RBPBEM FfH #1 [SPOILERS] Sareln of the Svartalfar

[Sareln]

Thanks alot for your posts and explanations of the Civics

No problem, it was good for me too, since I've been away from FfH for quite a while - and definitely needed the refresher course myself! For instance, City States has become much more powerful than when I last saw it. I would need to do way more playtesting than I have to back up the claim I made with City States vis-a-vis God King now in the general case. For elves, who need all the production they can get their hands on, God King is pretty clearly superior, IMO.

Now that I've mapped out the tech tree for you all, my next plan is to talk about my planned tech path, why it is what it is, and explain my religion focus, and use that as a neat little segue to talk about religions in Fall From Heaven, make predictions as to what religion each player will pursue and follow etc.

[Sareln]

Pictures from T8 later, since I'm in a hurry right now. I popped a hut for Ancient Chants!

[Sareln]

Alright, Turn 8 rolled around today, and hopefully we'll get in a nice blitz session tomorrow .

As I said earlier, popped the hut south of my capital with a warrior, and was rewarded with ancient chants! This is good stuff, since it puts me right next to Mysticism with God King and Elder Councils (building, +2 beakers, can hire 1 sage).



I also moved my scout south to continue trying to deceive Selrahc as to when I popped Letum Frigus. There's a mana source in that desert, so it will definitely be useful later. I think, that unless Selrahc really jams down the pedal for his expansion, I'll be settling near Letum Frigus to secure two mana sources.



Finally, here's an overview shot for the turn - I should go enumerate my tech plan now!

[Sareln]

Blitz is off, theArchduke got sick . Hopefully he gets better soon! I think it will still be good to run a blitz session in the near future (like next week) since we'll be playing stasis turns.

Rate of Play Calculations:
Standard 1 Turn / Day
Blitz ~2 Turns / Hour

Blitz Breakdown - 5 minutes per player, 2 minutes transitioning between players --> 35 minutes / turn.

We have 12 turns of stasis left, so we will have played through 6 of them come saturday (provided the archduke recovers). So a blitz session of 3 hours (not too bad!) would conclude the stasis turns and get the rest of us back in the game .

[Sareln]

Lurkers (thought): Sareln, you Bum! You haven't been updating your thread right after the turn, why the delay?

Me: Well, I got caught up in a side project, but now its done. In fact, I think you might even like to read it!

Lurkers: Oh, why?

Me: It's about Elemental, that upcoming TBS game from Stardock, the current technology system that they're using and some suggested changes for it.

Lurkers: Oh, I guess that's kinda cool, but why write it? Will Stardock even listen to you?

Me: They'll probably listen, whether or not they act on it is a whole different matter . Regardless, I think I made some good points, and would definitely be interested in what sort of comments our CIV Veterans would have on it, especially those who went through the beta of that game (Hi Sullla!).

I tried to keep things short, but it still bloomed out to 18 pages, there are pictures though! The executive summary and a link to the .pdf can be found on the Stardock Elemental forums here:

http://forums.elementalgame.com/383598

Edit1:
I'm putting it through more drafts right now, so if you haven't read it yet, hold off for a touch.

Edit2:
Finalized, goferit.

[Sareln]

Moved my scout south and spotted the Illian Border. We're freaking close!

[Krill]

Lurkers (thought): Sareln, you Bum! You haven't been updating your thread right after the turn, why the delay?

Me: Well, I got caught up in a side project, but now its done. In fact, I think you might even like to read it!

Lurkers: Oh, why?

Me: It's about Elemental, that upcoming TBS game from Stardock, the current technology system that they're using and some suggested changes for it.

Lurkers: Oh, I guess that's kinda cool, but why write it? Will Stardock even listen to you?

Me: They'll probably listen, whether or not they act on it is a whole different matter . Regardless, I think I made some good points, and would definitely be interested in what sort of comments our CIV Veterans would have on it, especially those who went through the beta of that game (Hi Sullla!).

I tried to keep things short, but it still bloomed out to 18 pages, there are pictures though! The executive summary and a link to the .pdf can be found on the Stardock Elemental forums here:

http://forums.elementalgame.com/383598

I'm putting it through more drafts right now, so if you haven't read it yet, hold off for a touch.

Interesting reading, you know where Ican sign up for the next Beta?

[Sullla]

Me: They'll probably listen, whether or not they act on it is a whole different matter . Regardless, I think I made some good points, and would definitely be interested in what sort of comments our CIV Veterans would have on it, especially those who went through the beta of that game (Hi Sullla!).

Not being part of the Elemental beta, I can't comment too much, but your argument seemed convincing to me. It seems very bad to me that there's a situation where techs will show up as "researchable" at one time, but if you go and research something else, they disappear and can no longer be researched. Not good! You can't penalize the player like that - the system has to be less random. And I agree that having 30+ techs available to research is overwhelming. The original Master of Orion sort of did this, but you only worked with one research field at a time, and you wouldn't want to research more than one or two techs in each tier, so it was mitigated.

Above all, you need to make information available to the player so they can make informed decisions. I will always argue that this should be the foundation of any good strategy game. (The developers of Civ5 seem to be moving away from this, and deliberately hiding diplomatic information, which I regard as a giant red flag.) More info is a good thing. Players should *NEVER* have to dig into the XML files to see tech pre-requisites. This is a major reason why Master of Orion 3 was such a dud - the game never gave you feedback on what anything did!

I've stayed away from the development of Elemental, but I'm probably going to buy it when it comes out. Just wish it wasn't releasing at the same time as Civ5...

[Sareln]

Stardock Betas are a "money up front" affair, you have to pre-order through Impulse (their Digital Distribution platform) to get into the beta. On the plus side, they don't charge you for your pre-order until the next round of Beta starts, and they typically keep the beta "open" for a week or so in each phase.

That said, Beta 1 was no fun at all (as repeated ad nauseum by Stardock's CEO and gamer, Brad Wardell). Beta 2 is for balancing, but I wouldn't expect it to be fun .

We're aimed at an Aug. 24th release (or a Feb 11th one if we slip past Aug 24th due to the vagaries of buying shelf space at a brick & mortar), so I would only hop on the beta if the base idea of the game itself sounds cool to you and you love theory-craft. Given-that, if we do slip, Sullla won't have to worry about us releasing at the same time, since Sid makes his deadlines neh?

[Sareln]

Turn 9:

More scouting. Illians want to set up a meeting between me and Kuriotate as a show of goodwill, but I don't think I can let my scouts wander that far from my capital while in Stasis. Trying to think of a good way to tell the Kuriotate that through the Illians without letting the Illians know I'm nervous about getting rushed.