[Feedback]Impressions from a new Beta tester

I bought Elemental a while ago, and got the beta version installed. First started on 3C, now on 4.

It might be that my impressions as a new player gives an important feedback on how it actually is to start afresh. Keep in mind, I'm an old gamer, I've been around since the time of legends, and in addition, I believe I've played most of what is worth playing in this genre; from the recent fantasy wars/elven legacy/etc. games to Disciples III and II, MoM, AoW, Civ4 (Ffh) etc. back to the original Warlords I. On the downside, being a new player of this Beta that also means I am not well-read on what is currently 'known issues' and such in Elemental. Bear with me mentioning stuff you allready know.

First: Game start. Very retro. Obviously a placeholder. And joke.  (Disappeared in 4. *sniff*)

Then the first thing most people do is probably create the sovereign. This was not unproblematic. Version 4 got better, but still.

There are some cool options there, but things seems nuts, at times. A good staff costs 10, when you can buy it in a shop for 10 gp once the game begins? Considering what you get for 10 development points compared to 10 gp.. not going to happen. That armor is a bit more likely - you need to research and build stuff before you can buy it - but even then it's expensive for doing little of importance. Unless you also buy the ability to use that sort of item, but I doubt that.

But, designing a sovereign is more than the stats and talents. It's also design, race, name, etc.
Race: There is no indication whatsoever what bonuses or maluses a race has, if any; it is also difficult to see what races go well with what nation/faction. Playing as the goblin sovereign of the high elves would be odd; it's kind of hard to know when you do the equivalent of that here.

Secondly, looks. Not everyone has all the classes of options, some options seem to disappear or reappear randomly. (Boots, surcoats, pants seem the most common. You can't choose hair when you have a helmet - you can take off the helmet, so you should have hair below it in case you do take it off. Lastly, it's difficult to create an interesting - looking female sovereign. (Any sexy or martial look seems rather impossible; all the clothing options are full gowns and similar outfits best suited for a bar or a ball, not a battle. This is less pronounced in 4, where the guys doesn't get that many 'cool' options either.

Thirdly, spellbooks - and really, the other options, too - has a problem. You don't get any information. Like many other things, you need to play the game with an option to find out what that option does. This adds a lot to the learning curve.

Choosing an empire / faction: Straightforward enough, and here it does state differences. You get a hint through the empire + sovereign card of what race of sovereign is appropriate for it, BUT this is after creating your sovereign, and with Kingdoms, the races are not all that easily identifiable.

Initial impression: Cool, but a bit frustrating.

Second: Playing the game (starting out)

Okay, this reminds me of civ IV, but with the city management on-map. This is good. Art style is odd.... blurry... looks like I'm looking at things through water? I changed the options around and they got crisp and clear, much better. I don't remember what option did it, but one of the default / starting options (3C) really messed up the graphics. (Basically it looked like VERY excessive smoothing.).

I funded my empire. Again, it seemed a bit inaccessible. I could build all sorts of things, but the only way to find out what you need, in what order, is by trial and error - things like who can build +1 food / material buildings in a basic town, which I still haven't figured out - it seems that sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. Some sort of advisor function would be good. (The Janusk? fellow you can hire does have that function, it appears.. if so, expand on that a bit.).

Thirdly: My first battle

Okay, not first, but still... I've run into several issues.
1: The tactical combat treshold changes how many enemies are necessary for an 'autocombat' resolution, it seems. Again, lack of info, and awkwardly placed. My sovereign died against extremely weak enemies a lot because I didn't find that out until later. (Or possibly because starting with spells disappeared in 4)
2: No edge-of-screen scrolling of the combat map. If you want to watch outlying areas, zooming out is the only way to go.
3: Difficult targeting. Targeting the squares or units are sometimes difficult or select the wrong square. This is a matter of getting used to a quirk, I guess, but it is better if it is intuitive straight away.
4: Both in the overland map and the tactical map, it is unclear which units has moved this turn and which hasn't; which are selectable to do something and which aren't. This could stand some improvement; either by moved units sitting down, or have a moved status easily seen in ther thumbnail info. (There probably is, but I haven't noticed it on casual inspection). This is as important in the tactical map.

Played a new game until it crashed. Reloaded autosave once, but it crashed again within a few turns. Savegame archived for reference, if wanted.

Things noted:

On trying to load a game, the game start screen is visible through the load game screen.

Starting location: Three arcane temples?!? My spellbook got big fast, I can tell you that.

I tried attacking a bandit lord and it wouldn't let me. There was no feedback on why. The attack icon had no 'color aura' around it, whatever that means. After a few turns I could attack (or it attacked me, not entirely sure which). It was not a champion.

Going after Thant next. I summoned a wildling, which let me beat them effortlessly. Destroyed its three cities without trouble - they weren't defended, except by a few peasants. Then machine started chugging like mad, alt-tab'd out to see if a virus scan or something was in progress, alt-tab'd back, after one or two turns the game crashed. Remembering a post about memory leaks I checked what Elemental.exe (or whatsitsname), and it was 1GB memory and pocket change; is that normal? I noticed that upon loading the same game after the crash, it only used 500 mb. The game seems to crash every few turns and there's a graphical glitch over a stone quarry, and while I had built a mine over it - and the mouse-over showed it - it was not visible on the map or other screens.

I haven't really tried to figure out how the spellbook is organized; I've only noticed that the game itself doesn't tell you this. So when this time I had a lot of spells I could learn, and research points enough to finish spells every turn, things got cluttered fast. Now, I did realize how the spellbook is organized in terms of spells learnt, spells being researched, spells available for research, and finally, spells unavailable for research, but I miss a way to organize them and get sorted or filtered overviews. When you gain a new level of spells, it might be an idea to also show what new spells are available for research in the same popup.

I learnt the (spell that gives +1 food in a town) and cast that on my starting town, then later the spell Brilliance. Trying to cast that on the town, the town outline was brown instead of green. Thinking I could only have one enchantment in town, I ended the food enchantment, but still couldn't cast brilliance. Next turn I could, and I could also cast the food spell.

It seems that most of the default sovereigns now has all spellbooks. That hurts differentiation between nations a bit, I think, if that is also the sovereigns the AI's use.

New game, also significant slowdown whenever I try to look at the area my city is in, and again an invisible stone quarry. (This time it turned visible when I built a quarry on it.).

I hired a group of three adventurers, and sent them to explore separately. They didn't respond to clicking on auto-explore, so I figured that was disabled. Tried a few more times. One activated auto-explore. The rest still wouldn't. Seems very spotty.

Turned on and off font smoothing; all the fonts disappeared. Fixed on restart. Not repeatable. Later fonts disappeared on their own (just after a diplomacy screen, but not the first.). 

When reloading after that, the 'headline' name of the town reads 'Lujahan' or something like that; the name of the town in actual is 'Amarantine'. Checked options, alt-tab'd out to type the above, on return, the 'headline' name (including stats and such) are unreadable. Typical memory corruption look. Crash on exit.

Played some more. When shopping, I miss something that tells you wether the selected unit can use the item you are considering buying or not.

Some of the bugs mentioned above could well be from some sort of install corruption, is there a file validation system or do I have to reinstall to confirm that?

The Continuing Voyages of Khardis.