Problems I Experienced With Elemental v1.07
Elemental Forums
Frogboy's posts took me off the fence. Instead of being someone waiting for Elemental to reach a 'finished' state before I played I am someone who is actually playing the game...just not a pay-to-beta-plus-test-our-game kind of player. I've only played this game in the 1.07 incarnation even though I purchased it on launch day, therefore i am not in any way familiar with what changed in-game save for what I've read in the Dev Journals.
Technology
-Toshiba Qosmio X505-Q880 gaming laptop (Windows 7 64x, Intel i7 Q720 1.6GHz CPU, 550GB memory, 6GB DDR3 RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTS 360M GPU);
-Custom built beast (Windows 7 64x,AMD Black Phenom II 3.2GHz cpu, 2TB memory, 8GB DDR3 RAM, x2 ATI HD Radeon 4850 GPUs)
Problems
-the game slows down considerably from turn 200 on, even on tiny maps with only two chosen enemy factions (with up to 3 minor factions involved);
-when Sovereign is housed in a city, moving any unit until their movement points have been expended immediately results in the turn ending and moving to the next turn even when there is at least one other unit that has not expended all of their movement points;
-expending Sovereigns movement points immediately results in the end of the current turn and beginning of a new turn, outside of combat, even when there is at least one other unit that has not expended all of their movement points;
-game freezes at any time after turn 100, despite a lack of...'things' on the play surface, be they notable locations, units, improvements in a city, et cetera;
-enemy units actually spawn inside the same tile as my units when two large armies (8+ unit armies) enter tactical battle;
-units spawn well away from the rest of their army's units (often right next to enemy units) when two large armies (see above for size) meet;
-units you have not selected will move in tactical combat, even though the unit you actually selected is still shown to be the target unit (note: there is no movement for the non-selected-but-moved unit in queue);
-the above occurs outside of combat as well;
-units will not move to the square you selected, even when zoomed in to the maximum and with the grid on. The worst example I have seen of this is selecting a square two squares away from my unit and the targeted square being shown as three squares above my unit, something the unit could not even move to by the end of the turn;
-the above happens inside tactical combat as well;
-sometimes a unit that is part of an army, viz. stack of units, will not accompany the rest of the army during movement or appear in combat;
-earning one point to spend on a champion's stats and spending it on any given stat does not result in a one point increase, it results in two or more depending on the stat chosen to increase;
-it is impossible to cast a spell while within a city, the caster needs to move outside of the city to cast any spell whatever and this results in a wasted movement point.
Final Thoughts
These are the examples I can remember from my last two play sessions, totaling over 6 hours and 5-6 came freezes (Ctrl+Alt+Del out to Task Manager to find the game not responding but Windows recognising the game has stopped responding). This makes me rather concerned for the planned multi-player, as these issues are rather annoying in a single-player game and will be absolutely devastating in a mulit-player game. I am sure that Stardock recognises this and I can only hope that these issues are addressed before attempting to turn on the multi-player feature we've already paid for. I can imagine some rather epic matches taking place only to freeze up or crash due to the issues I've encountered and/or the issues other people have encountered.
I like the direction that I see this game going, albeit incredibly late, however in order to realise Elemental's potential there are some shockingly fundamental gameplay elements that need to be cleaned up so the single-player game can run smoothly and before the multi-player portion should run at all.