If you have a fire shard, your fire spells are 2X effective.  Not in beta 4 but in our build.

In our build, swords tend to increase your combat speed but do less damage per hit so your units have to be more survivable.  By contrast, Battle Hammers are very slow but do a lot of damage so your focus is killing them quickly.

So if you go up against one big nasty monster, you'll want to use units with swords. If you're going up against lots of weaker units, you'll want guys with slower but nastier weapons.

But in beta 4, the values are jsut place holders. We don't try to balance items in the public betas because if you attempt to balance in beta, you end up with battles between fans and critics which causes splits in the community.

But they're what people have. Tyrion posted feedback about beta 4, after being gone for a while. That's the only build he has. It's not like he can give feedback on last night's internal build.

Thanks for confirming this.

I totally disagree with this argument, but its good that you're aware that there is a TON of balancing work that needs to go on relative to the beta4 build.  Very glad you're working on this internally.

Yes, but you can get a dragon in the game. 

As I have done closed beta testing in the past, I am quite familiar with large amounts of placeholder data.  Just looking though the XML data shows many such obvious discrepancies that are there for either testing purposes or just for fun.  Like the summoned bears strength compared to other summons for example.  I expect many things like that to change, and thus don't worry myself over them.  Nor can I comment on the mechanics of the current tactical battle system since it has many times been indicated by the devs that they are doing considerable work on that aspect of the game currently.

The lore never did concern me and I have zero problems with a human-centric lore.  It never bothered me in the Conan world, or the aforementioned Martin books, and it doesn't bother me here.  On the contrary, I like that it is different from what seems to have become the formula for a fantasy setting with elves, orcs, dwarves, etc.  I also believe that with the open nature of the game toward modding, that given a few months I wouldn't be at all surprised to see someone come up with a mod that does include other fantasy races. 

Unfortunately, I'm afraid that at this stage of the games development there can be little hope of their being any major changes to the core game mechanics.  That was for much earlier in the beta process when there was more time to take in and possibly implement ideas that were coming forth.  It doesn't of course help though that there are several important differences between what the devs are working on and what beta 4 has shown us.  I would recommend checking out the Elemental Dev Journals area to get some idea of what the devs are planning for the final release.  Still, I don't think such posts should be taken in an entirely negative light either as they raise some interesting points that may be something to consider for the future.  Also, it seems to be true that in many such cases here, these posts are made by folks that are genuinely excited about the prospect of their finally being another 4X strategy game that's fantasy based, and want to see it succeed in all possible ways.

And it would seem more than plausible that Balancing of weapons and armor, building outputs(Research/Gold/Prestige), Map based resource levels etc. etc. etc. etc, can, and better be, an ongoing process and can be done quite neatly over Impulse. 

Also, given that E:WoM will provide players MP there will always be someone griping about this weapon vs this armor... ad infinitum. What I can't wait for is when they open the resource sharing section, beyond Maps, in Impulse. Then we will get some seriously good Fan made stuff, that can and will, make available the differentiation the OP seeks under all aspects and in-game based materials and assets.

When 1.0 arrives, first thing I am going to do, to Test, is cast "FireGiant" and see if I get a Troll. Then I will create a unit and see if I can Way Point them into the front lines from a City.

Those will tell the tale... LOL

Months ago was a whole different world.

That is something that a lot of people seem to not recognize. 

Wow, talk about arrogance.  Do you realize that just because a beta tester says something over Frogboy or another Developer it doesn't instantly mean the beta tester has a valid point.  He's not creating this game and, I'm willing to bet, he doesn't speak for every single customer.  What exactly gives a beta tester, even a group of them, such exalted status?  Oh wait, that's right, you likely share the same opinions and damn what anyone else (be it other beta testers or the developers) may think.

 

Really?  Less than two full pages of discussion in a thread and the minority party in the thread is instantly a minority amongst the community at large?  You should go into politics, they love people with math like that.

I think you misunderstand what Frogboy was saying in the post you linked. From what I gleaned he was saying "Is this really the first time you felt the need to bring this up?" because at the point that that thread, and this one, were made the beta build was eons beyond the internal build, and the internal build was about to go gold.

It is much akin to saying "You know, that would have been a great thing to bring up about a month or two ago. . ."

It's a valid question. Did the person in question address his grievances back when they were actively soliciting information from a fairly current build for proper implementation? If the answer to that question is no, well then... I guess they should have, right?

A month, two months ago, that was an entirely different world. That's where the beta testers make a huge impact in the growth of a game's development, because that is what they're there for. At this point in time you are using a build that is lacking some functionality, various factors are filled with simple placeholder data that is dramatically different from the final build, and other similar issues. At this point, not a lot is going to change, because you're not playing the same game that's being released.