Very pretty already, IMO.

My first thought about those was "magical telegraph lines?" But the ones on the left kind of look like fences maybe?

True, but putting them inside the walls makes sense due to the setup of most games... Farm has X hp, soldier does Y damage. So a single soldier can come along and destroy a farm and often times destroy it within 30 seconds. Most games do not take into acount that farms, unlike other buildings, have both a standard building/cluster which can be burned/razed very quickly, as well as the fields which would take much longer to destroy. And unfortunately, one does not have to hide their torch... The AI often are not smart enough to leave the garison of the nearby town to go kill that lone soldier before he razes your food production to the ground. So until these problems are solved (standard hp system for farms and unresponsive gaurds), I think farms will continue to be found primarily inside walls out of convenience. There is nothing worse than having to check your towns every 5 minutes to rebuild farms a few enemy scouts decided to raze.

Although I wouldn't be suprised if the reason they are in the walls in Elemental is because the walls mark out the town's boundaries and putting stuff outside the town would clutter up the map to much.

I like it.  If it lives up to the high standard you've already set (GC II, SOASE) we're in for a good time.

Great or Superb graphics can wait...  the most important parts of a game are the features, game stability, content, game balance and optional settings.   Few of the fantasy TBS gamers would place graphics in the top three.

I think the fields need to be inside the walls for this particular town, since it's built perilously close to a cave that has "monster residence" written all over it.

But seriously, it's probably like someone said, all the structures beonging to a city are inside the wall. Think of it like a bunch of city-states united under a Channeller, if you like. A "Great Wall of China" like thing around every inhabited area might not be a luxury item in a monster haunted post-magical-apocalypse world.

Looks very nice.

I've only two little peanuts I don't like.

The power lines/fences are much too regular and thus look a bit silly/artificial.

The black lines are mostly fine, but when they're used at the bottom of the buildings/wall they make everything look like it is floating. I wonder if it would look better with improved shadows or more detailed grounds.

Else, it looks very good and is pleasing to the eye.

Oh, and I second the request for a higher resolution screenshot.

Am in agreement with most posts. I really like the artwork and if the game will look llike this (with a few tweaks here and there, eg slightly more detailed ground) then i will be very, very happy. My one complaint would be the outlines at the bottom of buildings, it seems to seperate them from the background a bit too much.

Are they shards or sources of metal at the bottom of the picture (outside the town, to the right of the gates as we look at the picture)? They certainly don't look like rocks.

Just so we're all on the same page, this is a shot taken of in-game assets then given some post-process love by the artists to recreate what we're shooting for (read: not a pure screenshot).

There's alot of work involved getting to this point (and beyond, of course) but the engine is really coming along    Glad we're shooting in the right direction!!!

Looks great. Keep up the great work.

The most interesting feature displayed in the shot is the cave entrance just 'north' of the town walls.  The explorer in me wants to find out what's inside.

re: I agree that having the crop fields within the walls is odd.

Aesthetics aside, from a gameplay standpoint I'm curious about that strictly because I'm leaning towards a preference of having such resource nodes (if that's the purpose they serve) outside of the walls and (theoretically) more vulnerable to attack.  Not that you shouldn't be able to fortify such locations (either or both with combat units and fortifying structures such as a local guard tower), but not necessarily heavily fortified by a town/stronghold.

Also, I enjoy setting up logistics (e.g., supply lines) where the peasants get to cart wheat or what-not back and forth to a facility to process into foodstuffs (in this example).  Such mechanics tend to appease my desire for details, and add to a sense that the game world is 'alive'.

The artwork style itself is different enough to make it interesting.  I suppose I'd be happy with detailed 3D renders of units/structures/terrain.  But this more abstracted style is pleasant to look at as well.

Im soo pumped!  I can't stop staring at it!!

And I will second this But they did it in MoM and CIV so I think we can expect it Though wouldnt be awesome to see a 20,000 people settlement take up like 10 map spaces and 20,000 visible little houses we could count!? lol right...

and whats in the cave do you think? Looks like a monster cave to me! lol

Since cities will spread on the map (each size increase gives you another tile to spread your city towards, ie. no one-tile cities like civIV, but multiple tile cities) I think we'll get a good representation of city sizes on the map.