Ugh.  How could I forget.  Warlords, Warlords, Warlords.

For the originality debate:

Yes, we want something original, but original does NOT mean "design the game as if the entire history of video game design never happened".  A great novel can be original and groundbreaking while at the same time beind informed by the work of all of the other great authors that came beforehand.  Art forms progress over time not because they're made in isolation, but because artists are constantly inspired by, or repulsed by, or are reacting in some way to what other artists throughout history have done (and yes, I pretentiously consider game design to be an art form.  Sue me ).

There's certainly a balance to be struck, as you certainly don't want a derivative work, but good points of other games are worth pointing out.  Even without copying a game mechanic, its possible to gain a good deal of insight on *why* that mechanic worked (or didn't work), and use that insight to inform your own design decisions.

Elemental's existing design was certainly not done in a vacuum.  What would the concept for Elemental look like without Master of Magic or Civilization?  There's a decent chance that without the inspiration of Master of Magic that Elemental wouldn't even exist.  That said, even with as much of a debt as the concept already owes to MoM, its already clear that Elemental is very much its own game.  Being inspired by Master of Magic has not turned Elemental into a MoM clone any more than drawing inspiration from Alpha Centauri, or Command and Conquer, or Doom would turn it into clones of those games.

The only thing I really remember from Alpha Cent, is that DIPLOMACY actually WORKED.  It was crazy, the AI would be SCARED of me when I ruled 1/2 the map...good times.

Yeah, i recognized the quote referenced, and probably could recite about half by heart. And it's worth noting that this particular quote accompanies the Retroviral Engineering tech.

Well, apart from the story telling, i really liked the custom unit designer (Clean Singularity Deathsperes anyone?), but since that's already planned for the game there's no need for me to whine about it.

Website with (pretty much) all of alpha centauri's quotes.

I don't like to name a top much of anything, but SMAC is definitely outstanding when it comes to a story layer for a TBS civ-mode game. And I think that's because of the random maps, not despite them. Immersive story is relatively easy if you stick to canned maps. Story bits that play well against a rondom map is a much neater trick.

Oh SMAC, how much I played that before.. newer found the expansionpack in the stores tough..

Alpha Centauri is just Mom meets Civ. Custom Units (MoM) and everything else Civ. But the FLAVOR of the game--- it's look, the Faction Leaders doing most of the voice overs for the techs and the wonders --- that created a serious atmosphere for the game.

What I want from Elemental? A lot of inspiration from Mom. All the rest of those games can go jump into a lake, as MoM had everything but the "Castles" storyline.

I am confident that StarDock will make a great game. They've done really well with their Gal Civ game line. I have no worries, and the utmost confidence, that this will be a fun game.

Oh, and ShadowDragoon--- the expansion was really a payed patch. It does fix a lot of the bugs in the game. But the new factions suck, whether human or alien. And including the aliens really knocked the game down. Playing them is like going back to the released version of SMAC, strategy wise. You just nerve gas everything out of existance, without penalty, because the Aliens suffer no negative effects from doing so. But--- I think you can buy the full SMAC and SMAX set from Direct2Drive and other online distributors, if you still want it. I still play SMAX--- for the bug fixes, but I usually use the original factions, because they are just so much better then any of the newer ones (which all require "advanced" play by humans to have a chance at being successful).

MoM

Nobunaga's Ambition (Remember that? One of, if not, the First Koie game on the 8 bit Nes)

Medieval/Shogun Total War

Lords of Magic (loved that game back in the day)

Yes I know that's four games.

It is often said that "Imitation is the Highest form of Flattery". If that is the case then these games have been flattered more times then I care to count. Someone above mentioned Spore. Spore was a great game though it has it's problems. It has Amazingly HUGE potential. I think that character creator should come standard with every game. The bad thing was once you got into Tribe and City level management it's like they dumbed it down to "Juniors First Strategy Game" levels so a 10 year old would like it. If it would of had the complexity and depth a game of it's caliber should have had we'd probably all be playing it right now.

I'm a HUGE X-Com fan. It's the classic standard for squad based tactics in my book. I wish someone would do a true re-invent of that game. Can you imagine X-Com put with a truly 3D engine? That would rock.

That was hardcore strategy. I had the original and the 2nd one for SNES, still do. They had marriages in that game but it was very limited. I am thinking there was an interesting flavor to it though. <<<<<---- was a huge KOIE fan.

Nobunaga's Ambition was one of the hardest strategy games ever made. I don't know how they did it way back then, but the AI was incredible. The funny thing is it being a Nes game. Those disks had like almost no memory space what so ever. Even today with our massive system specs and all the room to code you could ever want most developers can't make a game that has as good a AI as a old school game like Nobunaga's Ambition or Romance of the Three Kingdoms 1 & 2.

Excellent games my friend.