Teodosio wrote:
This sounds very misterious and dangerous...!

Its sounds GREAT!

Sovereign wrote:
i will not miss the negative anomalies. Cause i want to play a strategy game not a gambling game.

But good anomalies are not?



I think it adds immersion into the game with added personality.I think its a shame making the game blander.ES was terribly bland on release.

Divine_Moments_of_Truth wrote:
How much of region's surface can city influence (exploitation) area cover? What about the area that's outside of it?

Right now our regions are around 100 hex ( that can still vary quite a bit), and your city is 1hexagon at start, and can go up to around 20 hexes. Yet as all adjoining hexes can be exploited, so the total area that can be exploited can be much bigger, depending on the shape of your city.

Region sizes will be customizable for the players.

Divine_Moments_of_Truth wrote:
Will there be army attrition?

Nosferatiel wrote:
Regarding the dark season: Will there be attrition, like in winter in Total War? Troops not prepared for a season (or a region) should suffer losses. Who goes into the swamp without disease protection, into the desert without sufficient water or into winter without stocks and appropriate clothing, should face the lethal consequences.

So far we do not have any attrition in mind, as the dark season affects food production, movement, combat ability and activate unique traits. But we are all hears at what else can be affected by it.

Varadhon wrote:
I noticed that minor factions have three "villages" per region they occupy. Do players get to found "villages" as well? If so, how do they function or are they merely baronies detached from the region's city (which frankly sounds like a great option to me)?

So far we have no plans to create new ones, but that sounds interesting. we have plans to be able to raze and rebuild existing ones though.

Divine_Moments_of_Truth wrote:
I have some questions.

How much of region's surface can city influence (exploitation) area cover? What about the area that's outside of it?

Will there be army attrition?

I was wondering this same point. Is there any limiting principle that prevents a city from sprawling from one edge of a region to another? I like the idea of city extensions and creating a cost-benefit trade-off between the size of a city and what it can build in its city core/how defensible it is. It's a nice marrying of the traditional single-tile city of Civ and the amorphous cities in Elemental.



On a side note, I noticed that minor factions have three "villages" per region they occupy. Do players get to found "villages" as well? If so, how do they function or are they merely baronies detached from the region's city (which frankly sounds like a great option to me)?

Do we yet know what shape the world will be and how many regions a world will have based on its size settings (presuming that there are variable size settings for the world map)?



1. Flat world (as in Age of Wonders and lots of Civ scenario maps)

2. Cylinder world (E-W edges of map wrap, as in Civ generic maps)

3. Doughnut world (Pandora: First Contact, E-W edges wrap as well as N-S edges)

4. A 3D sphere (what I really want and hope we get)

Is there any word on what the actual shape of the world map is?



Civ has always used a cylinder world (mildly annoying), Age of Wonders just creates artificial edges to fashion a roughly rectangular map (more annoying), and the recently released Pandora: First Contact employs a doughnut world (bizarre). The only world map in a TBS that I recall being an honest attempt at making a spherical world was Alpha Centauri.

I like how each season will vary in length. That will definitely add an extra bit of diversity.



I'll only miss the anomalies for their added diversity.



I also hope thy will elaborate more on the sieges and prestige points. Hopefully they will be in another doc.

i will not miss the negative anomalies. Cause i want to play a strategy game not a gambling game.

Chronodrax wrote:
THE DARK SEASON



The Dark Season slows down the world’s evolution: Food becomes rare, Cities need more people working in the fields than building new Temples, refining Dust or making new Alchemy experiences. Roads fade, each army movement has to be pondered; bad decisions have greater consequences than usual.



Each season’s duration is hard to predict, as it changes each time. The game starts at an Era withstanding longer Dark seasons than usual, and they seem to be harsher each time. No wonder there are rumours about an inevitable doom; who knows if the next Dark season won’t last forever?

This sounds very misterious and dangerous...!

Stealth_Hawk wrote:
That was my first thought too, but it really does make sense to not have negative anomalies in a game like this. It sounds as though the map is expansive enough that the player could easily find a region/biome without a negative anomaly and settle there, and never touch the anomaly throughout the entirety of the game, essentially wasting map space, if I read correctly. But if you mean negative anomalies in the sense of a hostile biome housing a temple, wonders, etc., then it could be cool if you could venture into the biome, get the wonder, and then exploit that biome against your enemies perhaps. Thats my take anyways



So, as long as you control the region, is the player allowed to place a standalone mine on a resource hex? Or will we have to expand the entire city out if we want access to multiple resource hexes in a single region?

I guess it's region-bound. Otherwise we'll have cities everywhere lol

Tredecim wrote:
Well, I would have been a fan of some more... negative anomalies.

That was my first thought too, but it really does make sense to not have negative anomalies in a game like this. It sounds as though the map is expansive enough that the player could easily find a region/biome without a negative anomaly and settle there, and never touch the anomaly throughout the entirety of the game, essentially wasting map space, if I read correctly. But if you mean negative anomalies in the sense of a hostile biome housing a temple, wonders, etc., then it could be cool if you could venture into the biome, get the wonder, and then exploit that biome against your enemies perhaps. Thats my take anyways



So, as long as you control the region, is the player allowed to place a standalone mine on a resource hex? Or will we have to expand the entire city out if we want access to multiple resource hexes in a single region?

Well, I would have been a fan of some more... negative anomalies.



But the way ressources and luxuries are handled pleases me.



Tha Dark Season is going to be a nice challenge, I guess. lol

A realistic assessment, but unfortunate nonetheless.

Nobody's mentioned it, but it would be great if there were wandering beasts . . . maybe even wandering automata from Auriga's past =) Might make early game survival more interesting

maybe that is how they calculate winter in this game. though having winter the horrible terrifying season they talked about effecting only half of the world is a bit of a let down.

Nosferatiel wrote:
Maybe that's a double on the climate and e.g. southern and northern hemispheres on a globe are different.

Or the world might not rotate, making the sunny hemisphere of the globe bright and hot, while the dark hemisphere of the globe would be rather cold? One might speculate a lot on that, but I guess that is what "hemisphere" hints at.

These seem like as good of guesses as any. It could also be a mistranslation. There are several in the GDDs.

Maybe that's a double on the climate and e.g. southern and northern hemispheres on a globe are different.

Or the world might not rotate, making the sunny hemisphere of the globe bright and hot, while the dark hemisphere of the globe would be rather cold? One might speculate a lot on that, but I guess that is what "hemisphere" hints at.

Here's to hoping!



Based on the quote below, it looks like we get at least a cylinder world. Or that's what I take "horizontal loop" to mean. I'm totally confused by what is meant by "hemispheres."



The lack of a mini-map might just be an oversight. There wasn't one in ES. Given how easy it was to zoom in and out in ES, a mini-map wasn't entirely necessary. With the variations in terrain and geography, a mini-map feels essential in a terrestrial 4X game. I'm hard-pressed to think of a 4X game that DOESN'T have a mini-map.

Chronodrax wrote:






WORLD GENERATION



When starting a new game, the player has access to some generation options:

• Map size
• Horizontal loop
• Hemispheres
• Climate
• Ruggedness
• Continents type
• Regions size
  
  

maybe they are still working on a new world map system or are hiding secret information they don't want to reveal yet

If the system is already handling 3D renders, I don't really see how. There are older 4X space games that use a 3D universe model (MoO3, Sword of the Stars, etc.) and which run no more quickly or slowly than plenty of other games.



But getting back to the topic, I note that we haven't even seen a world map yet. It's sort of conspicuous by its absence in the screenies we've seen so far.