Elemental, or Fall from Heaven 2?

Honestly, I can't advise getting Elemental in its current state. There's a lot of coolness to it, and bugs I can deal with, however the poor game design simple makes the game not fun beyond the "figuring out what makes it tick" phase. Until they smooth out the rough spots on this aspect of the game, I won't recommend the game to anyone.

Haven't played FoH2. I did play a little FoH1, which was interesting, but had its own game design flaws too (as most mods do).

I still believe that Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic is the best game in the Genre, though I do believe Elemental will be better in the future.

Elemental seems promising if you have some time to allow SD team to fix majors issues.

I am sure that at the end it will be more enjoyable.

Just my thoughts so.

Personally, although I've had a good experience with Elemental since 1.0619 I'd recommend instead of FFH2 you check out Planetfall, an Alpha Centauri remake, or maybe Rise of Mankind, which adds a ton of new techs and gameplay to Civ IV/BTS (bts required). Check back in a week or two, by then a lot of the kinks will be worked out, and if you're too busy with Civ V the month after that Elemental will keep. As a matter of fact, if you didn't purchase Elemental until the first expansion came out, you'd likely have a lot better experience than anyone could predict right now.

That being said, the thing's working pretty well, most people are having reasonable performance and nearly no showstopping bugs I'm aware of with the latest release. You won't have the same sense of disappointment someone who eschewed the beta and hoped and waited for Elemental for the last few years would have had on getting their boxed copy home on the afternoon of the 24th.

   Both are pretty awesome games.  I never did like the fact though, that in fall from heaven two, your stacks square off, and randomly chooses which unit of yours fights which of theirs, and you lose your nursed heroes and powerful units without having much say so.  Fun though, and really well done.

If you have Civ4 with Expansionsm go download Fall from Heaven 2. I did, and regretted that it had taken me so long to play it. Its very deep, rich, and rewarding. However, it's got a little bit og a learning curve to it (a good thing though, I think). Make sure you download the short manual and have a read of the major game changes, and pick a race that's easy for newcomers. Then enjoy.

True, it's still Civ4 deep down, but I found that the modders did a great job at creating a different atmosphere... the magic system is well done, and the world is a lot more hostile. Nice art and unit models too. And only a few rough edges to overlook.

To get the most out of it though, make sure you're in the mood for reading the Civ/Leader backgrounds in the Civpedia. That'll help put you in the mood for it.

I haven't tried it, but I've only heard very good things about FfH2.

Elemental I have tried, and I'm sorry to say I can't recommend it. The game looks nice, and it has an outstanding tech tree. But pretty much everything else about it is... bad. The problem everyone talks about is how buggy the game is, and while that's all too true, it's not the reason to avoid the game. Based on past & current behaviour there's no reason at all to doubt Stardock will have squashed the bugs very soon. No, the reason to avoid Elemental, is that a great, big chunk of the core mechanics are incredibly ill-conceived. Check out the thread on the combat mechanics & why such mechanics lead to spiralling brokenness, for an example of what I mean. Pretty much everything in Elemental works in a similar fashion, unfortunately.

From similar games I'd reccomend going for King's Bounty: Armored Princess, FFH2, HOMAM5 or AoM:SM.

As for Elemental: wait a month and come back to see what's changed. It has plenty of potential but it's currently just not there yet.

Elemental has better empire building/management mechanics.

FfH has better combat, both on the grunt troops and the magic ends of things, and more differentiation between civs and such.

I think Elemental is good, FfH is better.

Elemental or Fall from Heaven 2? Hell, Elemental!!!

Civ IV BtS or Fall from Heaven 2? Civ IV BtS!!!

Go Fall from Heaven all the way. The AI is just as bad. Everything else is better.

I played some fall from heaven 2 when waiting for elemental and it just didn't work for me. Sure elemental has it's issues, but it will eventually be great. Fall from heaven 2 on the other hand is already old, and still the only viable strategy is to build moar archers. Also don't like the way how they use art from baldurs gate and icewind dale. It's a robbery.

Ive enjoyed FfH2 a lot, except for the fact that every time I get really late into the game where the end-game battles are beginning, usually me and my vassals vs some other civ and HIS vassals, the game degrades into unplayability and the game file gets corrupted somehow and Im never able to actually finish the damn game. Grr!

Elemental I can at least finish a game, even if its always super easy to beat the AI. Hopefully they'll fix that soon!

i don t understand how ppl can love FFH

its just bad, the fantasy elements are too much shallows, also the absense of tactica combat ruin the presence of spells etc

its just too much civ like imo(and i like civ)

so if you want a clone of civ with different units go FFH but its not a fantasy rpg

Elemental is still in the bug fix stage, it's pretty stable as of the 1.06 patch but, the game still needs balance & polish (things like magic, tech, units, quests, need to be fleshed more, random maps and a much better AI). The AI can't really play on a map of islands yet. The game is a collections of good ideas, that right now only work at a very basic level, the question of how these areas will be expanded (mods, lots of patches, expansion packs) is yet unknown.

There is no real difference in units other than other hit points and picture, very few units have any special abilities and those that do are so over powered (dragons, fire elements) are game breakers.

The quest system is very limited (find goodies, go here, go there), the game really needs dungeons!

The RPG elements need to be expanded.

Combat Magic is just willy, nilly, miss, miss, hit for 1 point of damage or sometimes hit for 20 points with no rhyme or reason.

Tactical Combat seems to be little more than random numbers (hit, miss), no real tactics.

Documentation is very poor, sometimes you can't build something and have no idea why.

If only FFH2 had tactical combat and some CRPG elements!

The word most players used is "EVENTUALLY" for Elemental based SD reputation.  So the choice is clear, isn't it?  Wait for Elemental and play FFH2 in the mean time.

I agree that Elemental needs some serious work, but I can't see anything that is so fundamentally broken that it can't be fixed or modded.

At the moment? FFH2, I bought Civ IV beyond the sword just to get it. And actually think it was worth it.

Give it another month though, and I'm pretty sure Elemental will kick ass, it's just not quite there yet. But it will be, trust me.

The biggest reason I'd suggest waiting on Elemental is, if you want to stay current, every daily new patch breaks your save game.

If you like magic, summons etc. then Elemental by far.   If you're lazy and won't use any mod tools then FFH will be worth playing at least once in a while.  I played FFH almost exclusively in my Civ 4 days, and elemental is a lot better.   The AI in FFH is terrible, easily exploited and rarely poses a challenge on any difficulty setting.   People say the same about elemental, but Elemental's AI is actually pretty good if you don't just full rush it.   If you wanted a game where you full rush everyone, play a RTS.  

The AI isn't very intelligent yet. GalCiv2's is the second best (AI Wars is even better, but that's a very different kind of strategy game) I've seen in a strategy game, though, and I'm confident Brad will keep working on it until it's even better than GalCiv2's.

@ Phazonfreak: I'm unaware to what extent the core mechanics are modable, but I wouldn't expect Stardock to fix them. Why? Because since the earliest days of the beta lots of people have written at length and in great detail on why the current mechanics can't produce balanced & interesting gameplay, and Stardock has at no point shown any interest in or receptiveness to that kind of criticism. So why would they now, when the game has reached a point where it is a hundred times as complicated to redesign them?

That sounds frustrating enough to suck the fun right out of the game.

Just right now IMO: AoW SM + BNWv3.2 > FFH2 > EWom

There is always Dwarf Fortress as well! Sorry, I am an ASCII whore.

By the time SD fixes Elemental (and they will) you should have picked up the DF learning curve:)

Civ IV, IMO, is one of the best strategy games of all time, one of my favorites for sure, and the best of the civ series (til 5 hits and blows it away).

That said, due to my love of fantasy, there are times when I've considered FfH to be better than civ itself.  It's truly an amazing thing how the FfH team transformed civ for fantasy purposes.  Everything about it feels right even with it being built on civ.  The races are all incredibly diverse and well done, the magic system works out great, the violence of the world is great.  Monster lairs and dungeons/goodie huts are all well represented and make sense.  It's just a wickedly good thing (and there's little wonder that it got scooped up to become a stand-alone game that's in production).  It also has some MoM-like feel with how the magic nodes work (and other stuff).  And you still have fantasy themed wonders.  In a lot of ways it's like the best of many things combined - civ and DnD with some MoM influence - sexy.  (FfH is based on the lead designer's old pnp DnD campaign).

So, ouch, really tough call.

I love FfH and still play it (and regular Civ IV:BTS, just as I still love to play GC2).

Elemental is kind of in a rough state and it'll probably be a few weeks/months before it's truly in a state it should've been in for release.  Elemental definitely has good parts about it now, and a lot of potential, and it's playable/enjoyable now.  A lot of Elemental's mechanics are different and cool (like city expansion, for ex).

My biggest problem with Elemental now is all the lockups and crashes - it's really, really irritating and pretty much unaccpetable in a modern game.  How many times has Civ IV:BTS or FfH crashed on me?  I'm sure it's happened but not enough that I actually remember.  Elemental crashes or locks up so much that I set autosave to every turn because I know I'll be restarting the game and loading a lot.  Arg!

I can't realy recommend one vs the other, but I will say that if you own Civ IV, like fantasy (you're here aren't you), and have not checked out FfH, that you have failed.  FfH is amazing and absolutely worth experiencing.

I generally don't screw with mods for games like this or civ, but FfH isn't a mod - it's a total conversion of the game - it's like a seperate game - and it is incredibly well done.

Also Dominions 3 is a decent fantasy tbs with very strong rpg background.