Nice interview Although I imagine you just managed to piss off the feminests, what with your talk of "breeding daughters"

Very cool interview.

It's nice there are hidden twists in the game where the balance of power can suddenly shift and that there are several ways of ammassing power. I hope the reconnaissance can give a good overview of the relative power of your opponents, given all these factors.

Oh, on the canon slider, I'd suggest three check boxes

One for technology canon, one for balance, and one for species canon.

Tech canon means if someone brings bear knights into the game good, bear TOW infantry, not so good.

Balance- bascially if something is overpowered, if gets chucked.

Species Canon- humans/fallen good, elves/dwarves maybe, oni ok unless they're wearing tiger-striped bikinis and shoot lighning, korx not ok (then again, it's the Korx, so what do you expect?)

The level of awesome is pretty damn high for the concepts of more subtle ways to rule the world. Or, perhaps subtle isn't the right word, but less forceful. The concept of culture gave ways to absorb without direct conflict and the idea of control via marriage or diplomacy really helps extend that. Being able to manipulate the world to your benefit through something other than force of arms is a big deal.

Given Game of Thrones is an inspiration, it might also be cool to have the concept of temporary troops on loan from a vassal. The Stark house had vassals that helped out (the Bear Island guys come to mind), but they weren't specifically Stark troops. They were troops Stark could probably rely on, but it wasn't a given and they might really only be willing to fight within a limited range of their vassal kingdom.

This might fit with another idea someone had of the megapoles for larger civs. Once your empire reaches a certain size, you have a hard time raising "general" troops that are willing to trek across the world for you. However, you can raise troops willing to work within the general area of their region of your empire. All sorts of ways to model this regional loyalty: limits on recruiting, cost, morale, etc.

Wow a good read thanks for posting it.

What a great interview.   And he used the magic word, 'X-Com', so that makes me VERY interested in this game (yes, I'm easy). 

I was also very encouraged by the comments about GALCIV2 and how this will be more accessible.   I'm a big Stardock fan, but frankly I did not care for GALCIV2 that much.   And it's not because I'm an RTS guy and never played a 4x before.  Actually I'm a big 4X guy, and love CIV4, etc.   I just found GALCIV2 so arcane and complicated that it was just not fun.   Took forever to do anything.    

'Elemental' just became my most anticipated game of the year.

Confused - on the ShackNews videos they say there is a two part video, but part one seems to end with Brad saying he'll resume the video in a bit after he's further in the game, and then part two is another video he put up a few days ago detailing the same map in the opening part of the game again - did Shack put up the wrong video, or is the actual video where Brad shows off some more of the "mid game" still coming?

Can I ask if there's been any news on the whole "vassals in charge of little sub-kingdoms" type thing that was in a journal entry a while back? The idea was that too big a kingdom causes a lot of management overhead, and you appoint family members or somesuch to rule certain parts of your kingdom for you. Is that still in-game? 

what are we doing looking at 09 interviews?