Yay an update!!! It looks great. I was worried about the late game getting bogged down in micromanagment on the really huge maps. As such I am happy that most of it will occur automaticaly.

On a seperate note I noticed that there was a trade boat coming into a harbor and some caravans moving around the map. Will these internal trade boats and caravans work similar in fashion to trade ships in GC2, except more or less automatic, or will there be something completley different?

Hooray an update!

It seems like from what I have heard EWOM will be a little bit Total War, a little bit Master of Magic,

A little bit Spore, and a little bit something completely different. It does seem a little bit different that trade kinda happens on its own - does that mean that traders could independently be trading goods from my kingdom with an enemy? Will caravans obey embargoes or will they still sell to your opponent thru a balck market?

And are we still on track for a June beta?

This is Stardock... everything exists for a reason! Of course we can attack them! We are able to attack trade and refinery ships in SoaSE, and those are arguably even less important than these caravans. The chances of being able to kill them is pretty much 100%

Man 5 adventurerw going into a dungeons and a few turns later you see one of them getting out running for his life with a band of gouls on his heels! Then those gools end up terrorizing farmsteads and then the farmers come and and whine to the king about them and so on and so forth...Man this game will really rock!

Nice graphics! What the recommended specs for those? Mouahahahahah

Hail the frog!

Yeah those graph paper/pencil emulation routines really eat up your processors

Thanks for the update Frogboy! We are, as ever, extremely excited

Nice update! Definitely answers a few questions, like whether it'll be 1 building per tile (nope!).

That said I'm not entirely happy with it... The middle city appears to be a mining colony. It has the required keep, barracks, housing, a mine, and mine [training?]. Does that mean that the only way to take advantage of a map resource is to build a full-fledged settlement on it? That would make me sad. I want to be able to establish a small colony near/on resources like mines or what-have-you. It would be totally incapable of anything but gathering the resource and shipping it off to cities for use; and it wouldn't be as good as a city at gathering the resource, in order to compensate for it being less of an investment than a full-fledged settlement.

It'd be kind sort of like in Civ IV how you can build roads to a resource within your borders but far from a city and build a mine/farm/whatever on it to take advantage of that resource. Not only do I like it for gameplay reasons, but also for immersion. For one, it would be frustrating and kind of... artificial not to be able to use a resource without building a full-fledged city on top of it, and secondly I think it'd make the map look so much more alive.

I hope some internal testing is done on large maps even before the beta arrives.  Problems can be easier to identify on the XL  maps during late game as compared with TINY maps. 

I hope the game will also include some fun optional features where we can adjust the percentage of activity such as:

   Weather:  Clouds, Rain, Storms, Tornados, Snow, etc.,

   Natural Disasters:  Hurricanes, Meteor Showers, Earthquakes, Volcanoes, Tsunami, etc.,

   Thieves/Bandits/Pirates:  Independent Thieves which travel on the map using one of the random behavior types from this thread:  https://forums.elementalgame.com/337474

   Birth of new AI opponents:  During a game a new AI opponent might appear on the map with a random amount of power/units/resources/etc., .  I recall at least one of the civilization series included this feature.

That's good to hear. The more organic the more immersive the game experience IMO.

Proud to say that I have an ORIGINAL scan of this image taped to my desk  Not that scans are original, but whatever.

I could be wrong, but I feel that many settlements would break the spirit of the game.

Now, as for micromanagement options, we've been discussing methods for queuing up imperial objectives which are then handled by the AI. This would allow you to be as hands on, hands off as youd like, but wouldn't be 'the game playing for you' since it requires 'broad stroke' imput from you.  It'd also give the AI something to work with in Multiplayer games that are being played while you're away (per your settings).

Anyways, we have an internal Alpha 1 due next week...we'll have more to talk about, and time to talk, after that.

Hey you're right, I didn't even notice the horse. It isn't bad, although on close inspection it kind of resembles a turtle

I don't think most buildings will be taking up a full tile. It looks to me like the big squares represent one over-land tile, and some of those contain multiple structures (up to four in this image). 

And yes, you're right about the mana generator! If you look closely, inside the box it's pointing to it says "Shard of Fire"!

Ok, so you think it says 'shard' not 'shrine'?   awesome time.    But does that mean that the shard of fire is part of the city?   or just happens to be next-door?

while you're away?   wait, what?   how much time away from the game do you expect players to be?    I'm excited to hear development along this line of thinking, because if games are able to be crazy long (because you're play-by-post/e-mail or something, and so you only get a couple of turns a day) you may not need to super micromanage, to the point where its ok if you miss a turn because your AI manages it for you.   The fact that you mentioned it pretty much off the bat like that just shows that you must have spent a good deal of time with the concept.

good news.  I guess I was under the impression you had already reached alpha, but now I'm on the edge of my seat to see what you have to report next week.

Given the nature of TBS ), we're PAINFULLY aware that the MP component has to be as flexable as possible. One of the ideas on our list is to allow for the game to support a 'Turn Buffer': a number of turns that the AI will take over before the human player needs to step in.

Let's say I start a game with a 30 turn 'buffer'. We're playing, and I need to leave, so you play another 20 turns without me while the AI takes over my role. Then you come back later and play another 10 turns before the game stops you. Perhaps we can have an email system to warn 'away players' if something major happens, letting them send a 'Stop the Game!!!' message that overrides the buffer and halt play until they return.

Lots of ideas...we'll see what manifests.

First, no please no with the 'please make everything optional so we can make our own game out of piecemeal'  

And secondly, the trade system I'd like to see is a sort of fusion between NTJedi's 2 and 3. A caravan-based foreign trade system controlled by a 3rd party merchant's guild.