Forum ate my last post.  It was poetic and beautiful... I assure you!  *cough*

To summarize (not very eloquently), you've shown developers how to take a mistake and turn it into something truly positive  I know how much you love Elemental (to its very core) and it was painful to watch that get squashed.  But sometimes adversity can make the later success that much more sweet in the end.  In fact, this could be the ultimate lesson for game developers who lay an egg and are stuck considering their options.  Support or cut your losses?  I hope great success is in store for Elemental and its expansions - as you've put your money and resources where your mouth is... something we don't see too often.  Continue taking the best feedback from fans and with the team you've got I can't imagine anything but great results. 

Luckily my opinions are not formed by a democratic vote via civ fanatics.

Further more if you would have actually read through the posts instead of cherry picking you would have noticed that I have admitted that 1UPT was a great idea in concept. However knowing that the "powers that be" would never give it the resources to make it work correctly it was  destined to be what it is.  A great idea implemented horribly.

Finally, using a poll to bolster your claims only proves my assertion.. that its a great idea conceptually. However the AI's tactical prowess.. or lack there of is directly tied to this. Which happens to be one of the biggest complaints from people.. go figure. People like to complain about the problems caused by the concepts they support.. its just like were in National politics. You know, where people only address the symptoms rather than the disease.

Would you please link one post where you interacted with the fans of the Civilization series who are disappointed with Civ 5.

Quit being a douche.

Ok, how many times can you post this like you are some kinda hero instead of some loser?

A note of positivity for those with open arms and a warm greeting to those who are not so welcoming, I like him already and hope that tone will be seen more often from Stardock.

What's got my eyebrows and ears perked up is how just recently Stardock had layoffs.   Now we've got a spate of senior staff being hired.

Oh god, give it a rest...

How can something be one of his favorite things to do, if he has never done it before?  How would he even know if likes to do it or not?

The new Zen Koan, I like it.  

You should learn some yourself, if you read what he posted it is clear he is stating they are hiring senior staff while underlings were laid off.(or it could look that way)  Maybe you should just go away condescending much?

I am right here, I can speak for myself.   You've got a company that is hiring and firing, almost simultaneously.   That is an interesting event.   And try picturing yourself as one of those laid off people witnessing this sometime.   Unless these laid off staff were serious underperformers, most people would say you're better off simply reassigning the people you already have.   Not to mention the morale hit you just incurred.

The news of hiring of Kael (Fall from Heaven onto HEllemental) got mostly positive feedback and most posters were saying it was a good direction for Elemental, and we *have* seen quite a bit of improvement in 1.1  whereas Jon the Chafer has received 80% negative feedback, so lets see what happens to 1.2 (there was some complaint of small, unnoticeable buttons in elemental UI, at lease we *know* from the horse's mouth itself, that buttons are going to be substantially bigger :-p )

The answer to that is easy: Quantity < Quality... Less quality guys will make a better product in the same amount of time as a horde of code monkeys.

You do realize 1.1 had very little input from Kael...it was mostly done by the time he arrived.

Which goes back to implying the people laid off were underperformers.  Brad said before they were laid off through no fault of their own.

In my field at least, we just count on losing $100,000 per every headcount of turnover.   That's recruiting costs, admin overhead, training, lost productivity time (because you're paying them salary & benefits over a period where they're too new to contribute much), etc..  And that's just for attrition.  These are layoffs, where there's a serious hit to morale, severance, and lost productivity in addition to that, and all at the worst possible time.

That raises my eyebrow right there, why you couldn't just reassign and/or re-train the talented people you're proud of whom you already have.  And then you hire big-name type people, which personally strikes me as buying the name.  Similar to buying the really cool Abercrombie & Fitch and Calvin Kleins at the fashion store.  That's something you do when you've got money to burn.  When you're on a budget, you stick to your Old Navy and your Levi's jeans--or even better, the cheapest jeans out there are the pair you've already got.

I mean, Jon, Derek, Dave and all are here.  It's done, you have to welcome them and work with them.  They're certainly not complaining that it gave them a job.  But--WTH???

This is pretty lame stuff. You apparently don't know the specifics about the lay-offs and are assuming Wardell is less intelligent than you are in how deal with his employees or what to prioritize in at Stardock. You are grasping at straws now. 

Not sure why any of this is our business anyways. Stardock is a private business and they can make their own HR decisions without us randomly speculating. All I care about is the type and quality of games Stardock puts out and their excellent attitude towards their customers.

Bring on the code crazy baboons if that's what it takes!

Stardock invites us into their home and occasionally chat with us. Its kinda like a soap opera but less cheesy, or sometimes more cheesy. Thus we feel we have a right to do as we do. Some people muse and share ideas, other use the forums as their toilet and deposit their crap here.

Some people amazingly combine musing and crap together in a post that neither denigrates nor contributes in any meaningful way.

Compliments will get you nowhere, buddy. 

Edit: Ah, never mind... it'd probably just start a boring flame war anyway (boring because I would easily win).

Which you obviously don't, so stop pretending like you do

I think some need to relax a bit. The guy is suppose to be working on the modding. He hasn't been made lead designer, etc. Now I'm not a big fan of Shafer. I do believe he is a large part of why Civ 5 didn't turn out well. I don't like a lot of his ideas either. However until he does something horrible at Stardock on a game I guess I'm indifferent to his being hired. His first post could have been a lot better. That people think so poorly of him I would have hoped he'd have more tact but oh well. If I don't like any of the new ideas he might bring on a future product I simply won't buy the game and will encourage others not to buy. End of story.