But you guys are a company, you're expected to behave 'appropriately'... 

(And yes, i am deliberately leaving myself open to that Brad Wardell quote... purely because I can't quote it off the top of my head or find it on the intornetzors)

Most people in denmark got some 10-20 Mbit download and some 1-2 Mbit upload. If this game need to transfer more then 100kb/s then i suggest Stardock gets some new network engineers who have a clue.

Im not sure what a "low end connection is" but i dont think 1Mbit up and down is low end when it comes to turn based games.

another thing to note...   Why would slow upload matter in a turn based game?   its not like LAG is going to be an issue.  (it might in tactical battles, but they can just be turned off for slow connections)

I sympathise with your predicament but as a player with a good internet connection, the people with shitty connections almost always screw me over in games that need at least a decent line. Slowdowns and massive pings are a huge annoyance when you want just want to hop in and do a game on a limited timeframe.

Hmmm.  Theoretically, I would think the opposite.  In a real time game, data is rather consistent and the code can be optimized for fluid game play.  Turn-based could be a bit different since the end of turn could result in a ton of data needing to be sent/received.

I am not sure the reasoning behind their statement.  This is the 21st century and I have excellent bandwidth, so I am not too concerned as to how this effects me.

Basically, Stardock's position is that on the games we host there will be users whose Internet connections fall below a certain threshold of quality. Rather than letting those users, as has happened in Demigod, wreck the experience for all players, they won't be able to play on our servers.

The threshold will be determined by the beta testers and Stardock during the beta.

However, when users choose to host games themselves, they can make whatever rules they want. There has been talk about letting hosts set a threshold themselves on network throughput.

Sounds like something you should do with Demigod 2 not a turn based strategy game. These two games aren't even remotely the same.

I doubt it. Real time online games such as FPSs have to constantly send vectors data and player inputs in and out to every players. A turn based game client merely has to send "unit A goes here, unit B goes there, crank up research allocation to X" each turn (every few minutes then) and that's about it. Everything is processed either by the server or the game host and the outcome is redispatched to clients.
At worst, the server might be a bottleneck if it got a really low bandwidth but I don't see how that could be a problem on SD's servers.

I dunno, that's just an assumption on my part, but I really don't see why Elemental would need a big ass network connection to run properly, has long as there are no graphic/sound resources and tons of mod scripts to download. And even then, that could cause a slowdown at game launch but not thereafter.

Which quote? Do you mean this one,

or this one,

or maybe this one?

I was thinking about the one where he made SD to be his own boss adn write his own rules.

Okay, if we can host our own games and set our own bandwidth rules, thats not so bad.

It's completely unnecessary for a game like Elemental. It's a turn based game. Turn based games are the only games I've played frequently where someone can loose their connection and return to the game without so much as a beat missed and no one was the wiser except your turn was a little long.

It sounds to me like Stardock has a new toy they are brewing up and they just want to test it on a their next game whether it needs it or not. This sort of thing should be reserved for RTS's and the like.

Where better to test it than somewhere it isn't game-breaking if it fails? He's already said that there is no hard limits, that the whole thing is subject to beta testing. If something goes terribly wrong, they disable that bit until it gets fixed. It may not even make it into the final game, but only be used during beta.

Testing a feature like this live on something like Demigod or Sins is beyond stupid.

Elemental shouldn't be a petri dish for RTS features. This sort of thing would be useless for a 4x turn based game and if they want to test it, test it on a game in beta that would actually use it.

I wouldn't have said it better.

Great in theory, but Stardock doesn't currently have any RTS games in beta. Why should they wait years to test something they'd like to introduce to existing RTS games? Testing it on games that are already out risks breaking established games. Testing on Elemental risks disaccomidating a handful of beta players, who entered the beta specifically to test new features and systems.

Who said this is a petri dish for RTS games?

There is also the tactical battles.  You keep forgetting about the "Continuous turns"  I could see lag causing trouble with that.

We still have to figure out what's behind the continuous turn thing and the scale of battles. This whole issue might indicate that the battles will be fairly big indeed, otherwise I don't see how they could be that network intensive.