My philosophy for many years now is to wait for several months, if not longer, when the game is either patched/fixed and release-ready, or it's apparent the game won't ever be release-ready. 

I violated my 'rule' for elemental because:

-I read your 'we won't release until it's ready' and similar statements and believed you

-I believed SD was different from most other game companies

-I wanted in beta as I respected your involving players much earlier than other companies do and thought that merited being rewarded (tho I waited til the very last day last Sept. to pre-order to get into the start of beta, to see how things were going)

I don't blame you for releasing too early (not that you are blameless), but as I'm an adult and should know better I blame myself for yet another example of my failing the 'fool me [more than] twice shame on me' test.

And I'll repeat for any who mistake this for 'hating' -- I believe SD will keep improving Elemental and that it'll be a classic of its' genre, and that the long-term outlook for Elemental is good and it's worth buying (just wish I'd have waited a few months...)

But this game is already worth $50 even $80 which I paid. You can't let a handful of malcontents ruin your sales when the game clearly works for a lot of us without CTD's or other things some are saying are happening. I can't believe I have the only game that works without issues thus I'm sure there are thousands that are playing the game like me and really don't take the time to post because they are having fun and don't really care what the malcontents have to say. You know as well as I do the malcontents rush to the forums of a new game and start bashing it. (I think many who don't even have the game do this). My only complaint is "Where is my BOXED copy?" It's the 25th and no box. ;))

I started a new game and have 7 ai opponents and 5 are set to challenging and 1 to extreme and 1 to ridiculous and the entire game set to hard. So far wolves have been keeping me busy and it's been hard to breakout to find new territory to conquer. The random spawn stuff can be pretty nasty as the game goes along I'm finding out too. Great fun and edge of seating playing....I like it.

I have an ATI Radeon 5700.  Guess it's windowed mode for now...

Ok, I haven't read most of the replies yet... But, I have installed the game, created my Hero and attempted to start several "New Games"... The game has crashed 4 times now. I patched it already, which took like an hour. The game is awesome looking, but I haven't gotten a turn in yet

I am new to the genre and enjoyed the campaign. Was it great? No..Was it confusing at times? Yes. But I stayed with it and finished it. I don't need a detailed manual to simply toy with the UI/menus for 5 minutes and figure things out. I now have a pretty decent understanding of how things work. I personally don't have any issues with the UI, though I'm used to MMO style UI's which look similar. I dunno...UI is not important to me as long as it is functional which this is. Though I do dislike the lack of notifications, and how they pop up on the sides. I'd rather just have a menu with an "ok" button pop up right in middle of screen saying "so and so had a child!"

Again, I have played the entire campaign without a single crash. If I sense the game is slowing down I just go ahead and save and restart quick. This is common in alot of games at launch, its not rly a big deal. Its the expected memory leak =P

Overall I like the game. I think the tactical battles could be spiced up alot with better animations for combat/spells, and definitely some sound effects (my biggest complaint). I'd also like to see some sound effects when you scroll close to a city; maybe hear people chattering etc. I think once Stardock irons out the performance issues people will enjoy the game more. EWOM is a solid foundation and I look forward to the improvements in the coming weeks/months.

I'd say no...not until the bugs are fixed

I think you should.

Sure it has some issues, that no one even tries to hide.

Thing is you dont just buy the game, you buy an opportunity to participate in the making of a game with amaizing potential.

If this game was made by anyone other then stardock i would say "No, stay away!" like pcgamer said.

Thing is, unlike other companies strdock is close to its playbase community,

They listen and implement (or try really hard).

So you basically are also buying the ear of the developers.

Stardock had allot of balls releasing even the beta's as nowdays people hack copy and release copycat games.

The - what some would call- "premature release" was more or less done with the playerbase conncent and even pressure.

Most of us knew exactly what we are buying, so with that mindset, its an awsome product even as it stands today.

...AND as stardock said they will for the next year only concentrate on polishing the game and not develope any new games\projects.

...with the release of 3 patches already they seem to deliver!

Unlike other developers, like firaxis and john sheffer. Who started form the modding community. They develope civ5 behind closed doors from most of the public with a more or less "holier then thou" attitude.

"This is what we think it should be like, take it and be amazed!".

Unlike stardock, who has a more "What do you think guys? good? should we change stuff?".

That's the main reason ot support stardock by buying the game and not just get it... from somewhere else.

Sorry for my english, its not my native tonge and im tired.

Make sure your GPU drivers are up to date.

There is a completely logical reason for getting this game right now.

The price for the game right now is about $50.00, and it has some rough edges.  Really rough edges.  The game balance needs attention, the instruction manual is woefully lacking and there are bugs.  If you give it another 6 months, the game will be golden.

Now let's say that the price drops by half in 6 months.  Then the question becomes, do you get the game now in an imperfect state or wait half a year and pick it up on the cheap?  You should get it right now.  Because the real question is "can I get an extra $25 worth of entertainment out of the game during the next 6 months while the developers are still working on it?"  And the answer is HELL YEAH! 

If there's one thing this game can do, it's deliver on replayability.  This is a game you will be playing consistantly for the next 6 months and beyond.  Bioshock was beautiful.  Loved it right out of the box, but after I beat it there was no more game left.  It stayed beaten.  I was addicted to Borderlands for a few weeks.  Played the hell out of the game at all difficulty settings and got the expansions.  But after a month or so, I knew it was time to move on. 

Elemental is like that crazy ex girlfriend who keeps showing up on you doorstep at 3 in the morning.  Sure she's not perfect, and of course there's a bunch of things you'd like to fix about her.  But when you're looking for a wild time, there's no one better.  Yeah, maybe not the best example to point to, but you get the idea.

 I would like to encourage people to buy it, but that's only because I preordered

Despite StarDock saying they are privately owned and all that, I still think if the initial sales tank , it is likely less resources will be poured into it.

So to a certain extent, I think it's going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, if everyone who bought the game advises "don't buy or at least wait", there's going to be a problem.

Personally i think EWOM will be good (not MOM level great though cos there's a limit to what patching can do b4 we have to pay for expansion packs) in the end , if SD can keep bashing at it.. it will just take a ton of patches..  

That's the only thing that is keeping me and many from giving up, cos SD has a rep for constant improving.. but it's not looking good at the start.

i think its worth the money, good game, good devs and a healthy community that will prolly make very nice mods

I recommend to wait at least another week. The game is great but it's really buggy. So wait until they iron them out.

On the other hand, the game will not be cheaper in that time, so you can buy now and play later

Yeah, I'd also recommend waiting.  I always buy games after they've been out for a few weeks before buying and went against my judgement on this one.

I'm enjoying it most of the time but am getting annoyed by some of the bugs.  Just wait and see how the patches affect things before buying (unless you don't mind playing a game that has quite a few).

Yeah!

Like that map of westrose...

I can tell you this:

At first I would have said yes, go ahead and buy it - but the more I play and the more I read positive, constructive feedback in these forums - the more I wish I had waited myself.  I have played a lot in the past two days, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that the more you play, the more serious flaws you discover.

The bugs I can live with, the major flaws/balance issues and really weak AI make it almost unplayable beyond the first few hours of "new game exploration".

Now that I've got the new game smell out of my system, I'm probably going to shelve it and keep an eye on patch news for a few weeks or longer.

Listen to Frogboy. Period.

Who btw. shows once again that whatever he does or says is in gamers' best interest and not to make profit at any(one's) cost.

Me personally, I'm gonna buy it very soon at full price to support SD, but will not play it until I can tell by what I can extract from the forum patch, logs etc. that it is going to provide the gaming experience I'm hoping for.

Don't have nearly enough time to play ANYTHING atm anyway...

The AI isn't weak you just don't have the optimum settings for it set. You can't play 1 or 2 games on normal or kiddie level and expect the ai to be a challenge for anyone with experience with these types of games. So until you set it up on rediculous difficulty and then max out the ai's able to play against you and set each individual difficulty from challenging to ridiculous as well then you haven't played against the ai you've just been playing with a romper room one.

Personally I am happy having bought the game - but i am a total strategy nut, and have been waiting for a good fantasy version of CIV for while.

My advice would be - wait and review the changelogs and developer logs until you are happy.  There you will get a sense of what they are fixing (and whethter that matters to you) and how quickly (very quickly).

My comment is that currently it is on a par with Fall From Heaven 2 the last time I played it.  The basics are all there, some things are a bit unclear, and the balancing is a bit off, but there is a good feel about it, and I have comfort that this will be sufficiently easy to mod, and the commitment of the developers will turn this into a great game.

However if you are interested in modding the game, jump in now, the flexibility of the system is good, and the existing tools allow for a lot of creativity (and there is lots to learn)

The massive advantage with an operation like this is that they actually talk, in detail, about what they are doing and why.

The AI isn't 'weak' people are learning exploits faster than the AI counters

Spells seem a bit over powered with shards in my experience

They are coding seperate balance for Mplayer games I believe

since 1.05.16 patch I havn't crashed

Its very playable and stardock issues patches like no other

I bought it to support the DEVs. 

I am content with the game in its state, and fell curtian it will evolve into a real gem. It shows so much potential, in a SEA of bad pc games. 

I tend to agree.  Its all a personality thing.  I bought Demigod shortly after launch knowing it was full of issues at that time.  If you can accept that its going to have some issues (that are being worked on), then pick it up now.  It is fun.  I'd personally suggest waiting a month or so and then picking it up as more fixes come out and additional polishing occurs. 

Unless you want to play beta tester, wait until the game is fixed, it's buggy, unfinished, unpolished.

- Limited Maps, no random maps

- AI can't play yet on Island maps

- Very Poor documentation

- The AI players no matter what the map size, one or two kingdoms start right on top of the player

- Very unbalanced, some times you can walk right over other kingdoms, next your get killed by a random generated creature that just appeared next to you on the map

- no multiplayer yet

- poor performance on many systems, issues with 64bit systems

- poor memory management, sooner or later the game will crash when it runs out of memory

- Magic system and Spell book are poor, (about 40% of the 60 spells, are just the same thing w/different name

- Graphic corruption issues on many systems with different graphic cards, some still can't use the tactical combat system because of this

- Combat magic is willy nilly, cast the same spell against the same target, it may miss 5 times in a row or hit for 1 damage point or 20 damage points

- The goal is building not just a kingdom but a dynasty yet if your spouse dies before you have heirs, it's game over, can't marry again, poor design