[Gameplay] E:WoM must learn magic and military from its legacy. (Work in Progress)

Despite better graphics, the GUI and most features are inferior to a game made in 1994.

I understand the following:

Similar ideas to those below have been suggested
E:WoM is its own game, not a blatant clone
Core development continues, and the current version is beta (in denial)
Not everyone wants what I like

It is a pity that there are great comparable titles out there from which E:WoM seemed to learn very little. Master of Magic, dating back from 1994, was used to advertise the game to fans of the classic title and yet disappoints by failing to implement some of its best features. And as you'll see later in my post, magic, the theme of the game, is done so poorly in E:WoM that you wonder if anyone on the development team actually played Master of Magic, or for that matter, played E:WoM in its current state. The game is called "Elemental" and yet for a game with magic is almost unique in the way that elements are almost irrelevant. Spells and their effects are so painfully uniform and uncreative, there isn't really a sense of "magic" at all to the game. No mysticism, no mystique, no enchanting or wondrous effects; you hurl fire/lightning/rocks at enemies, summon monsters which almost all brutes with no unique abilities, and cast mostly generic buffs/curses. Master of Magic, on the other hand, had greater variety in spells, special abilities, and almost everything "magical." Epic battles between a Fire wizard and a Nature wizard would ensue in MoM whereas it's so affordable to have all elements in E:WoM that there's no reason not to... except for the fact that all elements are basically the same.

Here are my suggestions for this game, based on my experience in the industry and with similar titles in the past. I'm going to ignore what I believe are bugs, which would make this list endless, and only regard issues that seem to be intentional. Contribute, criticize, or dismiss as you like.

GUI/Controls:

Left-click, right-click, and double-click are very poorly utilized. Everything from controlling unit movement to building structures in cities is unintuitive and inefficient. Many menus that should be accessible via right-click are not, and double-click is sometimes inexplicably expected or woefully unnecessary.
There should be additional unique cursors for unit movement, unit attack, unit garrisoning, when hovering over an impassable space with no notable features, when hovering over a building that have functions, and combining/splitting movements.
Splitting, combining, and controlling unit stacks is at first confusing, and even after understood, simply annoying.
Menus needs to become be more intuitive with their access, concise on their function, and clear in their effects. Choosing a tech-tree to study, for example, is poorly represented by the menu. The player inventory is difficult to access, and all functions involving items are confusing or lousy.
It is unclear why the button to cast spells appears with items, and not in "actions" along with shopping. The lower bar item menu is awful, and the action menu is silly. Why scroll through the next page of actions when they could have easily made everything fit at once or organized it in a better way? Why not right-click on a stack to perform many of their actions?
There must be more overt clarity on which kingdom a unit belongs to, whether they are a hero or not, their movement speed, how many moves they have remaining, and what action will occur when they land on a specific space.
Why does it even bother asking me if I want to see the spellbook or studying the next level of magic when the latter option is available in the first page of the spellbook? Why isn't it obvious which spells are new without having to analyze spell level? Why doesn't that pop-up which indicates I have gained a level in magic tell me which spells are new and send me to the book right away to choose to study more or cast something?

Magic:

Each element should be unique in some way.
Spell variety must be expanded and effects should be more interesting.

I ran out of time for today. I'll continue this later.

You may want to wait until it's done to criticize or contribute.

But no one will stop you!

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I shall talk about another great game I had hoped would be paid homage to - Alpha Centauri

In Alpha Centauri you also have the ability to change the world you live in. You can raise land, you can lower it. You can terraform. You can raise some mountains and change weather patterns that way, causing your enemies (or opponents, or just neighbours) to endure a drought. In Elemental you start with such powerful spells - but why ? Just to make space for your city ?

In Alpha Centauri you could design your own units. You can do the same in Elemental, but units all seem rather bland. It does not matter whether you equip your units with brown horses or black horses or wargs - you just get a +1 movement.

Government could be designed in Alpha Centauri. Did you want a police state, or rather a free liberal state full of scientists ? Did you want to nerve clamp all those drones toiling away ? You could do that. In Elemental you are the supreme ruler - but you have no way of influencing how your little kingdom or empire is run.

In Alpha Centauri you could load up missiles with planet busters and create giant craters, wiping out all human life in an area, and pissing off the wildlife. In Elemental you can raise a mountain or a volcano. Every Sovereign is a weapon of mass destruction, or at least potentially, and yet all they can manage is to freeze a settlement for a turn, or put a volcano somewhere ? The reason Sovereigns are using armies shouldn't be that they need them, but that two Sovereigns duking it out could really hurt the world. A lot.

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Agreed -the ui in this game is a bit off - many things are hard to reach or at the very least time consuming

casting a spell is - click spell icon - turn to page of the spell in question - click spell - click cast spell - click exit spell book - click target - repeat.

i would suggest Hot icons for this - give each sovereign a 5 custom slotted button that allows them to do all the above - except click target - and hence forth it will go as such.

click spell - click target. done.

More city information would also be nice - like a colored dot on the city (left bar) UI to show (yellow dot) for each caravan spot availeble in the city
this would make it easier to know/remember to build those caravans! (especially on Empire)

I agree also on the magic deal - it seems like each school is just a (grafical) difference compared to each other - i would also like more benefits/disavantages to each school - and then raise the price on them all - (or simply do the MoM way and add books

And yes the cursors can be improved alot - and move markers also - currently they are blue same as your city - so if you have a unit going to a city andf you forgot where you had it going - good luck spotting that move marker in all that! - i would suggest making it bright white (mayhap even with animation) and or foot prints leading TO the move marker!

and yes more focus on the whole essence and how to gather it - store it - boost it.

hope to read more from ya

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