This is actually one of the most underrated features in video games. It is usually not very hard to implement in games that already come with a spectator mode and new players can learn very fast from it. If possible I at least watch some replays of A.I.'s fighting each other in new games. I find it fascinating. Especially when you pit A.I.'s against each other with uneven "skill sets".

Both Skynet and the Cylons would disagree with you then kill you.

SD will release a virus...completely harmless to your OS, but which modifies the AI files and makes them develop Atomic weapons on turn 2. We're all doomed.

But the question remains: WILL THERE BE HOT MERMAIDS?

Hey, you're not allowed to read my posts

I do hope there are some hot mermaids though . Sea-shell braws FTW!!!

idk i think they suprised us sins of a solar empire beta testers with deplomacy by releasing it  a few days early for us.thats if i remember right though.

frog you should do some genetic algorithm AI scripting and have them fight each other for 100's of generations, then secretly have them play real people via multi-player for 100's of generations.

I want an AI that with no cheating is able to kick my ass every time. Have that be the Nightmare difficulty.

I'd be happy just having access to the Gold "Ship to Manufacturer" version and then waiting till release day for the 0-day patch. Honestly though, Stardock is the ONLY exception in my eyes of a company that it's ok to put out a 0-day release version. If it was ANY other company I'd call a foul for there even NEEDING To BE a 0-day release patch. In my eyes if a game needs a patch on it's first day of being released to be fun then something went terribly wrong in the design phase. Like I said in another reply on another thread, every major project I've ever been a part of in my career the actual "Game" was laid out and planned on paper (virtual paper), the mechanics were decided upon, and everything but final play testing was done Way before the game engine was even finished. Then once the engine was finished the mechanics were coded and put in place. Balancing was a very quick step because everything was already balanced in the design phase.

As Frogboy has stated many times, and been quite right about it too, many many games often have major re-designs and tweaks done sometimes as little as days before a game launches. To me if there needs to be a patch that soon (unless it's to fix a major crash bug) then someone messed up during the design phase. Testing gameplay mechanics and designs shouldn't be something that's put off till the last minute or just whipped up at the last minute and called a "game". The gameplay mechanics ARE the Game. That's why I really don't like services like Impulse. They give developers an excuse to put out a "unfinished product" because they can just patch it up any time they want. That's also why I get a twinge every time Frogboy says "It will never be Finished". I consider GalCiv 2 to be finished. It doesn't have any major updates or patches or any more expansions coming out does it? It doesn't have any major crash bugs that need to be fixed does it? No. Sounds like it's finished to me until I hear there's another expansion coming for it.

Granted Elemental will be a growing and evolving game for many years to come, and that I Love, but, each design phase should have a start and a finish. It's not a "Final Finish" of course as more patches and content will be coming out for a long time to come, but it's still the end of a particular phase.

I don't think we'll be getting our hands on the Gold Version either though. In fact I'm willing to bet the only people who will be playing the final Gold "ship to manufacturer" version of Elemental will be people who will be playing it that don't have Internet access at home and buy the game at a store then take it home to play it. That's the very same situation I was in when I lived out in the sticks outside of town. If a game wasn't finished when it was in it's box sitting on the shelf then I wouldn't buy it. Of course when saying that I don't mean finished as in "there will never be any patches or expansions". I mean Finished as in "You can install it and play it just fine and there are No major crash bugs in the game". Having an online, update it any time we want service, makes developers lazy (not Stardock, other Developers). There have been too many times I've bought a game from a store and taken it home to play it just to find out there was a major crash bug that needed an update to fix. It made me mad and made me wonder "Didn't these morons play test their own game before they released it?". Video games and electronic entertainment seems to be the Only Media where it's acceptable to sell a blatantly unfinished and untested product and the consumer gets screwed by buying it and no-one does anything about it. Half the time you can't even return a game once you've bought it whether it works as intended or not. Once you take the game home and open it you're stuck with it even if you have the receipt. The only way you can even sometimes take it back to the store is if you say "It's broke and won't work" and even then you can usually only exchange it for another copy of the same game or for in store credit.

Or, you know, it allows the developers to skirt around all the manufacturing/shipping delays that forces them to have your definition of a "finished" game several weeks before it needs to be a "finished" game (release date) by *gasp*, letting them *finish* it!

Games are supposed to be good on release days. If they have to send it off to manufacturing weeks ahead of time, why wouldn't they take the extra time in making tweaks? There are *always* changes to be made to any new release. It makes more sense to put out a day0 patch so people get it right away.

That's true. I can't argue with that. I just think that a quality game where the proper time was taken to design the mechanics and put them in place Shouldn't NEED a 0-day patch. In my opinion the only time a 0-day patch should be needed is to fix a game breaking bug, not to add in large pieces of the "Game" its-self. If it needs a 0-day patch to add in large pieces of the game then the game wasn't ready to be shipped in the first place. I don't think anyone can argue with that either.

Of course we all know from the info that Frogboy has shared with us that there wasn't much choice in the matter when it comes to Elemental. It was either get the game ready and ship it now or a lot of business deals and plans they made would have gotten messed up and Stardock probably would have lost a good chunk of money not to mention piss off a lot of people doing the work they contracted them to do (like make Boxes, manuals, maps, print disks etc etc). I think in the future though Stardock (or any company really) should take into account how it makes them look to the general gaming public that they would even need a 0-day patch to add in content. It Does put out the appearance that the game was rushed (though we know it wasn't and I do NOT think it was rushed). In some people's eyes though it does look that way. This was proven with the flood of messages that Frogboy got saying they were rushing the game. I don't think that can honestly be explained away simply by saying "those people just don't understand the internal workings of a game developer". There's a lot of us here just on the Elemental forums that have had jobs in the industry and there are many of us that know for a fact how things are usually done in the larger companies. Simply by putting a little more thought into the planning of the later stages of release for Elemental they could have saved themselves from hearing a lot of bitching from the general community. That's just my opinion though.

Edit Note: I should probably point out that from what we've all been told the 0-day patch for Elemental will not be adding in large chunks of gameplay content. From what Frogboy says it's only adding extra polish, and I believe him.

I hope we get one more patch for the beta just befor the release of game so we know some what what to except when retail comes out I still get few crashes here and there memory in task manager every now and then shoots up to 2k gigs of ram useage and then game locks up and i half to crash it.

I was reading that ATI cards could do that I am running ATI card the 4890 1gig MSI Cyclon I tryed the downloading newest drivers but it still dose it time to time it takes alot of turns but as game progress it ends up taking less and less what is funny is after a save and then a crash I usally can keep playing I know when it happens becusae end turn button greys out.

I'd personally like a Mercenaries game that is more like Mount and Blade.

Namely, battles happen whether you're there or not, and faction borders change with or without you.

That way, its not nearly as static, yet you can still have a large impact if you want to.