell-centric. The 3D engine is being designed so you can do Populous style spells to the world. Since it's turn-based (as opposed to real-time) that also means you can have some ridiculously fancy spell effects.

3) Very distinct magic schools.

4) You cannot build heroes. They have to be recruited and there's no Inn. Ones ability to attract heroes is one of the game mechanics and "interesting choices" players have. Those heroes can be wimpy or powerful depending on how the player chooses to use and invest in them.

5) There is massive scaling in this. At the beginning of Fellowship of the Rings (the movie edition) you could see just how powerful Sauron is. In this, if you manage to get a dragon, that dragon can wipe out hundreds of units. And by scale, we mean there's thousands and thousands of troops. One ancient dragon is taking out hundreds of troops.

6) Cities are built and improved and local geography matters. I won't say more on this right now.

7) Multiplayer will involve all players moving at the same time.

8) Battles zoom in so that tactical combat can occur which is also turn based.

I do want to stress that the goal for this isn't to be a MoM clone. It has its own game mechanics, many of which are in common with MoM since, in a sense, both want to have a lot of Civilization-style elements.

One advantage of being designed in 2007 is the hardware requirements are probably going to be higher than our other games. I want to see large battles. I want to see creatures that can wipe out massive numbers of foot soldiers and such. I want to see magic spells that can flood terrain, raise mountains, ruin worlds. I want to see the land sicken and die when evil takes it over.

If we'd done a MOM2, we would have been faithful to the Master of Magic mechanics. But since we're doing a new game, hopefully we'll be able to make a game that combines favorite elements from many games plus adds our own on innovations to the genre. But it'll be some months before we start putting up any previews or anything (or even announce the game officially).
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[Tifone]

I sense the presence of an interesting game ^^

Hope the new KO and JK work will make an interesting battle with this

[sector24]

Speaking of TBS fantasy, King's Bounty: The Legend is a REALLY good game. After resolving the incompatibilities with my graphics card I played the demo for 6 hours straight, bought the game and have been playing as often as possible since then. Dominions doesn't mind if I cheat on her, she's cool like that. She even said something about a three-some, but I was playing games so I didn't hear her...

[Epaminondas]

Originally Posted by sector24

Speaking of TBS fantasy, King's Bounty: The Legend is a REALLY good game. After resolving the incompatibilities with my graphics card I played the demo for 6 hours straight, bought the game and have been playing as often as possible since then. Dominions doesn't mind if I cheat on her, she's cool like that. She even said something about a three-some, but I was playing games so I didn't hear her...

Where can I get the demo?

I tend not to like Heroes of Might and Magic-like stacks in tactical battles, but I will give it a go if your endorsement is so ringing

[Epaminondas]

Also, I thought King's Bounty was real-time on the adventure map, not TBS?

[calmon]

King's Bounty is real time on strategy map and turn based on tactical fights!

I can confirm that this game is really a good one! Its a lot of fun to me on "impossible" difficult and its really hard to decide how and where to fight next and not to run out of gold. For me is the best game came out in 2008.

The quests are very funny and have a lot of humor (even only text quests)! I find the campaign mode much better than HoMM's scenario campaigns.

The game surpised me many times with cool new features during playtime.

Take a look on it!

[lch]

Originally Posted by Epaminondas

Where can I get the demo?

Here: http://www.gamershell.com/download_32652.shtml

I liked the demo enough that I instantly bought the game over GamersGate after it became available. I didn't have the time to play it anymore lately, but for the time that I played it, I really wasn't let down any. Great game!

[WraithLord]

The game looks great and given the recommendation here I think I'd go ahead and buy it.

Is it available at retail?

[lch]

I've heard that it's available for retail at Gamestop and Circuit City, yes. Then you'll have to deal with the DRM it carries, though. The downloadable version doesn't have that. GamersGate sounds the better deal for me: You can install it on up to three separate computers, and on others if you deinstall it again somewhere. The online check is only during installation, not while playing. The only problem is that you'll have to download, at least once, but you can reuse the same files again for the other installations, too.

[WraithLord]

Thanks for the tip lch. Gamer's gate does indeed seem to be the better deal. The three installation limitation doesn't pose an issue since I only have two machines. Can I D/L installation files, then burn them to disk so that I don't need to be online for subsequent install?