f5 f5 f5 f5 f5 f5 f5 f5 f5 f5 f5 f5 f5 f5 f5 ...

To those still confused by the stack comment, think of it like Age of Wonders instead of Civilization/FFH.

I imagine the tactical battles will be very similar to the ones in the AoW games. So imagine that sort of battle going on behind the scenes when you clash with another army.

I guess it depends on what part you're looking at. The city structure looks very organic, it flows out into whatever spaces and directions the player has chosen. If you're looking at how the tiles "fit" together, then I can see where you're coming from since there are no natural-looking transitions between adjacent tiles and two tiles of the same variety have no variation between them (as in minor props, etc).

Variations could probably be handled in a mod of some sort, though maybe only in a clunky manner (Farm1, Farm2, Farm3, etc.). Hopefully something that will come in time though.

As for natural-looking transitions, maybe just getting rid of the obviously-square shading beneath the tiles would do it (the market under construction and even the huts seem to blend with the underlying terrain better).

I was thinking about the possibility of modding in an all archer faction. Entrench in with either placed or shot in pike walls then retreating to fire. Will this be possible to mod in?

-Othello

Im excited, but it kind of sucks to lose features we already had in beta 1. Oh well, you win some you lose some. Bring it on! 

So my question is what is the main screen option inbetween campain and load..

Im not sure how you would "mod in" an all archer faction ... unless you mean new equipment and tools to counter the use of mounted units vs your archers. I mean, you could simply build all archers and it would be an all archer society.

You design your own units.

So ... you could have heavily armored archers, lightly armored archers, long range archers, short range archers, invisible archers, and magically enhanced archers (magic archers).

And also, of course, using your Sovereign/ Champions for SPELLZ which have nothing to do with archery but is an important part of the game.

It seems to me the power of the archer is usually in mass numbers.  And since you can probably train 5 archers for every 1 knight.  Theoretically speaking of course, not in game terms as I've never played.

But of course,  I don't think you can EVER go wrong with sticking some canon fodder to absorb a charge from some Calvary.  Hell I could easily see an archer / peasant army destroy a full Calvary army.  But then again, thinking back to games like Total War; I think they did a pretty terrible job at calvary units.  Generally Calvary is designed to charge and keep running through, not charge, and then stop.

So i suppose in hindsight, the Calvary would just charge through the peasants straight into the archers.  Maybe peasants with pikes....  Hmm

I think at this point it's fairly safe to say it isn't coming tonight.

Lucky for all those with a free weekend ahead, sucks for me, but ah well!

So if I go ahead and pre-order now, can I get in on this Beta, or would I have to wait until the next phase?

I mean....I'm preordering regardless. >.>

But I'm curious.

Yes you will get in in)

Fantastic!

I went ahead and preordered my copy then. I've been debating on purchasing this game for quite some time, but I decided to finally ante up, Stardock has never led me astray in the past, after all.

Well, presumably technologies are moddable - we already know Kingdoms and Empires will have different techs available, so you'd think that it'd be possible to mod a new faction with a unique third set of techs different from Kingdom/Empire. This new set of modded techs could include a variety of bow/crossbow/etc techs, and some way for archers to counter units such as cavalry, but no techs for other weapon types - so even though you're still designing your own units, your only weapon choices are bows. That is if one was really set on the idea of an archer-only faction, and not content to simply play a normal faction and build only archers.

Not that I think it's a good idea - I prefer FFH-style balancing where, for example, elves are encouraged to use archers by having stronger-than-average archer units. They still can and probably should build other types of units, they'll just tend to have more archers and fewer swordsmen than other civilizations. Elemental modders could definitely do that, by giving a new faction all the standard technologies plus stronger-than-normal bows.

But hey, the whole point of modding is making the game the way you want it, want an all-archer faction? Go for it, with all the modding possibilities Elemental is meant to have, it's got to be doable.

I am SO happy there's turn based combat.  Holy crap.  AGHHGGHGHGH

I am not really sure about what kind of message Frogboy wanted to pass, but if it can help, here is a summary of my experience with Beta 1 combat which was only with hand to hand weapons.

The combat was between a single unit and an army. It was either my super combatant sovereign againts wandering armies or group of NPC, or a troll against my super combatant sovereign and some cannon fodder.

Each turn works the same way: the single unit attacks the easiest target in the opposing army while ALL units in the ennemy army attack the single unit. The combat speed of each unit determines how many attacks a given unit can make in a turn. A single unit will attack different targets in the same turn if it hasn't used all its attacks for the current turn and its first target is already dead.

It isn't a one to one combat. The important thing is that ALL units in an army are engaged in the combat.

I guess that Frogboy is refering to stacks as in Civilization's stack and not as in MoM's stacks or MOO's stacks (which are effectively armies as they all fights during the same tactical battle)

Battle rating can help to sense the odds of winning/loosing a battle. But it can be misleading as you can see with this post https://forums.elementalgame.com/380340

And it may difficult to have a correct sense of the outcome with only the battle rating since the result will depend a lot on how many damage each side can make on the other. Even with only attack, defense, HP and Combat speed it can be tricky in beta 1 to estimate if you have a chance to kill a troll (lots of HP,  high attack, no defense, low combat speed). So it will be more difficult with range attack, type of damage (if different type of damage are available) or immunities (I am pretty sure that some mods will have some kind of weapon immunities for undead or werewolves) 

anything preventing people from creating an oober faction or unit?

ok  340 am over here in Florida. Just got back from a night of partying. Hoping to see something

Sheer cost in both training and resources should even out the all cannonfodder race vs the all doomy knights of doom race. So for every doomy knight of doom I produce the cannon fodder guy can produce a thousand peasants with clubs.

Chances of it happening in the depths of the night are slim, since they've already culled themselves a 24 hour timeframe. Get some sleep, folks.

Ya, not looking like I'll be playing it this morning. I leave in 3 hours though and will be gone 10, so hopefully it will be up when I get home.

I'll still keep checking until I leave though. At the very least it would be nice to download it while I was away, so would be cool if they put it up around 7 EST. 

I hope I find enough people to play during my wake hours (GMT +2), anyone up for the challenge? (Of matching GMT+2 waking hours that is   )

exciting stuff... looking forward to playing after work!  Thanks for the visual walk-through froggy!

I am very much looking forwards to it!

Can't wait either.

Damn you Frogboy! Your evil use of awesome screenshots combined with cool game ideas has forced me to pre-order this game now!

grrrr ... come one, post it now!