Another vote here for tactical combat in MP. Having tactical battles only in some separate from the normal game "Arena mode" sucks.

That's perfectly reasonable, but until you have all those other things leave tactical battles on in MP.

If I understand correctly, the auto combat will use your tactical spells, the actual combat is simulated (you can see the log and see who hit who with what), so it won't immediately make tactical spells useless, they'll be as good as the AI (whether that is a good thing is up to you I suppose).

I don't envy your position right now Brad. I'm not sure when your code freeze date is, but if I remember your previously mentioned schedule you can't be anymore than 2 weeks at most away in order to hit your August Ship date.

I'm not real big on multiplayer, but I DO play it and like others have mentioned, not having tactical battles available in some form will probably make me shun multiplayer mode until it is in. For the players that like MP, I would have to believe this is an extremely attractive feature for the hardcore player. So add my vote to wanting this feature in at the start.

I believe I also favor the idea that wandering monsters do not totally destroy a unprotected or lightly protected city. If it is possible, perhaps destruction or desvistation of the city could be linked to the World Difficulty mode? At normal, the city could survive, but population and buildings are destroyed, but at higher levels, monsters would raze the city.

I do think spells are uninteresting for a number of reasons. At least in the games that I've played, summoning an Ice Lord or a Fire Giant seems to make little difference. Perhaps spells like these should have some consequences, like freezing lands or catching forests on fire? In the games that I've played, learning spells is far too fast, so you really don't get time to really appreciate the spells that you learn at least in my opinion. In the last two games I played I was learn a spell almost every turn or every other turn. I didn't really pay any attention to what I put in my spell queue because I learned them so quickly. While aspects of the game are too slow, spell learning IMO is too quick. Also, it's not always clear why you can cast a certain spell and not another. When I look at my available spells most are unavailable. You can click on them and it will show you why you can't cast them, but you have to 1) be able to identify the underlying icon (or read the small print) and then click on it. If you can hover over the icon and see the spell card, I've never noticed it so perhaps if that function is there it responds too slow.

Just my two cents.

I hope you guys make your gold date as I really want this game in a finished version, but if the game needs more time I hope you make the right decision and push out the release date.

I can see the Dominions 3 concept coming to the rescue here...

1) Re: Spells - Stacks of spells just waiting to 'inspire'.

2) the way that battles are handled are in many repects a perfect compromise between tactics and speed.

The direct scripting of unit behaviours coupled with the real time play out of the battles means that not only are battles resolved quickly, but success is absolutely determined by the scripts the player chooses for their units.

If it was somehow possible to utilise a script based method of battle planning with the consequent battle played out in RT, well, not only would it speed up MP, it would still require significant tactical consideration. (AND its a hell of a lot of fun to watch!)

I don't see why you can't at least have the option for players to play multiplayer in a normal single player landscape?  Some people are perfectly willing to allow tactical battles of another player to resolve, and it can't take up that many resources to offer this kind of multiplayer mode, can it?

It seems tactical battles in multiplayer is a very, very big selling point.  My brother and I are most certainly sold on multiplayer tactical battles.

I think that Tactical Battles should be in multiplayer. But TB is time-consuming especially in multiplayer. My hopes go with a WEGO system at some point after release... It would make the tactical combat more dinamic and fast paced...

Agree with this post. Two important areas:

1) I don't understand the need to totally destroy the city. I would guess it stems from the implementation in Warcraft, but it seemed wrong to me there as well.  Once the people are dead the looting begins, then historically often the buildings got fired.

2) Hope you spend lots of time getting the finished version really captivating to play. I'd like this game to last the next 10years of my life. Take the time--we'll support that!

3) It would be nice to see a small scene where you learn a new spell and show your wizard casting it.  This might in some way link the spell learning process into RPG a little more firmly, so you see the price of learning and how it looks. As developers you get to show off your already worked on animation, the player gets to see the spell in action, and opportunities for humor might be created as well.

4) Would it be possible for there to be a failure to learn a spell?  This might be a game balancer that would introduce some variability.  Again, RPG like.

THANKS FOR THE WORK SO FAR--KEEP IT UP!!! Major compliments on your company, communication and design skills. Your dedication to excellence will enable all us beta fans to get our friends to buy EWOM and WILL end up rewarding you for your hard work.

well that depends on how tactical battles works, how long they last and how many there are in some average game

This was my check-in this afternoon of what I did in the past 24 hours to give you an idea of how fast progress can be.

And this is just me and I'm just one person out of 19 full time people (not including shared Stardock resources like QA and testing and such) working on the game right now.

Brad (12:00 PM)

+ AI designs better units

+ Sovereign more aggressive at goodie hut finding

+ AI now makes use of external resources

+ Bandits: Brigands and other thugs are now spawned into the world (this will eventually be event driven so that different games have different environmental bad guys)

+ Bandits: Interacts with player

+ Bandits: Will target for destruction undefended cities eventually.

+ The technology breakthru window doesn't default to continuing down the same path anymore.

+ AI Difficulty levels hooked up

+ First attempt to get the events to play tones in

+ Made changs to CanOwnCity() such that Monsters can destroy cities

+ Treasures can now have their own distinct sounds when found

+ Rewrote ::FindRandomGoodieHutTypeByTerrain() to have it take into account how rare the goodie hut is and make sure it is following the world spawn rating rules.

+ Hooked up Influence Ability. Every 100 points of Influence will increase the max radius of a player's zone of control by a full tile. By very careful with this.

+ MessageBoxWnd no longer hard coded to that treasure found sound.

+ Message Window can now play sounds when brought up.

+ Lots of changews to MobileObject.cpp to allow monsters to be monsters. BETA TESTERS: Be on the look out for stuck turns.

+ CPlayer::SetABility() added (seriously, we didn't have this)!

+ Beginnings of the AI designing units for the human player put in.

                - AI will try to design a unit every time they go up a level on the warfare/combat tree. If it is better than any existing unit the player can build, it will add it to their list. In theory.

+ By default, spawn ratings on quests are now -1

+ Fixed bug where quests were hard coded to 1.

+ Events should be playing sounds

+ Tactical Unit morale system rewritten

+ If a monster manages to "conquer" a city it will destroy it (they're monsters afterall)

+ Changed the way Goodie Hut spawns work such that the higher level goodie huts will mainly spawn around the player who triggered the spawn rather than spamming it randomly around the map.  In addition, players who do go up a goodie hut level will still be able to get some goodie huts placed near them.

+ First balance attempt to try to make the monster upgrading not go up so fast

+ Updated CWorld:laceRandomGoodieHuts() so that we can now optionally specify a player we want them to be spawned near

+ Tactical Maps for all terrain types created (13 new maps)

+ Fixed Core Accessories to work with new tech trees

+ Sound effects added to many treasures found in goodie huts

+ Lots of new items added (sick of healing nectar)

+ Sand Golem nerfed

+ Fixed typos where people were spelling sovereign as "soveriegn" (I before E except after C)

+ Wild Game now extremely rare (will have to have it spawn only near hunters in the future)

+ Tried, but failed, to get the lost library to have a different tactical map icon than the ancient temple Not sure why they still look the same but they are using different fiels now

+ Gave bandidts and other humanoid monsters intelligence of 10.

+ Started crated "gang" monster groups

+ Players now start out knowing certain spells. In addition, each spell book now has some spells that a caster knows by having that spell book.

+ Veteran troops can now be trained by Amarians

+ The default Pioneer is now unarmed (and cheaper)

+ Brought some of the Imperial improvement costs in line with the Kingdom equivalents

+ TONS of new Quest items to get

+ Started adding template quests that are easily modded to create other quests

+ Lots of new quest destinations

+ THE MASTER QUEST IS IN!

+ Dave Stern's writing in the Master Quest

does this mean the new patch is ready and soon to be seen ?

someone ninja asked the same thing before i was finished lol

I agree here.  Spell learning should be a rewarding event that doesn't happen too fast, and allows for a few battles discovering the new spells use and effectiveness.  Maybe I'm naive, but this sentiment makes sense to me.

On SP/MP. Perhaps the most distinctive and bold choices in developing this game is the stated focus on Single Player.  I was sold on that line alone.  Other that a stint of 4 months playing WOW, I don't play multiplayer.  I know and respect all the MP gamers out there, but resourced should not be taken away from the imersive and enriching SP experience.  Single Player Game should remain the primary focus for Stardock, IMO.  Multiplayer enhancements could wait until after release date if it comes to a choice between SP and MP. Trying to accomidate both if there is not enough time could condemn both to mediocracy. Single Player first!