Elemental: Max number of players = infinite

But, if you have 32 races, and then say 10 minor races, 20-25 cities is obviously too small. Assuming that you spread out some before going to war, and establish, say, four cities, then at four a piece you have 128 cities, just for the main races. Plus say another five or six for the minor races. Let's just say 135 for ease of computations.

So, if you're a huge sprawling empire by turn 500, and have crushed a few players, you probably have say, 40 cities, pretty easily. I don't know about you guys, but I wouldn't want to create 20 vassal cities and try and stay friendly with them. Unless they were puppets, forced into trade with me of course.

Assuming you win by conquering your foes, you should pretty easily have 80 or more cities, if not closer to the 135 total. Both numbers are of course, well above 20-25.

You're assuming that by taking the path of the conqueror, capturing every city is optimal/advisable. I think it'd be neat if there were some mechanism or feature in place that made choosing whether to capture or raze a city a meaningful choice. You might be better off just capturing your enemy's two best cities and razing the other two to the ground. Or maybe you'd raze his best cities to the ground and take his less-developed ones! The better cities' people might cause so much trouble for you that you'd rather just raze it the ground.

That alone could cut your number of cities down by half, or even more. Then there's also the matter that "HUGE, glorious, sprawling empire" is entirely relative to the size of the map you're playing on

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Quoting pigeonpigeon,

reply 51

But, if you have 32 races, and then say 10 minor races, 20-25 cities is obviously too small. Assuming that you spread out some before going to war, and establish, say, four cities, then at four a piece you have 128 cities, just for the main races. Plus say another five or six for the minor races. Let's just say 135 for ease of computations.
So, if you're a huge sprawling empire by turn 500, and have crushed a few players, you probably have say, 40 cities, pretty easily. I don't know about you guys, but I wouldn't want to create 20 vassal cities and try and stay friendly with them. Unless they were puppets, forced into trade with me of course.

Assuming you win by conquering your foes, you should pretty easily have 80 or more cities, if not closer to the 135 total. Both numbers are of course, well above 20-25.

You're assuming that by taking the path of the conqueror, capturing every city is optimal/advisable. I think it'd be neat if there were some mechanism or feature in place that made choosing whether to capture or raze a city a meaningful choice. You might be better off just capturing your enemy's two best cities and razing the other two to the ground. Or maybe you'd raze his best cities to the ground and take his less-developed ones! The better cities' people might cause so much trouble for you that you'd rather just raze it the ground.

That alone could cut your number of cities down by half, or even more. Then there's also the matter that "HUGE, glorious, sprawling empire" is entirely relative to the size of the map you're playing on

Razing a city should have some negative impact in the kind of game I've seen described here. With all the talk of gifting and blood relations, I can't see how razing a city would leave no impression on your allies or enemies. Razing a city is some pretty serious stuff; killing or making homeless an entire city's worth of non-combatants. It's not going to make a favorable impression I think.

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Quoting Seedy,

reply 52

Quoting pigeonpigeon,
reply 51

But, if you have 32 races, and then say 10 minor races, 20-25 cities is obviously too small. Assuming that you spread out some before going to war, and establish, say, four cities, then at four a piece you have 128 cities, just for the main races. Plus say another five or six for the minor races. Let's just say 135 for ease of computations.
So, if you're a huge sprawling empire by turn 500, and have crushed a few players, you probably have say, 40 cities, pretty easily. I don't know about you guys, but I wouldn't want to create 20 vassal cities and try and stay friendly with them. Unless they were puppets, forced into trade with me of course.

Assuming you win by conquering your foes, you should pretty easily have 80 or more cities, if not closer to the 135 total. Both numbers are of course, well above 20-25.

You're assuming that by taking the path of the conqueror, capturing every city is optimal/advisable. I think it'd be neat if there were some mechanism or feature in place that made choosing whether to capture or raze a city a meaningful choice. You might be better off just capturing your enemy's two best cities and razing the other two to the ground. Or maybe you'd raze his best cities to the ground and take his less-developed ones! The better cities' people might cause so much trouble for you that you'd rather just raze it the ground.

That alone could cut your number of cities down by half, or even more. Then there's also the matter that "HUGE, glorious, sprawling empire" is entirely relative to the size of the map you're playing on

Razing a city should have some negative impact in the kind of game I've seen described here. With all the talk of gifting and blood relations, I can't see how razing a city would leave no impression on your allies or enemies. Razing a city is some pretty serious stuff; killing or making homeless an entire city's worth of non-combatants. It's not going to make a favorable impression I think.

@Seedy: I concur, be hard to explain the death of blood relatives as well. That and razing a city is almost always a short term boost, rather than long term.

@pigeonpigeon: You sir, are quite right, I look at the conqueror picture constantly. To me there are few things as great as imperial might, so in games I tend to reflect that. I never try to win by any other means. Sometimes, just to show I can, I do everything up until that final step (i.e. allying with 7 of 8 races, or researching all techs but the final one), then I show that I can take it, but I don't, and then resume with my conquering. Weird, I know.

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Quoting Einlanzerous,

reply 53

Quoting Seedy, reply 52

Quoting pigeonpigeon,
reply 51

But, if you have 32 races, and then say 10 minor races, 20-25 cities is obviously too small. Assuming that you spread out some before going to war, and establish, say, four cities, then at four a piece you have 128 cities, just for the main races. Plus say another five or six for the minor races. Let's just say 135 for ease of computations.
So, if you're a huge sprawling empire by turn 500, and have crushed a few players, you probably have say, 40 cities, pretty easily. I don't know about you guys, but I wouldn't want to create 20 vassal cities and try and stay friendly with them. Unless they were puppets, forced into trade with me of course.

Assuming you win by conquering your foes, you should pretty easily have 80 or more cities, if not closer to the 135 total. Both numbers are of course, well above 20-25.

You're assuming that by taking the path of the conqueror, capturing every city is optimal/advisable. I think it'd be neat if there were some mechanism or feature in place that made choosing whether to capture or raze a city a meaningful choice. You might be better off just capturing your enemy's two best cities and razing the other two to the ground. Or maybe you'd raze his best cities to the ground and take his less-developed ones! The better cities' people might cause so much trouble for you that you'd rather just raze it the ground.

That alone could cut your number of cities down by half, or even more. Then there's also the matter that "HUGE, glorious, sprawling empire" is entirely relative to the size of the map you're playing on

Razing a city should have some negative impact in the kind of game I've seen described here. With all the talk of gifting and blood relations, I can't see how razing a city would leave no impression on your allies or enemies. Razing a city is some pretty serious stuff; killing or making homeless an entire city's worth of non-combatants. It's not going to make a favorable impression I think.

@Seedy: I concur, be hard to explain the death of blood relatives as well. That and razing a city is almost always a short term boost, rather than long term.

@pigeonpigeon: You sir, are quite right, I look at the conqueror picture constantly. To me there are few things as great as imperial might, so in games I tend to reflect that. I never try to win by any other means. Sometimes, just to show I can, I do everything up until that final step (i.e. allying with 7 of 8 races, or researching all techs but the final one), then I show that I can take it, but I don't, and then resume with my conquering. Weird, I know.

Don't use that geass on me!

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Were you playing much Europa Universalis when you made this decision?

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WAIT JUST ONE MINUTE. I think Frogboy just lied to us. The 64 bit version will have a maximum of 16.8 exobytes of RAM. I would assume additional players will require additional data' at the very least a few bytes to store variable related to each character. So the maximum number of players would probably be something like 2 quadrillion, NOT infinite.

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Razing a city should have some negative impact in the kind of game I've seen described here. With all the talk of gifting and blood relations, I can't see how razing a city would leave no impression on your allies or enemies. Razing a city is some pretty serious stuff; killing or making homeless an entire city's worth of non-combatants. It's not going to make a favorable impression I think.

Razing cities (or at least towns and villages) was common practice in ancient and to a lesser extent in medieval times. Sure, it'll leave a bad impression on the allies of whoever's towns you're razing, but they'd have a poor impression of you anyways. And maybe some other goody-two-shoes would get a negative impression of you from it... But razing a town doesn't necessarily mean slaughtering its inhabitants. It just means dispersing them and destroying the town itself.

@Seedy: I concur, be hard to explain the death of blood relatives as well. That and razing a city is almost always a short term boost, rather than long term.

In games, maybe - but just because it traditionally has been doesn't mean it needs to stay that way. Razing towns could present significant long-term advantages. Also, sometimes short-term advantages are worth more than long-term advantages. If foregoing the short-term advantage means you are unable to continue your offensive, for example, then you might lose more in the long-term by not razing the town than by razing it.

WAIT JUST ONE MINUTE. I think Frogboy just lied to us. The 64 bit version will have a maximum of 16.8 exobytes of RAM. I would assume additional players will require additional data' at the very least a few bytes to store variable related to each character. So the maximum number of players would probably be something like 2 quadrillion, NOT infinite.

Except for the fact that no hardware that exists today actually has 16.8 exobytes of RAM. And no operating system I'm aware of supports that much ram. (Perhaps some supercomputers and their custom OS's are exceptions). So whether or not Elemental can, in theory, use that much is irrelevant

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Remember you can create a vassal with more than one city, so you could create a vassal kingdom with like 5-10 cities. instead of dealing with 10 vassals.

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Quoting pigeonpigeon,

reply 57

Razing cities (or at least towns and villages) was common practice in ancient and to a lesser extent in medieval times. Sure, it'll leave a bad impression on the allies of whoever's towns you're razing, but they'd have a poor impression of you anyways. And maybe some other goody-two-shoes would get a negative impression of you from it... But razing a town doesn't necessarily mean slaughtering its inhabitants. It just means dispersing them and destroying the town itself.

It's not really a question of "goody" behavior, it's one of civilized behavior. Civilized cultures typically don't raze cities, barbarian cultures do. I honestly think that razing cities should have long term negative diplomatic consequences with all civilized cultures. I don't know if different cultural level has been brought up as a mechanic in this game, but obviously there are some pretty significant differences in how nomadic and sedentary cultures regard personal property and structures etc.

wth is up with no copy and past in firefox?!?!?! java is the devils spawn apparently.

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Quoting SnallTrippin,

reply 58

Remember you can create a vassal with more than one city, so you could create a vassal kingdom with like 5-10 cities. instead of dealing with 10 vassals.

Yes but then you're making them stronger then you have to and they might become a threat later Make 3 vassals with 3-4 cities each and play them against each other instead!

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Quoting Demiurge4,

reply 60

Quoting SnallTrippin,
reply 58
Remember you can create a vassal with more than one city, so you could create a vassal kingdom with like 5-10 cities. instead of dealing with 10 vassals.

Yes but then you're making them stronger then you have to and they might become a threat later Make 3 vassals with 3-4 cities each and play them against each other instead!

I'd rather just have the fewest number of vassals and be VERY nice to them. Or make them afraid..very afraid to cross me.

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I'd imagine that razing a city has multiple effects, which should be kept distinct. A lot of the talk is saying that razing a city that should not be taken lightly, which I agree. But it has a lot of side effects, some of which can be positive, depending on the situation:

1. The empire that had the city is weakened.

2. The enemies of that empire are happy that it is weaker.

3. The allies of that empire are mad that you hurt their ally.

4. You hurt your future of taking that city and devleoping it into one of your own. If its not a city you could reasonably hold, then this is not of consequence.

5. That empire is going to hate you. This isn't just a land dispute anymore - this is outright war.

6. Peace-keeping nations are going to dislike you, and war-mongering nations aren't going to care.

7. Nations will fear you! You're no longer the friendly Roman empire, marching into a city, claiming it as your own and putting up a flag and changing who they write their taxes to. You're Ivan the Terrible, you're Genghis Khan! You don't keep prisoners, even if they do.

8. Royal ties to those killed in any instance will hate you. Although I suspect that you should be able to attempt to capture royalty, even if you raize the city.

9. Royalty born in that city will hate you.

10. The actual people of their ethnic background are going to hate and fear you, unless they are the war-mongering type. This makes other cities of the same empire's easier to govern at first - "Hey, they burned down Chicago, I'm gonna listen to what he says or they'll burn down Atlanta too" - but harder long term. "I'm not paying my taxes, it'll just go to those Chicago-killing Canadians!" Obviously this effect rolls over into cities you already have control of (say, that one elven nation you have on the other side of the map), because you killed their kin.

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Maybe add a second kind of raze, one that takes a few turns and is "kinder" maybe called forced relocations, it would destroy the city, but give minimal fallout aginst you, as you let the citizen take some of theyr stuff whit them then leave for where they want, it could also provide some resources from the looted city, chance at capturing rich noble, one of a royal line, get information or other stuff. and Razing the city would just slash and burn it, chase the citizen away in what they are wearing/killing the citizen, leaving no resources.

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No, time wise it shouldn't take more turns, just lower the armies movement on the turn after.

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One of the biggest negatives of "colonies" and vassals in Civ4 is the "team diplomacy" factor. If you are friendly with anyone you are generally safe from being attacked by them. But, if you immediately form or take a vassal the AI considers the "average" of their diplomatic rating for you AND your vassal - which basically makes playing friendly with big neighbors impossible unless you go solo. Avoiding this downside should be considered if you want to make vassals feasible in both peaceful and war-mongering empires. Especially "colonies" but even normal vassals shouldn't utterly destroy political relations.

As for the "leader" of the new nation; I would expect that there would be a number of independent tribes that do not have channelers as their leaders but still have a leader (or group of leaders). I could also see particular independent heros providing protection to these settlements. Likewise, having heros and other channelers press for the freedom of a group of people would bring an interesting dynamic (e.g., Aragon agrees to help you if you give the people of Rohan their independence).

Lastly, the ability or inability to keep together large nations should be somewhat dependent on how loyal and effective the local ruler is that you assign to the region - and maybe partially dependent on what kinds of magics you control (such as teleportation, crystal balls, etc...) that allow your character to have influence over larger distances. The familial diplomacy aspects lead toward this kind of consideration as well. As can a form of "Civics" implementation and also military police (though how loyal such an army and command is to you would be a consideration).

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Quoting pigeonpigeon,

reply 57

Razing a city should have some negative impact in the kind of game I've seen described here. With all the talk of gifting and blood relations, I can't see how razing a city would leave no impression on your allies or enemies. Razing a city is some pretty serious stuff; killing or making homeless an entire city's worth of non-combatants. It's not going to make a favorable impression I think.

Razing cities (or at least towns and villages) was common practice in ancient and to a lesser extent in medieval times. Sure, it'll leave a bad impression on the allies of whoever's towns you're razing, but they'd have a poor impression of you anyways. And maybe some other goody-two-shoes would get a negative impression of you from it... But razing a town doesn't necessarily mean slaughtering its inhabitants. It just means dispersing them and destroying the town itself.

@Seedy: I concur, be hard to explain the death of blood relatives as well. That and razing a city is almost always a short term boost, rather than long term.

In games, maybe - but just because it traditionally has been doesn't mean it needs to stay that way. Razing towns could present significant long-term advantages. Also, sometimes short-term advantages are worth more than long-term advantages. If foregoing the short-term advantage means you are unable to continue your offensive, for example, then you might lose more in the long-term by not razing the town than by razing it.

In this world of magic however, it seems news would travel faster. Since I have also heard that many of the battles will take place in regions (i.e. all part of a larger picture), that would mean these towns and cities would be fairly close together (so it would offend more people, faster). Most civilized nations did not raze cities, unless they were so inferior as to be not worth the updating. I know in Rome Total War, there were tons of cities I hated to take, it taxed my economy so much to hold them and keep an army nearby. But once I held that city long enough it would become a powerful addition to my empire.

Razing a city because you can't hold it does make sense, but really, you should only try to invade when you think you can win. Taking a city you can't hold is overstretching your empire, which is something you would only do in a short sighted situation. It would seem more useful in this situation to liberate a town, making it a vassal (preferably a puppet state), and causing negitive diplomatic actions toward any empire that tries to take that town over.

@Kellendrunk: I save that power for when it's needed, maybe when we're playing, I'll kindly ask that you and your armies politely kill themselves.

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Quoting polobo,

reply 65

One of the biggest negatives of "colonies" and vassals in Civ4 is the "team diplomacy" factor. If you are friendly with anyone you are generally safe from being attacked by them. But, if you immediately form or take a vassal the AI considers the "average" of their diplomatic rating for you AND your vassal - which basically makes playing friendly with big neighbors impossible unless you go solo.

Lol, I didn't even know that. That is definately not the way to handle vassals. They should know that too, Mr. Spock even says so when you discover vassalage:

"I will to my lord be true and faithful, and love all that he loves, and shun all that he shuns."

That means you don't deal independently with vassals. If a vassal is causing your friend greif, it's treason.

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I think you guys are forgeting that cities take up more than one tile in this game...You won't (or atleast shouldn't) be able to just waltz in and raiz a whole city to the ground in one turn as you can in Civ4. Also, 20-25 is pretty gigantic if those cities are well developed and take up many tiles. Also, while 32 is the max number of factions you can play with, the game only have 8 cannon factions, so when he says that 20-25 is large number of cities, I'm going to assume he means in a game with the 8 cannon factions.

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It all depends on the time base of a turn Stowe, it doesn't take 6 months, or 3 months, or a month, or a week to raze a city. It takes a few hours. Fire is crazy like that.

EDIT - With, of course, more time being taken if you get the citizens out...althoguh usualy if you're gonna raze a city your troops have already messed up the citizen population pretty badly..

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the game only have 8 cannon factions

Minor correction: there are twelve canon factions, 6 human and 6 Fallen.

On razing cities, the Great Fire of London took about three days and didn't completely destroy the city. The ancient Romans took roughly a fortnight for just the burning part of their razing of Carthage; they also destroyed the city walls and the harbor. Stone walls and buildings don't burn, but if you're really pissed at an enemy, you can take the time to tear them down with siege engines.

Hopefully, the multi-tile city structure will enable a thoroughly satisfying, somewhat time-consuming way to raze city.

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Quoting StoweMobile,

reply 68

I think you guys are forgeting that cities take up more than one tile in this game...You won't (or atleast shouldn't) be able to just waltz in and raiz a whole city to the ground in one turn as you can in Civ4. Also, 20-25 is pretty gigantic if those cities are well developed and take up many tiles. Also, while 32 is the max number of factions you can play with, the game only have 8 cannon factions, so when he says that 20-25 is large number of cities, I'm going to assume he means in a game with the 8 cannon factions.

Well, have you seen the videos from PAX? 1 volcano destroyed a city.

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What will come after Elemental? Maybe a RPG game where you can enter your Elemental's game, and try to deal with the current faction present?

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Quoting GW Swicord,

reply 70

On razing cities, the Great Fire of London took about three days and didn't completely destroy the city. The ancient Romans took roughly a fortnight for just the burning part of their razing of Carthage; they also destroyed the city walls and the harbor. Stone walls and buildings don't burn, but if you're really pissed at an enemy, you can take the time to tear them down with siege engines.

And don't forget to add in additional time to sow their fields with salt if you're really ticked off at them.

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Besides razing towns, there is the other historical method of subjugation. It's called slavery.

All you have to do is round up all able bodied persons, and take them in chains back to your towns to work your as slaves.

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Has there been any word on slavery? Cause for the mordor-creating-evil-channelers it most certainly feels appropriate.

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