Looks cool. I like worlds with lots of islands.

I do have one question though, which I will direct at you Brad as I know you do the AI.

One great let-down of Master of Magic and other games was that the AI was bad at handling complex maps or islands. Can you confirm that the AI in this game will be flexible and able to handle diverse maps and islands?

Quick thought, could we get it so whenever Elemental makes a map, it'll save it?

I have, from time to time, gone back and replayed maps in other games using different setups and start locations. I would like to have such an option for Elemental. I know for GalCiv 2, my skill level has greatly improved over time, and I would really wish I could go back and try to replay some of those older games that I had trouble with.

Could you also include a means to remember the starting setup for every game played on a given map? Many updates for GalCiv 2 have rendered older games non-functional, so having a means to remember the starting conditions and other details would allow us to replay old games from the begining. Think of it like a means for a player to check to see if they have got any better.

Also, could we also have a means include some notes along side a map? I would like to be able to keep a set of notes for training maps, or keep a list of games I have played with a given map, related details for every game.

/Shrugs shoulders

Could be a forest of seaweed.

It might depend on how they feel about seaweed.

Does this mean no forests of seaweed?

Here I was begining to make invasion plans involving animated seaweed to attack ships, and to travel on land to terrorize costal cities as some horrid tenticle seaweed monster. Seriously, what am I going to do now to terrorize people?

underwater reseources and forests!   I want that!  (and floating bear cities.... wait, let me try that again?)

so are we going to get this for beta 0?   or is "backburner" mean until after beta 0?

I didn't see any Trentalor monster on that map!

A Trentalor monster? Whats that?

If you are refering to my "Horrid Tenticle Seaweed Monster" comment, I mentioned as part of my comments involving making a monster out of lots of seaweed by using a spell. There is no actual monster on the map, though there is a forest under water.

----

On a side note, I now want to turn one of my HTSM (Horrid Tenticle Seaweed Monster) into a mount. I want my opponents to fear getting a slimy piece of icky seaweed crawling up their pants more than me stabbing them with a sword. I would also want to give it a slobbering dog personality, except instead of drooling all over you, it will try to send its seaweed tenticles everywhere so you get that icky feeling all over you.

Looks fun. I love messing around with map editors.

I'm going to assume that it'll be possible to generate a complete map based on the same parameters that exists in-game, and then edit a map from there on in? I love to remodel some of my immediate to-be surroundings in games, and then play that game.

I always found GalCiv2 sorely lacking in the mapmaking department, unfortunately.

Tractor beams. All you really have to do is adjust the doppler frequency and reset the photons.

Excellent. I eat this stuff up. I made many maps in GalCiv, but they were pretty over the top type things.

This I could work with. I'm already thinking about recreating actual terrain maps. Take a piece of the Rocky Mountains, for example. Abundant mineral resources, food hard to come by, and small mountain passes to fight through. Or the great plains; abundant food, scarcer minerals, and wide open, with little or no natural defenses. I could map the Everglades, or the American southwest, with it's deserts and canyons. Please allow us to use negative altitude. Damn. A blurb and a couple of screenshots and I'm already getting worked up. Now...where exactly to put my ex's house? That's right sweetheart; it's hard to enjoy the bigscreen when you're dragon poop.

/whistles

Down boy down. Quit slobbering all over Solam. No, I don't think he wants seaweed slime that far up his pants, or his shirt, or all his helmet, or anywhere else. No I don't think he want to shake you tenticle. God only knows how many people you have groped in akward places with that thing.

Don't look at me like that. You don't exactly have a face, so you attempts at making a puppy face aren't going to work... Oh you poor thing! Ok, you can play with Solam for 5, maybe 10 minutes tops, but then you're comming home with me. Just make sure you don't leave a mess on the carpets this time... its a pain to clean up slime.

/throws a frizbee at Solam

You will want throw that before he catches you.

--This is a little off topic, but I'm really hoping that the random map genorator will come up with some awesome maps on it's own. One of my biggest problems with Civ3, and Civ4 was that you were lucky to get an intersting map. Except for some of the time you almost always ended up with a western rectangle and a eastern rectangle...with some islands trown in. The land masses hardly ever had intersing shapes or features. I always hoped that the maps would be more "Earth Like" if you will. I'm fairly confident that this game will pull off what I'm looking for, as the map sizes have already been shown to be much larger than in Civ4! I really think that it's especially important for a fantasy game to have interesting maps. What are yall thoughts on this?

I found certain map types to be interesting, and others to be horrid.   It was very selective based on what kind map generation you picked.  I almost always picked islands, and would make big islands if I wanted them big.   I too must voice my desire for less 'square' maps.   Honestly, the more bizzar and chaotic the boarders of a landscape are, the more realistic.  Perhaps long sections of mostly smooth area where an ocean plate could be concieved to be pressing, but these are almost always partnered by a mountain chain.  some distance inland.

Island chains, lagoons on particularly old islands, canyons with river valley + river, river delta that form near shore islands, river tributaries, and so on...  all these things are often missed in random generation.