I still think global mana is a good idea. The problem is they swung between 2 extremes. From one where every champion was tossing like magic like crazy to one where the Soverign was one of the few sources of mana and generating only +2!!! (I remember when frogboy first posted he said +1 then backtracked when people blasted him and he say it was just an example... well.. +2 isn't much better!)

Again take a leaf out of the game it is supposed to be a spriritual succuessor

a) Increase the base rate , in MOM, each spell book chosen increases the mana (actually power generation). 

You no longer select spell books at the start, but at least allow the soverign to pick talents that increase this? Or tie it to some stat. That's the reason why I think it's was a missed opportunity for them to remove the Wisdom stat. Add more strategic choice to start of game!!

Allow some form of conversion

In MOM you could use alchemy to convert gold to mana.

Alchemy makes a lot of sense for EWOM, I think, especially if combined with a sovereign trait that increases mana generation.  Got lots of extra mana?  Turn it to gold!  Lots of extra gold?  Turn it to mana!  All at a horrible exchange rate...  Unless you build alchemy labs in your cities to make the transformation more effective.

Alchemy is already in the game, and does exactly what you're asking.

Although I don't think you can convert gold to mana.

Best regards,
Steven.

I don't think you're wrong, just coming from a different POV than mine. To a large extent, it's the similarities that have me frustrated. I wanted a new game from the team that brought me a space game I love. Instead, I feel like Elemental is more or less GC2.5 tarted up with nice fantasy artwork.

Very likely, part of my customer/critic problem is that Brad and I have very different ideas about what 'content' is and how important it should be in a themed TBS game. GC1 lost me quickly because it had almost no content. GC2 won my lasting affection because it took great strides to overcome that problem with the Terrans-only version of the game. Only lately have I begun to appreciate that Brad's perspective is not exactly a great weakness so much as a reflection of the fact that Stardock makes most of its money building practical software, not toys. People use practical software to build games, but the best TBS games come from good tools finding their way into the hands of people with, ahem, a strong vision of the game world they want to create. Basically, I tend to think that The Engine Ate The Magic.

I can't even make myself start a 'proper' 1.1 game because the change logs make clear that they are moving forward with tragically gamy things like the Mobility and Terraforming spell books. If that doesn't reek of tech-trumping-magic at a design level, well, I'd hate to smell what really got the job done. And it will be a long while, if ever, before I get over the Inscrutable Error of reducing essence to a mere yes/no flag. MoM, like many a fantasy game, had magical elements as a theme. Nothing I know of had something like the original mana-essence distinction, and nothing has been sadder about the beta process than seeing the devs abandon their own brilliant innovation.

All this talk of Death magic gave me an idea:

If you choose death magic, you start off with a few units (skeletons, zombies, what have you) and the only way to get more is to resurrect actual units that die in the game.

At first you would get just creeps, but as the game wore on you would get normal units.

(You can already get bandits and such when a city levels up.)

Maybe you would have to build certain buildings to resurrect different creature types.

You would have to play it more like the typical RPG magic-user, start off weak and timid, but build up to a very powerful mid to late game player.

The game just currently lacks magical content.  I've read that Stardock realizes this but i just hope that they realize how important it really is!  Now that the core game has been setup and the bugs are gone and the game is stable i really hope they work on the magic part.  After that i would focus on more creatures differences, between races and racial abilities.  

Step one:Magic

then things like "Why does every race look like a human but with different colors.  Even the stone looking people are just reskinned models of a human.

or

more creatures or faction differences possibly even faction specific technologies/units.

If you look in the mod section, you will realize that the game's engine is surprisingly powerful and able to accomodate ALOT of stuff.

It's a huge contrast to how..barren..I'm afraid to say, that the basic game is.

EWOM suffers from a dearth of creativity. Install the Adventure Mod and the Expanded Faction Mod, and you can see what the game REALLY should be. 

Expanded Factions:https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/elemental_war_of_magic/11/

Adventure Content Pack:https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/elemental_war_of_magic/12/

Playing with mods has made me realize how astoundingly well programmed this game is. Stardock has EXCELLENT EXCELLENT programmers on the team. It's just a shame they haven't invested as much in content creators! I guess that's what comes of having business software making the majority of your revenue...

Wow these look great!  Ill download them now!

The problem is horribly ironic for me, given my general love of open, accessible software systems. And it's not even that they've been that skimpy on the spending for 'content' folks--there's been a steady stream of good visuals, nice background sounds, and a decent stab at music. The rub is that no art, not even dada, exists in a vacuum. It needs a context, and for a fantasy TBS, that context needed at least a few rules that were hands-down givens, not 'details' that could get written in or out because of a ruckus around a given deliverable deadline.

p.s. I've ranted previously about the Let Them Eat Mods problem, and I still think it's a problem, but I'm definitely more sympathetic about how it happened in a shop where primary revenues flow from building tools, not toys. Alas, that sympathy does nothing to reduce my frustration at the base game feeling like magic is just sci-fi tech in fantasy drag.

Very good point about building practical software. I think you just put your finger on why they have so much trouble. The weird thing is Brad tends to point out (correctly) it's not difficult to come up with rules that are fun without necessarily executng it, yet SD seems to be good at execution but not the fun/magic bit.. very odd and fustrating...

Agreed, this is a small thing but if nothing shows the mindset they have. 

There's quite a lot of interesting potential in EWOM to go beyond MOM including

1) Going tech vs magic

2) Building a warrior type soverign vs a wizard type soverign

But currently it's not even a serious choice ... Right now.. I'm still pinning my hope on Derik.

Supposedly 1.1 will be his baby. If 1.1 is not even 70% as good as MOM.. I dont think it will ever get there

  I've spent 50+ hours  trying to go magik with a wizard Sov. Its doable on "normal" but not much fun at all... while at Ridiculous it is impossible. I'm curious if anyone out there has been able to go magik successfuly up the dificulty settings tree?

  Sure when the AI is better I may feel some sort of challenge on normal/hard... but atm even ridiculous is ridiculously EASY with weapons & armor. And as you all already know from my posts... I'm pulling out what little hair remains on my head in frustration because magik is unplayable.

My number one issue with this game is that it's boring. There, I said it. And if you haven't freaked out yet and are typing an angry respnose about haters, Civ-fanboys and so on, let me explain.

First, look at the title. Elemental: War of magic. War. Of magic. Two spellcasters throwing fireballs at each other are just a simple fight. We are talking war. That means armies of spellcasters and magical creatures clashing together and destroying everything that gets between them. Cities are blown to pieces, mountains are sunk into the oceans, oceans boiling, basically the whole world almost being destroyed in the process. And what did we get instead? The occasional fireball and +1 sword. That's underwhelming, to say the least.

But nevermind that, let's look at the magical creatures. Surely they have them, right? I mean this is a spiritual successor to Master of Magic, right? Well, sort of. You can get some magical creatures later, but not many. And even then they are very late in the game. We hear all the time about monsters roaming the wilderness, but  have anyone actually seen any? Giant spiders don't count. Bears and wolves are animals, not monsters. I want a large section of the map to be dedicated giants. I want to go into a lair full of giantic ants. I want an army of lizardmen threatening my kingdom. Master of Orion and Galactic Civilizations had whole factions of aliens, so why can't Elemental have whole factions based around monstrs? Why are every single faction human?

Which leads us to customization. What's the point? We have a dozen factions of humans, yet they are all the same. Some have blue skin, but that's just cosmetic stuff. Both Fallen and, um, un-Fallen (forgot their name) have the same spells, the same units and the same skills. The gameplay is fun, but it gets dull fast if there aren't any variation,.

So what about the roleplaying stuff, then? Surely that has to be the thing they focused on? Um... no. Go there, fight that, pick up that. Repeat ad inifinite. I stopped reading quest descriptions a long time ago simply because I failed to see a point. They all send me to some other place, and once I'm there, I some times fight stuff, sometimes don't. They are all the same. Why can't someone send me to slay a dragon? What about an army of undead rising somewhere? What about saving the usual damsell in distress? For all I know I might have done all of that withiout noticing. If you can't tell the difference between slaying a horde of dragons and slaying a horde of small rats, there has to be something very wrong somewhere.

So I stand for what I said. Elemental is boring. It has a lot of potential and could one day be far better and more popular than even Civilization, but right now it's dull, uninspired and lacks any variation what so ever. Oh, sure, I got my lizardmen and undead factions through mods, but we shouldn't have to. And for that matter, when I got the collector's edition in the mail, I got a sweet tin dragon with it. So... where are the dragons in the game? Are there any? How the f*** can a fantasy-game called War of magic fail to have dragons in it?

Agree with OP.  I can say from doing a little modding work that when it come to magic, particle effects are okay and some interesting things can be done, but spell mechanics are very limited.  Mostly, they affect unit and city stats (like hit points, strength, food production), and there are a few abilities that move your unit to another square, and then not much other than that.  That is what the game engine has to work with right now.

For affecting unit damage, there are ways to set minimum damage and maximum damage per strike, but after that, there is no way to randomize spell effects, like say you were affecting another stat such as strength.  Now, the engine/xml files are capable of a good deal of randomization like we see with particle effects--that has a pretty good randomization system--but it isn't available in spell definitions.  Magic by nature benefits from a level of randomness which the XMLs don't accomodate.  Another thing--with area of effects, the area is measured with a radius.  It should be measured with a diameter to give a broader range of areas.  For example, with the current system you cannot have an area of effect with a diameter of 3, which would be a sensible size given the map sizes we are dealing with.

For particle effects it would be nice to have the ability to use 3D images in the effect, and also to rotate 2D images in 3D space.  Also to cut off spells at a defined time, even if the particle effect is still lingering, just to shut it off--that would help to keep the momentum of tactical combat brisk without compromising the appearance of spell effects.  Also lighting effects with particle effects would be great.

Then there needs to be a lot of new abilities, for example polymorphing a unit, or turning a unit invisible to the opposing side, stuff like that, to bring the game up to speed compared to other games with spells. 

Point being, I think it is going to take a full expansion to tweak the mechanics enough to make spells interesting.  So, we need to keep making noise about it.

1. Yes. Only the original

2. YES!  It was slow & boring. In another thread about disappointments GalCiv II is my 3rd worst game I bought for full price.

1. Yes, I played all of them except the last.

2. Yes and no. The ship customization was awesome, and you haven't 'cleaned up' the galaxy until you have done so with an army of intergalactic vaccuum cleaners the size of a planet. The AI was pretty good, especially after an expansion or two. The only thing I found a bit boring was the campaign and combat. But then again I didn't play the campaign much (because it was boring, and I only play these games for the sandbox anyway), and the combat was very much acceptable.

I fail to see your point, though. Why not ask if we have played one of Sid Meier's games? _(Civ, Colonization, Alpha Centauri?) What about Sword of the Stars? Master of Orion? X-Com? I've literally played all of them and liked most of them. Sword was a bit dull as it focused too much on combat and not enough on the strategy, so it felt like a Master of Orion Light. A casual GalCiv, if you want. It wasn't bad, just not deep enough. While it seems odd to mention X-Com in this circumstance, it's not that different. We build a few bases instead of planets and fight with a six-man squad instead of six-hundred ship fleet, but the gameplay is very much the same in most ways. And then there's Heroes of Might and Magic, while I remember it. and Art of Magic. They are all turn-based, but the combat is very similar to Elemental. And don't forget King's Boundy. I've only played Armored Princess, but it's a brilliant mix between Diablo and the combat from HoMM.

My point is I've played far more games than I want to count, and Elemental fails to entertain me for long. It suffers from the 'do one thing great or several things ok?' curse. If you focus on just one thing, you can be really good at it. On the other hand, you won't get much variation, and it could quickly become boring. If you focus on a lot of things, you get a lot more variation. But then again since you focus on too much, you won't do anything great. Just a lot of things 'good'. Which doesn't have to be bad, of course, but it's not great either.

After playing quite a lot, I don't exactly regret getting the kickass box or Julia the tin-dragon. (that's right. I named her.) I just wish we had a better game to go with it. There are so many great games out today that you shouldn't accept 'ok' games. Go for the best of the best.  You not only deserve to give yourself the best you can, but the whole game industry deserve to get a kick in the bee-hind and force itself to produce quality games. We have so many tripple-A games coming out today that it's time to spice it up to quadruple-A games. Doulbe-A games simply aren't good enough. If you have Super Mario Galaxy, why would you settle for Super Mario World? (bad example as SMW is awesome, but you get the idea.)

I could, but none of them are by SD

As someone in the thread noted, EWOM is bad by SD standards due to instability and poor AI, 2 areas they are relatively good at based on GalCiv2. But complaining about boring game mechanics, to some extent might be expected since they are following mostly GalCiv mechanics.

Ship customization is pretty fun to see for the coolness factor, but it did not really affect game play (at least for the original, I didn't play the expansions). This is mirrored a little by how you can customize units, your sovereign looks etc in EWOM but no effect either (and not as cool).. Strangely enough EWOM goes one step further allowing you to design units, but the way it works is currently pointless as well.

You say you found combat a bit boring in Galciv 2, guess what's boring in EWOM as well

People complain the "magic spells" are boring with tech names... CF Galciv

People complain about how all races/fractions play roughly the same. Well so did Galciv until the expansions right?

In other words, while EWOM is very disappointing, I feel some of it could be predicted, and even in the best case scenario, without bugs and strong AI, it would still be "bland" at least to many people..

One thing GalCiv did quite well (not as well as others but passably well) was atmosphere , even though you didn't really get to customize each race until the expansions, there was to me at least, some sort of different feeling when dealing with Drath for example...

It's hard to get into EWOM... 

"It's hard to get into EWOM"

and this is because of the lack of detail!

They have much work to do still but it IS getting better.  At least they are working on it and actively!  They could be like so many other game companies that promise you the world pump the game unfinished say they are going to add promised features in upcoming patch and then you never hear from them about that particular game again.  9 months later you find them trying to sell you a new game with the actual features of the old but with a nice new 50$ price tag on it.

Yes. Props to them for working on it. No question.

But one wonders if they will or are capable of working on the "content"/"magic" part... Something in their DNA.... 

Agreed luketan; i wonder why this is so difficult of task.  Magic would have been my main focal point and now that everyone mentions it the game does feel very much like im playing with a program than a game.

.

I try but as most comedians will tell you.. The funniest things in life are the things that are true!