Campaign

Yes. Confirmed numerous times. It's even been mentioned in such ways that some people apparently got the idea that there's not going to be a sandbox mode. Which is, of course, hearsay and heresy!

Specific maps, since there's going to be a canonical world. Also, I don't remember anything like that in the Gamespot review. *scurries off to read it again*
The rest is pretty much still in the unknown. Due to the fact that there's 12 distinct factions and presumably a canonical storyline to maintain, I doubt we'll be seeing any more than one faction per campaign, somewhat like GalCiv2.

Well a campaign will always be welcomed Question is of course how good it will be

What I would really like to see is some kind of random campaign generator, with events. It wouldn't be as profound as a real campaign but that would be really exciting to live a new story each time, even if that's stories tolmd 324345 times.

I'm not sure how elaborate it'll be, but they have said that sandbox games also will have a whole bunch of "quests", goals, and a ton of events. So it really depends on what you call a campaign.

I very rarely play campaigns in these kind of games, so I really hope they pack the gunpowder for the sandbox rather than the campaign, but I'm very glad that there's a campaign regardless, for the canonical immersion of the game.

Well I know i heard of a "Master Quest", that once completed is a way of winning. I would like to see that be the sort of campaign for the sandbox mode, like being completely different everytime with different random events that get in the way. because I dont usually play the campaigns either  And i suppose I would like to see that at the end of the Master Quest you dont just win but you find an ancient artifact or something that gives you amazing power but can also be stolen from you too. I dont know about you guys but I always didn't like it in games like civilization when the game just ended after winning diplomacy, alliance victories, etc Because to me I think eventually alliance would end and I would like to see the game go all the way to the end! But i dont know it might take too long... Especially on one of those 64 bit maps ive been hearing about    

Imagine the quests are linked together. And each player has a "secret" 15th quest that woud let them win the game.

Fo rinstance :

1st "campaign" quest : rescue the damn bear that roam around.

2nd "campaign" quest : learn more about riding animals (through tech, ancient dungeon craxling, visiting a druid etc..)

3rd "campaign" quest : some nature lovers come in and wants to kill you. you have 4 days to ake your mind : free bears or they attack you.

etc... A campaign would be quests linked together .. It wouldn't be as appealing as a real campaign in d&d but it would add so much flavour ...

I'm not sure that "canonical world" requires "Specific maps." The devs could run a lot of theme-driven parameters through a map generator. I never seriously messed with the GC2 scenarios, so I have no idea if there's a master map at work there or the games all start with locked-down settings for the normal map generation process.

I hope they put in super events like GalCiv2 has..though Im not a huge fan of instability with events.

I am looking forward to both a campaign mode and a sandbox mode.  But one question I have, are true random maps possible considering the zoomed out view looks like a map?  Or are they going for an Imperialism style random map where each map is made up of a selection of pre-made regions? 

 

Hmm, this is a good point, but I imagine the will have full random maps, I think It will radomly generate the layout of the map, and then use some sort of algorithm that generates the "zoomed out view". This is completely a guess though.

What I want to know about the maps is this. In one of the inteviews it was said that you would be able to select a lake or mountain range and name it whatever you want. I want to know if you will have to name everything, or if the map will randomly name things based on their type when It generates the map. I hope it gives them a name, and then you can simply rename it. I think it would be cool if they added in some quest element to it as well. For example, you've build a city close to "Goblin Mountain" and to rename it you have to clear out the goblin encampents on the mountain.

About the Campaign, by the way, I'd like to mention that it's apparently centered around the Kingdom and the Empire, which are human. I'm inclined to believe that they're base "stock" names for the time being, since I can't imagine Stardock being as unimaginative as to name them just "The Kingdom", "The Empire", "The Village", "The Stable", "That little red house on the way to school, with leprachauns in the basement", etc.

That's how I understood it aswell.

Based on the screenshots I would have to quess the actual name of "the kingdom" is The Kingdom of Fairview, but that could just be a coincidence, or the name of a diffefernt faction.

I'm hoping, but until we get some form of confirmation I'm not getting my hopes up too high. 

I hope there will be the same map creation options ala AOW:

random

campaign

map editor (to create your own)

Well it could be interesting if regular random games could have story like events.. though i am not sure how a campaign with this game is going to play like.

 

A campaign would be welcomed by yours truly, but on the condition that you don't have to start over from scratch at every new chapter.  That is sooooo annoying.  I rarely make it through campaigns that don't allow continual progress.  The HOMM games are an exception, since the hero levels and it's easy to see why little minions need to be built up.  But there are times in HOMM campaigns where the city you just conquered and built up needs to be built up again in the following chapter!  That kind of nonsense garners a big WTF from me every time.  GalCiv2 was guilty of this, let's hope that Elemental can turn the page . . . literally! 

It has been discussed by the devs (I don't know where it was mentioned, but we talked about it on the IRC) to have expanding maps. In campaign mode, Level 1 would be "THIS" area, level 2 would be "THIS + THAT" area, and so on. It's possible that it hasn't been mentioned in articles and the like, because it's not official. It's just been discussed, and I'm not even sure if they know HOW they'd do that.

But I personally support it 100%.

I've seen games that do the "THIS + THAT" map progression in campaign mode.  That would make sense from a campaign mode and make the world feel a bit more epic if it grew exponentially katamari style.  

"This + THAT" would also be made much easier if there were multiple planes (conquer this world, then its time to move on to the next!)

The expanding map sounds like an amazing idea...lots of potential there.

 

I've always had a mild dislike of campaigns where you conquer an area, and then are moved to conquer a new area without any contact with the area you just acquired = so old and unoriginal!

Not sure how to do the campaign....The Sovereign should probably keep his research and lvl (essence is an entirely different matter which I won't touch here) but for every next scenario you should only have 1 or 2 techs and spells already researched (like in GalCiv 2) so it doesn't become like Age of Wonders 2 where you research every single spell in the first lvl of the Fire lvls while holding of winning so you can steamroll the other 2 Fire lvls. Then repeat in the other lvls (Water, Air, Life and Death).

LoL, I was kind of shocked to see this post resurrected. Indeed they would have to be fairly clever to make it so that you can't carry TOO much over to the next senario...while still have the player not feel cheated when starting the next one.

They could create limits on how much military/tech/magic you can 'bring with you' to the next level. You could still surpass that in each level, but you'd lose any excess starting on the next.

I actually never play Campaigns in games these days, sandbox or multiplayer is always better.

Is Elemental even going to *have* a scenario/mission-based campaign?  I don't remember seeing any mention of it; I was kind of under the impression there will just be the sandbox mode. 

 

 

I hope that the mod tools include to be able to make our own campaigns like the original (plus any modification that the user needs to make to it's rules).