Except for the fact that Elemental is not really connected to the GC universe in any way....... it may be the "spiritual" successor, and they do share some plot elements, but we have yet to see any confirmation from the devs that there is actually a link, and there are more inconsistencies than similarities in the plot and appearence. There is no complaining about the horses, because this is not Altaria.

Elemental is tied to Gal Civ. And until they make clear the ties (or the lack of), I think it's safe to say that I can speculate quite a lot about it. Specially after reading some threads in this same forums (Elemental Insipirations anyone?).

Just that. An opinion. Just that instead about it being related to combat system, economic model, diplomacy or AI, it's related to the Lore. Of which we know as much as about any other topic.

Wait and see. I for one can see many more reasons why Elemental is not directly attached, but it will probably stay up in the air until well after the game is released, unless Brad becomes uncharacteristically talkative and dumps huge portions of his long-term plans on the forum.... Altough the evidence against a direct link is pretty potent at this point:

• There are large numbers of horses and other terrestrial life in the screenshots. The odds of a coincidence like that are pretty slim.
• What happened to the Fallen? The Elemental lore says that they were the ones created by the gods, and they are irredeemably evil. Yet the GC2 lore says that the Altarians were created by Draginol, and they are about as goody-goody as you can get.
• The dragons of Elemental look NOTHING like the Drath, and no mentions are made of any shapeshifting abilities.
• All of the ruins appear to be advanced from an archetectural standpoint, but not high-tech. It seems that if the Arnor/Dreadlords actually visited the planet, they would have left at least SOME gadgetry behind.
• This one's a little nitpicky, but the Elemental runic language doesn't even RESEMBLE the Altarian symbols seen behind Netro Mancer in the GC2 diplo window.
• These "magic shards".... what happened to them? It seems as though the Altarians miiiight want to tell their allies that they had pieces of the Telenanth lying around in a museum somewhere....

Oh come on! For one, that is the ancient roots of the word, not the modern definition. The modern definition is any place less than 250 mm of precipitation per year, end of story. Some places are misnamed deserts because they look like deserts but actually get too much rain to qualify - but even among actual deserts there is a huge variety. There are sandy deserts, dusty deserts, rocky deserts, icy deserts... There are totally barren deserts, there are deserts with so much vegetation that from far away you can hardly see the desert 'floor' for the plants. Hell, you can even cultivate crops in many deserts (the Judean Desert being a good example).

Also, desertification will only result in sand if there is already sand present. It will only result in dust if there is dirt. If the landscape is mostly rocky, there won't be copious amounts of dust and sand, no matter how bad the desertification. The temperature isn't really relevant, but the local geography is supremely relevant.

The latin word is not relevant. That is the etymological root. The only definition of the modern word "desert" is the one regarding rainfall. Deciding "oh this isn't a desert, it has so much more vegetation than that desert over there!" is ridiculous. If a region is 'only' desert by record of rainfall, then it is a desert because that is the only requirement. What you are used to thinking of as classic, sand-swept desert makes up a miniscule fraction of the deserts on the planet. If one desert happens to have lots more vegetation than another, or even more vegetation than some non-desert, then there are other factors at play besides the rainfall. Maybe it gets close to the maximum 250 mm per year, maybe it has excellent nutrients and just the right amount of sun. Maybe certain species managed to adapt excellently to that specific environment.

Yes - many if not most so-called deserts in North American are misnamed, but that does not change the fact that real deserts can support significant plant-life.

Here is a list of the major deserts in North America for anyone who cares.

First, elevation and the like is totally irrelevant. Desert can be mountainous, hilly, covered in dunes, and even perfectly flat. A savanna is tropical grasslands with an open tree canopy - totally different from desert. But more importantly, Stardock should not limit themselves to those kinds of rules - they are designing a fantasy game world. They should do whatever they need to do to make it look rich and interesting and good. If that means sticking cacti in every desert, so be it. Now, if they decide that doesn't give the right look to the game, that's another story all together.

Here are some images of the Northern Basin desert in North America:

Here are some pictures of the Gobi in Mongolia/China:

And here are some of the Judean desert:

And here's an image from the Colorado Plateau desert:

These are all deserts. You can yell and scream all you want - no matter how sandy, green, rocky, flat, hilly - they are all deserts and there is nothing you can do about it.

All that said, I remember something said about this not having the same story as Gal Civ 2. But not the same is not the same as no ties. Gal Civ (2) universa had, you know, alternate universes (ask the Thalan) so this could be one. Or whatever. I just have fun speculating to fight the lack of alpha/beta. (and because I love stories and detailed backgrounds)

Calm down, there's no need to "yell"......

The "evolution" of the Drath would have to occur over a geologically significant span of time, say several hundred thousand years at least. In that time, the "Altarians" would have been able to advance not just from a mideaval society to a spacefaring one, but far beyond that, and they would have been able to do it several times over: it's taken us only 500 years or so from our own midaeval period to put people on the moon.....

I suppose the languages could be just.... different..... English and Mandarin certainly don't resemble each other.....

I was referring to his recitence to reveal what inspired his games. You hear about the games themselves, and about the plot, but he never really explains his motivations.

About the plot and the likes... he has a book to sell. More reason not to spoil a single tiny bit of it.

Oh, and I was not yelling (or was not my intention). Sorry.

The bold text makes you look "loud".

Goodness, but it looks like some folks need that alpha soon, or need to just start drinking now and not stop until it is posted (and friends don't let friends type drunk). 

On the linked-to-GalCiv thing, I can't find it quickly, but the last I recall from dev-land was a statement roughly to the effect that Elemental is neither a prequel nor a sequel to GalCiv. The two seem to share some background cosmological themes, but I'm pretty sure that the campaign world of Elemental is *not* Altaria in the ancient GalCiv past nor its distant future.

Personally, I'm still hoping that the world is literally flat, like some of the pocket universe habitats in Philip Jose Farmer's World of Tiers stories. What's the point of having authorial power to define game physics if you don't go for some serious variety in your basic world parameters? And I still want climate zones on the map to be at least as influenced by magical things (cataclysm 'fallout,' independent powers like Geoff the Slug or a Snow Queen, etc.) as by mundane notions such as longitude, latitude, or distance from an ocean. I want weather too, but I really don't want extensive 'realism' arguments about any of that stuff. Look and feel will be what count the most, and we're a long way from having our hands on that stuff given that the first beta will be cloth-map only.

*Puts on earmuffs*

That would be cool, but I for one would prefer a hollow hemisphere with a sun and moon that rotate around it, surrounded by an infinite sea.

Then why did you bring it up?

anyway, I'm not argueing the point anymore.  I feel that the name is missleading and I think the scientific community should reconsider same of the names we apply to some ecosystems.  (I got pluto removed as a planet by having a similar opinion.   The universe curves to my demands if I remain by them I say)

I'm still hoping for alternate planes, each with its own styles:

earth like world, hell like world, bizzar like world, dark and cold (distant home star?) like world,   mostly ocean with tiny patches of almost land (everglades/swamp/marsh)  and so on covered worlds.   but of course, I'm a MoM fanboy and just want that to be recreated

CACTUAR!

.

Note for the Internet: When Wintersong (aka me) uses bold text, he isn't being loud and/or yelling and/or shouting.

Ok, because I ALWAYS SHOUT WITH CAPS FOLLOWED BY EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!

Your lack of 1 and one disturbs me.

Scientists gave the current definition to "desert" long before people perverted it to the extent that most people think deserts are all hot, sandy wastelands with saguaro cacti everywhere. There is no point in reconsidering names when they already have a consistent, sensical naming system in place - people who need to know know them, and most everyone else will remain ignorant no matter what they do. Unless the media picks up on it, which is even worse because then most people will think they know, but unaware that they've been told half-truths and misconceptions (because the media will get it all wrong).

OK, I admit that I basically prefer the strict, precipitation-based definition of desert, but I also believe that science advances by questioning and revising its own fundamental categories, so I don't agree about your "no point" point.

In addition, I feel obliged to note that you've got a couple of category errors in your last sentence here. The worst part of the way you use "the media" is the error of reification (which is still a big problem for me, so I'm not being holier-than-thou). Right after that is a more grammatical problem that I can't label as well, except to say that "the media," reification problems aside, is a group of entities with widely varying standards of quality and not a singular thing that deserves the definite article (the).

I find it funny that there's an argument I don't have any interest in.  It's so rare.

I just meant that there is no point changing the scientific meaning of the word desert just to make it conform to popular misconception. If someone comes along with a new, more useful/informative naming convention then by all means, go ahead. 

Yeah I realized that my last sentence there was a disaster, but I wasn't (and still am not) in the mood to fix it. I don't think there's a problem with reification - the media is not particularly abstract (it is merely the collective grouping of professional reporting) - but there are major grammatical issues that make the sentence read like it was drawn and quartered.

My guess is that you're one of those rare folks under 80 who has absolutely no postodernist traits. I was in recovery for a while, but I'm back to the corrosive/constructive binge these days...

You don't need to be a rocket surgeon to know that if it's got cactuses in it, it's a desert.  Maybe there are deserts without cactuses.  That's fine, but let's count the number of people that care.

Done.

Either way, those so-called deserts would have no place in either a video game, or a Sergio Leone festival.  Just so you know.

Wow, that line is either comedic genius, or the result of sleep deprevation, and I can't tell which.  Just in case, it's rocket scientist, and cactus grow all over the place, we've got prickly pears in our frigging yard, even in this drought we still measure yearly rain in the inches.

Huh?  You could fill a text book with different definitions of post modernism, how about some elaboration?

If I recall correctly, the "rocket surgeon" thing came from Ted Stevens, the senator who said the internet was a series of tubes. I might be making that up, though.

EDIT: I lied, he didn't say that . I know I've seen that phrase somewhere, though. Maybe it was one of those fail pictures

Just that you often sound like you strongly prefer 'canon' arguments to 'meta' discussions. As an unrecovering postmodernist, I vacillate wildly between preferring one or the other of those.