Hi everybody, I love this game. Yes it is horribly buggy at the moment but they will slowly work that out. Hey frogman, you knew this game was ambitious, so don't be disappointed if it takes longer that you though to get it perfect!

RPG ELEMENT:

IMO the RPG element is great and they won't have many problems improving that.

CITY SIM ELEMENT

Also I believe they will manage to balance the city-sim aspect of the game although that would mean to carefully balance every single building, since we definitely don't need all those 25% improvements to cities that just produce 1 gold or 1 material etc... Also I am a bit annoyed by the fact that I never end up to see  things like castles, since they are an advanced technology and you don't get them until the game is almost over. Castles are not a "difficult" thing that one has to study that long, they just take a long time to build and a lot of material. Even an outpost could be fortified that way no? And by the way, why should only level 4 cities be able to build the huge statue that is supposed to double the city's prestige? Prestige make city grow faster, but they are almost already at their max when I can finally get that: I'd say f you manage to research that tech, you should just be able to build it right away even in a small town... But I am not an expet of that kind of games so I should let others give suggetions in that area.

I am an expert of WARGAMES which is the aspect this game is less solid at

THE WARGAME ELEMENT

Warfare (and wargames) is based on on combat and movement, the combat system is obviously slow (animations should clearly be sped up and maybe an initiative system a la Heroes of M&M should be introduced. Go study the spells in that game: they are all useful and not redundant!!). The tile map doesn't help the realism, hexes are there for a reason in most regular wargames, but since the Frogman don't like them, let me throw this idea at him, just for fun: in certain more advanced systems the whole concept of a tile/hex map was removed by introducing the idea of distance. The Warhammer battle system is an example of that: units just move around the map based on their speed (in the tabletop battle system they measure each movement counting the inches a unit can advance each turn). After all in RTS games there are no tiles, and in real warfare if you are wrong at figuring out whether your unit will reach or not a particular position you are in trouble, Napoleon at Waterloo didn't have hexes to count in order to be sure that his cavalry would get back in time to save him... And it did not. (Not sure if it can be implemented in the future, just an idea, which has never been done in TBS games, but as I said RTS games don't have hexes and they still work)

PLEASE MAKE TELEPORT OPTIONAL - Age of Wonders Shadow Magic survives to this day because of that, and because of PBEM

!!!!! Play By E-Mail IS A MUST! I doubt anyone will ever manage to play a whole game of Elemental in LAN, at least not on large maps! Go see the Age of Wonders Shadow Magic Forum, that game came out in 2003 and they still play it by email !!!!! PLEASE PRETTY PLEASE !!!!! (in order for it to be playable I suggest units to be a little faster than they are, so that there are no boring initial turns where nothing happens, and of course all battlkes that are done between players are auto-resolved, but that is not too bad if heroes don't die too easily)

I have followed all the creative process between AOW Wizard Throne and AOW Shadow Magic I know very well that PBEM and Optional Teleport are a must (Teleport can destroy the strategy of a  game, by having super stack jumping around everywhere. The first AOW had a teleport spell similar to the one in Elemental and all game ended up being the same: The strategy became trying to get that one spell and then jumping around the map. ALL THE WORK IN MAKING THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE MAP INTERESTING WAS WASTED! It was no fun anymore there was only one super stack appearing everywhere. Epic maps are great because if it takes me 20 turns to bring my sovreign somewhere then he is stuck there. A mistake is a mistake a risk is a risk. Coming back from war in the ancient times was a long toughexperience (they wrote the Odyssey about that).

The AI - (obviously the toughest thing to program... just let me throw a couple of ideas to you)

The AI should be aggressive and team up against players who display an expansionist attitude (the old TBS game "Warlord" used to do that and worked quite well). I like the fact that you cannot exchange technologies, that is a major way to exploit the AI in most games. Also be careful with diplomatic points, I can just give a bunch of them to a enemy and he gives me everything he has... before I kill him.

The AI should learn to use the boats so that we can finally see island and terrain that is not just contorted stripes of land.

And all that you already know.

Best wishes Frogdude - This is the best TBS ever created, don't be disappointed for now: it is just not finished.