The Manual

I would like anice, leather-bound manual too, but it might be aliitle tough for those of us purchasing from inpulse, unless that laser from Tron is lying around somewhere...

Stardock should provide a basic PDF manual with the game, but then offer other hardcopy types available for sale.  These hardcopy types would naturally provide more than the basic PDF manual.  Here are some examples:

1}  Basic PDF manual copy... comes with the game and occassionally updated with patches.

----Now for the HardCopy examples----

2)  Advanced HardCopy of the Manual (Stardock chooses the price)... includes:

  A} Extra pages on the myths behind one or more creatures... not found in the PDF manual.

  B} Listing of HighScores and Rankings amongst all the Stardock Developers for games such as GalCiv_2, Civilization_4, Worms:Armagedon, Elemental Final_Beta version, etc., etc.,

3) Collectors Manual  (Stardock chooses the price)... includes  :

  A}  All the same features as found within the Advanced HardCopy

  B}  Plus actual signatures from the entire team at Stardock who worked on Elemental

  C}  Golden Ticket to join a group chat session with the developers during the middle of 2010.  Only those with golden tickets will be allowed to join this group chat session.

...  If you build it... they will come.  

And please for the love of all that is fair and square don't translate anything into Dutch. I faithfully bought my Civ 4 copy in a physical store, but it came with Dutch 100 page manual and reference poster. And on that poster the techs are sorted alphabetically, in Dutch. So to look one up I look at the name in the game, guess the translation they used and then look it up on the poster. Good thing there's a Civliopedia

Anyway, Dutch people are clever enough to be able to read English, and we actually prefer to read manuals that way ^^

Yes, yes, yes!  I'm also in favor of a ginormous manual.  Something that remains useful, necessary, and fun to read long after you've mastered the game's controls.  If E:WoM is harkening back to the old school days, then please do this for us. 

I love a well-printed, beautfilly bound tome far more than most folks, and I'd enjoy seeing Stardock take a Big Step up in the quality and quantity of their documentation. However, there's a major factor to consider when harkening back to the MoM docs as a model: Stardock produces continuous, substantive updates that can make old manual wording irrelevant or just plain wrong. Whatever, if anything at all, they decide to do by way of printed doc(s), I would like to see aggressive, methodical updating of the PDF version(s) as a normal part of releasing any major free code update.

I think Stardock should sell a few rights to the publishing companies a la whoever makes Halo (am too lazy to look at the back right now). I would certainly read anything they came out with!

Perhaps a separate guide that people could purchase and was about the same height as the rule books for pen and paper RPG's (though much wider). I know I loved the massive (350 page) tome of a guide I had for Civilization: Call to Power, and the huge tech tree/unit/terrain type/tile improvemnt/government/building/wonder  chart that came with the actual game was also a very nice touch too.

True, but after the intense 6-12 month beta period, I'd imagine that the initial manual won't need too much done to it later on.  All they'd need to do is exactly what they did with GalCiv2 Ultimate Edition: re-release an updated manual with the final version. 

Make it big like the one in Dominons III...but also make it full color...and that'd be a sight to behold!   

Well, for me, full color might be cost prohibitive and something I could live without.

I was jsut loooking at my SOASE manual - at 80 pages it really is pretty good. I'd still hope that with 12 factions as opposed to SOASE's 3 factions that EWOM's will be a good bit bigger, The exact page count or color isn't really my concern - I just want it to be rich, detailed - and able to deliver blunt force trauma.

I might pay for a separate, bound manual, but I don't want to pay for pricy color printing. It's the info in a good binding I want. I'd rather pay for paper, printing, and binding of the quality of the early hardcover Harry Potter books than see a bunch of colors on pages that will come loose if the book gets serious use.

If they did a manual, I would buy it, but only if it had a TON of not-necessarily-strategic-related info and lore in it. After all, I don't want to just stare at a bunch of unit ID's. I want BACKSTORY!

I agree with piderman on the localization issue: just don't bother.

Having to wait several months for a release is nuts when the only effects are that I get a mangled manual, a game filled with bad replacement voiceacting and a bunch of potential online players who refuse to speak/write the lingua franca of the internets.

If essential for sales: localisations can always be added with patches afterwards (IMHO having such data seperate is only good planning practice, and as the game is planned to be highly moddable I'd expect almost all data/content to be exposed). Have the game ask (in the localOSdefault language) whether the user desires to download and install a specific localisation patch during the installation process.

Doesn't help with the mangled manual issue though.

A big manual with art and background stories etc as well as in depth descriptions of the game mechanics is definately a reason to order the boxed version. Modding tips and methods are surely better suited to the electronic format.

However, the preorder page only states you get the retail box.... I could not care less about the box. Not 8euros worth in shipping surely!

So my question is: what does the box come with?

Dig deep and greedily,

Areyar

p.s. I'd surely love the option to order a real cloth map printed... either from stardock itself or by exporting 'my favorite game map' to a usable fileformat and heading to the local printingshop...but not sure whether ours would print large cloth-banner-type stuff.

Stardock has been known to add stuff to what the pre-order boxes include. Its very possible for the box itself to include a whole bunch of stuff by release.

For the purposes of having lore, and a manual, it might be a good idea to keep the 2 as separate books. The lore book could be the fancy hard cover book with all the lore you could drool over. The manual then could be built like the Dominions 3 manual for quick referencing, with the spiral bindings and all. You could flip the pages until you find what you want to reference, and then leave it open so you could reference it quickly until you decide to reference something else.

I'd also like to offer my services to SD as a proofreader (free of charge) for the manual or any other materials such as the read-me, etc. I have proofread for a novel as well as some short stories for a sci-fi author (my cousin, Lee Allred). I was a Sterling Scholar candidate in English 30 some odd years ago.

Don't judge based on my typing, I am a terrible typist with lots of typos and for most things I don't proof read my own stuff. And I know there is spell checkers etc and even grammar checkers for a lot of that stuff these days. I am still surprised at how much published material I come across that is riddled with errors.

Anyway, thought I would throw that out there. I don't know if you guys at SD even read these other forums much.

I'd swear I had a post here...

1. Manual should have all the techinical info needed for us (vets and newbies).
2. Art, pretty art.
3. Description of the 12 factions as well as fiction about them to flesh them out.
4. Stuff about the awesome thing that modding is and the... things to add things to the game (damn headache).
5. List of spells (even if they will get obsolete...).
6. List of development lines for the factions (see above).

Make it collectors edition so I can get it while cheap people only get a pdf version.

I agree with the above (I feel the technical modding stuff may want to be excuded because it would have a LOT of info.  I think they could get buy with a "you can mod your stuff.   For more info on how to do so visit our website".  Only way I can see justifying the mod stuff more than a few lines is if there is in-game interface for picking your custom downloadable content, in which case the manual should cover that information so casual players know how to access the custom stuff)

I want a color manual, and I want it to have the 'new game smell' when I open it for the 1st time

I want a map, or poster, or something in my collector's edition  

I would actually like to see the lore manual published as an actual book: I'd buy it.

I would also like to see it appear either on the web site or as a PDF with the game.

As for the manual, an aged leather-bound 500-page tome will do nicely.

I like the suggestion above to have at least one manual spiral bound so you can open it to the page you need and leave it there. This should at least contain all the technical how to stuff, and preferably the spell book as well. I can remember finding what I needed in the MoM manual and then sticking it under the corner of my keyboard to keep it propped open to what I needed.

The lore, and lots of the "non reference" material could either be included in the spiral if that is easiest, or could be in a regularly bound supplement manual. Also, if a lot of the technical stuff is going to be available via mouseover in game, that may not be necessary in printed form at all (especially with the ability to create your own...)

I am still against a full color manual just due to cost - maybe include some color artwork in a separate, color only addition. A color manual just doesn't do that much for me. Although I would like some artwork, color just doesn't add enough to justify the cost for me. I thought the GC2 manuals were very good, and the MoM manuals were also. The best manual I ever got with a game was with Falcon 3 a F-16 flight/combat sim. That was hefty it felt like you were reading an owner's manual for an F-16. You really had the feeling after reading that, that you could climg into a real F-16 cockpit and would know what you were doing. I even was fairly knowlegeable about what different munitions were good for, etc. I probably literally got almost as much enjoyment from that manual as I did from the game.

  Not that I expect that from this game, but a good solid GC2/MoM-type manual would be awesome.