I guess the other thing to worry about is what sort of incentives we're putting into place.  What should be the goal of small factions? Large factions? How do factions transition between the two states? What about the middle ground?

Which is then why the First idea made any sense to me in the first place.

The idea is that you start off with few cities, and no need to worry about mainenance.

Then, as your city # increases, maintenance becomes a real pain ... and you may have to build these *special palaces* to reduce maintenance if you want to build any more soldiers ... at the cost of Scientific Research (and I suppose Arcane Knowledge as well).

I suppose it would make a lot more sense if there was more than just the 2 palaces ... like many smaller buildings and techs, which increased your available Gildar along with Knowledge and Arcane penalties ... so you know full well what your getting into.

So you are hurting future research in order to more efficiently mass produce what you already know.

At that point, your cities Population sizes are only a source of Gildar income and Soldiers.

but yea, if you separate it into many different buildings, techs, and the Palace upgrades ... then you get to choose how far into the rabbit hole (of specializing as a Zerg/Large empire) you go.

This is well said.  Our expectation is set too high, but the delivery maybe questionable.   They are rushing the game to the Aug release,  I am  expecting average review from magazine now, instead of top-rated one.  Hope that I am wrong.

I expect modding be great, but modding is always a divisive activity.  Everyone is playing a different modd.   The community will be busy making mod, consolidate the best mods,  etc.  A good game won't be available probably after a year into release, or half a year.

I skimmed thorough various posts here, I found that using 'maintainence cost' to prevent big empire is always better is a brand-aid solution.   This is just a fix, that is not very fun but workable.

I am a bit worried about this.  I think a game needs to be significantly highly rated to attract the most people who like modding...

What do others think?  Do you think there will be enough people attracted to modding of Elemental after release and reviews?

Best regards,
Steven.

The people who create the best (read "only good") mods are the diehard fans. Yes better reviews and such will make a greater amount of people play it and mod it - but the masses usually (read "always") just churn out dross. In all honesty, the good, dedicated modders will already know what they want and will make it, irrespective of what Elemental brings out. For the modding, the quality of the actual game is negligible, as it's the mod tools that are of paramount importance. From what I've seen and read, it would seem that the mod tools and engine have gotten more attention than the retail game itself, which is both good and bad. 

Best regards, 

Paradoxical.

Exactly.  I would have preferred the game itself to get a little more attention.  Because there has been so much emphasis on the mod tools, that is both good and bad.  I think the game itself could have been significantly better if just a little bit less attention had been placed on the mod tools, and I don't think it would have been a particularly costly tradeoff (for modding capability).  The game is fun (as of 3B) but it doesn't seem like it will be revolutionary, which is a *little bit* of a shame.

Best regards,
Steven.

Well, we already have all the pieces from the past ... its just time to place them on the board right.

Frogboy was right imho ... its not necessarily a game that is "revolutionary" as much as the next step forwards.

Instead of just A, B, and C ... the game also has D-Z (or will anyways), thats my take on it

My biggest problem at the moment is the game is just A, B, and C. Nothing is new, and a lot of the features designed to be pillars of the game are flat-out basic (and I'm not referring to just the beta, there are inherent mechanics that can't be changed at this stage). I very much doubt that this game will be a next step, though I am looking forward to it.

To be totally honest, there really isn't any clear direction for 4x games to go, and this game appears to suffer from that problem in that it just goes in about 5 different directions at once. I feel it lacks a sense of synergy, but mods will fix all this. 

I'm sure I'll enjoy this game, but it won't be a game changer in anyway, and sadly without the modding capacity I doubt it would stand on its own. 

Best regards, 

Paradoxical

Revolutions is one of the most popular (and widely included in other mods) modification for Civ 4 simply because it does stop the easy empire expansion, and the conditions for rebellion and revolution are controllable.  You simply have to work on your empire stability, and not expand too fast.

EU series is actually an interesting one to bring up, simply because by the end they did do tech progression extremely well.  If you have a sprawling poor nation (ie Poland-Lithuania or Russia) odds are you will fall behind in Tech.  If you have a sprawling rich nation (ie France or England once England massively colonizes) you will be a tech leader.  If you have a medium sized wealthy nation you can also be a tech leader, and the small trading state can hyper-tech, although they will rarely have the manpower or weight to make it count in the larger scheme of things.  I think this was well modelled by the game mechanics, and is something to look into.

You do not want to sell a game engine or a do it yourself video game, you want to sell a real video game. Modding should not be used to create a game that does not exist, it should be used to extend the life on the game by adding alternate ways to play. So you need to have a solid working game right at the start. The common gamer will not play mods until he fully understand and enjoy the base game. The average gamer does not want to tweak the game before playing, he wants to buy, install and play now. When the base game has offered him enough challenges, then he is going to look out for mods.

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Many people suggested raising the maintenance cost for larger empire. I do not totally agree with that

- First, you do not want to prevent players from making larger empire, you want to make sure other players can stay competitive. If empire cannot grow any more, there will be no military domination victory unless you stop the game when a player owns 2/3 of the map.

- Second, calculating maintenance is annoying and should be done by itself. I promote the idea that each city should be able to maintain itself. I really liked civ rev that had no negative value to calculate.

City production could be calculated this way: Income - maintenance = Net income.

What the players really cares is the net income that will go into the treasury. So if you could abstract the maintenance and only show the player the net income, that would be easier for the player to manage. Net income would be used to maintain stuff outside the cities, like mobile armies, or go in the treasury which could be used for various purpose.

One of the way to abstract maintenance could be that the size of the city ( in population) determines the amount of buildings or units a city can maintain. This abstract all the tax collected by the population and the required population to operate the buildings as : this city can hold a maximum of 5 buildings right now. This way, players does not need to bother about the accounting of each city. It prevent also players to have a city in deficit (too much buildings for it's size) which would be supported by the net income of other cities.

Players, for example, could decide to build 2 barrack to gain more unit production. This is where it will become more strategic to determine which building you want to build according to your objectives. I might cost you gold to place new buildings so that changing your buildings configuration many times will empty your treasury.

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As for constant progression, there are many board games that use a system like this since it is harder to level production relative to empire size. For example, in Endeavor, each player take a buildings every turn, at the end of the game, all players will have too 7 buildings. So the growth is constant. In starcraft the board game, you are limited to 4 actions per turn. So if you have a larger empire, you will have less actions to manage your empire and will only bother about your borders. So it makes you more vulnerable to a player that will use his 4 actions against the same planet.

Personally I think making Tech and Magic research constant should be the solution. Also considering that there are so many research path, even if players all have the same research level, each player will still have a different combination. People suggested that heroes, quests and events could probably boost research. I totally agree with that since it is not related to the empire size.

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Therefore,  how should resources be handled in the game.I find it a bit stupid that you need a gold mine to get gold income. It makes the game look like in warcraft where there is no ecomony, all the gold spent goes into another dimensions. Here are some suggestions on how the resources could be managed according to various priorities.

Flat bonus: The city will gain a bonus to a stat if it controls the resource. Like in MOM, Game gave you +3 food, gold +5 gold, etc.

Exponential Bonus: The more you control of the same type of resource, the more income you gain. (ex: 1 gold = +5 gold, 2 gold = +15 gold ) This income should be empire wide. The advantages is that it is easier to lower the income of your ennemy by capturing cities with resources in order to de-multiply their bonus. Still, in order for the resource multiplication to be logical, you need to have very good communication between your cities which might not always be the case in medieval times.

Lock and unlock things: Having access to certain resources unlocks you the possibility to build certain buildings and units, So capturing these resource will weaken the enemy empire. Players can trade their access to resource in order to diversify their resources.

Cumulative with Production cost: Same as above instead that each turn, you accumulate a quantity of each of these resources and building stuff deplete them. So If your resource gets captured, you can still benefit from a reserve you could have accumulated. But if there are many resources, it is annoying to keep track of the amount of ressource of each type you have. So I prefer Lock/unlock method.

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I don't see anything else to say right now to say. If people need help to design an economic system, I don't mind helping as long as people state what they want and do not want to see in the game.

Personally, I prefer something relatively simple with little calculations so that the players could focus on important decisions to make rather than how to reduce my gold deficit.

What if the Cost of Maintenance per City was based simply on total Prestige points in use?

Currently, Prestige is a Cities growth element. The more Prestige, the faster the Pop grows. Pop. = Level. Level determines Tech based buildings allowed.

So, if I want low maintenance fees on 1,2,3 or more Cities, the only way to keep costs low is to slow the growth element. Low Prestige per City = slow growth Cities = low maintenance costs.

Then add in that City Level and Tech based buildings allowed to be built are linked to both Research & Magic and that Military might is directly linked to Population, high growth would speed up Research, Tech and Military Might but would be governed by maintenance cost based how many you Cities you wish to own and fast you desire to grow them.

The Prestige based cost would be Global in nature. All of your cities combined Prestige would represent the over-all maintenance cost of the Kingdom/Empire as a whole.

Only problem, currently, for someone interested in a fast early Military is that some/most Prestige based buildings are limited in #. That would have to be removed to allow someone to grow fast but at a known maintenance cost increase.

Idea:

First City has 1 Prestige point and costs 15G in maintenance. Each additional Prestige added point would be a 1-2% increase to that Global maintenance costs.

A 2 Prestige point City would take forever to level past 3....

you are wrong

frogboy stated already he is working to avoid a building game where the more you build the higher the chance to win

ofc it started like this and its still a bit like that but if frogboy told he knows the problem then there is nothing to be worried

its a beta, so full of problems but at least developers knows which way to go

also balance is far from solved, still the combat and partially the magic system is work in progress, first the skeleton then they ll try to balance things