Since the population is a global resource it could help if buildings of the same type increase the population cost in all cities. The reduction of the tiles per city esp. at lower levels would be another option.

Is the dodge chance high enough to make Dexterity useful?

I think all spells should be interesting and "super weapon" spells like Curgens Inferno are a mistake.

The wandering monsters remind me of the D&D dungeons

Wandering Monsters - I like that they group, but two things really stand out to me. First it seems like it happens immediately starting turn one, and that makes it REALLY difficult to stabilize your lands if enough spawn and group before you can deal with them. Second, it is just odd that you will wander into a group of two bandits, a bear, seven spiders, and an ogre. Is there a way to set a grouping preference so that monsters only gather with certain others, and only one or two types of monster per group? It just seems odd to wander around to non-stop instances of Barnum and Bailey's Wasteland Sideshow.

 

On the early monster spawning issue, it'd be nice if we had a few materials (5?) to start with, so we can build a defender for our first city immediately if we so choose.  Waiting for the Workshop to come online, plus a few more turns for the materials leaves your city vulnerable for far too long.

OR, maybe everyone should have one peasant stacked with their sovereign at the game start.  That way, you can leave him behind in your first city or risk leaving the city undefended.

A more uniform distribution of Materials around the map (Clay/Stone quarries, Old Growth Forests, etc.), might also be helpful.  If you don't have any nearby, and the goodie huts give you metal instead of materials, your early game REALLY slows down, and conversely if you hit the Materials motherlode in nearby Goodie huts, you end up with a strong early advantage.

I don't mind having bandits stacked with wolves, bears, and such.  But having wolves stacked with bears, shrills, and especially Spiders does seem odd at times.  If the grouping proves to be too strong, play balance wise, maybe a rule that creatures can only stack with similar creatures, but bandits, highwaymen, etc. still get to stack with them/acquire guard animals, might be a nice compromise.

Alternatively, just make the peasant cost no materials, just gold and population. This could be done by making the club cost only gold, and leave the staff as the early game weapon for those with materials.

But starting with a small amount of material would indeed be quite appreciate, at the very least to allow for the initial farm on turn 1 (instead of having to wait for 5 pop + workshop build time + 2 turns for the material).

I would like to add my impressions too. About 5 hours gameplay, medium map, extreme difficulty, AI at ridicilous difficulty. My last game was with 1.08n with almost the same setup except I had 'large map'

First, the setup was a lot better, there was only one AI placed right next to me, and what was even better: It was another fellow kingdom!!!! This is the first time the nearest AI was one of the same alignment as me. In the 1.08n game the closest 3 AI was all of opposite alignment, and 2 of them was placed too close.

Loot quests. 1.08n had a HUGE problem with quest litter. There was lost goods, graveyards and battlefields everywhere. In the short area between me and the two neighbour AI, the quests was  stacked knee-deep with 2-3 quests on every square. In this gameplay I have explored half the map. Killed two AIs and only seen a total of 8 quest, 3 being loot quests. Okay, that might be over-compensating! but it is still nicer than the quest litter. Now the problem is just a quest like "gather 3 moon stones", wait what: I have only seen ONE in 150 turns!.

I have lost my first hero, and my first city. The game is showing signs of putting  up a fight. The AI is obviously also cheating, so even minor gimped AI right next to you are a small challenge to beat. For some reason Irene had 25 attack, 15 defense, and 97 hit points. She single handedly destroyed two 4-men teams of the best equiped and best trained troops from the most powerfull faction in the world (mine). Insanity, but I set the AI at ridiculous difficulty so I can't complain for getting a bit of resistance, in the end she died anyway due to my willingness of sending wave after wave of man after her. What was even more interesting was that the cost of that particular war revealed itself, when the monsters grew larger and attacked and destroyed one of my cities, even though the city was defended with 2 well-armed men.

Pacing is also a lot better. For the first time in the 10 games of so I have played of Elemental, I have actually seen one of my children grow up before conquering the world, and I haven't even conquered half the world yet!

There are still tons of bugs though. There was graphical problems completely messing up the dynasty tree before reloading. Some technology descriptions are outdated meantioning features that have been moved to other tech. Balance is still shut, for most part of this playthrough all my armies and all my heroes has been equiped with "war staff", that's pretty boring. I would be willing to sacrifice a little for some variaty, but 9 attack just can not compete with 15 attack. Females are still unable to wear a huge amount of equipment. Horses are still non-existing, and of course lost libraries are truely lost.

Funny quirks I've noticed: I have plenty of crystal mines, and crystals make for a nice replacement for horses. There is a 1 crystal amylet that gives +1 movement! That is pretty neat. I even tried to find a use for short swords by combining them with a +2 attack amulet, but they still suck too much.

See. There is a difference between "making every decision count" at the beginning and "not having choices until turn 30 if you want to survive".

It bothers me immensely that on turn one my "choice" is to build a city and a beacon of hope, and then on turns 4 and 5 I lose all my production waiting for population (with no choice in the matter). Then, you have to build a workshop to have any other options. Now, its turn 8, you have 3 population, are just now generating materials, and you get to choose; protect your settlement and waste city production, or waste city production less and wait to do anything until you can build another building (probably a workshop while the farm gets built so you don't waste growth opportunity).

I'm all good with a difficult game. I'm not all good with a game that counts itself as a strategy game not allowing you any meaningful choices until 30 or so turns in if you want to have any prayer of actually playing the game.

I think it would be good to try out everyone starting with 5 materials.   However, what would the sides who now start with 10 materials and 10 metal start with if the default for any basic side is to start with 5 materials?

Best regards,
Steven.

I don't know how many times I have to repeat this point for people to understand the words coming out of my virtual mouth. The first 30 turns of Elemental have too much wasted Production (turns during which you are not producing something and receiving no benefit for it), and not enough legitimate choices.

Turn one, you either waste your time or build the beacon of hope (or empire equivalent). Always always on turns 4 and 5 you lose your production while you wait for population.

In Master of Magic, you are always producing SOMETHING with your cities production. You can build a quick spearman or two before your granary to defend your city better while you explore with two units. You can push through the barracks fast if you are going aggro with that city sooner. Yes you wait build times, but you get choices from turn one on on how you want to proceed. You get to start researching spells at a trickle rate on turn one, or you can choose to slow that down more and train skill or stock up on mana.

In Civ 2,3,4 and 5 you start the game with two or three good choices of things to build on turn one, and are always building SOMETHING. In fact, in Civ 4 and 5 early games, I generally find myself torn over which of my choices to make because there are several good ones (warrior or monument? Granary or settler?)

I can go on. Fact is, there is not one of these games that I have played which force a player down one universal select path for about 30 turns. There are a couple that allow you to waste production if you are careless or don't care, but all of them give you the capacity to make tough choices about your development in the first 10 turns of the game. Elemental does not allow us that.

As far as solutions go, I'm not sure that starting with materials is the answer. I've seen a suggestion to make clubs non-materials cost which sounds about right as I would never put them on a unit on purpose if I had an option. We could also have our first settler unit actually be a group of people so we start with 5 population in our capital city and are able to make legitimate choices from turn 1. I don't know the best way to fix it, but it is not "perfectly fine as is".

we are (and have been) looking for more ways to give players interesting choices in the early game (particularly the first 10-30 turns).  Look for some changes to this effect in the future...  For one I whole heartedly agree that you should start with a small amount of materials, not enough to neglect needing a workshop at some point soon but enough to give you options with your first couple buildings.

And once again Stardock listens to the community.  I never get tired of seeing this.