6521

Goats still give me horrible memories from Kohan.

There was a mythology to Kohan, it was just non-European, and they weren’t really that different from classic archetypes. Kohan is #1 on my list of games that I want to see a spiritual sequel too.

6522

Any feedback on 1.2?

6523

Sigh, aahh Kohan, I should get the digital versions of those so that I may replay them. Such wonderful games.

6524

I’ve never had stability issues really, and the majority of the patch was done in favor for those with memory issues. I think performance may be a bit better now.

I’d wait until 1.3 or even 1.4 honestly if you were wanting to play.

6525

I seriously wouldn’t play War of Magic regardless of version. Wait for one of the expansion-alones which are currently being designed by someone that’s proven to be at least of average competence, unlike the senselessly overrated, mediocre at best, atrociously awful at worst, Wardell.

6526

Elemental is so relentlessly cheese-able that I haven’t been able to go back to it.

I’m glad I’m getting FE for free, and whatever comes after it, but it’s an even chance I won’t be playing them. The core gameplay of the 4X lost its charm for me sometime during Civ4. I might get Civ5 a few years down the road when they gold-pack it, but that’s mostly because I’m hoping for Panzer General style scenarios in a game practically begging for them to be implemented.

6527

I’m not sure that Civ’s scale meshes nicely with operation-level gameplay of Panzer General. Having archers to shoot over Persian Gulf from Sinai to Egypt looks weird. Satisfying, but weird.

6528

Wasn’t there something about a spearman and a battleship as well…? :)

6529

Hi guys,

Well I wasn’t going to participate anymore on this thread but I felt I owed my Qt3 friends a status report and hopefully enough time has passed for passions to have subsided a little.

So here’s where things are:

E: War of Magic

v1.2 is out now. That version was largely an attempt to re-architect the memory handling. I’ve gotten a lot of information from the development team over the months on why the original release was so buggy, some of which (much of which) is over my head. Suffice to say, a lot of changes have been made on that end to make sure that sort of thing doesn’t happen again.

However, the more serious problem in the longer view was the gameplay itself. With Galactic Civilizations, I designed a game based on the AI playing it and on an engine that I knew very well (Galactic Civilizations I/II both used the same game engine as Entrepreneur/The Corporate Machine). War of Magic was designed based on assumptions of what the engine could do with a profound ignorance of the impact of the terrain system (again, the technical details are over my head but the land system in WOM is similar to Populous 3 if anyone remembers that game except a much much larger – memory intensive – map size).

The next update is v1.3 and that will be almost entirely a feature/design change update. The main team is working on E: Fallen Enchantress so v1.3 is being done by myself and a couple of support developers (I wrote The Corporate Machine myself so the small team size shouldn’t be taken as meaning not much can happen).

The big changes in v1.3 are:

  1. Major AI update, much of which will make it into FE.
  2. The minimum trained unit size will be 4 guys instead of 1 (makes champions much more distinguishable).
  3. There are no special building requirements anymore to build archers, catapults, or larger group sizes (still need techs though).
  4. Rewrite of the tactical battle AI.
  5. Tactical battles will support Clairvoyance which means that sovereigns will get a turn to cast spells from afar with the mana cost dependent on the distance.
  6. Far FAR fewer wandering champions.
  7. Champions will approach your kingdom based on making certain milestones (that’ll become the primary way new champions are brought in which makes things a bit more fair/less luck dependent on champion placement).
  8. Improvements that can be repeatedly built will cost increasing numbers of citizens to man (hence, you’re better off building them in bigger cities where higher end improvements can magnify these improvements – but you don’t have to).
  9. Some new quests, particularly early ones to help get characters equipped (particularly AI players).
  10. New notable locations with more lore.

…Meanwhile…

E: Fallen Enchantress is where the bulk of the action has been for these past several months. I won’t steal any of Derek’s thunder on that other than to say it is as different from War of Magic in game play as say HOMM is different from Age of Wonders.

The budget on FE has been dramatically increased from the original “expansion” concept.

Hopefully when that goes into public beta, we can get a new thread on Qt3 so that Kael isn’t dealing with the 2+ year old baggage (this is post 6,474) of this one.

Everyone who bought WOM last year or earlier gets FE for free. Everyone who got WOM before October 31 will get FE for free plus the subsequent strategy game title in the Elemental universe.

6530

Brad, thanks for the update. Does the above indicate another standalone Elemental title after FE?

6531

Thanks for the update. While I personally have given up on WoM, I am very much looking forward to FE. But I really enjoy reading your behind-the-scenes journals.

Jorune

6532

What is this? An expansion for FE?

Also will 1.3 be the last big update for Elemental?

6533

Yep.

Also will 1.3 be the last big update for Elemental?

Depends on how people feel about 1.3. At some point fairly soon I’ll need to put all my coding attention onto FE.

Usually, what stops me from doing updates on our games is the compiler the game was made with no longer works right with the current OS. That’s why I haven’t done any GalCiv updates. Visual Studio 6 doesn’t work right on Win7 and I’m too lazy to monkey around with VMs and such to get around that.

6534

Interesting stuff. I’m also looking forward to FE like everyone else, but WoM also seems like it may be shaping up into something pretty solid. I haven’t tried it in some time, but I’ll give it another spin soon.

6535

Wait for Fallen Enchantress.

6536

Thanks for the update, Brad.

6537

I took 1.2 for a brief spin recently, and was surprised at how summarily I was beaten by the AI. I was mainly just poking around to get my feet under me again, but in all three games, I had to quit just as my empire was getting under way because one of the AI players had gotten all powerful and uppity. In the last two games, they actually moved armies in and started taking my cities! What happened to the braindead passive AI?!?!?!???

I look forward to seeing how 1.3 and FE turn out, but I’m actually kind of inclined to roll up my sleeves and play 1.2 in earnest for a little while. There are some cool aspects to the game that seem to have a full game built around them now!

 -Tom
6538

There is definitely a decent game emerging. I have been enjoying 1.19n for some time now and am looking forward to having some time to mess around with 1.2 and, in due course, 1.3 and FE.

6539

I was planning on just waiting and getting FE, but by the sound of things I may end up getting WOM and playing around with it in the meantime.

6540

The 1.3 changes sound good, I think I’ll hold off on trying it again until that comes out. My last game was with 1.1 and I was pretty underwhelmed.