OT: Starcraft II and Elemental

[lch]

Originally Posted by WraithLord

this really hits the
very well put

Dude, I knew that there's a deep relationship of music and math, one of our emeriti profs recently published a book on this, but I had no idea about all that jazz...

After hearing the podcast at http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/lehmantod...that_jazz.html I've been taking a look at the lesson plans at
http://www.teachervision.fen.com/mus...plan/4851.html and http://www.teachervision.fen.com/mus...plan/4862.html
and now I'm seeing this with new eyes. Those that made it through all this might even take the Jazz exam if they dare.

[onomastikon]

Originally Posted by WraithLord

this really hits the
very well put

I also found that perfect, although Ich has a point.

I also agree with Foodstamp about Elemental, which has actually gone gold last week. There are not very many things I enjoy about it, but that could change after release. Currently, I think it will be a fun thing to play with for people who love modding; since I do not, I feel a bit left out. It "feels" like CivIV with bland tactical battles, and the technology innovations are still grouped into GC2-like "trees" or clusters that are all thematically related (e.g. Adventure, Diplomacy, Warfare, Civilization, Magic), it smacks too much of Lasers, Shields, and Diplomacy. The combat side of things is also currently underdeveloped. In general, there is also a great reliance on "Random House" (the company) to write wonderful things in terms of in-game texts -- not actual people, mind you, but the corporation itself is always personalized, as if they would deficate gold. But the hard core of the fan-base seems vitally, almost rabidly pleased, so that there are sure to be many people who are more than happy. Constructive criticism is not always welcome. Where I do have great hopes, however, is for the AI; I think Brad Wardell always does more than his share in that department, and I am sure that we will see strong new developments there before release and afterwards as well.

I don't find myself terribly excited about it now, and the current Beta, two weeks before release, is not a treat to play, although it will run on my laptop quite nicely.

I have heard very mixed things about Sword of the Stars. Are there many people here who enjoy it greatly?

[WraithLord]

Sword of the Stars is on my ToPlay list, right after completing HoMM V's (annoying) campaign, Warhammer mark of Chaos and Discipless III, so at the rate I'm going I'll get to it in a few years, or never

I recently purchased Discipless III and played a bit with it. Its quite pleasing to the eyes (gfx) and ears (music is cool, voice over is bad). Quite shallow tactically and strategically but fun in a, I'm too tired to actually think, kind of way.

All the bits and pieces I hear about elemental point to a dissapointing release. I think I'll stay on the fence for a while longer before trying it.

[sector24]

It bugs me that all of the "it's not ready" threads get locked, even the constructive ones. Usually with the response, "Beta 4 isn't release" with the implication that all the awesome is just lurking on the horizon waiting to explode all over your screen.

Through the whole development process (almost a year now) in my head I was expecting it to not live up to expectations. But my heart was hoping against hope that it would be awesome. I guess we'll see next week, the beta players may get a copy of the game a couple days early and provide some early reviews. But I can't see it being a replacement for Dominions, Civ, or even the old school quality titles (MoM, AoW). I can't even imagine what the game would be like if they decided to release it in February.

[Doo]

My laptop is close to five years old now and runs the Elemental beta. Its sluggish but apparently this will be fixed by the final release.

The game was touted to be playable on the most basic netbook, I hope it lives up to this claim or I will have to buy a new computer...

[Foodstamp]

Elemental is not living up to any of the hype. The modding beta starts tomorrow. Hopefully it will offer something, but they have already toned it down as well making it xml driven instead of python.

[Dimaz]

WL, to your first question, about other fantasy TBS games. There is one, Eador (www.eador.com), that I play for a year already. It was made by a small team (1 person made almost everything and some others helped with graphics and music I think), it's 2D, and it's really fun. Unfortunately, there is only Russian version so far. Author first distributed it himself, but now he has contract with some Russian publisher company and I think they're going to make a translation and release English version sooner or later, also they're going to make 3D version AFAIK. Unfortunately the game has lots of text that is hard to translate preserving original style, so the attempts for fan translations sort of failed.
About the gameplay: you play on random generated maps consisting of provinces. In the starting prov there's your castle where you can build buildings (more than 200 I think, they gradually appear in campaign) and buy units and heroes, and memorize spells. Each hero can lead up to 15 units, so the fight is maximum 16x16. Units have morale and fatigue stats as in dom3. The combat is turn-based, first one side then the other. The units and spells have different tiers; each hero has slots for some tier 1 units, less for tier 2 and so on, same with spells. Spells are recharged after battle. There are 2 resources, gold and magic crystals. All units and heroes collect exp in battles, the cap is lvl30. There are 4 basic classes of heroes and each class can dual on lvl 10 or remain the same (1-10: Warrior, Archer, Commander, Mage, 11-30: W-W, W-A, W-C, W-M, A-W, A-A, etc, where W-A and A-W are different classes). Units get upgrades on every levelup and also can receive a medal for some exceptional performance in battle (like dealing damage 3*own hp etc).
All provinces are owned by indies at start, and the farther the prov is from someone's cap, the stronger indies are. There are special sites in provinces, some of them are known from the beginning and some require searching. The guardians have the same distribution around the caps as indies. First ring has tier-1 units, second t2 etc. You can build guard in captured provinces and up to 3 buildings. Buildings can give some economic effect or allow to recruit units (forts) or other bonuses, guards, well, guard the province (you can have only 1 guard at a time).
OK, I think it's enough for now Overall, I really like it, and it costs only 10$ if you buy it directly from author as I did (don't know about publisher's price policy). Of course there are some problems here and there, but I definitely recommend it to everyone interested in MOM, HOMM, AOW style game.

[Natpy]

Eador is a nice game.

[WraithLord]

This Eador sounds real nice. The screenshots look cool as well. I hope they'll do an English version sometime.

[RadicalTurnip]

Nooo. Don't tell me this about Starcraft! See, I sorta' ignore WoW; so, to me, Blizzard is still this tiny niche company that doesn't have a lot of money, but find a style of game, and perfects it and combines all the awesomeness of other games within that style, and then releases a product like Diablo or Starcraft (heck, even Warcraft).

This sounds like I will have to face the fact that Blizzard got *huge* and seems to be succumbing the the money-hoggishness of most other huge companies.

I miss the Blizzard of yore.