Alright, I'm going to go ahead and make a little noise about something that I haven't seen mentioned too much in the forums, but is a big deal for me. I apologize because this is a repost (I hadn't seen this thread at the time), but I wanted to be sure it caught the eye of the devs, if just for a second.

Important note: First, I like this game. I think it's a brave concept, and any time you put forth a new idea, it's hard to get just right. I applaud you for going this route, and the following post is honest, hopefully constructive, criticism in the spirit of making the game more enjoyable.

Basically, it comes down to this: I played Civ4 for the first time the other day, and I was just stunning at the amount of strategic depth it has relative to this game. What makes strategy games fun for me is planning and succeeding at pulling off those plans (or not!). But, in Elemental, I've found that my basic strategy is exactly the same for every game of Elemental that I play.


1) Build a garrison and a few pioneers.

2) Control resources. There's a negligable cost for spamming outposts and a significant opportunity cost for not doing so.

3) If 2) is done well, race up the warfare tree, with a little bit of Civilization thrown in. Concentrate arcane research on spells appropriate for shard possession.

4) Fight.

5) Win.

6) Stifle a yawn and a vague feeling of disappointment at the lack of meaningful choices I have to make during gameplay.



On the other hand, I can sit with a turn of Civ 4 for /at least/ 5 minutes developing my strategy.

-City Management: Since production (in the broad sense of building/training/research) is limited by population in Civ and training and building are completed in the same queue, I can try to rush out a settler and grab some land early, let my population grow a bit, or produce a worker to develop the land a bit. I can focus on early Wonders, or concentrate on developing an infrastructure that will allow me to grab the later, better ones. In Elemental, population growth, training, and building all procede independantly, so it doesn't much matter what I do. Sure, I build a workshop before study because I need the materials, but it turns out to be the same pattern pretty much every time. Strategy in city management is really minimal right now.
 

-Warfare: Civ4 has a much richer combat system- and they only use one stat to do it! Now, I wouldn't want Elemental to go the one stat route, but I think it illustrates that there is plenty of room for improvement. In Elemental, one unit will beat another, hands down, or it won't- but the difference is random. In Civ4, there is a "soft counter" for everything, and that system rewards a well thought-out mix of units in an army. Essentially, what war in Elemental boils down to is this: if my randomly alloted number of gold mines allows for me to have better quality or quantity of units than Faction Y, I win. If not, I still ususally win (but the tactical AI is another story, and hopefully will be fixed). So, designing units is fun, but when I go to war, I leave my brain behind.


-Research: I actually really like what Elemental has done here by seperating the "lines" of research. However, there could certainly be some "cross-line" requirements. As of right now, the research cost algorithm goes something like this:

Pacing_multiplier x [Tech_level_multiplier x Tech_level^Tech_level_exponent]

If the tech lines were more fully developed and had cross-line requirements this would add quite a bit of replayability. Adding another term to the above equation that multiplied current tech cost by the player's total tech level would encourage some diversification (to get requirements) but reward players for staying "focused" on the techs they need to implement their strategy. So, the equation would look something like this:

Pacing_multiplier x [Tech_level_multiplier x Tech_level^Tech_level_exponent] x [Constant_to_be_balanced x Total_tech_level]


-Champions: Civ 4 had a wonderful system for Great People. You could choose to do many different things with them, and they were all tough choices. Having champions in Elemental take some ideas from the Great People concept would really help make them more than jsut another unit that provides a small bonus. I would even be alright if not all of them were combat oriented. I never liked sending my nerds and farmers out on the front line. Maybe they could level up outside of combat and their abilities (bonuses to food production, administration, etc.) could be based on thier stats.?



So. Stardock. I really want to like this game, but right now it just feels like "Strategy for Dummies". I'm begging you, please consider adding a little bit of depth to this game.


And, if that's too much to ask, maybe you would consider improving our ability to mod the game. That way, I can just make the game I want to play myself and shut up about it.

Bravo!

As I might have mentioned before, if you try to reinvent the wheel, all you're going to end up with is a very bumpy ride.

Innovation is great.  But Civilization and MoM are both GREAT games (well the former is a franchise) in their own rights and some "flattery" (aka plagiarism) wouldn't be undue here.  Play a game of MoM for the feel of persistent, powerful and all-encompassing magic.  Elemental: War of *MAGIC* should strive for this level of world infusing magic, especially since the sovereign is tasked with bringing magic back to the world!

I'll say it again...  innovation is great, but not when you're doing it just to say you did.  Trying to recreate the various standards of TBS gaming from the ground up (and trying to be different) hasn't worked well.

Which beta were you talking about? I don't remember an economy downgrade in beta, but that just might be because I joined after that already happened.

I have one suggestion for the tactical battle window.  Find a copy of SPI's (= Simulations Publications, Inc, defunct paper game company for the 70's) prestages tactical series (Pre 17th century tactical operational level combat).  They, using a very simple system, did a wonderful job of simulating battles from greek hoplites, all tha way thru agincourt.  Introducing flanking, rear attacks, attackes from multiple sides - enflades, (basically, 'facing' for combat units - not individuals) real archer (fire) units of various types, fortifying on the tac window, fog of war, etc.  This would allow for real tactics, luring opponet into a crossfire, or setting up a cav charge to break morale, etc. 

Since you don't have an internet connection at home, you can use anywhere.impulsedriven.com from a machine with a good internet connection to login to your impulse account and download the latest patch. You will want to obtain the impulse bits and possibly .Net 2.0 depending on your machine's OS age and status of updates.  Copy the lot to a sufficently large USB stick and you should be good to go.

Instructions from the  Impulse User Guide below: 

Impulse Anywhere

Impulse Anywhere allows you to access the software you purchased through Impulse via a web browser. The purpose of this is to allow those with computers either not connected to the internet or who cannot handle large downloads to install software from Impulse. This is how it works:

1. Create an Impulse account (or use an existing account) and purchase software through the Impulse store. This may include using Impulse on a computer connected to the internet, or through the web-based Impulse Store (www.impulsedriven.com).
2. Using a computer connected to the internet, login to Impulse Anywhere (anywhere.impulsedriven.com) using your Impulse account.
3. Select the software you purchased and want to install on the other computer. Download the file, as well as Impulse itself.
4. Store the files on a USB flash drive or other device to transport to the other computer.
5. Then install Impulse and the software using the downloaded installer and any associated data file(s).

Requirements:

The computer you are installing this offline software to must have:

• Impulse installed on it. (A link to download it will be provided by Impulse Anywhere.)
• Microsoft .NET Framework v2.0 is required. (A link to download it will be provided by Impulse Anywhere.)
• Some form of internet access may be required to unlock/activate your product.

Also please be aware of any system requirements for both Impulse and the software product you are purchasing, that the computer meets or exceeds those requirements.

PS. ahh SPI, brings back fond memries of high school. (I may even have a copy of Gondor around somewhere, along with the Canadian Civil War) Old grognards don't die, they just carry the scars of a thousand paper cuts.

Have fun with the update!

I like Stardock and i like the attitude they have toward their customers.

But the more i read the threads they open to  get feedback, the more i have the feeling they should just not do this.

They should sit down, create thier own vision of the game and stick to it. Give feedback on the progress, but dont ask for opinion. You will get just to many to filter in any useable form.

Thats IMHO and therefor should be ignored, too.

Don't worry, around here idea-based feedback ain't doing anything aside from cluttering the forum. Keep reading it and you'll get the point.

This "gimme feedback" thread is not the first nor is it the last. (anyone's making bets on when the next one coming?) You see, the dev. team have mastered the art of "back and forth" so they only give one ounce of back for 10-40 ounces of forth.

From the analysis of their thread-fu I'd say they focus on dodging posts and the few they make themselves they focus on provoking more posts from us. Some of us tried pointing out the flaws of this technique, but it doesn't look like those posts hit the spot either.

So don't worry, when dev. team says "give us feedback" that means "keep daydreaming, we're to busy to actually communicate".

Gee, what the heck is happening with SD lately...

Anyway, sorry for being rude, but the previously said is exactly how local communication policy feels recently. I hope the atmosphere here will get better. In any case, my grump-o-meter shows that the time for me hit the breaks is long overdue. Got to calm down...

No, that's REFINEMENTS to the original wheel with all it's stone age glitz and glory (if one is to buy into that damnable caveman propoganda).  It's still round and rotates on a central point.

REINVENTING it goes off into all sorts of crazy territory involving hexagons, octagons and possible dodecagons...  oh the horror.  Maybe even a couple of Platonic solids thrown in just 'cause someone was feeling cheeky.

[quote="post"]

I'm putting up this thread as a way for us to just generally talk about the game, brain storm ideas for the future, etc.

[/quote]

I think a great idea that someone had in another thread that I strongly agree with which will make the game enjoyable to the widest possible range of players and is great from a sales perspective is the concept of increasing the pre-game "world" settings so that individual players can better tailor the game to their liking. Right now, we basically have two pre-game user defined settings, one to tailor the sovereign for the RPG aspect of the game (50 point stats with at least 4/5 different categories [at roughly 12 elements per category] to dump the points into to create our personalized sovereign), and the second "world" creation settings that tailor for the TB-strategy aspect of the game (3 choices: world size, difficulty, # of opponents).

Currently the sovereign aspect is great from my POV, but the "world" design can be significantly improved to provide more variability for additional enjoyment than is currently possible now. The following should be added:

1) Degree of magic (for a more vs less magic world): I suggest three settings: high, medium, low. At each of these settings the mana-cost of spells and regeneration is affected. For example, using the spells teleportation & fireball as examples: mana costs to cast are as follows: fireball(5/7/9), teleport(5/10/15) and basic per-turn mana regeneration would be (3/2/1). Hence the "High" magic world would mostly be influenced by spells and spell-casting while the “low” magic world would be mostly decided by troops, squads, archers, etc. “Medium” is between the two extremes.

2) Resource availability: I suggest at least 4 or 5 levels where the way it currently is the average level. The AI needs to be able to cope on the low resource level, arbitrarily give it more resources if that's what it takes (a good AI trumps everything, period). Also, this should be linked to 1) only for magic-related tiles, i.e. for low magic, only 1 of each shard should exist in the game plus maybe 2 crystals, perhaps triple this amount for high and double for low.

3) World type, in addition to world sized have 5 or 6 different world types to choose from (continental-flat, continental-mtn, continental-lakes, "hot" world which has more marsh, swamps, volcanoes, "cold" world with more tundra, glaciers, iceburgs, etc, "moderate" world which would be similar to what we have now).

4) Monster breeding: high, medium, low. “High” would be wandering monsters everywhere like the first version of the game. “Low” would be the way it is now. “Medium” is somewhere in-between. Also, the “resource availability” setting from 2) affects how much is gotten in loot from monsters with “high” being booty the way the game first was & “low” being the way it is now. You can thus have high booty but few monsters, or many monsters but low booty. Each player can tailor the monster aspect of the game to his/her liking, satisfying the enjoyment level of the most possible people.

5) Adding 15/20 more resources, as I suggested here from another thread:

6) Increase the number of unique monster sites and weapons that are only available as recruiting sources for particular kingdoms/empires/factions. All kingdoms/empire/factions should have at least one unique monster that can be recruited after sufficient research, assuming they’ve found the site. Also, all factions should have at least one unique weapon that others don’t have. Example: umber maybe should get a “Damascus sword that does more damage,” maybe yithril gets a “samaurai sword” that has much more speed (3 attacks per turn). In general, I would like to see more weapons, shields, and armor with more diversity & less top-of-the-tree be&end all weapons. Every weapon should have a good counter specifically for that type of weapon to prevent this kind of effect. Bows should be significantly hindered by terrain .. I should not be able to fire past the initial line of trees, why I can shoot cedar longbow deep into the woods is beyond me. Even the first tree should provide a 90% defense bonus vs archers. Some monsters like serpents should be stronger in marsh/swamp.

4) Having a turn based or real-time option for tactical combat would be great for those that want an "epic" scale game, yet is still satisfying to those who like to micromanage the battle as it currently is.  This would probably be too difficult to implement, hence it's last on my list of suggestions.

A last suggestion: I would make swamp mp cost 1.5, should be a little more than open ground but not as heavy as forests.

Doing all these things could provide something for everyone, and make the game more enjoyable to the majority of players. Those that love a “monster rich” booty environment ripe for harvesting are satisfied, and those that like a “monster poor” but expansion-spam friendly environment are satisfied (AI should be able to expand more on this setting too). Those that want an environment where city growth is significantly difficult can choose “resource poor” making it difficult to build more that a handful of cities, say.

Players would have a huge ability to create the kind of world they want to play on with these settings; this would be awesome.

Rather than spending their limited time on pure content, I would rather they build us the tools to make it easier to make more content ourselves (quests, creatures, etc).  That should be the communities job.

Why don't some of you focus on moving forward then whining about what they did or didn't, getting petty now.  Can't move forward if you have to continue to dwell on the past.

Dungeons were originally planned but they had to scrap them during design, Frogboy has stated that he still wants to add dungeons to the game at a later date.

Well, if you insist.

The Map
At the start of the game the map feels empty to me. I know you are going for a barren 'the world has been destroyed' feel, but it is just to much. It doesn't really matter where you start, as long as there are a few good resources nearby. During the game the map starts to fill up, not just with player built structures, but also with stuff unlocked by researching certain technologies. The worst part about this, to me, is that it feels so random. Again it doesn't really matter where you are, stuff will pop up. Either mostly inside your own territory (resources, neutral races) or all over the map (quest locations). Below I will make some suggestions that could help with this, making the world seem more 'alive' (though still post-cataclysmic).

Monster lairs
First of all, bring back the monster lairs that were in the Beta. They can give much flavor to an area simply by being there. A nearby swamp is no longer just a swamp when it has a Skath lair in it, it is the Skath infested area that you will need to avoid at first, until you find a way to deal with them. Same thing for bandits, spiders, trolls, etc. These monster lairs would be one of the challenges you face when expanding your kingdom, which would help with the feeling that you are reclaiming the lands for civilization. To make sure that these lairs stay a challenge they should start out relatively weak, but slowly grow during the game.

Neutral races
Secondly, place neutral races (like darkling villages) on the map at game start. I feels a bit silly to me that these just appear inside your territory when you research the corresponding tech. So have them on the map and make them behave like monster lairs. To stay with the Darklings, they should defend their villages, attack anyone that enters 'their' territory, and perhaps spawn raiding parties that will attack nearby players from time to time, making them more of a threat than your average stay-at-home monster.

In fact, I would go as far as suggesting making monster lairs and neutral races completely the same. They should just go about their business as usual, but their spawning site could be captured and used by a player that has done the right research. This way one man's 'monster' could be another man's ally. To keep things interesting the techs for recruiting certain races shouldn't always show up in every game. So while the tech for recruiting darklings would be pretty common for empires, the tech 'Skath taming' should only show up once every other game or so.

Quest sites
You might notice a pattern here; quest sites should also be on the map at the start. Maybe not all of them, but certain special ones like the big dark tower (I forget it's name) should be. Not only do they look good, but they could also add something to the game. If there is a random event that spawns a pack of demons at the tower, you might want to avoid building a city near it. Or you might want to protect it, as your enemies could use whatever is inside it to summon a whole legion of demons. Not all sites need to be as dramatic as this obviously.

Dynamic spread of revitalised land
In the beta you always had to use your sovereign to found new cities because you had to revitalise the land. I'm glad it was changed because it wasn't much fun. However the current system has gone to much into the other direction, because now the sovereign is only needed for the first town. Pioneers can build a city everywhere, and the land inside their influence will be revitalised. This removes the 'I'm restoring the world for civilisation' feeling.

How about allowing the revitalised land to speak beyond your towns influence, and if possible having this process be influenced by the environment and the distance to the point where you cast the spell? It would spread at a normal rate over land, faster near rivers and coasts, slower over hills and through forests (maybe a bit counter-intuitive, but it would require more 'energy' to revitalise all that biomass. Besides, you need some boundaries, and itkeeps forests 'spooky' longer) and glacially slow over mountains, deserts and artic areas. Pioneers should only be able to build new outposts on already revitalised land, or outposts should only be able to grow when they are on revitalised land. Either way will give a more 'natural' growth of factions, following natural boundaries like mountain ranges and deserts. And if you want to expand the currently revitalised lands, you will either have to wait until life has spread to that area, or cast Revitalise there.

I know that that this suggestion is a lot more far out than my previous ones, and I can imagine this requiring a lot of computing power. Maybe the calculations could be done once every couple of turns, representing the passing of seasons.

Give the terrain value
Another problem with revitalised land is that it has no value in and of itself, as another poster has pointed out here. The only tiles that you use are the ones with a resource on it, the rest of it is just empty space. I know this was done because you wanted open spaces rather than having the whole world tamed/civilised, but maybe it has gone to much into the opposite direction. Giving each tile a use would be a bad idea though, as it would encourage filling the world with cities and improvements like civ4 does. Maybe an in between solution could be found..

The one thing I could think of are fertile lands; farming requires huge tracks of land, yet fertile lands are always just one tile. This may be fine for mines and sush, but not for farm land; even the smallest of outposts are two or three times as big when they have a few buildings. This just doesn't feel right to me. How about making fertile land a terrain type that you would find not in single tiles, but in area's of various sizes. Some stretched out areas along river banks, more grouped in a valley, centered around a magical site, etc. When you build a town nearby you can start building farms on it, or maybe this is done automatically.

Scale
This brings me to another point, the scale of the map and the things on it. Scaling is always difficult in 4X games, but in Elemental some things are really off, like the aforementioned fertile lands being only one tile. Cities on the other hand are huge, easily spanning up to a dozen tiles. Yet the walking speed of the average humanoid is two tiles per turn. No matter what time scale you use, that just doesn't compute to me. Houses can be built in the time it takes to walk around a town, unless you walk through it, in which case movement is instantaneous.

Along with the change I proposed for fertile lands, I would suggest two things. One, increase the default movement speed to maybe three or four tiles per turn. My second suggestion is most likely not going to be a popular one; remove the on-the-map building of individual buildings. I liked the 'original' idea better; where you could build several buildings in a tile, and when you ran out of space you could expand into a new tile. This would lead to small towns being only one or two tiles big, while the larger cities use maybe half a dozen. I know that even if you would like to do this it is probablysomething for the long term like the second expansion or even a possible sequel, but I can dream right?

The Fallen lands
This is more of a graphical thing, but the fallen lands look too dead to me, even deader than the barren lands. The look would be fine for lands under the influence of a necromancer raising an undead horde and destroying all life in the process, but for a growing living empire it doesn't fit.

Random map generator
This has been suggested on the forums a lot, and in this thread as well but I wanted to include it anyway; improve the random map generator that is in the game. Allow for different map scripts, and more options like setting the amount of resources, the amount of monsters, number of minor factions, etc..

The economy
Frankly, the game's economy is way to simple and just plain boring. I know this isn't The Settlers or Dawn of Discovery and that is not what you should aim for, but right now the economic system is at a primary school level of difficulty. Most people playing this game are mature and intelligent enough to handle, and maybe even enjoy, a little complexity.

In my opinion the way to go is to have your economy revolve around your most valuable resource; your population. To say it is undervalued right now is an understatement, the only thing it is good for is providing soldiers and getting a city to the next level.

All buildings should require people to work there. And since people require food, the amount of food you can produce will determine how big your economy can get. As long as you don't have unlimited food, you will need to make decisions on what you want your people to do. This will also allow you to get rid off any arbitrary building limits for towns; you can only build something if you have enough people to work there.

Your population should also be your primary source of income for gold and research. By making a town more prosperous your tax income will rise, and by making it more learned your research will increase. Buildings shouldn't directly produce gold or research points, but rather influence how much gold and research each citizen of that town produces. If this is balanced right, a large, prosperous city could produce more gold and research than a hand full of towns with the same combined population. This would provide a deterrent to city spamming.

Research
This has been said on the forums on more than one occasion, but research should never, ever, be required to unlock game mechanics. If I want to come to an agreement with my neighbour not to smash each other's skulls in, I shouldn't have to research 'peace' first. Obviously I can talk to him, he's not an alien or something.

Likewise, if I have focused on the civilization tech tree and ignored the military one but have to go to war, I shouldbe able to produce a group of a hundred peasants, rather than a hundred individual ones. However, having them fight effectively as an unit should require research. A player that has focused on warfare should be able to train a group of twenty well equipped and well trained soldiers that can easily deal with my untrained and poorly equipped peasants.

Combat
Speaking of combat, let me just state for the record that I very strongly dislike the Tile-based YouGoIGocombat. I enjoyed it in the original Age of Wonders, but the novelty quickly wore off. I particularly dislike how one side's units just stand there while they are surrounded, attacked and killed. It's fine for board games, not for a grand strategy computer game. I would rather have seen Elemental try something different, like the originally intended Continuous turns, or X-Com's WeGo. I doubt (but still hope) this is going to change, but maybe for the sequel?

Magic
I'm not going deep into magic, it has been discussed more than enough all over the forums. I think the recently revealed system could work quite well. I would however like to suggest making the numbers involved bigger. So rather than having the sovereign generate 1 mana each turn, he should maybe produce five. This would give the player more choice, for instance in summoning two creatures that each require two mana to maintain, on one more powerful creature that requires five.

General thoughts

Sound
I made a post about this a while back, so I won't repeat everything in here. It is sufficient to say that Elemental's 'art', though quite good in the other departments, is lacking a bit in sound. There need to be more sound effects for events, and more ambient sounds for people, cities and buildings, and the environment.

That's it for now. It took quite a while to write all of this, so I hope you dev's are still reading.

Agreed Belmont35.

What I really can't believe is that they locked that thread by the Gorgon! Ok he was a little down on them but I agreed with so many things said in that thread (not just Gorgon's original post). I really feel that taking a big picture redesign of the game mechanics for a decent period of time is the only way to turn Elemental into a masterpiece.

By locking threads like hithe impression I get (hopefully incorrectly) is that they have no interest in this message and Stardock are hoping they can just tweak the game here and there and suddenly have it turn into a pure gold.

While that might be technically possible the odds of that happening are vanishingly small IMO. I don't say that because I doubt Stardock, I don't think any game developer can really turn out an A+ game by doing that.