Ok, I've made my vote but there's something that somewhat confounds me. How would the dev team support a faction like the following:



24. Star Dreamers: Celestial, floating mobile cities, militaristic, high power/high cost - Lynx_gnt



Floating mobile cities? I understand the idea. I just don't understand how that could be supported in the game? I read the .pdf and I didn't see any "guidelines" stating that cities should be ground-based or any other "rules".



Seeing as how the above submission is on the list, I'll assume that you guys can actually make cities fly? ;-) I suppose you can also make water-based cities? I would think this would be out of the realm of possibility due to the direction the game has already gone. All cities are on ground tiles.



I guess my question is, are flying or water cities even a possibility in this game? And, if so, how would combat work?

I love the concept of a floating city, but hey, i think it's not really possible to implement this in game (cf combat system ground based)

I fear that the devs might simply go around it by saying "hey, this city is flying, honest", adding some cloud-like textures and giving that city a defence bonus. Which, again, isn't exactly what the voters voted for Again, some clarification on the matter would be amazing.



I do trust Amplitude to do whatever they believe is best for the game. But, as much as I love them, I don't think they handled this competition terribly well I guess noone expect that people would post so many entries.



Right now we probably just have to wait until this poll is over and the G2G vote starts. We'll see what the devs' final decision will be. If they promise to deliver flying cities and that doing so won't require too much time spent on coding - well, in that case, I'll regred not voting for them (for those asking, yes, the main reason I didn't vote for star dreamers is because I thought they're too difficult to implement). I still don't know how a rival faction could possibly siege flying cities but that's an entirely different matter ^_^



And if the devs state that flying cities are not achievable... well, then what? Redoing the whole poll feels wasteful, especially since the same situation could happen again with a different faction. On the other hand, implementing non-flying flying cities would be even worse because that's not what people asked for.





Alright, I seriously need to stop worrying about it and let do their job. They haven't disappointed me before so I should believe that they can make the right call. It's their game after all

Out of the three that have the highest percentages this one seems the most interesting. Religious units just have no place in my opinion as a major faction. A minor sure, and seeing as there is already one in the form of the sisters, I would like to see this aquatic race win.

caritog wrote:
Out of the three that have the highest percentages this one seems the most interesting.

That one's growing on me too. Plus the name fits the lore which is nice



But I think I like the Eternal End just as much if not more...

SlightlyQuarky wrote:
Oh jeez, I didn't think the voting would start this quickly! I'm amazed that the staff have managed to sort all the submissions out this quickly! xD

If devs had actually read through all of them, list would be slightly shorter. For example, it has two ideas by same person which is against the rules.

caritog wrote:
Out of the three that have the highest percentages this one seems the most interesting. Religious units just have no place in my opinion as a major faction. A minor sure, and seeing as there is already one in the form of the sisters, I would like to see this aquatic race win.

Yeah, out of current three winners, they are my favourite as well. I just hope they don't end up as sexy mermaids. The concept has a lot of horrifying(read cool :3) potential that I hope won't be missed for sake of fanservice...

I really can't imagine a flying city being that hard to implement. Cities are already locked to regions, and if it's one tile at a time, it's just a city that can shift it's work tiles once a turn. Big deal.

The flying city thing just doesn't work for me in the game. Love the concept but just don't see how it fits in EL game mechanics. Do see how a flying city can be sieged - Flying units. However that puts an emphasis that any other major faction would require a flying unit or to assimilate a flying minor faction to fight. That seems unfair and makes the game very predictable. Hence I don't see how it fits the game.



Similar with water based cities - unless we're talking of a floating city as there is mention of 'Boats' and continents for forth coming maps. I can then see a chance for the water based faction to work. But - how would a water based battle work? An army of 6 unload and magically float on the sea? If they can do that then what's the point of making the land and sea any different?



Now add the flying city to hovering over water and you can just forget the game making any sense at all

JohnnySupernova wrote:
I really can't imagine a flying city being that hard to implement. Cities are already locked to regions, and if it's one tile at a time, it's just a city that can shift it's work tiles once a turn. Big deal.

Yeah flying citys are quite popular, i mean i loved the landscape of Pandora (flying rocks etc) and i loved the "The infernal City" novels of the Elder Scrolls series but i have to agree i also dont see a proper implementation in to the game right now.



Edit: but i think everything is somehow possible.

My main worry about flying cities: What happens if you switch off/sabotage/destroy by attack whatever keeps the city afloat? Does it fall down, terraform the land into a collision crater and instantaneously die with all inhabitants?

Adventurer_Blitz wrote:
as i understand it, nosferatiel kept track of and read all of the faction ideas, writing summaries, categorizing them, and then the staff just used his amazing list.

That's mainly it. I did not police any of the entries according to their compliance with the rules, as I'm participating in the contest, myself.

That'd have been unfair beyond measure, plain and simple. If anyone has a right to cull that list, it's the devs, not me.

Stealth_Hawk wrote:
That one's growing on me too. Plus the name fits the lore which is nice



But I think I like the Eternal End just as much if not more...

Thanks for the support to you and all cultists, hidden in their covens all over the world.

Sovereign wrote:
Yeah flying citys are quite popular, i mean i loved the landscape of Pandora (flying rocks etc) and i loved the "The infernal City" novels of the Elder Scrolls series but i have to agree i also dont see a proper implementation in to the game right now.



Edit: but i think everything is somehow possible.

As for the flying rocks of Pandora, that concept was originally "floated" back in the 1970's on the band YES's album covers drawn by artist Roger Dean long before Avatar. Check out some of Roger Dean's work.



https://www.google.com/search?q=roger+dean+artwork&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=nZhvU8aKCcbIsATXuYLgBg&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1297&bih=856

Poor Star Dreamers. While the Celestial Fortresses have their own issues, one of the reasons as to why I didn't vote it was that Seeker of Knowledge is the only minor faction related trait to them. Minor Faction Theme...



Maybe instead of flying cities, they could have walking ones. You would still have issues of hving to code mobile cities but battles would require less worries.

JohnnySupernova wrote:
I really can't imagine a flying city being that hard to implement. Cities are already locked to regions, and if it's one tile at a time, it's just a city that can shift it's work tiles once a turn. Big deal.

The problem is that city in this game aren't really one tile tbh. You need districts to unlock cities full potential and that makes city at least 4 tiles which can take various forms. My biggest city so far I believe was city tile + 8 districts and by many standards it was small.

Wintersong wrote:
Poor Star Dreamers. While the Celestial Fortresses have their own issues, one of the reasons as to why I didn't vote it was that Seeker of Knowledge is the only minor faction related trait to them. Minor Faction Theme...

At least they do have some sort of mechanic related to minor factions. There are plenty of entries that don't even have that

Maybe instead of flying cities, they could have walking ones. You would still have issues of hving to code mobile cities but battles would require less worries.

As amusing as that would be, it doesn't fit the faction and it's not what the people are voting for either

I really can't imagine a flying city being that hard to implement. Cities are already locked to regions, and if it's one tile at a time, it's just a city that can shift it's work tiles once a turn. Big deal.

Let's imagine that it's true for a second. But how will the game cope with districts floating above mountain tiles? Or other impassable terrain? How hard will it be for the game to determine if moving a city wouldn't move it outside of its region? How will the game handle the navigation process without making it horribly obnoxious? And how stable (bug-wise) will moving cities be, especially in multiplayer? Those are the sort of things that are worrying me.









BTW, Semi-off-topic - Soveregin wrote cool fanfic involving his and my entry. It's not really related to this competition per se but it's a nice read regardless and I'm amazed that he did this sort of thing The link is in my signature

PANCZASU wrote:
At least they do have some sort of mechanic related to minor factions. There are plenty of entries that don't even have that

If I remove the minor faction traits from your faction, it becomes unplayable. From that point of view, your faction is an example of good minor faction theme. IMHO, of course. My faction idea is inferior to yours because if you remove the minor faction stuff from it, it's still playable (quite vanilla though). In its defense, all the special traits are minor faction related which was the whole point of my entry.

As amusing as that would be, it doesn't fit the faction and it's not what the people are voting for either

The change would go with a proper change of lore, which is as much a subject of change as the gameplay elements. But I was joking. That kind of stuff would fall to the devs and the author of the entry, if the situation requires it.

Wintersong wrote:
If I remove the minor faction traits from your faction, it becomes unplayable. From that point of view, your faction is an example of good minor faction theme. IMHO, of course. My faction idea is inferior to yours because if you remove the minor faction stuff from it, it's still playable (quite vanilla though). In its defense, all the special traits are minor faction related which was the whole point of my entry.

My faction also becomes unplayable without minor factions, which is why I bundled in an idea for a new minor faction already merged.



I doubt that's the defining criteria for the winning entry though



Shame, as it's the brief as posted - vague as it was.

I dunno whether my idea is good example of theme or not... On one hand I did originally design the faction around the theme and idea is that you can't win with them without utilizing minor factions, but I might have missed the mark and just by buffing the units you could make a version of my faction with only guerrilla tactics aspect without minor factions <_<

indigav wrote:
I doubt that's the defining criteria for the winning entry though

I'm sure of that. But we got the chance to define a faction of our liking that works around/with/"does-cool-stuff-with" minor factions. Cool, but not easy, theme. Of which some have done great stuff. (even if some didn't get my vote in the end)